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 | In Our Time
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 |  |  | The big ideas which form the intellectual agenda of our age are illuminated by some of the best minds. Melvyn Bragg and three guests investigate the history of ideas and debate their application in modern life. |  |  |  |  | LISTEN AGAIN  |  |  | |
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|  |  |  | | "I'm fascinated by the fact that we live in a time when so many people are doing fantastic work, and thinking in areas which it's not remotely possible for me to keep up with & and these people are prepared to talk about it. They're prepared to come on In Our Time and other programmes on Radio 4 and try and talk to the rest of us ..." |
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 |  |  | THE APOCALYPSE
George Bernard Shaw dismissed it as “the curious record of the visions of a drug addict” and if the Orthodox Christian Church had had its way, it would never have made it into the New Testament. But the Book of Revelation was included and its images of apocalypse, from the Four Horsemen to the Whore of Babylon, were fixed into the Christian imagination and its theology. As well as providing abundant imagery for artists from Durer to Blake, ideas of the end of the world have influenced the response to political, social and natural upheavals throughout history. Our understanding of history itself owes much to the apocalyptic way of thinking.
But how did this powerful narrative of judgement and retribution evolve, and how does it still shape our thinking on the deepest questions of morality and history?
Contributors
Martin Palmer, theologian and Director of the International Consultancy on Religion, Education and Culture
Marina Benjamin, journalist and author of Living at the End of the World (Picador, 1999) Justin Champion, Reader in the History of Early Modern Ideas at Royal Holloway College, University of London
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