This article presents a semiotic and semantic analysis of the ideas about cyclic nature of time in popular eschatological texts that are characteristic of the modern Orthodox Church. The sources of research have been prophetic eschatological texts including apocryphal and anonymous ones that are prevalent in the discourses of folk Orthodoxy. The author identified four sources of folk eschatology: the eschatological doctrine of the Orthodox Church fragmentary borrowed and reinterpreted from church sermons, catechetical and theological literature; eschatological myths of various genesis and styles; apocryphal and pseudo graphic prophecies attributed to various authority figures; anonymous and pseudonymous verbalized visionary experience. They are the source of the views that the world will not be destroyed in its current forms, but will continue to exist from scratch. In this new world there will be a new human civilization, which will again have to go through a historical path of development. Such notions clearly contradict the official dogma of the Orthodox Church and prove the acraliscal foundations of folk eschatology.

Prilutskii Aleksandr Mikhailovich, Doctor of Sciences (Philosophy), Professor, Head, Department of History of Religions and Theology, Herzen State Pedagogical University of Russia, 48, Moyka embankment, St. Petersburg, 191186, Russian Federation, tel.: 8(812)3123640, e-mail: alpril@mail.ru

Prilutskii A. M. Semantics of the Mythologeme about Eternal Return in the Discourse of Folk Orthodox Eschatology. The Bulletin of Irkutsk State University. Series Political Science and Religion Studies. 2019, vol. 27, pp. 48-54. https://doi.org/10.26516/2073-3380.2019.27.48 (in Russian)

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