Six Ages of the World
Encyclopedia
Christian
A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as recorded in the Canonical gospels and the letters of the New Testament...
historical periodization
Periodization
Periodization is the attempt to categorize or divide time into named blocks. The result is a descriptive abstraction that provides a useful handle on periods of time with relatively stable characteristics...
first written about by Saint Augustine
Augustine of Hippo
Augustine of Hippo , also known as Augustine, St. Augustine, St. Austin, St. Augoustinos, Blessed Augustine, or St. Augustine the Blessed, was Bishop of Hippo Regius . He was a Latin-speaking philosopher and theologian who lived in the Roman Africa Province...
circa 400 AD. It is based upon Christian religious events, from the creation of Adam
Adam and Eve
Adam and Eve were, according to the Genesis creation narratives, the first human couple to inhabit Earth, created by YHWH, the God of the ancient Hebrews...
to the events of Revelation
Revelation
In religion and theology, revelation is the revealing or disclosing, through active or passive communication with a supernatural or a divine entity...
. The six ages of history, with each age lasting approximately 1000 years, were widely believed and in use throughout the Middle Ages
Middle Ages
The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...
, and until the Enlightenment
Age of Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment was an elite cultural movement of intellectuals in 18th century Europe that sought to mobilize the power of reason in order to reform society and advance knowledge. It promoted intellectual interchange and opposed intolerance and abuses in church and state...
, the writing of history was mostly the filling out of all or some part of this outline.
The outline accounts for Seven Ages, just as there are seven days of the week
Seven-day week
The seven-day week is used by the majority of the world and is the international standard as specified in ISO 8601.- Origins :The origin of the seven-day week is the religious significance that was placed on the seventh day by ancient cultures, including the Babylonian civilization and the Jewish...
, with the Seventh Age being eternal rest after the Final Judgement and End Times
End times
The end time, end times, or end of days is a time period described in the eschatological writings in the three Abrahamic religions and in doomsday scenarios in various other non-Abrahamic religions...
, just as the seventh day of the week is reserved for rest. It was normally called the Six Ages of the World because they were the ages of the world
World (theology)
-Christian views on the World:In Christianity, the concept connotes the fallen and corrupt world order of human society. The world is frequently cited alongside the flesh and the Devil as a source of temptation that Christians should flee...
, of history, while the Seventh Age was not of this world or was the World to Come
World to Come
The World to Come is an eschatological phrase reflecting the belief that the "current world" is flawed or cursed and will be replaced in the future by a better world or a paradise. The concept is similar to the concepts of Heaven and the afterlife, but Heaven is another place generally seen as...
and lasting forever.
Six Ages
The Six Ages are best described in the words of Saint Augustine, found in De catechizandis rudibus (On the catechizing of the uninstructed), Chapter 22:- The First Age: "The first is from the beginning of the human race, that is, from AdamAdam and EveAdam and Eve were, according to the Genesis creation narratives, the first human couple to inhabit Earth, created by YHWH, the God of the ancient Hebrews...
, who was the first man that was made, down to NoahNoahNoah was, according to the Hebrew Bible, the tenth and last of the antediluvian Patriarchs. The biblical story of Noah is contained in chapters 6–9 of the book of Genesis, where he saves his family and representatives of all animals from the flood by constructing an ark...
, who constructed the ark at the time of the floodNoah's ArkNoah's Ark is a vessel appearing in the Book of Genesis and the Quran . These narratives describe the construction of the ark by Noah at God's command to save himself, his family, and the world's animals from the worldwide deluge of the Great Flood.In the narrative of the ark, God sees the...
." - The Second Age: "..extends from that period on to AbrahamAbrahamAbraham , whose birth name was Abram, is the eponym of the Abrahamic religions, among which are Judaism, Christianity and Islam...
, who was called the father indeed of all nations.." - The Third Age: "For the third age extends from Abraham on to DavidDavidDavid was the second king of the united Kingdom of Israel according to the Hebrew Bible and, according to the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, an ancestor of Jesus Christ through both Saint Joseph and Mary...
the king." - The Fourth Age: "The fourth from David on to that captivityBabylonian captivityThe Babylonian captivity was the period in Jewish history during which the Jews of the ancient Kingdom of Judah were captives in Babylon—conventionally 587–538 BCE....
whereby the people of God passed over into Babylonia." - The Fifth Age: "The fifth from that transmigration down to the advent of our Lord Jesus Christ."
- The Sixth Age: "With His
[Jesus Christ's] coming the sixth age has entered on its process."
The Ages reflect the seven days of creation, of which the last day is the rest of the Sabbath
Sabbath
Sabbath in Christianity is a weekly day of rest or religious observance, derived from the Biblical Sabbath.Seventh-day Sabbath observance, i.e. resting from labor from Friday sunset to Saturday sunset, is practiced by seventh-day Sabbatarians...
, illustrating the human journey to find eternal rest with God, a common Christian narrative.
Theory
Saint Augustine taught that there are six ages of the world in his De catechizandis rudibus (On the Catechising of the Uninstructed). Augustine was not the first to conceive of the Six Ages, which had its roots in the Jewish tradition, but he was the first Christian to write about it, and as his ideas became central to the church so did his authority.The theory originated from a passage in II Peter:
- "But of this one thing be not ignorant, my beloved, that one day with the Lord is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day." (II Peter 3:8)
The interpretation was taken to mean that mankind would live through six 1,000 year periods (or "days"), with the seventh being eternity in heaven
Heaven
Heaven, the Heavens or Seven Heavens, is a common religious cosmological or metaphysical term for the physical or transcendent place from which heavenly beings originate, are enthroned or inhabit...
or according to the Nicene Creed
Nicene Creed
The Nicene Creed is the creed or profession of faith that is most widely used in Christian liturgy. It is called Nicene because, in its original form, it was adopted in the city of Nicaea by the first ecumenical council, which met there in the year 325.The Nicene Creed has been normative to the...
, a World to Come
World to Come
The World to Come is an eschatological phrase reflecting the belief that the "current world" is flawed or cursed and will be replaced in the future by a better world or a paradise. The concept is similar to the concepts of Heaven and the afterlife, but Heaven is another place generally seen as...
.
Medieval Christian scholars believed it was possible to determine the overall time of human history, starting with Adam, by counting forward how long each generation had lived up to the time of Jesus
Jesus
Jesus of Nazareth , commonly referred to as Jesus Christ or simply as Jesus or Christ, is the central figure of Christianity...
, based on the ages recorded in the Bible. While the exact age of the earth was a matter of biblical interpretive debate, it was generally agreed man was somewhere in the last and final thousand years, the Sixth Age, and the final Seventh Age
Christian eschatology
Christian eschatology is a major branch of study within Christian theology. Eschatology, from two Greek words meaning last and study , is the study of the end of things, whether the end of an individual life, the end of the age, or the end of the world...
could happen at any time. The world was seen as an old place, the future would be much shorter than the past, a common image was of the world growing old.
While Augustine was the first to write of the Six Ages, early Christians prior to Augustine found no end of evidence in the Jewish traditions of the Old Testament
Old Testament
The Old Testament, of which Christians hold different views, is a Christian term for the religious writings of ancient Israel held sacred and inspired by Christians which overlaps with the 24-book canon of the Masoretic Text of Judaism...
, and initially set the date for the End of the World at the year 500
500
Year 500 was a leap year starting on Saturday of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Patricius and Hypatius...
. Hippolytus said that the measurements of the Ark of the Covenant
Ark of the Covenant
The Ark of the Covenant , also known as the Ark of the Testimony, is a chest described in Book of Exodus as solely containing the Tablets of Stone on which the Ten Commandments were inscribed...
added up to five and one-half cubit
Cubit
The cubit is a traditional unit of length, based on the length of the forearm. Cubits of various lengths were employed in many parts of the world in Antiquity, in the Middle Ages and into Early Modern Times....
s, meaning five and a half thousand years. Since Jesus had been born in the "sixth hour", or halfway through a day (or, five hundred years into an Age), and since five kingdoms (five thousand years) had already fallen according to Revelation, plus the half day of Jesus (the body of Jesus replacing the Ark of the Jews), it meant that five-thousand five-hundred years had already passed when Jesus was born and another 500 years would mark the end of the world. An alternative scheme had set the date to the year 202, but when this date passed without event, people expected the end in the year 500.
By the 3rd century, Christians no longer believed the "End of the Ages" would occur in their lifetime, as was common among the earliest Christians
Early Christianity
Early Christianity is generally considered as Christianity before 325. The New Testament's Book of Acts and Epistle to the Galatians records that the first Christian community was centered in Jerusalem and its leaders included James, Peter and John....
.
See also
- AntediluvianAntediluvianThe antediluvian period meaning "before the deluge" is the period referred to in the Bible between the Creation of the Earth and the Deluge . The narrative takes up chapters 1-6 of Genesis...
- Bartholomew HolzhauserBartholomew HolzhauserVenerable Bartholomew Holzhauser was a German priest, a founder of a religious community, and a visionary and writer of prophecies.-Early life:...
- DispensationalismDispensationalismDispensationalism is a nineteenth-century evangelical development based on a futurist biblical hermeneutic that sees a series of chronologically successive "dispensations" or periods in history in which God relates to human beings in different ways under different Biblical covenants.As a system,...
- Fifth MonarchistsFifth MonarchistsThe Fifth Monarchists or Fifth Monarchy Men were active from 1649 to 1661 during the Interregnum, following the English Civil Wars of the 17th century. They took their name from a prophecy in the Book of Daniel that four ancient monarchies would precede Christ's return...
- Four monarchiesFour monarchiesThe four kingdoms refers to four monarchies, or world empires, described in dreams and visions in the Book of Daniel of the Hebrew Bible. The actual term "four kingdoms" occurs once, found in Daniel 8:22. These four kingdoms are described in different ways throughout Daniel, beginning with chapter...
- Jewish mythologyJewish mythologyJewish mythology is generally the sacred and traditional narratives that help explain and symbolize the Jewish religion, whereas Jewish folklore consists of the folk tales and legends that existed in the general Jewish culture. There is very little early folklore distinct from the aggadah literature...
- Sons of NoahSons of NoahThe Seventy Nations or Sons of Noah is an extensive list of descendants of Noah appearing in of the Hebrew Bible, representing an ethnology from an Iron Age Levantine perspective...
- Ussher chronology
External links
- Winchester Bible image of the Ages of the World, illustrated within the opening letter "I" of the book of Genesis.
- Image: Six Ages of the World from the British LibraryBritish LibraryThe British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom, and is the world's largest library in terms of total number of items. The library is a major research library, holding over 150 million items from every country in the world, in virtually all known languages and in many formats,...
. Dated last quarter of the 14th century.