[dnf末日预言]末日预言——想象和荒诞的合成品(双语)

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Isaac Newton"s Scribbled Prediction 牛顿弥留之际的预言
He introduced the world to the laws of motion and universal gravitation, but in reality these were the pursuits of a young man. In fact, Newton spent the bulk of his life as an apocalyptic thinker who scoured the Bible looking for insight into the end of the world. Although he had expressly avoided putting a date to his interpretations, in 2003, news hit that on one occasion he did. Near the end of his life, in an offhand calculation written on the back of an envelope, he suggested the year 2060.这位物理大师，或者说末日预言家，其生命中的大部分时间，不是用来研究地心引力，而是孜孜不倦地在圣经中寻找有关世界末日的真言。虽然他避免提出一个确切的末日日期，2003年的一则新闻指出他其实已经这么做了。在他生命的最后时刻，牛顿在一个信封的背面做了一个临时计算，将日期定在了2060年。

The Witch Hunter"s Predictions “女巫终结者”的预言
The Puritan preacher Cotton Mather might have been good at stirring up anti-witch sentiment, but the man was a flop when it came to predicting the end of the world.Mather gave his flock no fewer than four such dates, beginning with the year 1697.
清教徒Cotton Mather热衷于煽动民众对女巫的憎恨心理，但他本人在预言世界末日方面却不怎么在行。他一共提出了四个日期，第一个是1697年。

When 1697 came and went, he fiddled with the numbers and arrived at 1736. Likely realizing this was too far in the future to pay him any dividends, he revised it to 1716. When that year came and went, he shifted it ahead to 1717. He should have considered himself lucky that he hadn"t been accused of stupidity and hanged like a witch. Instead, he kept insisting that the end was imminent, only quitting in 1728 when death itself succeeded in silencing him.
1697平安无事地过去了，他瞎计算了一番，将日期定在1736.可能是觉得自己活不到那一年，以验证自己的先见之明，他将其改在1716年。1716年过去了，他又说是1717年。这个人没被骂脑残或跟女巫一样被绞死，真该感叹自己交了好运。事实上，他一直坚称世界末日迫在眉睫，直到1728年，死神成功地让他闭嘴。

The Third Fuzzy Secret 第三个不能说的秘密
In 1917, 10-year-old Portuguese peasant Lucia Santos, along with her two cousins, claimed that they were being visited by a hazy, chatty image of the Virgin Mary. 
1917年，十岁的葡萄牙女孩Lucia Santos和她两个堂兄弟声称，一个形貌模糊、酷似圣母玛利亚的人拜访了他们，并聊了很多。

Over a decade later, Lucia began writing her memoirs, in which she said, for the first time, that the ghost had imparted to her three secret predictions, the third of which was so horrible that it was kept from the public for almost seven decades -- plenty of time for rampant public speculation, which leaned toward the idea that it foretold the end of the world. The secret was revealed in 2000, it was so vague that it could be read to predict the end of anything, from the end of the world to the end of 8-tracks.
十年之后，Lucia开始写一部回忆录，其中她第一次提到，那个幽灵曾说过三个神秘的预言，而第三个实在太可怕，以至于保守了近七十年——七十年中充斥着对这个秘密各式各样的猜测，最终都集中于末日预言这个说法。2000年这个秘密终于大白天下，人们发现它可以被解读为世界末日，也可以被解读为八轨磁带的终结，因为内容实在晦涩难懂，不知所云。

The Great Disappointment 失望的预言家
This is not only the best name in the long history of eschatology, it"s the only name that should ever be used.
这不仅是最符合末世论发展史的名字，也是唯一应该用来指代末世论的名字。

Baptist preacher William Miller led his flock into 1844 on the wings of a poignant dream: that the Second Coming was imminent. Although Miller was reluctant to offer an actual date, he eventually relented, agreeing to October 22, 1844. By the following day, the Millerite movement was as good as dead.
浸信会牧师William Miller传道时宣称，基督再临的日子已经近了。虽然他不愿意透露具体日期，最终还是松口了，确定基督再临就在1844年的十月二十二日。不过第二天，由他发起的这场骚乱就彻底结束了。

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