Andrew Crome - Böcker

Prophecy and millennial speculation are often seen as having played a key role in early European engagements with the new world, from Columbus’s use of the predictions of Joachim of Fiore, to the puritan ‘Errand into the Wilderness’.

In an age shadowed by pandemics, climate catastrophe, authoritarian resurgence, and existential technological threats, The Bloomsbury Handbook of Apocalypticism and Millennialism offers a timely and indispensable exploration of how societies make sense of their Ends—and their hoped-for new beginnings. This ground-breaking volume gathers leading scholars to trace the evolution, meanings, and enduring potency of apocalyptic and millennial ideas across religious, secular, and cultural landscapes.From ancient revelatory texts to contemporary political movements and popular culture, the book dissects how these concepts function not just as prophecies of doom, but as frameworks for resistance, renewal, and transformation. Through meticulous historical analysis and bold theoretical interventions, the contributors interrogate core debates—from the distinctions between apocalypticism and millennialism to their radical entanglements with justice, space, temporality, and morality.This volume dismantles simplistic portrayals of End Times thinking, revealing instead its nuanced, world-shaping logic. Whether manifest in religious movements or global politics, apocalypse is no longer a marginal concern—it is the defining hermeneutic of our times.Scholarly, provocative, and urgent, this Handbook is essential reading for researchers, students, and anyone seeking to understand how humanity envisions and enacts its endings, and potentially, new beginnings.

This book explores why English Christians, from the early modern period onwards, believed that their nation had a special mission to restore the Jews to Palestine.

This book offers the first detailed examination of the life and works of biblical commentator Thomas Brightman (1562-1607), analysing his influential eschatological commentaries and their impact on both conservative and radical writers in early modern England.

This book offers the first detailed examination of the life and works of biblical commentator Thomas Brightman (1562-1607), analysing his influential eschatological commentaries and their impact on both conservative and radical writers in early modern England. It examines in detail the hermeneutic strategies used by Brightman and argues that his method centred on the dual axes of a Jewish restoration to Palestine and the construction of a strong English national identity.  This book suggests that Brightman’s use of conservative modes of “literal” exegesis led him to new interpretations which had a major impact on early modern English eschatology. A radically historicised mode of exegesis sought to provide interpretations of the Old Testament that would have made sense to their original readers, leading Brightman and those who followed him to argue for the physical restoration of the Jews to the Holy Land. In doing so, the standard Reformed identification of Old Testament Israel with elect Christians was denied. This book traces the evolution of the controversial idea that Israel and the church both had separate unfulfilled scriptural promises in early modern England and shows how early modern exegetes sought to re-construct a distinctly English Christian identity through reading their nation into prophecy. In examining Brightman’s hermeneutic strategies and their influence, this book argues for important links between a “literal” hermeneutic, ideas of Jewish restoration and national identity construction in early modern England. Its central arguments will be of interest to all those researching the history of biblical interpretation, the role of religion in constructing national identity and the background to the later development of Christian Zionism.This important study provides a new examination of Thomas Brightman's hermeneutical method, particularly his ideas on the restoration of the Jews. The author's thorough analysis ofBrightman's approach also has more general and wider implications for understanding the development of English apocalyptic interpretation into the later seventeenth-century.' - Dr Warren Johnston, Associate Professor of History, Algoma University.Andrew Crome's ground-breaking study of Thomas Brightman offers a new and sometimes surprising account of the development of millennial thinking in and beyond early modern England. This masterly account demonstrates the extent to which an emerging Zionism supported an emerging English nationalism, while outlining the historical roots of some of the most important of contemporary geopolitical themes." - Professor Crawford Gribben, Professor of Early Modern British History, Queen's University Belfast.This important study provides a new examination of Thomas Brightman's hermeneutical method, particularly his ideas on the restoration of the Jews. The author's thorough analysis of Brightman's approach also has more general and wider implications for understanding the development of English apocalyptic interpretation into the later seventeenth-century.' - Dr Warren Johnston, Associate Professor of History, Algoma University.