2 - The Story Begins

Summary

This chapter begins with how Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons, brought the early traditions into a cohesive narrative whole by incorporating the abomination of desolation, the little horn, the fourth beast and the fourth king, the Man of Sin, the Son of Perdition, and the beasts that arose from the earth and the sea into the Antichrist figure. It then explores the development of the Irenaean story through Hippolytus of Rome, Tertullian, Lactantius, and Pseudo-Hippolytus. It analyses the various components of the story as they were developing over the third and fourth centuries, including the notion of double Antichrists, the role of Nero as the Antichrist, the Antichrist as Satan incarnate, and physical depictions of the Antichrist as a monstrous being in various Greek, Coptic, Syriac, Ethiopian, and Latin texts.