|
A trivia point, to start
First (a picayune point, so please forgive me) it's Revelation, singlular, not Revelations.
Who wrote it, when and where?
It's generally believed to have been written about 95 C.E. during one of the periods of persecution of Christians. (Might have been during the reign of Emperor Domitian or Vespatian but I've been away from this stuff long enough that my memory is really rusty. I don't remember which emperor is which.)
It was written by someone named John on the island of Patmos in the Greek world, now part of Turkey, I believe. It was written in Greek, and I'm pretty sure it's the only book of the Bible written originally in Greek. For a long, long time people believed that the John who wrote it was the apostle John. Early Christian legends said that John lived to a very old age, well into his 90s, and that when the apostles split up and went in different directions to preach the gospel, that John was the one who went to Greece, so it's at least somewhat plausible that he wrote it.
Whoever wrote it was well-versed in the Jewish scriptures because there are many, many references and allusions to the Jewish scriptures. I think he was probably also familiar with at least some of Paul's writings because there seem to be some references to them.
He was also apparently not a native Greek speaker because sometimes his Greek grammar is bad, as L.L. mentioned in post #12. Modern scholars, since sometime in the 1800s I think, generally believe that it was not the apostle John because the theology seems so different from the mystical gospel of John and the letters of John, which are still at least somewhat believed to be by the apostle. However, to me, that conclusion about Rev seems to accept that the fundamentalist interpretation of Revelation is accurate, which I completely disagree with. I think Rev is both very mystical and very logical (seriously!!!) but then, no one has ever cared what I think about Rev.
Anyway, the belief that the apostle wrote it (or at least might have) seems to be the main reason it was included in the canon. Back then no one could make any sense of it either, but "if an apostle wrote it, we have to include it in the canon" was the general opinion.
A very Greek book
Back to the Greek background. It's hard for me to imagine an ancient Greek reading the part about the opening of the seals (the "Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse") and not comparing and contrasting it with the Greek story of Pandora, but no one today notices that. It's also hard for me to imagine a Greek not comparing and contrasting John's version of Judgment Day with Plato's version of Judgment Day in "Republic," but nobody today even notices that John lifted it almost directly from Plato, dropped some stuff, and changed it to basically say "My Christian God is more merciful than your Greek gods." Hmmm, God is merciful, that's not the fundie view of Judgment Day. Surprise!
Another Greek influence (and probably a delight to ancient Greek readers of philosophical persuasion) is the numerous logic puzzles and riddles that he poses in Rev. Solving these riddles sometimes turns apparent gibberish into perfectly sensible passages, and other times the only possible logical solution disagrees with church doctrine. But today no one evens notices that the riddles are there, much less that they're heretical.
The book "The Rapture Exposed"
As post #3 mentions, a good book. Read it if you're interested in this stuff or if you just want to know that there really is a sound rationale for rejecting the fundamentalist wacko ideas about Rev. This book is the only published source I've read that gets this obvious point about Armageddon: a double-edged sword coming out of the mouth of the Word of God (BTW, the only "weapon" that Rev mentions being used on God's side at Armageddon) doesn't make sense at all as a symbol of military power, but it does make sense as a symbol of another kind of power overcoming militarism. I don't think she gets the meaning quite right, but at least she gets that the fundie view doesn't make any sense, and she presents a reasonable interpretation of it.
Some interesting and disturbing (anti-Christian) stuff that's in Revelation
Rev says some very unChristian things. For example, at one place the martyrs of Jesus cry out for revenge. Revenge is not a Christian value. At another place, he promises to make nations bow down before you, hardly something a real Christian would be wanting, although the fundies gloat about it a lot. For the most part, no one but gloating fundies even notices these things. (These disturbing things make perfect sense, in their context in the story and in the way I read Rev.)
Why is Rev so cryptic? What's he hiding from whom?
The party line is that it's cryptic because he's attacking the Roman persecution of Christians, so he's trying to conceal from the Romans what he's talking about. However, when he's talking about Rome, it's so blatantly obvious that no Roman with an IQ above 50 could fail to see it. That theory just doesn't make any sense to me.
What does make sense to me is that he was actually attacking the emerging church heirarchy and orthodoxy and defending the original Jesus-taught religion from the rising, organized, and structured othodoxy. In fact, he hid those attacks so well (yet in plain sight) that the church even till today hasn't noticed and just ignores the passages that are blasphemous and don't fit the orthodoxy.
For example, he vehemently attacks the famous letter of Clement, Bishop of Rome, that demands that Christians "bow the head" to the authority of the bishops and church heirarchy. He espouses the same blasphemies that got Jesus in trouble and that the churches universally consider to be heresy. And he clearly disagrees with Paul's doctrine of justification by faith (instead of by works). But nobody ever even notices those things because they don't fit their worldview.
|
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
