Preface

There are no zombies in Section One of our book, which might be a good thing, as its four chapters are already terrifying enough in and of themselves. Terrifying, because the world will end one day and some of us, depending on the ways in which we have lived, thought, and spoken, will be cast eternally into a pit of fire, into hell. That is one of the central teachings of ethical monotheism, the most popular form of religion in the world, which holds that God is one and that long ago the Supreme Creator established laws that we are to follow, and if we do not, we are doomed, condemned. It is unclear what is to happen to zombies, or whether they will be pardoned for having already suffered enough, but the apocalypse is a much older idea than they and collides with the zombie only in the twentieth century. This is a notion that we cover at length in Section Two. Section One, meanwhile, looks closely at four great monotheistic religions and their eschatologies, or their teachings about the end of the world, the cataclysmic apocalypse, judgment day, and the afterlife. Chapter One begins with the beginning of the end, found in the ancient Persian religion of Zoroastrianism, and focuses on the teachings of its founder, Zoroaster, and those of a later prophet named Arda Viraf. Their eschatological insights were well known among Jews in the region and influenced confluent notions in Judaism and its apocalyptic theology, the central subjects of Chapter Two. Chapter Three does the same with Christianity, which sits squarely in this apocalyptic lineage but diverts significantly by claiming Jesus Christ to be the very messiah spoken of previously in Zoroastrianism and in the Hebrew Bible, the scripture at the very heart of his own faith tradition. Chapter Four turns attention to Islam, the world’s fastest growing religion and soon to be its largest, which is heir and torchbearer to this remarkable history of apocalyptic prophecy, practice, and fascination. Before journeying into the depths of hell and the lofty heights of heaven, each chapter opens with a brief and basic introduction to one of these extraordinary and world-transforming faith traditions, considered in chronological order in terms of apocalypticism. We now proceed to the first, Zoroastrianism.