A Tale of a New Era · 2027–2033
RESEARCH PROGRAMME
Can apokalypsis reveal the mythos of history?
A seven-year cinematic inquiry in which filmmaking brings historical investigation, lived experience and cultural observation into a single research process.
The Inquiry
A Tale of a New Era approaches history as a whole and asks whether apparently isolated events may belong to an underlying dramatic continuity. Book One establishes the initial hypothesis: that the period extending approximately from 3000 BCE to 3000 CE may constitute a dramatic arc, and that humanity may now inhabit its phase of anagnorisis.
In Romans, Paul gives conceptual form to a universal movement already unfolding through the history of Israel and the prophets. Extending from Israel toward the nations, this movement advances toward apokalypsis: the removal of what has concealed the meaning and direction of history.
Aristotle performs a corresponding operation within dramatic thought. He situates anagnorisis within mythos—the organised whole in which events acquire meaning through their relationship to one another. Read together, apokalypsis and anagnorisis describe two aspects of the same possible event: history is unveiled, and its parts become recognisable as a dramatic whole.
The project’s seven-year duration provides a temporal framework for observing this possibility. Each Book occupies a defined place within the larger structure and extends the recognition achieved by the preceding films.
The Three Phases of the Inquiry
The seven Books form one cumulative investigation. Each phase establishes the conditions for the next.
I · 2027–2028
Establishing the Inquiry
The historical hypothesis is formulated and its epistemological foundations established.
Book One · 2027
History on a Story Arc
Book One proposes that the period extending from 3000 BCE to 3000 CE constitutes a dramatic whole. By reading Paul’s Letter to the Romans through Aristotle’s Poetics, it identifies the present as a possible phase in which history’s concealed continuity becomes recognisable as plot before proceeding toward resolution. The film establishes the historical and dramatic framework within which the subsequent inquiry unfolds.
Book Two · 2028
The Realm of Language
Book Two proposes that humanity inhabits a realm of meaning whose structures are formed and transmitted through language. It follows the twentieth-century turn toward language into its twenty-first-century technological realisation in the large language model. The capacity to model semantic relationships across extensive textual bodies establishes the epistemological foundation for making historical structure visible within language itself.
II · 2029–2031
Testing the Inquiry
Do Scripture, restoration traditions and the history of the Common Era articulate the same underlying dramatic movement in different semantic and historical forms?
Book Three · 2029
Portrait of Scripture
Book Three proposes that Scripture articulates a semantic grammar through which the story of Israel gradually becomes the story of humanity. From the creation narratives through Israel’s history and its relationship with the nations, the biblical tradition gives historical form to a universal movement.
Book Four · 2030
The Bringer of Benefit
Book Four proposes that humanity’s restoration traditions articulate the same underlying dramatic movement through different symbolic languages. It brings Paul’s expression en Christō into relation with the Zoroastrian figure of the Bringer of Benefit and other traditions of restoration.
Book Five · 2031
Impact of Revelation
Book Five proposes that the history of the Common Era reveals a growing tension between human integration and fragmentation. It asks whether Paul’s hamartia and charis articulate this tension as the semantic grammar of history rather than solely as theological concepts.
III · 2032–2033
Consequences of Recognition
What forms of human agency and shared historical life become possible once humanity recognises its place within the movement it inhabits?
Book Six · 2032
Return of the Liberator
Book Six proposes that liberation may consist in unveiling humanity’s true place within the dramatic movement of history. It approaches the enduring expectation of a saviour through apokalypsis and examines whether recognition can restore human agency and become a liberating historical event.
Book Seven · 2033
The Invisible City
Book Seven proposes that recognition of a shared dramatic continuity may open a new historical epoch. It explores what forms of civilisation, culture and collective life become possible when humanity understands its place within a common story.
How Can the Inquiry Be Tested?
History persists as layers of meaning accumulated in language, concepts and narratives. If it possesses a dramatic continuity, traces of that movement may remain within the language through which humanity has interpreted its experience.
The twentieth-century turn toward language made this condition visible. The large language model gives it technological form by modelling semantic relationships across extensive textual bodies. Within the inquiry, the model helps compare traditions, trace conceptual continuities and articulate structures that remain subject to textual verification and human judgement.
The films’ narrated passages emerge through dialogue: the filmmaker introduces experience, questions, sources and direction; the model maps relationships and proposes formulations; the filmmaker evaluates and rewrites them. The human prompts; the model maps.
The hypothesis can be articulated as a prompt and examined against shared textual sources. Research questions, prompts, source references and developing formulations will be made available for others to reproduce, challenge and extend through different language models. Agreement between models does not establish historical truth; the purpose is to make the reasoning publicly examinable.