At 12:50 PM 10/7/99 -0400, Tom Izbicki wrote:
>The reason for the composition of Revelation might have gone away, but
>Apocalypticism seems to find renewed strength in other adversities. So
>the puzzle is why Augustine did not find that a recourse in his own age of
>stress.
I share your puzzlement to some degree. There's no question that "relative
deprivation" prompts apocalyptic imaginings. (My neighbor Pat Robertson is
one of Virginia's wealthiest and most influential citizens, yet apocalyptic
logic makes sense for him because he reads the "signs of the times" as
ominous.) Might Alaric's raiding party have seemed less cataclysmic to the
provincial Augustine than to Italians (or certainly Romans)?
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