Now that I have said something about what's in the book of Revelation and about how we need to study it in light of its literary *genre* ("apocalypse") I can begin to discuss something about its historical context.  As you know, one of the overarching themes of this entire blog is that if you take something out of its context, you change its meaning.  If you want to know what the author of Revelation might have actually meant and how he would have been understood by his real-life audience -- the Christians in the seven churches of Asia Minor he was addressing - you have to put the book and its author in their own historical context (not in our 21st century context). Here are some of the most important points about that, as I make them in my textbook on the New Testament (The New Testament: A Historical and Literary Introduction;  Oxford University Press, 7th ed.), edited slightly here.   ********************************************** The Revelation of John in Historical Context I have already pointed out that [...]

I am at the beginning of my thread on the book of Revelation, and am giving the background necessary to make sense of how I now make sense of the book, which is different from how I've made sense of it most of my life!  But one thing I wholeheartedly agree with myself on from earlier days: you HAVE to understand the book in its own historical context or you will completely misconstrue its meaning -- as almost everyone does, since they think it is a book written for the 21st century instead of the 1st.  That's a big mistake if you have any interest in what an author of the 1st century was saying to his audience of the 1st century.  You have to understand the literary conventions and historical realities of their time.  Seems obvious, but, well, I guess it's not to most readers.... In my previous post I began to stress the importance of knowing what an “apocalypse” is before trying to interpret any one particular apocalypse.  Today I pursue that a [...]

The Book of Revelation!  I am ready now to start a new thread on my thoughts on the book, as I get serious about writing about it for a general audience.  I mentioned a couple of weeks ago (see blog for June 20) that I had changed my mind rather radically about what my book was going to cover.  I’ll explain the current plan (hopefully the *final* plan) in later posts.  For now it would be important to start at the beginning so we are all on the same page. And so in this post I want to review – or introduce, in case you’re not familiar with it – the contents of the book of Revelation itself, more or less free of interpretation.  It’s not a long book, and can be read in one sitting.  (Twenty-one chapters, but most are very short.)  If you’re interested, go ahead and read it (for the first time or again!).  You’ll pick up something new every time.  Or at least I do, now in my 50th year of [...]

Yesterday’s post was meant as background to this brief discussion about the meaning of the “number of the beast” in the book of Revelation.  Remember: I’m talking about “gematria” as a way of interpreting words by understanding their letters as numbers.  Yesterday I tried to explain the symbolism of the beast in Rev. 17.  To make best sense of what I have to say now, it would probably help to see that post.  But it’s not required reading and will not be on the Final Exam. Four chapters earlier are given a description of another beast, one which in fact bears a remarkable resemblance to the one that shows up in ch. 17. According to chap. 13, this other beast arises from the sea and has ten horns and many heads.  One of its heads receives a mortal wound that is then healed.  The entire world follows this beast, which is empowered by the dragon (i.e., the Devil, 12:9).  The beast makes war on the saints and conquers them (13:7).  It has power over all [...]

In my previous posts, I have talked about the use of “gematria” in early Christianity – the interpretive technique that uses the numerical significance of letters of the alphabet to provide keys to the interpretation of words. It is almost a highly *creative* interpretation of words.  E.g.,  I have shown how gematria gets used on the epistle of Barnabas to show that the sign of circumcision given to the father of the Jews, Abraham, was really a symbol for the cross of Jesus, and how it may be used in Jesus’ genealogy in Matthew to stress that he really is the messiah, the son of David. In the post that follows this one, I will explain how that relates to one of the great mysteries of the Bible, the identification of the Antichrist in the book of Revelation, whose number was 666.  What is this number referring to? To make sense of this intriguing number, I need to return to an important topic over the course of the blog:  the symbolism of the book of [...]

As I hope you know, I try to keep my personal politics out of the blog.  I also hope I succeed, but some of you may think not…  But I do try.    It’s not that I do not have strong political convictions.  On the contrary, I am passionately political and will go to the mat for my views.   BUT, I want the blog to be open and welcoming to all people, whatever their political views (or religious views or any other kinds of views).  We can all be interested in early Christianity, and our politics don’t need to enter into it. And unlike most of the people I know who have strong political views, I really do try to see “the other side,” and to realize that there are very, very good people with views different from mine.   Also unlike most people, I often appreciate and get a very good laugh out of jokes poked at views that I actually take very seriously.  But it’s always good to laugh, even at ourselves. I say that [...]

I've been asked about who wrote the book of Revelation.  Here are some musings on it, the first part taken from my textbook on the New Testament. Even though the book of Revelation was finally included in the New Testament canon because Christian leaders came to think it had been written by Jesus’ disciple, John the son of Zebedee, there were outspoken dissenters against its inclusion. Perhaps the most famous was Dionysius, a bishop of the city of Alexandria (Egypt) in the mid-third century, whose remarks about the book have a surprisingly modern feel to them. Dionysius used the author’s self-presentation and his Greek writing style to show that he was not the writer of the Fourth Gospel (whom Dionysius assumed was the disciple John). His conclusion? There must have been two different early Christian leaders named John, both of whom were active in Asia Minor, whence both the Gospel and Revelation derived. The following quotations are drawn from Dionysius’s writings, as quoted by the fourth-century church historian Eusebius (Ecclesiastical History 7.25). The one who [...]