https://www.academia.edu/12304787/Late_Antique_Apocalyptic_a_Context_for_the_Qur_an

Eschatological thinking had been part of Christian and Jewish assumptions from an early stage, and early Christians lived in expectation of an imminent end. When this did not happen, various adjustments had had to be made, and this still continued in late antiquity in many different spheres14 – certainly not without being contested and argued over. The same happened in the sixth century when the expected end soon after AD 500 did not happen. Eschatology and apocalyptic thinking were and had to be extremely malleable; they changed to suit the historical circumstances. Jesus as an apocalyptic prophet: Bart D. Ehrman, Jesus, Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millenium (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), and for discussion of the differing approaches, which also depend on assessments of the Jewish apocalyptic context, see C. Fletcher‐Louis, ‘Jesus and apocalypticism’, in T. Holmén and S. E. Porter, eds., Handbook for the Study of the Historical Jesus (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 3, 2877‐2909.

1. In a chapter with the title ‘Apocalypse and the Arabs’, Sidney Griffith makes the point that Christian reactions to the Arab conquests, both during and at the end of the seventh century tended to adopt an apocalyptic tone; however, these were, as he makes clear, reactions to something already happening, while it is clear that the later seventh-century writer Anastasius of Sinai already had some awareness of Qur’anic themes. Sidney H. Griffith, ‘Apocalypse and the Arabs’, id., The Church in the Shadow of the Mosque. Christians and Muslims in the World of Islam (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008), 23‐44; the chapter’s subtitle is ’The first Christian responses to the challenge of Islam’. For the other Syriac texts of the same general period as Ps. Methodius see 34 n. 35, and in general see also H. Suermann, Die geschichtstheologische Reaktion auf die einfallenden Muslime in der edessenischen Apokalyptic des 7. Jahrhunderts (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1985) and F.J. Martinez, ‘La literatura apocaliptica y las primeras reaciones cristianas a la conquista islamica en Oriente’, in Gonzalez Anes y Alvarez de Castrillón, ed., Europa y el Islam (Madrid: Real Academia de la Historia, 2003), 155‐81. Like the article by Reinink cited in n. 16, all these contributions are cast in terms of the reactions of others to Islam, rather than the general late antique background.
2. Writing with a stronger focus on the early medieval west, Jane Baun has broadened the enquiry and comments that ‘we find recorded not only the opinions of eminent bishops, but also the visionary experience of humbler lay people and monastics, both male and female.’22 We certainly need to distinguish between apocalyptic texts as such, and the common and much broader and overall assumptions about the end of the world, judgment and the Second Coming of Christ which are memorably described by Cyril Mango in a chapter entitled ‘The future of mankind’ in his 1980 book, Byzantium. The Empire of New Rome.
3. Paul Magdalino’s emphasis on the actual variety of apocalyptic and eschatological texts and references is worth emphasising. One example of such texts lies in the work of the sixth-century traveller and writer Cosmas Indicopleustes, who inserts an excursus in his Christian Topography referring to the book of Daniel. Unlike many others, however, he interprets it symbolically rather than in terms of an approaching end, and sees the Christian Roman empire as eternal, part of the divine dispensation. 24 The first two known commentaries in Greek on the Apocalypse of John date from our period, and one at least is preserved in a large number of later manuscripts and with translations into Armenian, Georgian and Old Slavonic, although Shoemaker suggests that attention to the Apocalypse did not change significantly before the eleventh century.
4. As for later periods, Magdalino makes the point that while apocalyptic thinking continued, and continued in many forms, despite the fact that the world had not ended when expected, later Byzantine apocalyptic was primarily interested in the fall of Constantinople. This is illustrated vividly in the final centuries of Byzantium before 1453, but nearer in time to our period, similar fears also showed themselves in connection with the Arab siege of Constantinople in 717 (See Brandes, ‘Anastasios’, 52). Turning from Constantinople to Jerusalem, it would surely have been amazing if the events of the early seventh century had not given rise to apocalyptic expectations, hopes and fears. After all, the arrival of the Muslims and the surrender of Jerusalem were preceded by the almost equally extraordinary events of the Persian capture of the city, and the dangerous Avar and Persian siege of Constantinople in 626, followed against all expectations by the spectacular victory of Heraclius deep in Persian territory and his triumphant restoration of the True Cross (Brandes, ‘Anastasios’, 38, for Gog and Magog in the homily on the siege by Theodore Syncellus).(edited)
5. Strikingly different from the eschatological elements in the Qur’an and of course from the Qur’anic treatment of the crucifixion, Christian apocalyptic thinking in the seventh century gave great importance to the theme of the cross. We do not know exactly what form Heraclius’s restitution of the cross actually took, though it seems likely, as Jan Willem Drijvers argues, that Heraclius’s reference points were Old Testament and Davidic, as shown in the poetry of George of Pisidia (See Drijvers, ‘Heraclius and the restitutio crucis’, 184‐86; for the Syriac Alexander Legend as a ‘protoByzantine propaganda writing’, from 629/30 in North Mesopotamia, see Brandes, ‘Anastasios’, 50). But we see in this period a growing focus on the liturgical theology of the cross, with obvious resonance in the events of the Persian invasion and Heraclius’s restoration of the Cross to Jerusalem. The Christian sources on the Persian capture of Jerusalem in 614, when the True Cross had been removed to Ctesiphon, and the accounts of its restoration all lay enormous emphasis on its symbolism. The great day of restoration, designated as 21 March, was hailed by Sophronius in Palestine (M. Gigante, ed., Sophronii Anacreontica [Rome: Gismondi, 1957), no. 18, and George of Pisidia in Constantinople.
6. To repeat Brian Daley’s words, Christianity in late antiquity was based on hope, the personal hope of salvation (Daley, The Hope of the Early Church). That hope could be easily dented. It might require the help of intercession, whether from the Virgin or the saints, or through relics, pilgrimage, or, increasingly, images, yet these too could arouse anxieties in the faithful. The scepticism and anxiety expressed by some about the power of saints after their deaths were responses to a much more widespread turn towards the help of saints, relics, and images for personal agendas in which a main issue was the salvation of the individual or those on whose behalf they prayed, yet when it was often difficult for individuals to be quite sure of where they stood (Matthew Dal Santo, ‘Text, image and the “visionary body” in early Byzantine hagiography: incubation and the rise of the Christian image cult’, Journal of Late Antiquity 4.1 (2011), 31‐54). Meier, Das andere Justinians, places emphasis on an increase in piety in the late sixth century. There is also in this period an abundance of evidence for Christian concerns about fate, astrology and prophecy. Two authors of the period – the early seventhcentury historian Theophylact Simocatta and the early eighth-century patriarch of Constantinople, Germanos, both composed dialogues arguing against the fatalistic idea that God had ordained a fixed term of life for each individual (See Averil Cameron, Dialoguing in Late Antiquity (Washington, DC: Harvard University Press, 2014), chapter one). Arguments against the power of astrology and of the heavenly bodies, and the idea of fate had long been standard in Christian writing, and continued to be so now (Averil Cameron, ‘Divine providence in late antiquity’; that attitudes towards them were also ambivalent, even among Byzantine intellectuals, has been shown in an excellent recent study by Paul Magdalino, L’orthodoxie des astrologues. La science entre le dogme et la divination à Byzance (VII­XIVe siècles) (Paris: Lethielleux, 2006). There is no question that fears of the coming of Antichrist, or predictions of the end of the world, are common in late antique sources, as are concerns about divine justice and providence. However, behind the passages about fate and tyche in classicizing historians like Procopius and Agathias discussed by A. Kaldellis, Procopius of Caesarea: Tyranny, History and Philosophy at the End of Antiquity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004) and ‘The historical and religious views of Agathias: a reinterpretation’, Byzantion 69 (1999), 206‐52, lie many precedents in classical historiography.