4 big myths of Revelations

[47of74]

Interesting article on CNN's site;

(CNN) – The anti-Christ. The Battle of Armageddon. The dreaded Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

You don’t have to be a student of religion to recognize references from the Book of Revelation. The last book in the Bible has fascinated readers for centuries. People who don’t even follow religion are nonetheless familiar with figures and images from Revelation.

And why not? No other New Testament book reads like Revelation. The book virtually drips with blood and reeks of sulfur. At the center of this final battle between good and evil is an action-hero-like Jesus, who is in no mood to turn the other cheek.

Elaine Pagels, one of the world’s leading biblical scholars, first read Revelation as a teenager. She read it again in writing her latest book, “Revelations: Visions, Prophecy & Politics in the Book of Revelation.”

The article goes on to say that the 4 myths are:
1. Revelations was about the end of the world.
2. 666 stands for the devil.
3. The author of the book was a Christian.
4. There was only one Book of Revelations.

[hvn_nbr_2]

1. Anything by Elaine Pagels is worth a closer look

I haven't read this book yet or even perused it in a bookstore, but based on her previous works, I expect it to be interesting.

I agree about the "mythhood" of 3 of those four myths, but I think the author was a Christian. Just not the kind of Christian that won the heresy wars in the early church.

One disagreement I will probably have with her is the view that's it's all a polemic against the Roman Empire. A couple parts of Revelation clearly talk about Rome, but only a couple parts. Most of the story has absolutely no connection to Rome. For example, the beast from the land is clearly about Rome; the beast from the sea has bits about Rome but it has much more about other historical empires that preceded Rome and other ones that would follow Rome. "The beast," which is a combination of the beast from the sea, the beast from the land, and the dragon, likewise has some about Rome but much more about "evil empires" in general. The whore of Babylon has a connection to Rome but it's only tangential; in fact, she even rules over Rome (probably an odd-sounding concept but it's completely sensible--I'll say more if anyone is interested). Nothing else in the whole book of Revelation says anything at all about Rome.

One quote from the CNN article seems worthy of additional note: "At the center of this final battle between good and evil is an action-hero-like Jesus." I don't think so, although I'm probably the only person in the world who thinks this. In this final battle (Armageddon), Jesus is not like an action hero. Jesus battles the armies of the world with a two-edged sword coming out of His mouth. Who ever heard of an action hero going into battle carrying his weapon in his mouth? Can anybody name a single one? It doesn't make sense. What does make sense about it is that this sword coming of the mouth of the Word of God is in contrast to the "unclean spirits" that come out of the mouths of several satanic characters to call the world to war at Armageddon. The point is the contrast between what comes out of satanic mouths and what comes out of the Word of God's mouth. What comes out of mouths? Words and statements, truth and falsehood, wisdom and folly, not physical weapons of war. In my view, Armageddon is about God's truth (what comes out of God's mouth) overcoming and defeating war and armies and the call to war (what comes out of satanic mouths).

[regnaD kciN]

2. I think we're going to have to disagree on a few things...

Personally, I'm not all that impressed with Pagels, sensing that, when it's a matter of orthodox Christianity versus one of the esoteric forms, she automatically has a predisposition for the latter and a bias against the former, and lets that predisposition color her scholarship.

Second, I've always considered Revelation (notice there's no plural) to be a coded message against Roman persecution, written to reassure the victims of said persecution that their oppressors would fall in the end and the reign of God would triumph, but done in such "hidden" language that any of the authorities who read it would just conclude that it was a bunch of nonsensical fantasies about "the end of the world." I think it's a mistake to look at every event and/or character in Revelation as pointing to a specific analogue in real-life.

Again, her contention that "the author was not a Christian" can be translated to "the author was not an orthodox Christian." However, I'm not too sure we can agree that the negative prophecies supposedly spoken by Christ criticizing the "seven churches" were really attacks on said orthodox Christianity. We simply don't know enough about the circumstances in those long-gone communities to know exactly what was being denounced there.

Finally, as to the "many books of Revelation," we once again get Pagel's particular hobby-horse about all the non-canonical writings she tends to champion. The fact is, there were lots of books of Christian "scripture" that didn't get in the canon. Not just "revelations," but gospels, epistles, etc. Over the first couple of centuries of the Church, many writings got used and then "winnowed out" for various reasons, so that, by the time of the first ecumenical councils, there was already a pretty general list of accepted books that wound up being codified as the "New Testament," and others that had fallen by the wayside. It wasn't, as some (hello, Dan Brown!) would like to assume, a case where the Bishops of the newly-legalized Church got together as a secret cabal and picked the writings that suited their particular biases to make as "official," while condemning and suppressing a bloc of equally-accepted writings as heretical; rather, there was almost a period of "natural selection" in the centuries beforehand that made the official canon merely a recognition of a given reality, not the creation of a new one out of whole cloth.

Personally, I don't put much value in the Revelation of John. Despite those over the years who have made an obsession of studying the book and applying its imagery to their particular times and circumstances, I don't find it to be one of the most valuable books of the Christian scriptures, compared to the gospels and some of the epistles. I think it's mainly useful as a "fantastical" epilogue to the Bible, a way of telling in the most striking form what Christians affirm: that, no matter how dark things may seem at any time, no matter how much it seems evil has taken control of the world, God will triumph in the end, and the eternal reign of peace and justice will come.

[deutsey]

3. Nice post!

I've been fascinated by Revelation since I was a kid.

When I grew up in the '70s, Hal Lindsey's "The Late Great Planet Earth" was a bestseller and when I read it I was filled with fear that I wasn't going to be Raptured and would live during the Tribulation.

Ironic, really, since I believe what you say about Revelation is true: it's supposed to be a hopeful (albeit trippy) testament of how God will ultimately prevail.

I still enjoy watching televangelists like Jack Van Impe hype gloom and doom and fear on their shows (mainly to hawk End Times videos...one of Van Impe's videos actually claimed that UFO were satanic "spirits of the air&quot . There was one local End Times show back in '99 that was really hyping Y2K and how it was going to lead to the collapse of civilization...then they'd cut to one of their commercials selling dried food supplies that you could store in the basement or underground bunker.

[hvn_nbr_2]

4. Well, we have some areas of agreement too.

Last edited Tue Apr 10, 2012, 10:58 PM - Edit history (1)

"hidden" language that any of the authorities who read it would just conclude that it was a bunch of nonsensical fantasies about "the end of the world."

That's a little different from the rationale that I usually hear, and your variation makes some sense to me. What I usually hear is that he was trying to hide his meaning from the Romans, and that just doesn't make sense to me. For example, if the Romans didn't know that Rome was the city built on seven hills (ref. Rev. 17: 9) or know their own emperor's number in the popular gematria system, then they would have to be the stupidest people who ever lived. But if, as you say, he said those things in such an over-the-top way that they'd just think it was all "nonsensical fantasies" from (my addition to your words) a crazy guy, then it's plausible.

I think it's a mistake to look at every event and/or character in Revelation as pointing to a specific analogue in real-life.

I'm not sure if I understand you correctly, but if I do, then I agree about that too. By "pointing to a specific analogue in real-life," I think you mean "having a a specific meaning/interpretation as a specific event/person/group/institution/whatever in real future or history. There's so much and so much fantastical stuff that it would be thoroughly unrealistic to expect to decipher every detail or to expect that he had some specific meaning in mind for every detail. However, since you said that in the paragraph about the whole book being about Rome, I'm guessing that you mean that not every detail of Revelation needs to be identifiably about Rome. If that's what you mean, then I would respond that I only agree up to a point--I think that to claim that the whole book is about Rome, you need to identify more than the 5 or 10% of the book that is clearly about Rome. If that small a part of it is clearly about Rome, then it seems to me a much more sensible position to claim that it's only partly about Rome but also about some other stuff too.

Again, her contention that "the author was not a Christian" can be translated to "the author was not an orthodox Christian." However, I'm not too sure we can agree that the negative prophecies supposedly spoken by Christ criticizing the "seven churches" were really attacks on said orthodox Christianity. We simply don't know enough about the circumstances in those long-gone communities to know exactly what was being denounced there.

The first sentence of that paragraph says basically what I said in my second paragraph, but you said it a bit more tactfully than my "heresy wars" comment.

If she says that the messages to the seven churches were an attack on orthodoxy, then I would completely disagree with that. (Recall that I haven't actually read the book yet, only read about it.) I do think that there's some anti-orthodoxy in Revelation, but it certainly isn't a predominant theme and certainly isn't what the messages to the churches are about. BTW, Bruce Metzger's book "Breaking the Code: Understanding the Book of Revelation" has some interesting historical background on those communities and their churches. (Metzger was at Princeton Theological Seminary--not sure if that is part of Princeton or a separate entity--but he was much more orthodox than Pagels. He was chair of the translation committee for the New Revised Standard Version.)

when it's a matter of orthodox Christianity versus one of the esoteric forms, she automatically has a predisposition for the latter and a bias against the former, and lets that predisposition color her scholarship.

Well, her academic specialty is the non-canonical non-orthodox writing of that time so that's naturally what she investigates. Nobody ever calls it a "bias" when orthodox scholars side with orthodoxy. If a Princeton professor had a specialty in, say, Old Testament books of prophecy that are shorter than five pages long, nobody would ever call that topic the professor's "hobby-horse."

edit: to spell Bruce Metzger's name right.