Armageddon

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Coordinates: 32 ° 35 ′ 0 ″  N , 35 ° 11 ′ 0 ″  E

Armageddon (also Armageddon , Armageddon or Har-Magedon , Greek Ἁρμαγεδών ) designates in the Revelation of John the place of the end-time decisive battle in the "war of the great day of God the Almighty". In the broader sense, the term in theology describes the eschatological decision-making battle . It is used secularly for very large, all-destructive catastrophes .

Biblical source

The word Armageddon is mentioned only once in the Bible, namely in the Revelation of John , chapter 16, verse 16. The author describes in the context of the verse the last series of end-time plagues, the " seven bowls of wrath ". According to God's command, seven angels pour them over the earth. The sixth bowl (verses 12-16) shows that the river Euphrates is drying up and that three demon spirits move the kings of the world to assemble on Mount Armageddon for war with God . According to the critical text editions used today, verse 16 reads : "Καὶ συνήγαγεν αὐτοὺς εἰς τὸν τόπον τὸν καλούμενον Ἑβραϊστὶ Ἁρμαγεδών".

The manuscripts at this point offer a variety of spellings for the word Armageddon (Ἁρμαγεδών). Many textual witnesses, including the majority of the text , read Μαγεδών or Μαγεδδών, other Αρμεγηδων, Αρμαγεδδων, Αρμεγεδδων, Αρμεγεδων, Αρμαγεδω, Αρμαγεδον, Αρμαγεδωμ, Μαγεδωδ, Μαγιδων, Μακεδδων. The most important and best manuscripts (including the Sinaiticus and Alexandrinus ) read at this point Ἁρμαγεδν, i.e. Armagedian with a long o and an emphasis on the last syllable.

Interpretations of the place

To the subject of the verse

The passage is reproduced differently in different Bible translations. In the Luther Bible, revised in 1984, and in the Elberfeld Bible it says: "And he gathered them together to the place which is called Armageddon in Hebrew " ( Rev 16:16  ELB ) - with "he" in the context of the "angel" from verse 12, “God Almighty” from verse 14 or Christ as speaker and subject in verse 15. Similar to the Zurich Bible : According to it, the angel (from verse 12) gathers the kings at Armageddon.

The standard translation is different ; she writes: "The spirits brought the kings together in the place that is called Armageddon in Hebrew " ( Rev 16:16  EU ). She thus sees in the spirits (Greek: πνεύματα δαιμονίων) from verse 14 the subject for the verb “to gather”. All modern commentators see it that way too.

On the term Armageddon

The term Armageddon occurs in the Bible only in the context of the aforementioned vision of the future. The place cannot be clearly identified. Possible interpretations are as follows:

  • Har Megiddô (Hebrew הר מגדו), mountain of Megiddo , a southern branch of the Carmel Mountains . In the plain of Megiddo (בקעת־מגדו) is the classic battlefield of Canaan ( Ri 4.12–16  EU and Ri 5.19  EU ; 2 Kings 23.29  EU ; 2 Chr 35.22  EU )
  • the Greek rendering of har mô'ed (Hebrew הר מועד), the mythical assembly mountain as the meeting place of anti-divine powers and the demonic counterpart to the assembly mountain of the gods ( Isa 14:13)
  • the Greek rendering of har (ham) maqdôn (Hebrew הר [ה] מקדון), mountain of Alexander the great

Only a place of assembly or also a place of battle?

Many interpreters see Armageddon not only as the place of the gathering of kings, but also as the place of the end-time decisive battle. In terms of language, however, this is not mandatory, because there is no talk of the end-time struggle at the point and its context. So Armageddon can only refer to the place of the assembly of the kings, but the fight itself can also be used elsewhere - e.g. B. near Jerusalem - take place (cf. Rev 14.20  Luth and Sach 14.2  Luth ).

Modern reception

The expectation of an eschatological battle at Armageddon has no significant significance in the life and theology of the large, European-influenced official churches . On the other hand, it is very essential for Christian groups and artists with an end - time orientation. Due to the prevailing awareness of the inner non-belonging to the transitory world in these special communities, the Revelation of John, understood as a book that describes the fall of this world and the rise of a new one, occupies a special position. The motif of the last battle at Armageddon is also interpreted in this context.

In secular (not ecclesiastical) language, the term, stripped of its theological content, is used synonymously with the end of the world or catastrophe .

Dispensationalism

A real Armageddon theology has developed in American dispensationalism . She sees Armageddon as an actual battle between the Israel of the end times and the "kings of the east". Here the one in Rev. The place mentioned in 16:16 is interpreted as the battle described in Rev 19 : 11-20  EU , in which the kings, the "beast" and their followers are destroyed by the heavenly hosts. It is followed by the millennial kingdom of peace , in which Jesus Christ and his martyrs reign on earth. Some proponents of this point of view repeatedly suggest to their readers that these end-time events are imminent. The evangelical preacher Hal Lindsey (* 1929), for example, explained in his 1980 bestseller The 1980s. Countdown to Armageddon that the 1980s “could very well be the last decade of history as we know it,” and predicted an impending nuclear war between the US and the Soviet Union . In this book, Cold War thinking has been mixed up with a very specific Armageddon concept within the dispensationalist tradition of perception. Another work that is part of this interpretative story is the Left Behind novel series by the authors Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins.

Jehovah's Witnesses

For Charles Taze Russell , the founder of the religious community of Jehovah's Witnesses , "the War of Armageddon" was such an important topic that he named the fourth volume of his scriptural studies , published in 1897, that way. He said at the time that this war was already under way and would end in 1914 with the advent of the Kingdom of Peace. For the Jehovah's Witnesses the doctrine of the Battle of Armageddon is at the center of their theology: They expect that in the near future Jehovah through his Son Jesus Christ (equated with the Archangel Michael ) together with the angel army in the battle of Armageddon will eliminate Satan's world system and will replace it with the promised millennial kingdom of peace .

music

The reggae musician Willi Williams sang in 1978 from the perspective of the Rastafarian religion about the "Armagideon Time" of his present. The song was covered the following year by punk band The Clash and appeared as the B-side of their single London Calling . The song Armageddon is on the debut album of the Christian music band Söhne Mannheims , "Zion" (2000) . According to the song, the end times with their warlike events have already begun.

Movie

Measured against the large number of films that take up or deal with apocalyptic subjects, “Armageddon” appears rather seldom in the recording of the Revelation of John. So z. B. in the movie The Omega Code (1999) and Megiddo: Omega Code 2 (2001). The last mentioned film ends with a quote from Rev 11:15  Luth .

The topic “Armageddon” is more often used secularly in science fiction films for very large, all-destructive catastrophes (see end of the world ). First against the background of the nuclear arms race: The Last Shore (1959), Dr. Strange or How I Learned to Love the Bomb (1964), Return to the Planet of the Apes (1970); then alluding to the possibilities of biological warfare: Der Omega-Mann (1971), 12 Monkeys (1995); finally with the theme of the alien invasion : Clash of the Worlds (1953, remake: 2005), Independence Day (1996). The catastrophe film Armageddon - The Last Judgment (1998) takes up the theme of "Armageddon" both in the title and in one scene - when the President of the United States interprets the impending catastrophe of the asteroid impact as the "day that the Bible calls Armageddon" , but otherwise shows no parallels to the Revelation of John. A similar disaster is also the subject of the film Deep Impact (1998).

literature

In the literature since the Second World War there is also numerous evidence of the inclusion of the topic - on the one hand in the secularized form, as with the British historian Max Hastings , who used the term as the title for his book about the fall of the Third Reich at the end of the Second World War chose, or in the science fiction novel The Last Shore by the English author Nevil Shute , in which humanity is destroyed by a nuclear war ; on the other hand in the religious inclusion of the topic in the left-behind novel series (1995-2007) by the authors Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins. There the army of the "true believers" fights against the "army of Satan" on the battlefield of Megiddo until Jesus appears and kills the believers' enemies.

literature

  • Richard Bauckham : Article Armageddon. I. New Testament . Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception 2, De Gruyter, Berlin [ua] 2009, pp. 769–772 (accessed via De Gruyter Online).
  • Lorenzo DiTommaso: Article Armageddon. III. Christianity. B. Modern Europe and America . Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception 2, De Gruyter, Berlin [ua] 2009, pp. 779-781 (accessed via De Gruyter Online).
  • Mark D. Stucky: Article Armageddon. V. film. In: Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception 2. De Gruyter, Berlin [et al.] 2009, pp. 782–784 (accessed via De Gruyter Online).
  • Franz Graf-Stuhlhofer : “The end is near!” The mistakes of the end-time specialists. 3. Edition. VKW Verlag für Kultur und Wissenschaft, Bonn 2007 (first edition 1992), ISBN 978-3-938116-30-2 .
  • M. James Penton: End Times Without End: The Story of Jehovah's Witnesses. Ausstieg, Karlsruhe 2010, ISBN 978-3-00-032916-6 (original title: Apocalypse Delayed: The Story of Jehovah's Witnesses , translated by Herbert Raab).
  • Tina Pippin: Article Armageddon. IV. Literature . Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception 2, De Gruyter, Berlin [ua] 2009, pp. 781–782 (accessed via De Gruyter Online).
  • Werner Thiede : A sweet, yet difficult to digest book. On the interpretation of the Revelation of John in Christian special communities. In: Kerygma and Dogma. Volume 42, 1995, pp. 213-242.
  • Vicktoria and Victor Trimondi : Prophecy and Politics. The end-time speculations of the American doomsday writers. In: War of Religions. Politics, faith and terror in the sign of the apocalypse. Fink, Paderborn 2005, ISBN 978-3-7705-4188-1 .
  • Rebekka Voss: Controversial Redeemers: Politics, Ideology and Judeo-Christian Messianism in Germany, 1500–1600 (= Jewish religion, history and culture , volume 11). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2011, ISBN 978-3-525-56900-9 (dissertation, University of Düsseldorf 2007, 272 pages, under the title: More than the art of being right ).

Web links

Commons : Armageddon  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Remarks

  1. Barbara Aland , Kurt Aland (ed.): Novum Testamentum Graece . 28th edition. Stuttgart 2012, p. 771 ( online ).
  2. Bruce M. Metzger : A Textual Commentary On The Greek New Testament. 2nd Edition. Stuttgart 1994, p. 681.
  3. ^ Evangelical Reformed Church of the Canton of Zurich (ed.): Zurich Bible. 3. Edition. 2009 ( online  ( page no longer available , search in web archivesInfo: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. ).@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.die-bibel.de  
  4. See Bousset 399 ; Roloff 160.164; Müller 277; Giesen 360; Satake 337; Beale 838; Aune 898.
  5. Bauckham : Armageddon , pp. 771–772, indicates against the background of Sach 12.11  EU ; Ez 38.8  EU ; Ez 2,4,17  EU and Joel 4,2  EU Armageddon as a meeting place from which the enemies move down to attack Jerusalem.
  6. So z. B. Bousset 399 ; Satake 339.
  7. See Bauckham: Armageddon , p. 770.
  8. ↑ In terms of the sociology of religion, this is almost a basic requirement for the formation and maintenance of these communities. Thiede: little book , p. 215.
  9. In connection with the financial crisis from 2007 and the euro crisis, there is repeated talk of a “financial Armageddon” that needs to be averted. See Michael Panzner: Financial Armageddon. Protect Your Future from Economic Collapse. Kaplan Publishing, New York 2008; Henrik Müller : Who will save the world from the financial Armageddon? In: Der Spiegel from July 19, 2011 ( online , accessed July 24, 2011); Mark Schieritz: Get out of the debt hole. In: Die Zeit from July 28, 2011, p. 19 ( online , accessed July 31, 2011).
  10. ^ Franz Graf-Stuhlhofer : "The end is near!" The errors of the end-time specialists. 3. Edition. Verlag für Kultur und Wissenschaft, Bonn 2007, pp. 142–151.
  11. quoted from Paul S. Boyer: When Time shall be no more. Prophecy Belief in Modern American Culture. Harvard University Press, Cambridge 1992, p. 5. On Lindsey, see also: DiTommaso, p. 779.
  12. DiTommaso, p. 779. There, the topic of the article is taken up in the 11th volume.
  13. ^ Charles Taze Russell : Studies in the Scriptures , Vol. 4: The Battle of Armageddon , 1897.
  14. ^ Franz Stuhlhofer: Charles T. Russell and Jehovah's Witnesses. The incorrigible prophet. 3. Edition. Berneck 1994, pp. 69-74 (there also the exact sequence predicted by Russell).
  15. See Rüdiger Hauth: Art. Sekten, TRE 31 (2000), pp. 33-38. According to Hauth, Armageddon is the “most important keyword that you [sc. that determines the life and thought of Jehovah's Witnesses ". As evidence, Hauth quotes from The Watchtower of February 1, 1985, p. 4.
  16. Werner Thiede: A sweet and yet indigestible little book. On the interpretation of the Revelation of John in Christian special communities. In: Kerygma and Dogma 42 (1995), pp. 224, 226 f.
  17. The lyrics are only abbreviated in the booklet and in most internet sources. Michael Ganster: Christian spiritual content in contemporary pop music using the example of Xavier Naidoos and their reception among young people, Konstanz 2003, pp. 81–86, the entire text including the audio commentary attached to the song is listed.
  18. See Michael Schneider: "Did you hear Armageddon is here". Reception of biblical texts and motifs in selected texts by Xavier Naidoo. Zeitschrift für Neues Testament 17 (9th year) 2006, pp. 53–63, here: pp. 58 f.
  19. See Stucky, p. 782. In the film, the source of the quotation is incorrectly given as “Revelation 17:15”.
  20. See Stucky, p. 783.
  21. See Stucky, pp. 783f.
  22. Max Hastings: Armageddon. The Battle for Germany 1944-45. MacMillan, London 2004.
  23. Further examples in Tippin, p. 782: The Last Generation ( Arthur C. Clarke , 1953), Katzenwiege ( Kurt Vonnegut , 1963), The War of the Worlds ( HG Wells , 1898), The Planet of the Apes ( Pierre Boulle , 1963 ), In the Land of Empty Houses ( PD James , 1993).
  24. See Pippin, p. 782 with reference to Volume 11 of the series of novels.
  25. with a current article by Thomas Schirrmacher , criticism of generalizing and charismatic end-time authors because of predictions that did not come true