Millennialism, the Millerites, and Historicism

WHY has the creation of the kingdom of God on earth been a central vision of the Bahá'í Faith, and why has it resonated particularly with converts from Protestant Christianity? A number of motifs have been central to various stages in Bahá'í history, according to sociologist Peter Smith.^[1] The first and foremost of these motifs, he posits, is millennialism (the urgent expectation of eschatological events and revolutionary changes that would transform society through the agency of God, His Emissary, or His people) and the expectation of a future time when that transformed society would minimize poverty and suffering. Thus it is not surprising that millennialism has primacy as a theme in the writings of the Bábí Faith and as a foundation for other motifs, such as martyrdom and social reform. This same millennial motif was a major impulse that encouraged early American Bahá'ís, living in a largely Protestant culture, to focus on the Bible and a particular form of interpretation of biblical time prophecy.

The interpretation of prophecy has fundamental value for large numbers of believers in any religion because it plays a crucial role in individual and group self-definition. "Prophecy belief," according to Paul Boyer, a leading scholar of millennialism, "is a way of ordering experience. It gives a grand, overarching shape to history, and thus ultimate meaning to the lives of individuals caught up in history's stream."^[2] At the end of the nineteenth century this process of self-definition consumed early American Bahá'ís, who sought proof from the Bible that Bahá'u'lláh, the founder of their Faith, was the return of Christ anticipated by the millennial elements within all religions. One strand of American Protestantism, Millerism, was particularly attractive to early American Bahá'ís largely because of its expectations for the fulfillment of biblical prophecy in 1844— the beginning of the Bahá'í era. This conjunction of the founding of the Bahá'í Faith with the Millerite prediction validated for Bahá'ís of Protestant background the exegetical method employed by the followers of Millerism.

An investigation of the intellectual genealogy of the Millerites and their exegetical method reveals how influential Protestant beliefs were in shaping a distinctly Bahá'í methodology in time-prophecy interpretation. The Millerite movement was the prime example of Christian expectation regarding 1844, and its principles of time-prophecy interpretation found favor as a pattern for prophetic interpretation by American Bahá'ís.

Early American Bahá'ís were instrumental in fostering a consensus around this approach that has since become the norm among Bahá'ís, largely through the confirmation, correction, and creative synthesis of 'Abdu'l-Bahá, Bahá'u'lláh's eldest son, His appointed successor, and the interpreter of His writings. By applying one of several distinctly Protestant approaches to time-prophecy interpretation and drawing on a Bahá'í perspective on key biblical passages, American Bahá'ís have emerged in the twentieth century as the primary bearers of a particular approach to time-prophecy interpretation.

Seeds of Historicism

BELIEF in prophecy, and particularly in the type of prophecy that specifies the dates of future events, has its roots in the human experience of time. Human beings have an innate need to measure and order things, relating human actions and events to each other in sequence. Hence they have set up elaborate schemes for measuring time.^[3] Calendars and clocks demarcate human experience by dividing time into manageable portions to which meaning and value can be assigned.

Human beings also seek to escape time, to be freed from imprisonment in the here and now, to gain transcendent knowledge of the future or at least a sense of assurance in predicting its course in humanity's favor. In the base ten number system now universally in use, the multiples of ten, one hundred, and one thousand demarcate transitions in order of magnitude and are used as a convenient way to count in large amounts. The inherent operations of base-ten counting, with the appearance of one or more zeros at the end of a number, thus serves as a mental marker. In the past two centuries, as each century has begun, human discourse has been filled With expectation. The highest expectation, however, has been reserved for millennial markers, when three zeros ring up after the initial digit. There is ongoing discussion about whether the year 1000 was seen as anything special by those Who lived through it.^[4] To any honest observer, however, it is clear that the year 2000 has sparked a mythic interest that combines the fear of apocalypse and the hope of progress.

The Bible has also given to the Christian world a demarcation in the form of the millennium, a Latin word meaning a period of one thousand years, which represents the Christian expectation that Jesus Christ will return bodily from heaven and reign over a recreated earth for a thousand years (Revelation 20). But millennialism is not confined to the Christian or religious worlds: It has come to have a historical and sociological meaning that transcends both Christianity and a specific period of time. One of the most widely used definitions calls millennialism a brand of salvationism that pictures salvation as collective, terrestrial, imminent, total, and miraculous or, succinctly, as the "urgent expectation of eschatological events that will utterly transform the world."^[5] In its most generic form, the millennium is "a future time free from cares, imperfections, and suffering."^[6]

In addition to the millennium, Jewish and Christian scriptures refer to other time periods that mark significant events in sacred history, perhaps contemporary with the authors, perhaps future: 1,260 days, 1,290 days, 1,335 days, 2,300 days.^[7] The myth and magic of such numbers inserted in a sacred text has spurred many to search for the keys to their decoding.

Both the biblical prophecies and the properties of calendrical systems have fostered a significant trend in religion: the interpretation of prophecy in terms of a timetable of sacred history. The interpreting of dates within sacred texts and traditions has been an important way of defending prophetic claims, establishing theological chronologies, and constructing scenarios of the consummation of history. Protestant Christianity in particular has fostered several schools of prophetic exegesis. One of these is of particular importance in understanding the development of the Bahá'í approach to time prophecy in the largely Protestant environment of North America.

The exegetical method used by many Protestant interpreters in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries has been termed historicism.^[8] It was a method of continuous historical interpretation, including the coordination of all prophecy with specific historical events.

Historicists believed that Daniel's prophecies were reiterated in the Book of Revelation and that many of the events described had already been fulfilled in history. Drawing on the historicist method, one could theoretically know which prophecies were yet to be fulfilled and calculate them based on the historical events and dates that historicists assigned to the already-completed prophecies. Protestant historicism exhibited four characteristics: a preoccupation with prophetic time periods, buttressed by the widely accepted theory that every prophetic day signified a literal year; a calibration of all prophecy with history; the identification of the papacy with the Antichrist; and a coherent system of interdependent synchronization among prophecies.

For those who believed in prophecy, and particularly in historicism, history had a direction, a goal. The randomness and uncertainty of history gave way to coherence, order, and certainty.^[9] Chronologies in which particular years were invested with millennialist significance were of necessity destined to elicit and evoke a millennialist response whenever a period of mythic import approached. Likewise, if one wishes to search for the meaning of prophecies in historical events, millennialist significance can be created around a date on the basis of the perceived authority of the prophetic text and the apparent soundness of the methods used for deciphering prophecies. Such creative investment of an otherwise mundane year with mythic meaning can be seen in the results of the historicist methodology used by the Millerites. This method of interpretation, widespread and largely unquestioned in eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century American Protestantism, had its origins in a number of trends and movements in pre-Christian writings and within early Christianity.

The Greek poet Hesiod (eighth century B.C.E.) taught that history was a succession of worsening stages, descending from a golden age to silver, bronze, and iron.^[10] The final stage of history, he believed, would be marked by warfare and discord, completed by Zeus' destruction of humankind for its wickedness.^[11] This Greek vision reemerged in the book of Daniel in the form of the image in Nebuchadnezzar's dream (Dan. 2:31-45).^[12]

Apocalyptic writing, which emerged from the earlier prophetic tradition of Amos, Hosea, and Micah that stressed ethical issues, reached its apogee in the eighth to the sixth centuries B.C.E. among Jewish authors who observed God's operation in human actions and who gave sacred significance to the sweep of history. The most significant of such apocalyptic writers were the authors of portions of the book of Ezekiel and the book of Daniel in the Old Testament, as well as the authors of several later noncanonical texts. The apocalyptic passages of Ezekiel were set down following a period when the Jews faced extinction as a nation, when the Babylonian ruler Nebuchadnezzar conquered the Holy Land and destroyed Solomon's temple in Jerusalem (sixth century B.C.E.). The author of the book of Daniel wrote around the time that the Seleucid monarch Antiochus Epiphanes attempted, between 175 and 164 B.C.E., a forced Hellenization of the Jewish people, who revolted under the leadership of the Maccabee family. The historical personages of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, and other lesser prophetic figures had functioned primarily as preachers focusing on contemporary transgressions, foretelling divine favor or wrath, depending on the actions taken toward Israel by Israel's enemies and Israel's response to the divine call. The subsequent apocalyptic authors who wrote the biblical books that now bear the names of Ezekiel and Daniel introduced the notion that history would have an ending or consummation —an apocalypse. They were

stylists consciously creating a literary genre that relied heavily on symbol and allegory to reveal the divine plan underlying the surface flow of events. Taking the entire sweep of history as their subject, they portrayed in metaphorical language the future of the Jews, the fate of Israel's enemies, and the ultimate destiny of humanity and the universe itself. The prophets viewed the struggle between good and evil as an individual and corporate matter; the apocalypticists saw it in cosmic terms.^[13] The apocalyptic authors' understanding of humanity's fate, which was articulated when the books of Ezekiel and Daniel were written, opened the door for continued elaboration of humanity's cosmic destiny. In the period of more than a century and a half between the Maccabean revolt and the appearance of Christianity, a number of apocalyptic works, some canonical, some extracanonical, appeared, including apocalyptic works in the Dead Sea scrolls.

The canonical apocalypses available to early Christians included important parts of Ezekiel and Daniel; the Little Apocalypse (also known as the Olivet Discourse or Synoptic Apocalypse, in Mark 13:14-27, Luke 21:25-28, Matt. 24:29-31), and the Revelation of St. John.^[14] All would become the basis of the kind of prophetic dating on which historicism flourished.

The eschatological hopes and millennial dreams that sustained the early Christians remained alive and took various forms over time. In 172 C.E. the Phrygian Christian prophet Montanus proclaimed that he was the Holy Spirit incarnate and that the last judgment was at hand. The great Christian theologian Irenaeus (c.130-c.200 C.E.), in his treatise Against Heresies, reviewed the biblical apocalypses and developed a prophetic timetable that demarcated millennial periods based on the six days of creation and the day of rest. History would last for six thousand years, ending with Christ's return and the millennium. Victorinus, the late third century C.E. Bishop of Pettau, wrote the earliest surviving commentary on the Book of Revelation, in which he asserted the millennialist vision that Christ would reign for a thousand years at the end of history. The theologian Lactantius (early fourth century C.E.) introduced a strong apocalyptic strain in his Divine Institutes. However, Origen (c.185-c.254 C.E.), the premier theologian of the early Greek church, wrote against literal interpretation of prophecies. He taught, for example, that the Antichrist was only a symbol of evil and that the thousand-year reign of righteousness described was a spiritual state of the souls of individual believers. Christianity's most celebrated doctrinal theologian, Saint Augustine (354-430 C.E.), also rejected a literal millennium, elaborating instead the metaphor of history as a struggle between two cities symbolically represented by Jerusalem the city of God—that is, the Church) and Babylon (the city of man). The combat of the Book of Revelation did not await eschatological fulfillment because it was being enacted in the present.^[15]

Despite the caution urged by Origen and Augustine, early Christianity was already strongly affected by the association of apocalyptic symbols with contemporary imperial powers and world events. These associations had arisen in the Maccabean period (second and first centuries B.C.E.), when Jewish existence was threatened, and when symbols in Daniel were already being applied to the contemporary Romans. It was a short stretch for New Testament authors and early church exegetes to interpret the book of Daniel by projecting some of its references into the future (for example, Matt. 24:15) while connecting prophecies to the international political realities of the day. From the time of the church fathers (the bishops and teachers of the early Christian church, circa 100-800 C.E.), the four kingdoms of Nebuchadnezzar's dream in the book of Daniel (2:31-45) were identified as Babylon (the head of gold), Persia (the breast and arms of silver), Greece (the belly and thighs of bronze), and Rome (the legs of iron). If Rome was the kingdom of iron, its rule would be followed by disintegration into weak and strong nations (feet of iron mixed with clay) and the ultimate setting up of God's kingdom. Believers could begin to ask themselves at what date this kingdom would arrive. However, historicism as a method of interpreting biblical time prophecy did not yet exist, for there was no harmonization of prophecies, and there was no papal Antichrist.

There existed in the early Church, however, a growing preoccupation with chronology, particularly with millennial dates. It is the confluence of calendrical millennia and the association of specific prophecies with past and contemporary events that catalyzed the historicist worldview. Judaism and Christianity both developed an overarching chronological measurement in the early centuries of the common era. The chronology was based on the supposed age of the world (anno Mundi, or A.M.). In the period from around 250 to 850 C.E. Christianity twice made major revisions in this dating system to avoid the threatened consummation of world history and the beginning of the millennium in the year six thousand A.M. It finally adopted the standard that reckons from the purported date of Christ's birth (anno Domini, or A.D.), forestalling the threatened consummation, while creating fertile ground for future consummations as A.D. millennial years approached.

Near the end of the first millennium of Christianity, some Jewish commentators started to calculate prophetic time by counting a biblical prophetic day as a year (Hebrew י֣וֹם לַשָּׁנָ֗ה yom la-shana). Joachim of Fiore (1130-1202) was perhaps the first Christian to employ the year-day method. He applied it to the 1,260 days of the Book of Revelation, teaching that a new age was to begin in 1260 C.E. This age was to be the third spiritual dispensation of human history, the first having been that of the Father as recorded in the Jewish scriptures and the second, that of the Son as recorded in the New Testament. The third age would be the age of the Holy Spirit.^[16] Joachim can be credited with another exegetical convention on which historicists later seized. Joachim believed that the Antichrist would usurp the Holy See (the authority and power of the Pope, the bishop of Rome). By the time of the Reformation this view was common among the majority of those who became Protestants.

One thinker brought all the disparate elements of historicism together in a historicist world view. Joseph Mede (1586-1638) a master of Christ's College, Cambridge, is credited with revolutionizing the interpretation of prophecy. His major work, Clavis Apocalyptica, or The Keys to the Apocalypse, was still in print in the nineteenth century.^[17] Mede's main contribution was the synchronization of prophetic symbols. He coordinated the key prophecies of Daniel with those of Revelation, thereby radically altering any future explanations of Daniel. Mede's most influential conclusion was equating seven time prophecies that contained time spans of 3½ times (Dan. 7:25, 12:7 and Rev. 12:14), 42 months (Rev. 11:2, 13:5), and 1,260 days (Rev. 11:3, 12:6) and defining a prophetic year as 360 days and a prophetic month as 30 days, thus dissociating prophetic years from exact solar and lunar years.

Mede also went beyond the boundaries of Daniel and Revelation. Writing to the famed Archbishop of Armagh, James Ussher (1581-1656), Mede revived the early Church concept that the second advent and millennium were to inaugurate a great Sabbath that was to begin six thousand years after the creation of the world.^[18] Mede matched the end of the six thousand years with his terminus for the 1,260 days/years of papal Antichrist in the year 1736 C.E.

Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727) applied Mede's rationalist method to prophecy through the use of mathematics, which Newton had already used so successfully to explain natural phenomena. Newton's main contribution was to define historicist exegesis as scientific. Newton considered the book of Daniel to be the key to all other prophecy.^[19] Although Newton avoided becoming absolutely specific about the dates from which a terminal point of history could be calculated, he adumbrated a detailed mathematical foundation for calculating prophetic time. Newton, like Mede, equated the biblical 3½ times, 42 months, and 1,260 days and defined a prophetic year as 360 days and a prophetic month as 30 days. His model became widely accepted in the 1700s. Newton also introduced a starting point for time—prophetic calculations by measuring the 70 weeks (490 prophetic years) of Dan. 9:25 from Artaxerxes’ decree to rebuild the temple (Ezra 7), which Newton stated was issued in 457 B.C.E. Newton thus cast over prophetic exegesis the mantle of mathematical science. Throughout the eighteenth century and into the nineteenth century, this framework of so-called scientific interpretation of the symbols of the apocalyptic books was still in use, and Newton’s reputation was a powerful force in its legitimization.

In nineteenth-century American literature, the most-mentioned eighteenth-century interpreter of prophecies was Bishop Thomas Newton (1704-82), dean of St. Paul’s in London and Anglican Bishop of Bristol. Bishop Newton’s Dissertations on the Prophecies was extremely popular and widely read. The bishop’s central idea was that the entire Bible represented a harmonious chain of prophecy on the first and second advents of Christ. The two apocalyptic books, Daniel and Revelation, were the keys for unlocking the mysteries of other parts of the Bible. The prophecies, Bishop Newton believed, were a “summary of the history of the world” when explained scientifically.^[20] Newton’s addition to prophetic chronology was his equation of terminal points for six thousand anno Mundi, the completion of the 1,260 days/years and the 2,300 days/years. Emphasis on the completion of six thousand years and the coming of the millennial Day of God changed the priorities of Bible study. All genealogies and chronologies in the Bible became time prophecies with as much importance as the specifically apocalyptic prophecies of Daniel and Revelation. Thus Bishop Newton, despite eschewing any specific date for the Parousia, or Second Coming, wrote in a manner that encouraged chronological speculation and left to his readers the working out of eschatological timetables.

Further influence on nineteenth-century religious thinking was the prevalence of historicism as the exegetical methodology of most published Protestant commentaries of the time. As already noted, historicism was a method of continuous historical interpretation of sacred text, coordinating all prophecy with specific historical events, including the specific anticipated dates of future events. Along with the appearance of William Miller in America, there was in Britain a contemporaneous premillennial awakening led by interpreters of prophecy such as William Cuninghame (d. 1849), Edward Bickersteth (1786-1850), Thomas Rawson Birks (1810-83), and Edward Irving (1792-1834).^[21] The Christian Observer (London), which was published from 1802, predicted the second advent for some time between 1843 and 1847.

The Emergence of the Millerites

AT NO time was the process of constructing eschatological scenarios from historicist time prophecy more intense than during the nineteenth century. Millennial elements within all religions were convinced that the time of the end and the return of their promised one as encoded in their respective writings had arrived. In the landscape of American Protestant Christianity, no group was more influential than the Millerites in constructing an historicist interpretation of biblical time prophecy that argued for the imminent return of Christ in 1843 or 1844. Millerism is the premier example of the radical millennialism prevalent in parts of the United States in the early nineteenth century, and it remains the best-known case of the development of a millennialist movement that apparently failed in its time-prophetic predictions.^[22]

William Miller (1782-1849) has been called “the most famous millenarian in history.”^[23] Born in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, he later moved with his family to Low Hampton, New York. He was largely self-educated. In 1816 he returned fervently to the Baptist roots that had nurtured his intense interest in the Bible. It was questions of biblical interpretation that led Miller to study and calculate historical events. From his own reading and interpretation of the Bible, Miller developed ideas closely resembling those of British premillennialists of his time, but it appears that his ideas were an independent invention.^[24] The congruence between Miller’s interpretation and older readings of millennialist symbols shows that Miller breathed the common millennialist atmosphere of American Protestantism in the early nineteenth century.^[25]

Miller was neither a charismatic individual nor one possessed of training in preaching.^[26] For several years he read the Bible with the help of a concordance until he became convinced that the Second Advent was imminent. Although he felt compelled to preach, he began his mission as a preacher reluctantly. He suppressed his urge to proclaim the near Second Advent until some of his writing on the subject appeared in a Vermont newspaper in 1831, leading to requests from neighboring Baptist churches that he visit them. Miller abandoned farming to engage full time in the diffusion of his exegetical principles and their conclusions. Publication of Miller’s lectures in 1836 raised the visibility of the adventist cause. Having his lectures in print made it possible for Miller to reach beyond the immediate neighborhood. The appearance of Miller’s Evidence from Scripture and History resulted in the Boston Times’ printing excerpts from the book in 1838 and announcing that Christ would return in five years.^[27]

Miller became the authorized interpreter of a particular ideology of historicist premillennialism. His message was a simple one, largely in accord with the given tenets of his Protestant culture. His preaching and focus was on the Bible, which, supplemented with a concordance, was his one constant companion. Parallel to Miller’s focus on the Bible was his method of handling history, which he believed would unfold in accordance with Biblical prophecy. Along with his evangelical contemporaries, Miller preached Jesus as the solution to the problems of the world and of the individual soul. But the distinguishing characteristic of the Millerite message was the setting of the date for the premillennial Second Coming of Jesus, which Miller said would be some time in 1843.^[28] That year was a date commonly put forward by historicist premillennialists in Britain and America. Miller was not originally dogmatic about 1843, and he even accepted in the movement some associates who did not agree that 1843 should have special significance. In 1843 he modified the predicted fulfillment to the period between 21 March 1843 and 21 March 1844.

As the predicted date drew near, Millerism grew rapidly. There were a number of dates during 1843 and 1844 on which Miller or his followers expected the descent of Jesus Christ on the clouds. Originally the expectation was limited to what he termed the “Jewish year” of 21 March 1843 through 21 March 1844. When the awaited Parousia did not take place on 21 March 1844, Joshua Himes wrote: “If we are mistaken in the time, and the world still goes on after 1843, we shall have the satisfaction of having done our duty.” This softness on the time tended to be held by the central leaders and cushioned the disappointment of spring 1844.^[29] But a new movement —called the “seventh-month movement” —began that the established leaders of the initial movement could not control. Its followers believed that Christ’s return would be on the day of atonement according to the Karaite calendar (the tenth day of the seventh month) or 22 October 1844. On 22 October 1844—the last of the definite dates given by the Millerites for the Parousia—the person of Jesus Christ did not descend in the expected manner. Millerism, by this failed prediction, discredited premillennialism in America for many years and undermined historicism as the preferred method of interpreting time prophecy.^[30] In concentrating on a specific date, Miller introduced an element in which failure would bring the movement to an end. The movement’s exegesis and claim to truth rested on a set date that could be disconfirmed if the expected event did not materialize. However, it was not necessarily the setting of dates, in itself, that was the cause of objections by non-Millerites:

It was not date setting that caused the showdown crisis. After all, John Wesley had once set a date for the end in 1836. And several Baptists had set dates between 1830 and 1847. Rather, it was the assertiveness, popular success, and closeness of the time, as preached by the Millerites, that made it difficult for many people to ignore Millerism, especially in light of the increasing burden of the Adventists to warn the world. Millerism and its culture were on a collision course that could only intensify with time.^[31] [emphasis added]

Indeed, one scholar has estimated that the fifty thousand Millerites influenced a million or more American Christians to become anxiously but cautiously expectant of the advent.^[32] Within the American Bahá’í community the Millerites’ exegetical methods, too, emerged at the beginning of the twentieth century as the primary methodology for Bahá’ís in “proving” that Christian anticipation about the return of Christ, and particularly the Millerites’ expectations of 1844, had been fulfilled in the twin Manifestations of the Báb and Bahá’u’lláh.

Sacred Beginnings

Shiite Eschatology. The Bábí and Bahá’í religions are considered by Bahá’ís to be two successive parts of a single religious tradition that emerged in 1844 within Iran’s Shia Islamic environment.^[33] Islam is comprised of two major divisions that are separated by their views on succession to the Prophet Muhammad. The majority Sunni have accepted a principle of leadership by public acclamation that resulted in the election of four Caliphs. The minority Shia have held to a principle of lineal succession to the Prophet through a number of male successors called Imams. The most prominent of the Shia groups is Ithná-‘Asharí or “Twelver” Shia, primarily located in Iran and Iraq, which holds that there were twelve imams.^[34]

The increasing hostility of the Abbasid dynasty toward the Tenth and Eleventh Imams forced them to communicate with their followers through a network of agents called the wukálah (وُكَلَاء). The Eleventh Imam, Ḥasan al-‘Askarí, died in A.H. 260 [873/874 C.E.], and a supposed son—the Twelfth Imam named Mahdí—was believed to have gone into hiding in a mystical place from which he would one day reappear.^[35] On the disappearance of the purported Twelfth Imam, at least four spokesmen served as intermediaries, communicating with his followers. In time these spokesmen became known as the four bábs, or gates.^[36] Twelver Shia mythology about the Twelfth Imam is essentially messianic, millennialist, and apocalyptic. The myth held that the Twelfth Imam would arise or emerge no earlier than a thousand years after his disappearance, which would be in A.H. 1260 (1844 C.E.).

Two terms have been used for the eschatological figures of Shia and Sunni Islam— Qá’im and Mahdi. Qá’im is the first part of the phrase Qá’im-i Ál-i Muḥammad, signifying “He who arises from the family of Muhammad.” This referred to the Imam who was in authority at any given time. Each of the twelve Imams was the Imam Qá’im in his own time. The Twelfth Imam, as the last Imam, was considered by Shiites as the Imam Qá’im who was expected to reappear in the physical world at a future time. Mahdi is a term common to both Sunni and Shia branches as the future messianic figure. While Sunnis have prophecies that the Mahdi will come with certain characteristics (such as membership in the family of the Prophet Muhammad), Shiites are more specific, saying the Mahdi will, in fact, be the Twelfth Imam who had “disappeared” or gone into “occultation.” For Shiites, Qá’im and Mahdi are one and the same eschatological personage.^[37]

Shayhhism. Among the movements that flourished among Muslims during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was the Shaykhís, followers of Shaykh Aḥmad-i-Aḥsá’í (1753-1826) and his successor Sayyid Káẓim-i-Rashtí (1793-1843), who taught primarily in Iraq.^[38] Aḥsá’í developed a number of metaphorical interpretations of the literalist expectations of the Shia masses, particularly with regard to the notions of resurrection, heaven and hell, and the return of the Imam. When Rashtí died in 1843, he did not appoint a successor but called on his students to search for the promised one.

Beginnings of the Bábí Faith. In early 1844 one of Rashtí’s pupils—Mullá Ḥusayn-i-Bushrú’í —undertook a forty-day fast and began his quest for the mysterious promised one. He found that promised one in the person of Sayyid ‘Alí-Muḥammad of Shiraz (1819-50), a twenty-four year-old man known in Shaykhí circles, who took the title of the Báb (gate, or the door to divine knowledge, Arabic (باب).^[39] The title could mean that He was a new gate to the as-yet-unrevealed Hidden Imam or that He was—as reported by Mullá Ḥusayn—the gate of God Himself. in the Qayyúmu’l-Asmá’ He hinted at claims to a station as lofty as those of Muhammad, Jesus, and Moses.^[40] The Báb’s messianic and millennialist role was particularly attractive to an expectant and significant minority of Persians because of His elastic interpretation of His station. Their expectations could be accommodated within the wide spiritual authority claimed by the prophet from Shiraz. As early as 1847 the Báb had laid explicit claim to Qá’imhood and Mahdihood, the two eschatological stations expected by Shia and Sunni Islam.^[41]

The Bábí Faith as Religious and Social Revolution. Unlike traditional claimants to Mahdihood, the Báb openly proclaimed the abrogation of the Islamic sharí‘a (path, way; custom, law) and its replacement by the laws of the Bayán (exposition or revelation). Bayán was the term designating the entire body of works revealed by the Báb, as well as two specific works: the Bayán-i-Fársí (Persian Bayán) and the Bayán al-‘Arabí (Arabic Bayán). A Bábí break from Islam, implicit from the beginning of the movement in 1844, became explicit at a meeting in the village of Badasht in 1848, where leading exponents of the movement accepted the inevitable break from Islamic law, symbolically enacted by Ṭáhirih’s removal of her veil in the presence of the male believers.^[42] This abrogation of the Islamic legal code was fundamental to the Bábí Faith’s ultimate transformation into the Bahá’í religion, for it had effectively abandoned any claim to be a sectarian or specifically Shia development and had begun to assume the character of an independent world religion.

The Bábís, whose claims made them appear revolutionary and antisocial in the eyes of the Shia majority, found themselves forced into a series of conflicts with state and religious authorities in what have been termed the Mázindarán, Nayríz, and Zanján upheavals.^[43] The Báb challenged the world to accept Him as a source of divine revelation and to make itself ready to recognize the next Messenger, Whose appearance was imminent.

Shia Expectation and Dating and Bábí Expansion.^[44] The Bábí Faith emerged at a time when the imaginative power of the Islamic date A.H. 1260 (1844 C.E.) could be fully exercised. Its inception coincided with the one thousand year anniversary of the disappearance of the Twelfth Imam. The year itself arrived, providing opportunity for the expression of all the millennialist expectations fixed on that date. The mythic date came also in the context of severe crisis and social disruption. Persian economic, political, and social infrastructure had sunk into apathy and decay and failed to articulate a restructuring. The Qájár dynasty was incapable of bringing long-term improvement and proved unable to control the tensions and conflicts in the society. Due to corruption and mismanagement, central administration steadily deteriorated. Into this vacuum stepped the Russians and British, who struggled for influence and control over Iran throughout much of the nineteenth century. Above the disturbed social, political, and economic circumstances of Iran, the prophetic power and promise of fulfillment contained in the date of A.H. 1260 (1844 C.E.) provided significant explanation and grounding for the millennialist fervor that gave rise to the Bábí Faith. Those who were ready to focus on the strained Iranian sociopolitical environment found ample evidence of the fulfillment about to occur in the magical year of expectation, just as those who fervently awaited the year could use its mythic potency to find and explain the stresses in contemporary Iranian affairs.

It is, nevertheless, essential to understand that the Báb’s stated intent, as expressed in His own writings, was spiritual renewal rather than political insurrection. The Báb defined the Day of Resurrection as the time when a new Manifestation of God appears, when those who believe in previous dispensations must determine their response to His claim. He included recurring renewal in the body of His religious doctrine in the form of the concept of progressive revelation—the concept that God periodically renews religion according to the exigencies of the time by sending a new Messenger. While Persians hoped for a spiritual and cultural change, the Báb’s teachings provided a spiritually based solution to the moribund condition of all the world’s long-established religious and social formulae.

The Bábí religion was not, therefore, a short-lived catastrophic millennialist movement. Though the Báb claimed to be the Qá’im and Mahdi, it was the spiritual authority He conveyed as an independent prophet holding the same rank as Muhammad and Jesus and His promise of the imminent appearance of the messianic “He Whom God shall manifest” that made possible the long-term survival of His spiritual message.

The Emergence of the Bahá’í Faith. The Báb was executed in 1850 by the Persian authorities. His followers were persecuted with a ferocity and vigor largely unmatched in the annals of Persian imperial rule. Without the staying power of millennialist ideas, the Bábí Faith might have ceased to exist. Its transformation into a world religion, at once orthodox and cosmopolitan, was effected by the charisma and claims of divine authority of Mírzá Ḥusayn-‘Alí Núrí (1817-92), Who took the title Bahá’u’lláh (the Glory of God, Arabic بَهاءُالله).^[45]

Early in the Báb’s ministry, Bahá’u’lláh instantaneously converted to the Bábí Faith and became one of its most articulate exponents. Following the execution of the Báb and the subsequent persecutions of His followers, Bahá’u’lláh was imprisoned in the 'Síyáh-Chál (Black Pit) of Tehran, a loathsome place of incarceration for the Shah’s prisoners. In an effort to reduce Bahá’u’lláh’s influence on the Báb’s followers, Iranian authorities exiled Him to Ottoman Iraq in 1853. In Baghdad He established Himself as the preeminent leader and spiritual guide to the scattered and dispirited Bábí community. In 1863, under pressure from Iran, the Ottoman government condemned Bahá’u’lláh to a further exile to Constantinople (Istanbul), then to Edirne, and finally in 1868 to the prison-citadel in Acre, a town in Ottoman Palestine. Before His departure from Baghdad, Bahá’u’lláh, already the de facto head of the Bábí community, announced that He was the man yuẓhiruhu’lláh (He Whom God shall manjfest, Arabic من يظهر الله).^[46]

Significantly, Bahá’u’lláh’s claim was more inclusive than simply that of being the fulfillment of the Báb’s teachings. Not only was He the fulfiller of the Báb’s promise, but He was also the latter-day messiah promised by all religions. His millennial kingdom, as He proclaimed it, came into existence spiritually at the public assumption of His mission and was to be established by His followers in the visible world over a period of at least a thousand years.^[47] The Bahá’í shari‘a focused on the establishment of institutions, of social structures, and of spiritual life that would become the basis for world civilization and the unification of contending nations in one global federation. The Bahá’í religion’s foundation was, therefore, a progressive millennialism, enunciated in a set of theological and social principles that would generally be considered progressive and inclusive.^[48]

Bahá’u’lláh provided His followers with a clear succession and an administrative structure, which they regard as divine in origin. He appointed His son, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá (1844-1921), to be the head of the religion, the authorized interpreter of its sacred texts, and the exemplar of Bahá’í life. Likewise, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá appointed His eldest grandson, Shoghi Effendi (1897-1957), to be the first Guardian of the Bahá’í Faith and the authorized interpreter of its scriptures. Bahá’u’lláh outlined the institutions and processes, later elaborated on by His appointed successors, for creating an international administrative structure, based on local, national, and international houses of justice. The present head of the faith is the Universal House of Justice, charged With legislating on questions not already revealed in scripture or authoritative interpretation, elucidating questions that are obscure, and making final decisions on all appeals through the Bahá’í administrative system.^[49] Obedience and loyalty to the successive heads of the religion is a sacred responsibility embodied in the notion of the Covenant. This Covenant creates a sacred bond of loyalty between the believer and the head of the religion.

The millennialist strand in Bahá’í thinking retained its importance, in large measure, because of the missionary activities of the religion and the need in the West to present proofs that Christianity had been fulfilled in the Bahá’í Faith. For the millennialist motif of the Bahá’í community to be a successful conversion tool in North America, it, therefore, had to undergo modifications to fit a specifically Protestant culture that believed in rationalist, biblical, common-sense proofs.

Bahá’u’lláh’s Hermeneutic. Bahá’u’lláh’s approach to the Bible and to Christian beliefs was different from that of American Protestants, among whom the Bahá’í Faith was soon to be introduced. Bahá’u’lláh taught that all religions have eternal doctrines. Like the Báb, He also emphasized progressive revelation—the idea that God reveals Himself gradually, according to the human capacity and social exigencies of the time. God is, in Himself, complete and unchanging; but God’s creatures undergo a process of growth and development that requires divine revelation itself to be relative. All religions thus contain truth, but each is especially suited to its time and place. This concept of progressive revelation is to some degree in conflict with the evangelical Protestant belief in unchanging divine truth.

Bahá’u’lláh’s principles of universal education, the duty of individuals to investigate the truth independently of tradition, and the abolition of clergy all tend to imply that Bahá’u’lláh considered truth accessible to all. Bahá’u’lláh interpreted the Bible in the context of progressive revelation. This principle implies that divine truth, while progressively evolving, is not self-contradictory. Hence Bahá’u’lláh’s revelation cannot be seen as contradicting biblical revelation. Previous scriptures, such as the Bible, point toward and promise the Bahá’í scriptures, and the latter fulfill the former. Bahá’u’lláh demonstrated these notions by claiming to fulfill biblical prophecy and by interpreting the Bible symbolically from the perspective of progressive revelation. The manifestations of God, He writes,

speak a twofold language. One language, the outward language, is devoid of allusions, is unconcealed and unveiled. . . . The other language is veiled and concealed, so that whatever lieth hidden in the heart of the malevolent may be made manifest. . . . In such utterances, the literal meaning, as generally understood by the people, is not what hath been intended.^[50]

The hermeneutical methodology on which Bahá’u’lláh based His approach to the Bible included reliance on post-biblical sacred texts to interpret the Bible (especially the Koran and hadith);^[51] a focus on the symbolic, allegorical, and metaphorical meanings of the images; and the view of all sacred scripture as having many meanings. An example is Bahá’u’lláh’s interpretation of the Olivet Discourse or Synoptic Apocalypse (Mark 13:14-27; Luke 21:25-28; Matthew 24:29-31).^[52] Bahá’u’lláh devoted more than fifty pages to the exegesis of this passage, explaining various words such as “oppression,” “sun,” “moon,” and “stars.”^[53] This hermeneutic was to be the pattern of later interpretations by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá. Bahá’u’lláh apparently did not calculate and decipher time prophecies of the Bible or Koran, although He used Islamic hadith and statements by the Báb to demonstrate the date of His own revelation. Rather, the hermeneutic Bahá’u’lláh used created a rationale for scriptural symbolism within which to show correspondences between texts in various religions and thus to extract the eschatological meaning of the metaphorical imagery.^[54]

Persian Exegetes. A few Persian-language treatises on Bible prophecy were written before the American Bahá’í community was established in 1894. The greatest scholar of the first Bahá’í century was Mírzá Abu’l-Faḍl Gulpáygání (1844-1914).^[55] He had studied the Bible thoroughly, and it is clear from his writings that he was capable of an exegesis of symbol and of time prophecy.^[56] He wrote two treatises in 1888 C.E. that are particularly relevant: Sharḥ-i Áyát-i Muwarrakhih and Risáliy-i Ayyúbíyyih. The former was a study of fulfillment of Islamic, Judaic, Christian, and Zoroastrian prophecies. The author showed that each scripture promised two latter-day messengers. Gulpáygání addressed time prophecies in Daniel, referring specifically to the accepted Jewish and Christian use of the principle that a day in time prophecy is equal to a year of history. He asserted that Christian leaders also followed this interpretation, especially in regard to Dan. 9:24 where it is stated that “Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people and upon thy holy city. . . .” Christians calculated seventy weeks to be the equivalent of 490 days, or according to the “day for a year” computation, 490 years, which they assert to be a prophecy for the advent of Jesus.^[57]

Gulpáygání stopped short of carrying the prophecy to the logical and specific conclusion that Miller and American Bahá’í exegetes did. In the Ayyúbíyyih, Gulpáygání wrote of the 2,300 days/years of Dan". 8:14 that “it is evident that over 2,300 years have elapsed from the destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar [586 B.C.E.] and the present time” [1888 C.E.].^[58] Gulpaygani did not articulate the corollary that the 490-year prediction of Christ’s first advent was calculated from 456 or 457 B.C.E. and that the 2,300 year prophecy could also have the same initial point. Likewise, Gulpáygání treated the reference in Dan. 12:11 to 1,290 days as being fulfilled in the time of Bahá’u’lláh.^[59] In his interpretations of Revelation 11 and 12, however, Gulpáygání clearly anticipated later interpretations by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in Some Answered Questions, published in 1908.^[60] Gulpáygání named the two witnesses of Rev. 11:3 as Muhammad and ‘Alí (first Imam of the Shia); clearly identified the 3½ times/1,260 days as a reference to A.H. 1260 (A.D. 1844), the year in which the Báb announced His mission; and interpreted the dragon of Revelation 12 as the Umayyad dynasty, which in the Shia view was the evil agency responsible for the martyrdoms of the early Imams.^[61] Gulpáygání was cautious to interpret most time prophecies as being fulfilled within a time period rather than during a given year. It was only in the case of the 1,260 years (1,260 days = 3½ times = 42 months) that the association of A.H. 1260 with the beginning of the Bahá’í era was unquestioned and absolutely specific.

Ḥájí Mírzá Ḥaydar-‘Alí (d. 1920), an early follower of the Báb and Bahá’u’lláh, echoes and expands on many of Gulpáygání’s interpretations while also advancing new “proof” of Bahá’u’lláh’s fulfillment of biblical expectation. In his Dalá’ilu’l-‘Irfán, published in 1896, Ḥaydar-‘Alí devoted a few pages to the interpretation of prophecies in Daniel and Revelation. He quoted the twelfth chapter of Daniel in its entirety and then explained that in time prophecy a “day” meant a “year,” according to Num. 14:34. He stated that Daniel 12 prophesied the greatness, glory, and wonder of Bahá’u’lláh and all the signs associated with His appearance. According to Ḥaydar-‘Alí, after the appearance of Muhammad, the second Caliph [‘Umar] conquered the Holy Land and forbade the sacrifice that is among the important laws of the Jewish faith; the children of Israel were exiled and scattered from that region. After the passage of 1,290 years, Bahá’u’lláh, together with His companions, arrived in the city of Acre. When Bahá’u’lláh was permitted out of prison, He visited Mount Carmel as prophesied in the Old Testament (presumably as stated in the book of Isa. 35:2). Ḥaydar-‘Alí also quoted Revelation 11 and 12, explaining that the two witnesses were Muhammad and ‘Alí, who ruled for 1,260 days (42 months) or 1,260 years.^[62] His analysis appeared to have been informed by the writings of Gulpáygání and again anticipated ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s exegesis in Some Answered Questions.

Chronologically, Gulpáygání’s and Ḥaydar-‘Alí’s analyses appeared before ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s authoritative interpretation. The similarities in interpretation may lead readers to assume that ‘Abdu’l-Bahá received His ideas from these authors. All three were, however, recipients of considerable instruction directly from Bahá’u’lláh Himself. Gulpáygání and Ḥaydar-‘Alí were frequent visitors to Bahá’u’lláh, received communications from Him, and became long-term residents in ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s household, where they were also able to absorb ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s explanations on many topics, including biblical and koranic prophecies. Lua Getsinger, who became a Bahá’í in 1897 and was intimately associated with the household of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá for almost two decades, wrote in a letter dated 19 October 1900 that Mírzá Abu’l-Faḍl’s “teachings and explanations of the Bible are authorized by our Lord [‘Abdu’l-Bahá], so we know they are correct!”^[63] There was at the least a developing understanding in the American Bahá’í community of the meaning of such prophecies, based on Bahá’u’lláh’s hermeneutic and a decades-long discourse between ‘Abdu’l-Bahá and various Bahá’ís who researched the scriptures for biblical proofs. Getsinger reported in 1901 that ‘Abdu’l-Bahá “‘gives lessons every morning from the Bible.’”^[64] The fruition was ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s normative exegesis, with a relatively detailed understanding of the meaning of certain passages in Daniel, Isaiah, and Revelation, just as Bahá’u’lláh’s exegesis of the Synoptic Apocalypse in the Kitáb-i-Íqán informed and set the groundwork for all Bahá'í understanding of that text.

‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s authority as Center of the Bahá’í Faith and authorized interpreter bridged three worlds: the Shia Islamic world of most Iranian believers, the Protestant Christian world of the emerging North American Bahá’í community, and the Bahá’í worldview that had to make coherent sense of Islam and Christianity as chapters in the evolution of a single divine faith of which Bahá’u’lláh was the latest Revealer. Bahá’ís in Persia and North America were setting their minds to the task of creating traditional proofs based on koranic and biblical prophecy. Such proofs were, therefore, a significant and expected element of the interpretive scope exercised by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá.

Conclusion to Part 1. Millennialism arose from the apocalyptic writings of Jewish authors who used coded symbolic language to encourage their people in the face of persecution and threatened extinction. Apocalyptic authors transmuted the contemporary meaning into assurance of a final cosmic triumph of good over evil and the destruction of Israel’s enemies. History, calendars, and symbolism were later combined into an exegetical method called historicism, where dates from the past, present, and future could be decoded. Fulfillment became fixed in the text and could be deciphered if one had the key. Protestant Christianity set itself the task of finding that key. Historicism culminated in American millennialism’s most dramatic movement—Millerism—with its prediction of Jesus’ literal return in 1843-1844. The apparent failure of Miller’s prediction discredited historicism. The historicist exegesis of biblical time prophecy used by Millerites, nevertheless, provided a tool for Bahá’ís to attract Protestant Americans to a new millennial vision. The final part of this exploration will survey the use of historicism by North American Bahá’ís in the first decade of the twentieth century, the corrective and authoritative exegesis by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in Some Answered Questions (1908), and the continuing contributions to this theme made by others in the middle and late twentieth century.

* * *

ED. NOTE: The conclusion of William P. Collins’ examination of the Bahá’í interpretation of biblical time prophecy will appear in World Order’s Winter 1998-99 issue.

Notes:

1. For a full discussion of the Bahá'í motifs, see Peter Smith, The Babi and Baha'i Religions: From Messianic Shi'ism to a World Religion (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1987) 31-47, 72-85, 136-56.

2. Paul Boyer, When Time Shall Be No More: Prophecy Belief in Modern American Culture (Cambridge: Harvard UP-Belknap, 1992) xi.

3. Richard Landes notes that "Literate cultures share an almost universal tendency to produce chronological systems" ("Lest the Millennium Be Fulfilled: Apocalyptic Expectations and the Pattern of Western Chronography, 100-800 CE," in Werner Vebeke, Daniel Verhelst, and Andries Welkenhuysen, eds., The Use and Abuse of Eschatology in the Middle Ages [Leuven, Belgium: Leuven UP, 1988] 137).

4. Richard Landes, professor of medieval history at Boston University, and his Center for Millennial Studies at Boston University, have held a number of seminars and conferences to air the differing views.

5. See Norman Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages, rev. and exp. ed. (New York: Oxford UP, 1970) 15, and Peter Smith, "Millenarianism in the Babi and Baha'i Religions," in Roy Wallis, ed., Millennialism and Charisma (Belfast: The Queen's U, 1982) 232.

6. Michael Barkun, Crucible of the Millennium: The Burned-Over District of New York in the 1840s (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse UP, 1986) 13. Barkun's full argument is on pp. 13-29.

7. See Dan. 12:7; Rev. 11:2-3, 9; Rev. 12:6, 14; Dan. 12:11; Dan. 8:13-14. The Authorized (King James) Version of the Bible is used throughout.

8. Ernest R. Sandeen gives a clear definition and overview of both historicism and futurism in The Roots of Fundamentalism: British and American Millenarianism, 1800-1930 (Chicago: Chicago UP, 1970) 36-38. The best treatment of historicism in the Millerite context is Kai Arasola, The End of Historicism: Millerite Hermeneutic of Time Prophecies in the Old Testament (Uppsala: U of Uppsala Faculty of Theology, 1990) 23-48, on which most of my synopsis is based.

9. It is interesting to note that late twentieth-century prophecy writers from dispensational premillennialism chose one "secular" historian from whom to quote—Arnold Toynbee. Toynbee was the one historian to look for the "grand themes and recurring patterns" of history in the same way that prophecy writers looked for the cosmic pattern (Boyer, When Time Shall Be No More 314-15). The Bahá'í community has found Toynbee a source of fascination, because of the compatibility of his historical model with that of the Bahá'í writings, where founders of the world's religious traditions are the cause of the rise of civilizations. Toynbee referred positively to the Bahá'í Faith in several of his works.

10. B.C.E. (before the common era) and C.E. (of the common era) are alternate designations equivalent to A.D. and B.C. (before Christ).

11. Boyer, When Time Shall Be No More 21.

12. Nebuchadnezzar's dream of the image of gold, silver, bronze, iron, and iron mixed with clay (Dan. 2:31-45) figured prominently and consistently in Millerite Adventist literature. This symbol found favor almost in toto with Bahá'í exegetes. Bahá'í writers understood the identification of the parts of the image with specific empires and of the feet of iron and clay with the mix of modern nation-states. At the heart of the differing Adventist and Bahá'í understandings of the fulfillment of the predictions of Christ's return in 1844 C.E. was the identification of the "stone cut out of the mountain without hands" (Dan. 2:45), which Daniel interpreted as a Kingdom set up by God that would "break in pieces and consume" the nations, and would last forever (Dan. 2:44). For Adventists, that Kingdom could only appear with the literal return of Jesus Christ from the clouds. For Bahá'ís, it would appear through the agency of a new Prophet, Whose followers and institutions would build that Kingdom.

13. Boyer, When Time Shall Be No More 22-23.

14. The Olivet Discourse is the major source, from words attributed to Jesus Himself, of prophetic prediction about the end of the age. The discourse appears in slightly different forms in all three of the synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke). For this reason it is often called the Synoptic Apocalypse. To distinguish it from the Book of Revelation, this sermon is also called the Little Apocalypse. See Boyer, When Time Shall Be No More 34-36.

15. Boyer, When Time Shall Be No More 46-49.

16. A particularly interesting study from a Bahá'í perspective is Howard Garey, "1260 A.D. or A.H.?: Case of the Mistaken Date," World Order, 7.1 (Fall 1972): 4-20.

17. Joseph Mede, Clavis Apocalyptica, or The Keys to the Apocalypse (1632; Dublin, 1831).

18. James Ussher, Archbishop of Armagh, author of Annales Veteris et Novi Testamenti (1650-54), who calculated that the date of creation was 4004 B.C.E. This calculation was widely accepted throughout the Protestant world.

19. Sir Isaac Newton, Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel, and the Apocalypse of St. John (London, 1733) 16.

20. Thomas Newton, Dissertations on the Prophecies (London, 1833) 715.

21. Leroy Edwin Froom, The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers: The Historical Development of Prophetic Interpretation (Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald, 1946-54) 4:239f.

22. This brief history of Millerism is based on George R. Knight, Millennial Fever and the End of the World: A Study of Millerite Adventism (Boise, Idaho: Pacific Press Publishing Association, 1993); David L. Rowe, Thunder and Trumpets: Millerites and Dissenting Religion in Upstate New York, 1800-1850 (Chico, Calif: Scholars Press, 1985); Barkun, Crucible of the Millennium 33-41; Sandeen, The Roots of Fundamentalism 50-55; and Joshua Himes' biographical sketch in William Miller, Views of the Prophecies and Prophetic Chronology Selected from the Manuscripts of William Miller; with a Memoir of His Life by Joshua V. Himes (Boston, 1841).

23. Sandeen, Roots of Fundamentalism 50.

24. Probably all Christian premillennialists are in some sense historicists. Historicists believed that Jesus would return before the millennium and that it was possible to coordinate Bible prophecies with historical events. However, historicism, which believes that all end-time events alluded to in prophecy can be dated, is differentiated from dispensationalist premillennialism, which believes that "of that day and hour knoweth no man" (Matt. 24:36).

25. Knight, Millennial Fever 40.

26. Margrit Eichler, "Leadership in Social Movements," in William R. Lassey and Marshal Sashkin, eds., Leadership and Social Change, 3d ed., rev. & upd. (San Diego, Calif.: University Associates, 1983), 300.

27. Knight, Millennial Fever 70-71.

28. Miller believed Jesus's statement "of that day and hour knoweth no man" (Matt. 24:36), but Miller believed that the year was absolutely clear from proper biblical exegesis.

29. Knight, Millennial Fever 29.

30. Sandeen, Roots of Fundamentalism 54.

31. Knight, Millennial Fever 142.

32. Whitney R. Cross, The Burned-Over District: The Social and Intellectual History of Enthusiastic Religion in Western New York, 1800-1850 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell UP, 1950) 287.

33. English dictionaries permit a number of words to describe Shiism. Shia, Shiah, Shi'i, and Shiite may all be used to describe the followers of Shiism. If one seeks technical correctness, Shi'at 'Alí (party of 'Alí) is the proper reference to the community that follows Muhammad's son-in-law and his descendants as legitimate successors. The believers are called Shiites.

34. The best one-volume scholarly introduction to Shiism is Moojan Momen, An Introduction to Shi'i Islam: The History and Doctrines of Twelver Ski Shi'ism (New Haven: Yale UP, 1985; Oxford: George Ronald, 1985).

35. A.H. is the abbreviation for anno Hegirae, the dating of the lunar Islamic calendar. The calendar is measured from the time of the hijra (hegira), Muhammad's flight from Mecca to Medina, which took place in 622 C.E.

36. Momen, Introduction to Shi'i Islam 162-64.

37. Momen, Introduction to Shi'i Islam 161-71; Momen, e-mail to the author, 14 July 1998.

38. Shaykhism is covered in a number of works, most fully in two dissertations: Denis MacEoin, "From Shaykhism to Babism: A Study in Charismatic Renewal in Shi'i Islam," diss., U of Cambridge, 1979; Vahid Rafati, "The Development of Shaykhi Thought in Shi'i Islam," diss., U of California-Los Angeles, 1979. See also Amanat, Resurrection and Renewal, 48-69, and Momen, Introduction to Shi'i Islam 225-31.

39. Standard works on the Báb and the Bábí Faith include Nabíl-i-A'ẓam [Muḥammad-i-Zarandí], The Dawn-Breakers: Nabíl's Narrative of the Early Days of the Bahá'í Revelation, trans. and ed. Shoghi Effendi (Wilmette: Bahá'í Publishing Trust, 1932); Mírzá Ḥusayn Hamadání, The New History of Mírzá 'Alí Muhammed, the Báb, ed. Edward G. Browne (1893; Amsterdam: Philo Press, 1975); H. M. Balyuzi, The Báb: The Herald of the Day of Days (Oxford: George Ronald, 1973); and Abbas Amanat, Resurrection and Renewal: The Making of the Babi Movement in Iran, 1844-1850 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell UP, 1989).

40. The Báb (Selections from the Writings of the Báb, comp. Research Department of the Universal House of Justice, trans. Habib Taherzadeh et al. [Haifa: Bahá'í World Centre, 1976] 119) clarified the reasons for His developing claims as follows: "Consider the manifold favours vouchsafed by the Promised One, and the effusions of His bounty which have pervaded the concourse of the followers of Islam to enable them to attain unto salvation. Indeed observe how He Who representeth the origin of creation, He Who is the Exponent of the verse, 'I, in very truth, am God', identified Himself as the Gate [Báb] for the advent of the promised Qá'im, a descendant of Muḥammad, and in His first Book enjoined the observance of the laws of the Qur'án, so that the people might not be seized with perturbation by reason of a new Book and a new Revelation and might regard His Faith as similar to their own. . . ."

41. E. G. Browne, "A Summary of the Persian Bayán," Selections from the Writings of E. G. Browne on the Bábí and Bahá'í Religions, ed. Moojan Momen (Oxford: George Ronald, 1987) 324, 401.

42. The dramatic story of Badasht has been covered in many sources, including Nabíl, Dawn-Breakers 288-300; Amanat, Resurrection and Renewal 324-28; and Balyuzi, Báb 167-71.

43. See Nabíl, Dawn-Breakers 324-581.

44. The analysis in this section is based almost entirely on Amanat, Resurrection and Renewal 18-29.

45. Standard works on Bahá'u'lláh and the Bahá'í Faith include H. M. Balyuzi, Bahá'u'lláh: The King of Glory (Oxford: George Ronald, 1980); Adib Taherzadeh, The Revelation of Bahá'u'lláh, 4 vols. (Oxford: George Ronald, 1974-87); J. E. Esslemont, Bahá'u'lláh and the New Era: An Introduction to the Bahá'í Faith, 5th ed. (Wilmette, Ill.: Bahá'í Publishing Trust, 1980); William S. Hatcher and Douglas Martin, The Bahá'í Faith: The Emerging Global Religion (San Francisco: Harper, 1985; rev. ed. Wilmette, Ill.: Bahá'í Publishing Trust, 1998); John Ferraby, All Things Made New, 2d ed. (London: Bahá'í Publishing Trust, 1987); John Huddleston, The Earth Is But One Country, 3d ed. (London: Bahá'í Publishing Trust, 1988); Peter Smith, A Short History of the Bahá'í Faith (Oxford: Oneworld, 1996); Moojan Momen, A Short Introduction to the Bahá'í Faith (Oxford: Oneworld, 1997).

46. Bahá'ís traditionally commemorate this announcement as the twelve-day Riḍván festival, which they regard as the most sacred of the religion's holy days.

47. In the Kitáb-i-Aqdas, regarded by Bahá'ís as their most holy book, Bahá'u'lláh states that "Whoso layeth claim to a Revelation direct from God, ere the expiration of a full thousand years, such a man is assuredly a lying impostor" (The Kitáb-i-Aqdas: The Most Holy Book, ps ed. [Wilmette, Ill.: Bahá'í Publishing Trust, 1993] ¶37).

48. Theological principles include humanity's inability to know God fully and the revealing of God's will and attributes through a series of divine Manifestations; social principles include emphasis on world unification, the oneness of humanity, the equality of the sexes, and the establishment of mechanisms to ensure permanent and lasting peace. These principles have been stated in diverse forms since the time when 'Abdu'l-Bahá made them the centerpieces of many of His public talks in Europe and America in 1911, 1912, and 1913. For a useful summary of the principles, see Moojan Momen, The Bábí and Bahá'í Religions, 1844-1944: Some Contemporary Western Accounts (Oxford: George Ronald, 1981) xxiv-xxv.

49. The Universal House of Justice, The Constitution of the Universal House of Justice (Haifa: Bahá'í World Centre, 1972).

50. Bahá'u'lláh, Kitáb-i-Íqán: The Book of Certitude, trans. Shoghi Effendi, 1st ps ed. (Wilmette, Ill.: Bahá'í Publishing Trust, 1983) 254-55.

51. Hadith are extra-Koranic traditions or sayings attributed to Muhammad and the imams.

52. Bahá'u'lláh, Kitáb-i-Íqán 24-81.

53. It is striking to compare Bahá'u'lláh's exegesis of the symbolism in the Synoptic Apocalypse with William Miller's explanation in A Familiar Exposition of the Twenty-Fourth Chapter of Matthew and the Fifth and Sixth Chapters of Hosea (Boston, 1842), especially pp. 24-26. There are parallel understandings regarding the "heavens" representing the clergy and divines who become corrupted from the truth.

54. Christopher Buck, Symbol and Secret: Qur'án Commentary in Bahá'u'lláh's Kitáb-i-Íqán (Los Angeles, Calif.: Kalimát Press, 1995) 233-91.

55. Mírzá Abu'l-Faḍl Gulpáygání became master of a prestigious Islamic seminary in Tehran at a young age. But his greatest challenge was the astute reasoning of a Bahá'í blacksmith who put him on the road to conversion. Gulpáygání studied and wrote copiously on the Bahá'í Faith, developing its philosophy and theology to a highly rational level. He lived his last years in Egypt, the intellectual hub of Islam at the turn of the century, where he taught a large number of students at al-Azhar University (the preeminent Islamic university located in Cairo), many of whom became Bahá'ís.

56. See, for example, his "Alexandrian Epistle: Biblical Prophecies about Islam," in Mírzá Abu'l-Faḍl Gulpáygání, Miracles and Metaphors, trans. and annotated by Juan Ricardo Cole (Los Angeles: Kalimát Press, 1981) 59-96. The work was first published in Arabic in 1900 in Egypt.

57. Mírzá Abu'l-Faḍl Gulpáygání, "Two Treatises Explaining Scriptural Verses Referring to the Day of God," trans. and annotated by Jamshed Monajem (unpublished ms., Montreal, 1996) pt. 1, 35.

58. Gulpáygání, "Two Treatises" pt. 2, 30.

59. Gulpáygání, "Two Treatises" pt. 1, 40.

60. Revelation 11 and 12 pertain to the role of the two mysterious eschatological witnesses who emerge after John's renewal of prophetic announcement that, with the sounding of the seventh trumpet, the mystery of God prophesied by the prophets will be revealed. The identity of these witnesses has been a topic of some debate among biblical scholars. For a discussion of Some Answered Questions (comp. and trans. Laura Clifford Barney, 1st ps ed. [Wilmette, Ill.: Bahá'í Publishing Trust, 1984]), see William P. Collins' conclusion to his discussion of Bahá'í interpretation of Biblical time prophecy in World Order, 30.2 (Winter 1998-99) forthcoming.

61. The dragon is one of three mythological figures introduced in Revelation 12 as part of the prophesied coming of Christ and His return. The dragon has often been interpreted as the devil and great antagonist of God.

62. Ḥájí Mírzá Ḥaydar-'Alí, Dalá'ilu'l-'Irfán (Bombay, A.H. 1312 [1896]) 108-12. Translated by Dr. Ahang Rabbani, with stylistic improvements to the English by William Collins.

63. Quoted in Velda Piff Metelmann, Lua Getsinger: Herald of the Covenant (Oxford: George Ronald, 1997) 39.

64. Metelmann, Lua Getsinger 41.