Ex Oriente Lux 2021

153 Perezolova Anna HSE University, Faculty of World Economy and International Affairs THE GENRE OF HISTORICAL APOCALYPSE IN EASTERN CHRISTIAN COMMUNITIES IN LATE ANTIQUITY Due to centuries of political upheavals in the Middle East, a new genre of reli- gious text appeared within Eastern Christian communities — a historical apoca- lypse. This paper will discuss the defining features of a historical apocalypse the main of which is the specificity of personal names, events and places mentioned in a particular text of an apocalypse. It will discuss the representations of ‘enemies’ in these texts: some of the Eastern Christian apocalyptic texts explicitly mention other religious groups in a negative connotation, referring to them as enemies and even equating these foreigners with demonic archetypes. This statement is true most com- monly for descriptions of Muslims found in such texts as The Book of the Rolls, the Apocalypse of Shenute, the Apocalypse of Samuel of Kalamun, the Arabic Revela- tion of Jesus Christ to Peter and others. For instance, these descriptions include such metaphors as “Sons of Perdition”, “Arkun’s beloved”, “Sons of the wolf”, etc. that refer to demonic attributes. These parallels between a newly emerged ideological and political threat and eschatologically symbolic omens significantly influenced not only the political view of the foreigners, but also the perception of apocalypse in the marginal, apocryphal theology of apocryphal literature. It will be argued that the struggles of Eastern Christian Churches to maintain their autonomy and integrity forced these communi- ties into juxtaposition of self with other religious entities and have influenced the development of apocalyptic genre that was widely spread in various Eastern Chris- tian communities throughout centuries.