Thesis (Th. M.)--Westminster Theological Seminary (Philadelphia, Pa.), 2008. / Typescript. Includes vita. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 126-139).

Thesis (M.A.)--Acadia University, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 108-119). Also available on the Internet via the World Wide Web.

Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 325-333). Also available online in ProQuest, free to University of Oregon users.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Dept. of History, August 2002. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (M.A.)--Georgia State University, 2006. / Title from title screen. Reiner Smolinski, committee chair; Victor A. Kramer, Christopher Kocela, committee members. Electronic text (79 p.) : digital, PDF file. Description based on contents viewed May 9, 2007. Includes bibliographical references (p. 77-79).

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Bibliography: leaves 208-219. / Religious apocalyptic literature appears to have been written in response to a situation of crisis in which the believers found themselves. It is the catalyst which provided the energy which the society needed in order to withstand that crisis, and it did this by radically inverting the dimensions which make up a worldview, that is the dimensions of time and space, and the classification of groups, so that it reflects the possibility of a new order, a new heaven and a new earth. Since the nineteenth century, the Western world has seen itself in a constant state of crisis in terms of the rapid secularisation, industrialisation and urbanisation, and it would seem that the notion of an apocalypse is still relevant. But religious visions of the apocalypse do not seem to have relevance to the largely secular society they would have been addressing. Something new, immediate and drastic was needed, which would supply the society with the energy to withstand the crisis of a secular world. Science fiction as a literary genre arose in the late nineteenth century, and it would seem as if the new social situation generated a new symbolic vocabulary for ancient apocalyptic themes, in other words, science fiction appeared as an imaginative literary genre of mythic, apocalyptic dimensions to address this situation. In the same way as religious visions of the apocalypse, science fiction inverts the components of a worldview so that a new social order, a new heaven and a new earth are seen as possible. In order to explore this theme, science fiction is examined in the light of radical inversion of accepted worldviews, and the genre is divided into three historical periods in order to understand the conditions under which it was written, as well as the content of the material involved. These periods are: 1. Apocalypses of Expectation and Hope. The late nineteenth century and the early twentieth century; the beginnings of the genre in the crisis of rapid industrialisation, secularisation and urbanisation, using the works of Jules Verne and H G Wells. 2. Apocalypses of Irony and Despair. The nineteen twenties to the end of the Second World War; the crises of the two World Wars on a complacent world, using the works of Aldous Huxley and George Orwell. 3. Apocalypses of Destruction and Redemption. The nineteen fifties to the present; the crisis of nuclear power and thinking machines, using the works of Frank Herbert and Isaac Asimov. Also examined are the quasi-religious nature of science fiction, apocalypse as a cleansing agent of the universe, and the myths of noble survivors of post-apocalyptic literature and films. In the light of the above, it can be understood why science fiction can be seen as the functional equivalent to religious apocalyptic myth, but relevant to the largely secular Western world of the twentieth century.

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Images of pregnant women and women in childbirth play an important role in first-century apocalyptic literature. The embodied experience of labor pains and parturition captured the imaginations of male authors of apocalyptic eschatology as they envisioned how the eschaton might occur. These writers, while often critical of the present state of the world, were not isolated from it; rather, as active participants in the broader culture, their visions and fantasies are best understood within the literary and material context of the Roman Empire. Imperial and apocalyptic arguments alike employ discourses of gender, power, and futurity, engaging the reproductive body as a fundamental point of connection between humanity and the divine and between the present and future. At the same time, votive offerings and uterine amulets related to pregnancy and childbearing further illustrate the centrality of fecundity and childbearing to women and their families. Reproduction was a cultural imperative achieved, at least in part, by means of appeals to the divine. Medical writers also addressed successful pregnancy, in this case by associating feminine anatomical inferiority with the ability to become pregnant. Together, this evidence serves as a framework for this study of apocalyptic images of pregnancy and childbirth in the writings of Paul, the book of Revelation, and 4 Ezra. Each of these works employs images of pregnancy and childbirth to assert the power of God over humanity and creation, to emphasize the appropriate societal regulation of women’s bodies, and to describe the end of the known world. The reproductive bodies of women become the ground upon which claims of divine authority and human futurity are made and disputed.

This thesis uses principles from Burke's Rhetoric of Identification to examine how apocalyptic prophecies foster and maintain an apocalyptic group identity. Jehovah's Witnesses were used as a sample apocalyptic group because they comprise a group with a heavy textual and symbolic focus on the apocalypse.