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The Millenium Page consists of seven segments. Each contains a brief introductory essay followed by a set of Internet links that are pertinent to the topic. Use the navigation bars at the top and bottom of each page to explore the various segments. When you click on external links, a separate browser will open to facilitate your ease in returning to the links and content on this page.
The Millennium: A Quest for Understanding
With time ticking forward. or backwards if you have a millennium clock,1) a kind of controlled hysteria builds slowly as planet Earth moves inexorably toward the year 2000. In a short six months from this writing we will all know whether the dawning of year 2000 will bring something extraordinary, something above and beyond the hype associated with the countdown--something that might be recalled at the dawning of Y3K.
Unlike its predecessor a thousand years ago, communication, watches, and atomic clocks will allow everyone to know exactly when the new millennium occurs. Well, at least those who use the Gregorian calendar will know. Of course, when the magic moment arrives depends on which time zone of the planet you reside in. And for those who call Indiana home, the "exact" time will depend on whether your local government voted for day-light savings time some years earlier in the twentieth century.
Ultimately millennium hysteria is over an arbitrary date, set by humans, and varied around the world. Even if everyone agreed to use the International Date Line, people would still be debating over when the millennium truly occurs. Since there was no year 0, is the true millennium 2001? And what about the fact that many scholars believe that Christ was born in 4 B.C. If that is so, has the millennium already past? Or should it be calculated from when Christ was crucified?2
In spite of the fact that we all know the arbitrary nature of dates, our minds tend to associate the end of a decade, year, or century as an end to an era and the beginning of something new. Only a tiny proportion of the planet's population will be conscious of having lived to see the dawning of two centuries. It is absolutely clear that the several billion earthlings who witness the dawning of the new millennium will experience this only once.
Many groups, including the White House, are using the millennium to promote cultural renewal and sound the clarion call for the beginning of a better future.3 On the other hand, rationalists are quick to criticize year 2000 hype and it has become an easy target for satire.4
While the rationalists may be correct, the very hype surrounding the millennium is a sociological phenomenon worthy of study. Because we are "modern" and "rational," we accept the value of a uniform scale to consistently measure time. As a result, these arbitrary constructions of time and dates take on tremendous significance. The skeptic will criticize, but this does little to help us better understand the phenomenon.5
There are literally thousands of web sites containing some type of commentary on the millennium. This project was initially undertaken with some apprehension that it would achieve little more than add to the clutter of millennium chatter. After looking at scores of other millennium sites, it became evident that the tremendous variations in web sites dedicated to the millennium, doomsday prophecies, and so on, deserved its own commentary.
Many learned scholars have devoted careers to studying the millennium through history. The goal of this web page is to hopefully use these scholarly resources to shed some light on the tremendous volume of millennium resources on the Internet. The sheer volume of both scholarly and Internet resources precludes the likelihood of achieve any significant closure on the subject as a single term project.
The goal of this inquiry is to draw upon scholarly literature to better understand the phenomenon of millennial madness as it is manifest on the Internet which, in turn, is assumed to be one significant manifestation of broader cultural reaction. The focus of the inquiry is on The Millennium as a religious phenomenon.
The goal of this project is not to write a treatise of great scholarly merit. Rather, by combining scholarly inquiry with an examination of religious millennialism as it is manifest on the Internet, I hope to provide a resource that will assist others in reaching their own conclusions.
In reading the introductory and integrative text to each segment, you will see many superscript numbers. These are not conventional footnotes. Click on the numbers and they will link you to materials that provide more insight into the topic. My goal is to use a large variety of web sites to show the variations in perspectives. While it should be obvious, let me state explicitly that linking to a particular web site does not constitute an endorsement of the content of that site.
While this web page will primarily focus on religious responses to the millennium, it is important to realize that the fascination and responses to the end times transcends the exclusive domains of both the sacred and secular sectors of society.
Few subjects consume more human thinking than the search for a meaning to life. We want to bring some significance to our lives by knowing why we are here and by understanding the beginning and the end, we hope to bring some closure to this curiosity. Many of the political events of this century can be traced to nuclear weapons and its threat.6 With the end of the red scare, cinema has replaced this gap with movies about aliens Independence Day), diseases (Outbreak), and most recently asteroids (Deep Impact, Armageddon ).7
Even the great rationalists, scientists, spend whole careers thinking about the beginning and the end. Darwin changed biology forever with his discoveries about evolution. And in the process, the main purpose of cosmology has been transformed into the quest to explain the universe. s beginning and end.
Big bang theorists seek to chart the birth of the universe to its first hundredths of a second. Telescopes, such as the Hubble, allow us to literally see back in time. Now, many cosmologists consider whether or not the universe will collapse, reach equilibrium, or expand forever and end in a whimper (the prevailing thought).8 But why should cosmologists care? Before any of this, the earth will be consumed by the Sun, which will be gone too. And even before this, the human race will most likely be destroyed by either asteroids, disease, melting ice caps, or nuclear war. Still the fascination drives us.
Sometimes completely secular predictors often gain our attention. Tabloids often use Nostradamus predictions to increase circulation. Living in 16th century France, Nostradamus wrote cryptic predictions in his book Centuries. The book consists of quatrains grouped in sets of a hundred, which is called a century. He has been credited with predicting Napoleon, the American Revolution, and Hitler who he called Hister. Nostradamus believers must be particularly curious about Centuries X, Quatrain 72:
But before you move into a bomb shelter, take some things into consideration. Nostradamus wrote hundreds of these cryptic quatrains. Also, Nostradamus interpreters do a far better job picking things that happened in the past than they do at predicting the future. One could associate this with reading your horoscope and identifying it with something that happened yesterday. Finally, many prophecies could be self-fulfilling. When somebody showed Nostradamus. s prediction to Hitler, he quickly used it as a propaganda tool (of course with his own interpretation). The allies similarly used it do demonize Hitler (Chandler: 57-68). Those interpreting the prophecy can make them "self-fulfilling" by causing them to come true.9
My quest to understand the spiritual significance of The Millennium has been engaging and fascinating beyond the high expectations I had when I began. I invite you to use the resource I have created to aid in your own quest for understanding.
Christopher W. Smith
University of Virginia
07/01/99
When does the millennium begin?
Nostradamus and other secular predictors.
The Millennium Page was created by Christopher W. Smith (cws2p@virginia.edu), an undergraduate history major at the University as partial fulfillment of an independent research project in the Department of Sociology. Mr. Smith was earlier a student in the New Religious Movements course and created a most interesting project on direct sales organizations as para-religious movements. He would welcome your thoughts and comments on The Millennium Page.
Jeffrey K. Hadden
hadden@virginia.edu
07/01/99