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introduction After Strange Gods The Making of Christ and His Doubles The Orthodoxy of Heresy Antichrist appears by name first in the Johannine epistles and not again for about a hundred years.1 By then a lot had happened. To flesh out the figure certain passages in scripture, originally unrelated, had to be connected. Extrapolation ran rampant. The lawless “man of sin” or “son of perdition” predicted to arrive before the innocent son of God could lawfully second his first appearance (2 Thess. 2:3, 8); the sea monster foretold by John to star in a devilish trinity comprising itself, a Dragon, and land beast (Rev. 11:7, 13:1–10);2 the pseudo-Christs and false prophets enshrined throughout the gospels and apostolic epistles: under scrutiny from the learned these multiple demons had jelled into one. That 1. 1 Jn 2:18, 23; 4:3, and 2 Jn 7, ca. 100 CE. The development of an Antichrist figure prior to the New Testament has been laid out by Geert W. Lorein, The Antichrist Theme in the Intertestamental Period (London: T & T Clark International, 2003). Two others, L. J. Lietaert Peerbolte, The Antecedents of Antichrist: A Traditio-Historical Study of the Earliest Christian Views on Eschatological Opponents (Leiden: Brill, 1996), and Gregory C. Jenks, The Origins and Early Development of the Antichrist Myth (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1991), take the story through to the third-century Fathers. See also William C. Weinrich, “Antichrist in the Early Church,” Concordia Theological Quarterly 49 (1985): 135–47. Wilhelm Bousset’s seminal work, originally published in 1895 and now reprinted in translation, remains valuable: The Antichrist Legend: A Chapter in Christian and Jewish Folklore, trans. A. H. Keane (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1999). The most comprehensive study is Bernard McGinn, Antichrist: Two Thousand Years of the Human Fascination with Evil (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000). I have borrowed from McGinn the phrase “dialectical counterpart” (37) at the end of this paragraph and will have subsequent occasion to quote from his superb work. 2. “Devilish trinity” belongs to Josef Ernst, Die eschatologischen Gegenspieler in den Schriften des Neuen Testaments (Regensburg: Pustet, 1967), p. 96. Richard K. Emmerson, Antichrist in the Middle Ages: A Study of Medieval Apocalypticism, Art, and Literature (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1981), calls it a “parodic Trinity” (24), as do a number of other scholars cited by Jenks (Origins, p. 236 n. 29), though he finds such phrases anachronistic. 2 Introduction ominous composite then became in effect the dialectical counterpart to Christ, his doppelgänger and dark supplement. Further corroboration for Antichrist’s coming could be had from the texts on which these texts were based, Daniel especially, and the discernment of his presence here too, in the newly christened “Old” Testament, was of a piece with its christening. Antichrist provided yet another instance of continuity with the one tradition that Christians could not, except by continuing, otherwise supplant. The Jews had been right. They had rightly predicted their own intransigence. Evidently a number were still holding out (at least in the eyes of their Christian opponents) for a messiah who might deliver his people from worldly affliction, whereas Jesus had not. Even some of his own disciples seem to have wished for more than they got. “We had hoped,” comes the sad confession in Luke, “that he was the one to redeem Israel” (Lk 24:21; cf. Acts 1:6). Hope such as this, true Christians in time had had to give up—or what amounts to the same thing, such hope had been spiritualized. Antichrist proved the gentiles’ righteousness. It was he, not the real Christ, who would raise the kingdom of the Jews, end the Diaspora, and restore their nation.3 Holdouts for a messiah other than Jesus would no longer get the Son of God but rather “the Son of the Devil” (Antichrist 15, 57 [GCS 1:11, 37; ANF 5:207, 216]). Meanwhile Antichrist gave an indirect answer to the “Jewish” accusations, repeated emphatically by scripture and echoing through subsequent centuries , according to which Jesus is the real impostor, a “deceiver” who “leads people astray” (Mt 27:63; Jn 7:12) by equating himself with God (Jn 5:18, 10:33, 19:7) though really an “evildoer” ( Jn 18:30) and blasphemer (Mk 14:64; Mt 9:3, 26:65).4 Christians might now admit that these accusations 3. Irenaeus, Adv. haer. 5.25.4 (SC 153:318–22; ANF 1:554); Hippolytus, Antichrist 25, 54 (GCS...

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