Product Description

End of Days is a study of the apocalyptic views and struggles between various religious groups, namely Jews, Christians and Muslims, over Jerusalem's Temple Mount, believed to be the key to salvation as the end of the world, the apocalypse, draws near. In this book, Gorenberg weaves a story that stretches from California churches to West Bank settlements, explaining why believers hope for the End, and why prominent American fundamentalists provide hard-line support for Israel, while looking forward to an apocalypse in which they expect Jews to die or else convert. He makes sense of the messianic fervor that has driven Israeli settlers to oppose peace, and describes the Islamic apocalyptic visions that cast Israel's actions in Jerusalem as diabolic plots. At the centre of this turmoil is the site known to Jews and Christians as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as Al Aqsa. Modern Jewish and Christian messianic activists have aspired to rebuild the Third Jewish Temple, each in fulfillment of different biblical prophecies. Meanwhile, popular Muslim thinking holds that a Jewish desecration or destruction of Al Aqsa may also be a preliminary event to the apocalypse and the ultimate triumph of Islam. Ultimately, the site as described by Gorenberg, is the "single stage on which three different plays unfold...the final day beliefs of the world's major monotheistic faiths" and this book is an exploration of the diifferent religious groups' struggle to reach a final resolution.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #434805 in Books
• Published on: 2002-11-28
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
For the average American watching CNN, the conflict in the Middle East is a complicated affair, mired in an ancient past and an uncertain future. It also seems like a distant story, one that only remotely touches upon the temples and churches beyond the Middle East. Not so, explains Gershom Gorenberg, a senior editor at the Jerusalem Report. In fact, the threat of apocalyptic religious violence is happening now, and it's happening everywhere. It is fuelled in part, he says, by Christian leaders in America's fundamentalist churches.

To help readers make sense of it all, Gorenberg centres his fascinating discussion around the Temple Mount, the world's most desired piece of religious real estate. It is where King David erected an altar, where Solomon and Herod built their temples, and where the Dome of Rock now stands. (Cain even murdered Abel, according to ancient legend, over who would own this place.) The Christian far right now stakes a future claim to the Temple Mount, where they predict (or at least hope) the "Third Temple" will be built shortly. Gorenberg offers the impressive research of a seasoned investigative journalist, yet he possesses the narrative skills of a novelist. The result is an enthralling and informative read. --Gail Hudson

Customer Reviews

A timely plea for relativism and humility
Deciphering the signs pointing to all-out war in the Middle East is the passionate purpose of this book, which analyzes the motivations of fundamentalist and evangelical Christians who support Israel in its struggles against the Palestinians in general and in its often violent disputes over the Temple Mount in particular because their literal interpretations of Scriptural passages lead them to believe that these current events represent enactments of the "Endtime" in which the Messiah will reappear and perform the Final Judgment. A decidedly unbenign corollary of such beliefs, of course, is the expectation that the majority of Jews will be killed during the ensuing Armageddon, and that only the few who convert in time will join the ranks of true believers who enter the Kingdom of Heaven. In tracing these volatile beliefs, summarized under the rubric of "dispensational premillennialism," along with the parallel convictions of Jewish messianists and the unswerving commitments of Muslims to the defense of the sacred precincts on the Mount, Gershom Gorenberg contrasts the literalism with which a "political arrangement over thirty-five acres," the area of the Temple Mount, "is described as a cosmological defeat of light by darkness" - i.e., an accommodation preventing the destroyed Temple's rebuilding, an essential precondition to fulfillment of the Doomsday scripts of both Christian and Jewish fundamentalists - with the moderate evangelicals' rejection of the Crusades as a betrayal of Jesus, who "saw the image of God in every person he met." The author alternates passages of philosophical reflection with folksy descriptions of meetings with rabbis, ministers, scientists, politicians, and philosophers, and even with an analogy of the current crisis in the Middle East to the 1993 conflagration in Waco, Texas, which he interprets as a salient and pertinent example not only of the importance of understanding symbols in any dialogue or confrontation between adherents of different religions or cultures but also of the inevitable consequences of failing to heed or to speak one's interlocutor's symbolic language.

The Ultimate danger arising from the notion of sacred places and sacred texts.
Some reviewers of this book have accused Gorenburg of failing to respect sincerely held religious views. They think his mocking tone towards religious whackos is unjustified. Gorenburg's treatment of Biblical and Koranic literalists, whose crazy notions are at the heart of the Midddle East crisis, is a healthy blast of fresh air.

The Bible, Christian and Jewish, as well as the Koran, have specfic prophecies about an imminent Hour of Doom or Day of Judgement. The Books of Revelation and Daniel in particular are riddled with number puzzles about dates for the End of Days. So long as these dangerous books (Koran and Bible) are revered, it is fruitless for the 'reasonable and mainstream' 'people of the Book' to express dismay when the texts are taken seriously.

There is a myth that Bible and Koranic stories are subtle, symbolic and allegorical and were never meant to be taken literally. On the contrary, it is only since the 18th century European enlightenment that the literal truth of the Bible has been questioned. Even Hegel, Marx's Alma Mater, was convinced, for example, that Noah's flood was a real and global event.

Gorenburg interviews a range of people, Christian, Jewish and Muslim, whose lives are centred on physical preparation for their own particular take on the imminent cataclysm. Some US Christians are allying with Jews to prepare for the Jerusalam Temple's miraculous restoration. It needs a High Priest annointed with the ashes of a pure red heifer. Hence there is a plan to breed one. What else can a sane person do except giggle at such absurdity?

The status of Jerusalem, for all that it has no industry, a difficult water supply and lies on no trade routes, has, for purely mythical reasons, had a hold on the religious imagination for millennia. The Crusades were just one episode. The Book of Revelation describes the recreation of the Jewish Temple, with pearly gates and other wonders, becoming restored at the End of Time.

I was reared as a Jehovah's Witness. They were End of Days obsessives, though Jerusalem has been sidelined in their version of TRUTH for some decades now. Like all fundamentalist creeds they are guilty of creating a mass of misery. They do not deserve respect, any more than do the crazy characters interviewed by Gorenburg in this book. Gorenburg makes an excellent case for discounting the whole ridiculous and dangerous notion of a Divinely revealed text. It is fruitless for the mainstream religious to wail. Their respect for the same texts gives legitimacy, indeed added ammunition, to the crackpots. When those texts refer to a great battle at the End of Time, it is hardly surprising that, given the Books' status, some folks take them seriously and act accordingly.

Disappointing. Needs more in-depth study.
Having read many reviews on this book, most of which heap praise upon it, I picked it up with a sense of eager anticipation. Jerusalem being a city that I know so very well and love more than any other.

Only too aware of the immense religious and political significance of the Jerusalem's Temple Mount to Judaism, Christianity and Islam, I expected to read a serious, in-depth, respectful study of the relevance of the Temple Mount to all the parties concerned, particularly in relation to how all faiths view it's place in the end times.

Whilst these subjects are touched upon and there is much of merit in this book, I do not feel that the book does justice to this colossal subject.

I feel that time and again, the writer's personal opinions are allowed to taint this study. Whilst such should be respected, I fail to find any justification for deviating from essential & pivotal issues to personally attack and insult Christian evangelists for example, over their own personal appearances & histories, or to ridicule the differing personal opinions of others professing some knowledge of the Temple Mount. Accusations of certain beliefs/opinions as being 'myths' without any appropriate elaboration or explanation for such accusations leaves a lot to be desired.

Others might accuse me of 'nit-picking', but I feel that this is a subject that needs to be approached with the utmost respect. I consider that there is much destructive criticism within this book, smeared at times with arrogance, whilst constructive criticism and respect is unfortunately sometimes lacking, as is any real in-depth study to the issues concerned. Other reviews quite correctly state the immense signifcance and importance of the matters discussed here, but I am left feeling that this subject needs to be addressed with far more depth and far more respect.

There are better books out there on these matters. Might I respectfully suggest that interested persons read "Secrets Of Jerusalem's Temple Mount" by Leen & Kathleen Ritmeyer, "The Coming Last Days Temple" and "Jerusalem In Prophecy" both by Randall Price. Thanks for listening.