Fascinating: the idea that end-time cults happened to emerge in a society with an “endless monotonously increasing” numbering scheme for years, as a kind of response to some cognitive dissonance about the inevitability of time to go on forever.
For those who also find this stuff fun, I’m reading and highly recommend “When Christians Were Jews: The First Generation” by Paula Fredriksen [1], about the very early Christians.
I find it a vivid and history-backed picture of those times. It’s hard to appreciate just how apocalyptic the first believers were, and how the continued failure of the end-times to come would change the messaging and focus of the religion over the first few generations.
For those who also find this stuff fun, I’m reading and highly recommend “When Christians Were Jews: The First Generation” by Paula Fredriksen [1], about the very early Christians.
I find it a vivid and history-backed picture of those times. It’s hard to appreciate just how apocalyptic the first believers were, and how the continued failure of the end-times to come would change the messaging and focus of the religion over the first few generations.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paula_Fredriksen#Books