riddle@ut-sally.UUCP (Prentiss Riddle) (11/03/83)
Aha! I thought I remembered something along these lines from when I took
an Old English course a couple of years back. I scratched around and
found the following which might be of interest to those wondering whether
the world will end in the year 2000. (My Old English has gotten very rusty;
otherwise I'd try to give you something a bit juicier and translate a bit
of the original text. This is just commentary and will have to do.)
"The End of the World is at Hand: Blickling Homily X"
"The imminence of Doomsday was a theme which fascinated the author of
the Blickling Homilies and he returned to it again and again. It is
natural to associate his interest to the anxiety, widespread in Europe
in the late tenth century, that the turn of the millenium and the end
of the world would arrive together. Orthodox thought combatted this
attitude of the grounds that it was presumptuous for men to try to
forecast Doomsday, and our author echoes this orthodoxy in Homily XI,
where he tells us that the hour of its coming is so secret that there
is 'nae:nig on heofenum, the thaet ae:fre wiste, hwonne he: -- u:re
Drihten -- thisse worlde ende gesettan wolde on do:mes daeg.' [My loose
translation: There is none in Heaven who knows when He -- our Lord --
will ordain the end of this world on Doomsday.] Still he seems peren-
nially conscious of the fact that he lives not only in the sixth and
last age of the world, but very much toward the latter end of it."
-- from "Bright's Old English Grammar and Reader"
There is nothing new under the sun. There was almost a general panic
about the end of the world in the years leading up to 1000 A.D., and
much occaision to preach fire and brimstone and to make terrifying pro-
phecy about the afterlife (like the Blickling Homily X mentioned above).
It didn't happen the last time three zeroes rolled around; I don't expect
it to this time, either.
----
Prentiss Riddle
{ihnp4,seismo,ctvax}!ut-sally!riddle
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