Reddit reviews A History of the End of the World: How the Most Controversial Book in the Bible Changed the Course of Western Civilization

I mean, technically millennialism as a doctrine has been a common feature of Western religious doctrines since Jewish apocalypticism started to become popular during the intertestamental period (200BCE-100CE) in which writings about looming end of the world started to proliferate across the Jewish diaspora like in communities like the Essenes that sprung up in preparation for the literal apocalypse. Fast-forwarding to the early days of Christianity, the early Christians thought that the day of judgement would be soon - as in within their own lifetimes. Millennialist groups would spring up often over the next two thousand years, such as the Anabaptists of Münster, who claimed that the German city would be the new Jerusalem and started an exceedingly bloody uprising in 1534. Then, as now, millennialist theology provides an idea that someday (hopefully soon), there will be a cosmic righting of wrongs in which the virtuous will be eternally rewarded and the sinners eternally punished. This kind of thinking - which is as much a revenge fantasy as it is a desire for righteousness, can be highly seductive to poor, desperate and unworldly people who feel like they’ve lost their lot in life and must instead rely on a supernatural cataclysm to make their lives “the way it should be”. Eschatology is a really fascinating subject and learning about it makes a lot of the motivations of the religious far right of the Abrahamic faiths clearer.

Here are some great books for further reading:

A History of the End of the World - Jonathan Kirsch

The Pursuit of the Millenium. Revolutionary Messianism in Medieval and Reformation Europe and Its Bearing on Modern Totalitarian Movements. - Norman Cohn

I'll leave the heavy lifting to others here who are clearly better educated on the subject but one trait that identifies fundamentalism is anticipation of the apocalypse. This has been going on for a couple of thousand years, give or take a few hundred years. Probably longer.

I grew up in that environment and it wasn't until I was leaving my teens that I realized that people had been making the same predictions all this time.

A decent book on the subject: http://www.amazon.com/History-End-World-Controversial-Civilization/dp/0061349879

> History of satanism I am hesitant of this as the history of it is very unclear.

depends on how broadly you wish to cast that net and which sources you choose to accept. there's no shortage of kooky counterfactual history from occultists and christian conspiracy theorists.

> Satanism vs. Luciferianism I've noticed that many here don't know much about Luciferianism.

to be fair, many luciferians don't know much about luciferianism either.

> I imagine I would have to split atheistic satanism and theistic satanism because the beliefs are fucking broad.

entirely depends on how detailed you'd want to get; quick guide verse compendium. it's your prerogative if you'd want to drag joy of satan, temple of set, satanic reds, or supposed order of nine angles into the mix. at some point it's like doing taxonomy on every furry sparkledog.

> I would also like to include demonaltry somewhere in it.

and that's the point.

> I would like to include various beliefs of Satan

that's a little cooler. plenty of well researched legit respectable academic books on the subject of satan as a character. i got done with a history of the end of the world a while ago, not specifically satan themed, but some evolution of character is included.