Antichrist – Two Thousand Years of the Human Fascination With Evil

By Stefan Isaksson

Antichrist – Two Thousand Years of the Human Fascination With Evil
Bernard McGinn
Columbia University Press
369 pages
ISBN: 0231119771

There is this one word that’s useful when describing Bernard McGinn’s impressive book Antichrist. And that word is “very”.

Because it’s a book whose adjectives all can be preceded by “very”. First and foremost, it’s very well written. Very well written indeed. Every page, every paragraph, every single sentence is packed with facts. Names, important years, classic and unknown works of writing, historical events, and much, MUCH more. Very much more, so to speak. It’s not a heavy book, it’s a VERY heavy book, and it takes a lot of energy and mental strength in order to finish it all.

But, it’s well worth the effort to try. McGinn attempts, and indeed succeeds, to give a description of the Antichrist ever since his, or its, conception. Many probably think that the Antichrist is simply the son of the Devil and that’s he nothing more than the opposite to Christ, but as McGinn beautifully describes, the story is tremendously more complex and complicated.

The study of the Antichrist bears many resemblances to the study of evil; what it is, why it exists, and who is responsible for it. Throughout the ages all sorts of people, events, faiths and so on have been connected to the Antichrist, and McGinn is extremely thorough and almost painfully academic in his very precise chronological resume. While reading it one finds oneself more or less drowning in a huge ocean of academia, and it doesn’t take long to realize that it’s more or less impossible to read it all in one go.

But that’s ok, because the book is divided into different chapters detailing different ages, making it easy to choose whatever period interests you the most. To the everyday reader with a more casual interest in the phenomenon, the last chapter, “Antichrist Our Contemporary” will be of most interest. Here McGinn discusses such things as the Omen motion pictures and how Saddam Hussen has been labelled the Antichrist by fundamental Christians in America, but he also discusses why it is that the phenomenon of Antichrist is not as “hot” anymore, compared to earlier eras when practically everyone was convinced that the end was near.

So, so what if he makes the mistake of naming the killer in the Halloween-series Jason and not Michael Myers; the book is still a masterpiece in thorough academic religious research. To students of religion the entire book is of interest, but the everyday reader will probably only be able to fully enjoy the last chapter.