I've been reading a book by Jonathan Spence, a professor of Chinese Studies at Yale University, called God's Chinese Son (review pending). It's a really interesting history book, mostly because it's not written like a history book. Spence has a very literary style, so the history he writes (in this case, the history of the Chinese Taiping Rebellion) is more like a story, complete with all sorts of ideas about the central characters' lives that Spence provides where there is no historical record to support them. I really like this 'based on a true story' approach to history because it's very obvious when he has the facts and when he doesn't, and the author's intentions are very honestly laid out for the reader to see.
One of the things Spence highlights about the rebellion is that it is a massive millenarian movement. I've read several books that have said the same thing, but I've never really understood the term. Rather than just go to Wikipedia and find out, I'd rather try and explore the meaning myself. This will probably end up being worse than Wikipedia, so don't take my word for it.
Let's see. Millenarian has the word 'millennium' in it, which means 1000 years. It also has the suffix -arian in it, which applies to people who do a certain thing (librarians keep books in order) or belong to certain lifestyles (agrarian societies live off of the crops they grow and have more free time than hunter/gatherers).
Since I can't do 1000 years, much less do a hand stand, I'm guessing that it has something to do with the Christian idea of the Millennial Reign. To my best knowledge, this is a belief based on the book of Revelations which states that the Apocalypse will be followed by a period of peace lasting - you guessed it - 1000 years. During this time Jesus will reign on earth and there will be none of the war, famine, pestilence or death that the Apocalypse is said will bring.
So, my educated guess would be that a millenarian is a person that believes in the Millennial Reign, and that a millenarian movement is a large religious movement concerned with bringing about this particular prophecy of the Bible. Hong Xiuquan, the person who calls himself the Son of God in Spence's book, tries to overthrow the 'Manchu devil demons' and create a new kingdom devoted to 'The One True God'. Furthermore, the name of this new empire was called Taiping or, 'Heavenly Peace'. So, my definition of millenarian makes sense, at least with regards to Hong XiuQuan.
However, I still wonder how else the word millenarian has been applied in history. Could we consider the Manifest Destiny of US history as a millenarian movement? How about religious revolutions other than Christianity? Could we say that the dynastic cycles of China contained any instances of millenarianism, or is that just me reading history backwards? Is there another name for this sort of thing as it pertains to non-Christian, non-Western-influenced upheavals? The word 'rebellion', while appropriate, seems too general to me in this case. I could just say 'religious rebellion' and end our misery, but are rebellions that are religious in nature truly much different than those with purely social or political roots?
So many questions, so little time, so instead of continuing what is quickly becoming a semantic argument, I'll just go play Wii for a while and then get back to reading.
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