​MILLENNIUM (a pseudo-Latin word formed on the analogyofbiennium,triennium, from Lat.mille, a thousand, andannus,year), literally a period of a thousand years. The term isspecially used of the period of 1000 years during which Christ,as has been believed, would return to govern the earth in person.Hence it is used to describe a vague time in the future when allflaws in human existence will have vanished, and perfect goodnessand happiness will prevail. The attribution of a mysticsignificance to the millennium-period, though perhaps notprominent in that theory of Christian eschatology to which thenames Millenarianism and Chiliasm (from Gr.χιλιάς, a thousand)are given, is quite common in non-Christian religions andcosmological systems.

Faith in the nearness of Christ’s second advent and theestablishing of his reign of glory on the earth was undoubtedlya strong point in the primitive Christian Church. In the anticipationsof the future prevalent amongst the early Christians(c. 50–150) it is necessary to distinguish a fixed and a fluctuatingelement. The former includes (1) the notion that a last terriblebattle with the enemies of God was impending; (2) the faith inthe speedy return of Christ; (3) the conviction that Christ willjudge all men, and (4) will set up a kingdom of glory on earth.To the latter belong views of the Antichrist, of the heathen world-power,of the place, extent, and duration of the earthly kingdomof Christ, &c. These remained in a state of solution; they weremodified from day to day, partly because of the changing circumstancesof the present by which forecasts of the future wereregulated, partly because the indications—real or supposed—ofthe ancient prophets always admitted of new combinations andconstructions. But even here certain positions were agreed onin large sections of Christendom. Amongst these was theexpectation that the future kingdom of Christ on earth shouldhave a fixed duration—according to the most prevalent opinion,a duration of one thousand years. From this fact the wholeancient Christian eschatology was known in later times as“chiliasm”—a name which is not strictly accurate, since thedoctrine of the millennium was only one feature in its scheme ofthe future.

1. This idea that the Messianic kingdom of the future on earthshould have a definite duration has—like the whole eschatologyof the primitive Church—its roots in the Jewish apocalypticliterature, where it appears at a comparatively late period. Atfirst it was assumed that the Messianic kingdom in Palestinewould last for ever (so the prophets; cf. Jer. xxiv. 6; Ezek.xxxvii. 25; Joel iv. 20; Dan. vi. 27; Sibyll. iii. 49 seq., 766;Psalt. Salom. xvii. 4; Enoch lxii. 14), and this seems always tohave been the most widely accepted view (John xii. 34). Butfrom a comparison of prophetic passages of the Old Testamentlearned apocalyptic writers came to the conclusion that a distinctionmust be drawn between the earthly appearance of theMessiah and the appearance of God Himself amongst His peopleand in the Gentile world for the final judgment. As a necessaryconsequence, a limited period had to be assigned to the Messianickingdom. According to the Apocalypse of Baruch (xl. 3) thiskingdom will last “donec finiatur mundus corruptionis.” Inthe Book of Enoch (xci. 12) “a week” is specified, in the Apocalypseof Ezra (vii. 28 seq.) four hundred years. This figure,corresponding to the four hundred years of Egyptian bondage,occurs also in the Talmud (Sanhedrin 99a). But this is the onlypassage; the Talmud has no fixed doctrine on the point. Theview most frequently expressed there (see Von Otto inHilgenfeld’sZeitschrift, 1877, p. 527 seq.) is that the Messianic kingdom willlast for one thousand (some said two thousand) years. “Insix days God created the world, on the seventh He rested. Buta day of God is equal to a thousand years (Ps. xc. 4). Hence theworld will last for six thousand years of toil and labour; then willcome one thousand years of Sabbath rest for the people of Godin the kingdom of the Messiah.” This idea must have alreadybeen very common in the first century before Christ. Thecombination of Gen. i., Dan. ix. and Ps. xc. 4 was peculiarly fascinating.

Nowhere in the discourses of Jesus is there a hint of a limited duration of the Messianic kingdom. The apostolic epistles are equally free from any trace of chiliasm (neither 1 Cor. xv. 23 seq. nor 1 Thess. iv. 16 seq. points in this direction). In Revelation however, it occurs in the following shape (ch. xx.). After ​Christ has appeared from heaven in the guise of a warrior, andvanquished the antichristian world-power, the wisdom of theworld and the devil, those who have remained steadfast in thetime of the last catastrophe, and have given up their lives fortheir faith, shall be raised up, and shall reign with Christ on thisearth as a royal priesthood for one thousand years. At the endof this time Satan is to be let loose again for a short season; hewill prepare a new onslaught, but God will miraculously destroyhim and his hosts. Then will follow the general resurrectionof the dead, the last judgment, and the creation of new heavensand a new earth. Thatall believers will have a share in the firstresurrection and in the Messianic kingdom is an idea of whichthe author of Revelation knows nothing. The earthly kingdomof Christ is reserved for those who have endured the most terribletribulation, who have withstood the supreme effort of the world-power—thatis, for those who are actually members of the churchof the last days. The Jewish expectation is thus considerablycurtailed, as it is also shorn of its sensual attractions. “Blessedand holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection; on such thesecond death hath no power; but they shall be priests of God andof Christ, and shall reign with Him a thousand years.” Otherancient Christian authors were not so cautious. Accepting theJewish apocalypses as sacred books of venerable antiquity, theyread them eagerly, and transferred their contents bodily toChristianity. Nay more, the Gentile Christians took possessionof them, and just in proportion as they were neglected by theJews—who, after the war of Bar-Cochba, became indifferent tothe Messianic hope and hardened themselves once more indevotion to the law—they were naturalized in the Christian communities.The result was that these books became “Christian”documents; it is entirely to Christian, not to Jewish, traditionthat we owe their preservation. The Jewish expectations areadopted for example, by Papias, by the writer of the epistle ofBarnabas, and by Justin. Papias actually confounds expressionsof Jesus with verses from the Apocalypse of Baruch, referringto the amazing fertility of the days of the Messianic kingdom(Papias in Iren. v. 33). Barnabas (Ep. 15) gives us the Jewishtheory (from Gen. i. and Ps. xc. 4) that the present condition ofthe world is to last six thousand years from the creation, that atthe beginning of the Sabbath (the seventh millennium) the Sonof God appears, to put an end to the time of “the unjust one,”to judge the ungodly and renew the earth. But he does notindulge, like Papias, in sensuous descriptions of this seventhmillennium; to Barnabas it is a time of rest, of sinlessness, and ofa holy peace. It is not the end, however; it is followed by aneighth day of eternal duration—“the beginning of anotherworld.” So that in the view of Barnabas the Messianic reignstill belongs toοὗτος ὁ αἰών. Justin (Dial. 80) speaks ofchiliasm as a necessary part of complete orthodoxy, although heknows Christians who do not accept it. He believes, with theJews, in a restoration and extension of the city of Jerusalem; heassumes that this city will be the seat of the Messianic kingdom,and he takes it as a matter of course that there all believers(here he is at one with Barnabas) along with patriarchs andprophets will enjoy perfect felicity for one thousand years. Thata philosopher like Justin, with a bias towards an Hellenic constructionof the Christian religion, should nevertheless haveaccepted its chiliastic elements is the strongest proof thatthese enthusiastic expectations were inseparably bound up withthe Christian faith down to the middle of the 2nd century. Andanother proof is found in the fact that even a speculative JewishChristian like Cerinthus not only did not renounce the chiliastichope, but pictured the future kingdom of Christ as a kingdomof sensual pleasures, of eating and drinking and marriagefestivities (Euseb.H. E. iii. 28, vii. 25).

After the middle of the 2nd century these expectations weregradually thrust into the background. They would never havedied out, however, had not circumstances altered, and a newmental attitude been taken up. The spirit of philosophical andtheological speculation and of ethical reflection, which began tospread through the churches, did not know what to make of theold hopes of the future. To a new generation they seemed paltry,earthly and fantastic, and far-seeing men had good reason toregard them as a source of political danger. But more than this,these wild dreams about the glorious kingdom of Christ began todisturb the organization which the churches had seen fit to introduce.In the interests of self-preservation against the world,the state and the heretics, the Christian communities had formedthemselves into compact societies with a definite creed and constitution,and they felt that their existence was threatened bythe white heat of religious subjectivity. So early as the year 170,a church party in Asia Minor—the so-called Alogi—rejected thewhole body of apocalyptic writings and denounced the book ofRevelation as a book of fables. All the more powerful was thereaction. In the so-called Montanistic controversy (c. 160–220)one of the principal issues involved was the continuance of thechiliastic expectations in the churches. The Montanists of AsiaMinor defended them in their integrity, with one slight modification:they announced that Pepuza, the city of Montanus, wouldbe the site of the New Jerusalem and the millennial kingdom.After the Montanistic controversy chiliastic views were more andmore discredited in the Greek Church; they were, in fact, stigmatizedas “Jewish” and consequently “heretical.” It was theAlexandrian theology that superseded them; that is to say, Neo-Platonicmysticism triumphed over the early Christian hope ofthe future, first among the “cultured,” and then, when thetheology of the “cultured” had taken the faith of the “uncultured”under its protection, amongst the latter also. Aboutthe year 260 an Egyptian bishop, Nepos, in a treatise calledἔλεγχος ἀλληγοριστῶν, endeavoured to overthrow the Origenistictheology and vindicate chiliasm by exegetical methods. Severalcongregations took his part; but ultimately Dionysius, bishop ofAlexandria, succeeded in healing the schism and asserting theallegorical interpretation of the prophets as the only legitimateexegesis. During this controversy Dionysius became convincedthat the victory of mystical theology over “Jewish” chiliasmwould never be secure so long as the book of Revelation passedfor an apostolic writing and kept its place among the homologoumenaof the canon. He accordingly raised the questionof its apostolic origin; and by reviving old difficulties, withingenious arguments of his own, he carried his point. At thetime of Eusebius the Greek Church was saturated with prejudiceagainst the book and with doubts as to its canonicity. In thecourse of the 4th century it was removed from the Greek canon,and thus the troublesome foundation on which chiliasm mighthave continued to build was got rid of. The attempts of Methodiusof Tyre at the beginning of the 4th century and Apollinariusof Laodicea about 360 to defend chiliasm and assail the theologyof Origen had no result. For many centuries the Greek Churchkept Revelation out of its canon, and consequently chiliasmremained in its grave. It was considered a sufficient safeguardagainst the spiritualizing eschatology of Origen and his school tohave rescued the main doctrines of the creed and theregula fidei(the visible advent of Christ; eternal misery and hell-fire for thewicked). Anything beyond this was held to be Jewish. It wasonly the chronologists and historians of the church who, followingJulius Africanus, made use of apocalyptic numbers in theircalculations, while court theologians like Eusebius entertainedthe imperial table with discussions as to whether the dining-hallof the emperor—the second David and Solomon, the beloved ofGod—might not be the New Jerusalem of John’s Apocalypse.Eusebius was not the first who dabbled in such speculations.Dionysius of Alexandria had already referred a Messianic predictionof the Old Testament to the emperor Gallienus. Butmysticism and political servility between them gave the deathblowto chiliasm in the Greek Church. It never again obtaineda footing there; for, although, late in the middle ages, the bookof Revelation—by what means we cannot tell—did recover itsauthority, the Church was by that time so hopelessly trammelledby a magical cultus as to be incapable of fresh developments.In the Semitic churches of the East (the Syrian, Arabian andEthiopian), and in that of Armenia, the apocalyptic literaturewas preserved much longer than in the Greek Church. Theywere very conservative of ancient traditions in general, and hence ​chiliasm survived amongst them to a later date than inAlexandria or Constantinople.

But the Western Church was also more conservative thanthe Greek. Her theologians had, to begin with, little turn formystical speculation; their tendency was rather to reduce thegospel to a system of morals. Now for the moralists chiliasmhad a special significance as the one distinguishing feature of thegospel, and the only thing that gave a specifically Christiancharacter to their system. This, however, holds good of theWestern theologians only after the middle of the 3rd century.The earlier fathers, Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Tertullian, believed inchiliasm simply because it was a part of the tradition of the churchand because Marcion and the Gnostics would have nothing to dowith it. Irenaeus (v. 28, 29) has the same conception of themillennial kingdom as Barnabas and Papias, and appeals insupport of it to the testimony of disciples of the apostles. Hippolytus,although an opponent of Montanism, was nevertheless a.thorough-going millennarian (see his bookDe Antichristo).Tertullian (cf. especiallyAdv. Marcion., 3) aimed at a morespiritual conception of the millennial blessings than Papias had,but he still adhered, especially in his Montanistic period, to allthe ancient anticipations. It is the same all through the 3rd and4th centuries with those Latin theologians who escaped theinfluence of Greek speculation. Commodian, Victorinus Pettavensis,Lactantius and Sulpicius Severus were all pronouncedmillennarians, holding by the very details of the primitiveChristian expectations. They still believe, as John did, in thereturn of Nero as the Antichrist; they still expect that after thefirst resurrection Christ will reign with his saints “in the flesh”for a thousand years. Once, but only once (in the Gospel ofNicodemus), the time is reduced to five hundred years. Victorinuswrote a commentary on the Apocalypse of John; and allthese theologians, especially Lactantius, were diligent students ofthe ancient Sibylline oracles of Jewish and Christian origin, andtreated them as divine revelations. As to the canonicity andapostolic authorship of the Johannine Apocalypse no doubtswere ever entertained in the West; indeed an Apocalypse ofPeter was still retained in the canon in the 3rd century. Thatof Ezra, in its Latin translation, must have been all but a canonicalbook—the numbers of extant manuscripts of the so-called4 Ezra being incredibly great, while several of them are foundin copies of the Latin Bible at the beginning of the 16th century.The Apocalypse of Hermas was much read till far through themiddle ages, and has also kept its place in some Bibles. Theapocalyptic “Testamenta duodecim patriarcharum” was afavourite reading-book; and Latin versions of ancient apocalypsesare being continually brought to light from Western libraries(e.g. theAssumptio Mosis, theAscensio Jesajae, &c.). All thesefacts show how vigorously the early hopes of the future maintainedthemselves in the West. In the hands of moralistictheologians, like Lactantius, they certainly assume a somewhatgrotesque form, but the fact that these men clung to them is theclearest evidence that in the West millennarianism was still apoint of “orthodoxy” in the 4th century.

This state of matters, however, gradually disappeared afterthe end of the 4th century. The change was brought about bytwo causes—first, Greek theology, which reached the Westchiefly through Jerome Rufinus and Ambrose, and, second, thenew idea of the church wrought out by Augustine on the basis ofthe altered political situation of the church. Augustine was thefirst who ventured to teach that the catholic church, in itsempirical form, was the kingdom of Christ, that the millennialkingdom had commenced with the appearing of Christ, and wastherefore an accomplished fact. By this doctrine of Augustine’s,the old millennarianism, though not completely extirpated, wasat least banished from the official theology. It still lived on,however, in the lower strata of Christian society; and in certainundercurrents of tradition it was transmitted from century tocentury. At various periods in the history of the middle ageswe encounter sudden outbreaks of millennarianism, sometimesas the tenet of a small sect, sometimes as a far-reaching movement.And, since it had been suppressed, not, as in the East, bymystical speculation, its mightiest antagonist, but by the politicalchurch of the hierarchy, we find that wherever chiliasm appearsin the middle ages it makes common cause with all enemies ofthe secularized church. It strengthened the hands of churchdemocracy; it formed an alliance with the pure souls who heldup to the church the ideal of apostolic poverty; it united itselffor a time even with mysticism in a common opposition to thesupremacy of the church; nay, it lent the strength of its convictionsto the support of states and princes in their efforts to breakthe political power of the church. It is sufficient to recall thewell-known names of Joachim of Floris, of all the numerousFranciscan spiritualists, of the leading sectaries from the 13th tothe 15th century who assailed the papacy and the secularism ofthe church—above all, the name of Occam. In these men themillennarianism of the ancient church came to life again; and inthe revolutionary movements of the 15th and 16th centuries—especiallyin the Anabaptist movements—it appears with all itsold uncompromising energy. If the church, and not the state,was regarded as Babylon, and the pope declared to be the Antichrist,these were legitimate inferences from the ancient traditionsand the actual position of the church. But, of course, the newchiliasm was not in every respect identical with the old. Itcould not hold its ground without admitting certain innovations.The “everlasting gospel” of Joachim of Floris was a differentthing from the announcement of Christ’s glorious return in theclouds of heaven; the “age of the spirit” which mystics andspiritualists expected contained traits which must be characterizedas “modern”; and the “kingdom” of the Anabaptists inMünster was a Satanic caricature of that kingdom in which theChristians of the 2nd century looked for a peaceful Sabbath rest.Only we must not form our ideas of the great apocalyptic andchiliastic movement of the first decades of the 16th centuryfrom the rabble in Münster. There were pure evangelical forcesat work in it; and many Anabaptists need not shun comparisonwith the Christians of the apostolic and post-apostolicages.

The German and Swiss Reformers also believed that the end ofthe world was near, but they had different aims in view fromthose of the Anabaptists. It was not from poverty and apocalypticismthat they hoped for a reformation of the Church. Incontrast to the fanatics, after a brief hesitation they threw millennarianismoverboard, and along with it all other “opinionesJudaicae.” They took up the same ground in this respect whichthe Roman Catholic Church had occupied since the time ofAugustine. How millennarianism nevertheless found its way,with the help of apocalyptic mysticism and Anabaptist influencesinto the churches of the Reformation, chiefly among the Reformedsects, but afterwards also in the Lutheran Church, howit became incorporated with Pietism, how in more recent timesan exceedingly mild type of “academic” chiliasm has beendeveloped from a belief in the verbal inspiration of the Bible,how finally new sects are still springing up here and there withapocalyptic and chiliastic expectations—these are matters whichcannot be fully entered upon here.