What was armageddon

World View 02 NOV Career Feature 25 OCT Francis Crick Institute. Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily. Advanced search.

Skip to main content Thank you for visiting nature. You have full access to this article via your institution. Download PDF. Latest on: History Caltech confronted its racist past. Society Caltech confronted its racist past. Close banner Close. Email address Sign up. Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox.

Sign up for Nature Briefing. Search Search articles by subject, keyword or author. Such were the numbers and such the carnage that men have compared the conflict to that of the nations at Armageddon. New Word List Word List. Save This Word! Revelation When Christianity branched off from Judaism 2, years ago, it took this belief. The concept appears throughout the Christian Bible, and in fact the Book of Revelations is wholly devoted to it. Revelations consists of a prophetic description of how the world will end.

Its writer identifies himself as John, but other than his name, nothing is known of him, and the traditional identification of him with John the Apostle is likely not true. Yet whoever this John was, he played a decisive role in molding the Christian conception of the eschatological end of days. John, who wrote Revelations in Greek, also bestowed upon the English language two words for the end of the worlds: apocalypse and Armageddon.

The origin of the first is clear, but the latter is puzzling. Thus, as was the common practice at the time, it became used as the name of the book. Since the book describes the end of the world, its Greek title began to be used by English speakers to refer to the end of the world itself, which is how we got the word apocalypse.

The origin of the word Armageddon is far more difficult to explain. Out of the mouth of dragons. Who exactly is gathered to Armageddon is not exactly clear from context.

It resulted in the defeat of Judah and the death of king Josiah. Judah was substantially weakened and was destroyed a few decades later by Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II. Even in modern times, Megiddo has seen significant battles. The loss was so crushing that the Ottoman Empire was forced to request an armistice shortly afterward.

Megiddo was a place worth fighting over because the site is located at the crossroads of the Jezreel Valley, an important, strategic location that overlooked several trade routes, wrote archaeologist and The University of Iowa religious studies professor Robert Cargill, in his book "The Cities that Built the Bible" HarperOne, In the Book of Revelation, "Megiddo was identified as the location of the end of the world because it had been the epicenter of armed conflict throughout Israel's history," Cargill explained.

Many archaeological discoveries have been made at Megiddo over the past century. Some of the most important were made by the University of Chicago's expedition that ran from to The story behind the expedition is documented in Cline's book. One of the expedition's more famous discoveries was a series of "stables," which the excavators thought were built by King Solomon today, most archaeologists believe that someone other than Solomon built them.