I used to interpret Revelation from a Preterist perspective, But Revelation 20 was always a problem. Eventually I accepted amillennialism. But one needs to do a lot of interpretive gymnastics. I had never heard of Jewish Apocalypticism. When I read it from that perspective, it seems to make perfect sense. They were just wrong. No Christian wants to allow that interpretation. Am I on the right track?
🤷♂️
There is roughly 1000 years between *1 and *2.
*1(Jewish Roman Wars and the Council of Nicaea)
*2(Crusades begin and end)
There is roughly 1000 years between *1*2 and *3.
The Hebrew calendar *3(7th millennium begins on the Hebrew year 6000).
That is year 2240 AD.
The Jewish messiah must return before the 7th mellium.
The Hebrew calendar is based on calculating all the years back in Genesis to approximate when Genesis 1 occurred. That is approximately 5785 years ago. The only people who go about trying to verify those numbers would be someone like Sir Isaac Newton. He was fascinated by it and did his own calculations based off the brand new thing called a 1611 King James Bible.
“interpret Revelation from a Preterist perspective, But Revelation 20 was always a problem”
How so?– details?
“I had never heard of Jewish Apocalypticism. When I read it from that perspective, it seems to make perfect sense. They were just wrong”
Wrong about what?
Who are some prominent people who read Revelation 20 from a Jewish Apocalypticism perspective?
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Jewish apocalypticism is a worldview that developed in ancient Judaism during the Hellenistic period and draws heavily on ancient myths, expressing a sense that the world is governed by transcendent powers and that human destiny transcends the present order.
This perspective includes the belief that God is the creator and redeemer of the world, and that the entire creation has become corrupt due to the presence of sin and the power of Satan.
Apocalypticists maintained that the forces of good and evil were in conflict, with God leading the forces of good and Satan leading the forces of evil.
Apocalypticism is often characterized by the belief that the end of the world is imminent, even within one’s own lifetime, and that civilization will soon come to a tumultuous end due to some sort of catastrophic global event.
This belief is usually accompanied by the idea that there will be a final judgment of humanity, the salvation of the faithful elect, and the eventual rule of the elect with God in a renewed heaven and earth.
The roots of Jewish apocalypticism can be traced back to pre-exilic books such as Joel and Malachi, and it is evident in the Book of Daniel, which is considered the first and only apocalypse of the Hebrew Bible.
The Book of Watchers, part of the Book of Enoch, is also considered one of the earliest examples of Jewish apocalyptic literature.
Scholars have suggested that Babylonian elements may have influenced the origins of Jewish apocalyptic literature.
Apocalypticism was a very common view in Jesus’ day, held by the Essenes who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Pharisees, John the Baptist, and almost certainly by Jesus himself.
It is also evident in the New Testament, where it shapes the understanding of the Messiah and the Kingdom of God.
In Revelation 20, the author seems to be presenting a view that is consistent with Jewish Apocalypticism. The kingdom of God is coming soon. Jesus will reign with the martyrs for 1000 years and finally put an end to evil for all time. Then, if I borrow from Paul, Jesus delivers the kingdom to the Father, and everyone lives happily ever after. The author, and those who shared his beliefs, were just wrong. I am beginning to realize there are lots of inconsistencies with other parts of the new testament. I used to go through all kinds of interpretive gymnastics to arrive at amillennialism. Everyone was just wrong. The kingdom didn’t come and it isn’t coming. When I was a believer, that was an impossibility.
Jesus was a failed apocalyptic prophet. Both Jesus and Paul taught and believed that God was bringing the kingdom very soon. They were both wrong. I had never heard of Jewish Apocalypticism until I found Bart. It was all new to me. I find his evidence very convincing. The Christian narrative I have heard all my life is not true. I still maintain a Jesus lifestyle. I realize that I read the Bible to fit the narrative I was told instead of reading the text. I trusted people who I loved and respected, assuming they were telling me the truth. No one deliberately lied to me. They found no reason to doubt what they had been told and remained in the Christian “bubble.”
I studied and read my Bible a lot. I was a disciple of R C Sproul. I even played ping pong with him when he was a pastor at my local church around 1970. He was very well educated and I found him very convincing. He seemed knowledgeable about many things. It did not occur to me until recently that he was educated in Reformation theology. He never claimed to be a biblical scholar. He was a theologian and apologist. At the time I didn’t know the distinction. When you grow up in the Christian church, you don’t realize how isolated you are. We are told the same narrative over and over by people we trust and respect. When we have doubts, we are constantly reassured that everything is as we have been told. For decades, I read nothing but Reformed theology and thought I was well educated on the Bible. I started to have doubts. I read N T Wright, Marcus Borg, and John Dominic Crossan. Finally I found Bart, and everything started to make sense.
I won’t go to the extreme of judging Jesus as a “false” prophet. Even the Quran has judged Jesus as a prophet, but not a false prophet.
Topic:
Matthew 24 @ Daniel 7 @ Revelation 20
My ignorance:
I only study the 🇬🇷Ancient Greek texts, Attic and Koine dialects. (American English 🇺🇸 is my native language.)
Interpreting ΩΣ ως:
(1)Daniel 7:13 LXX does not say “one like a son of man.” Just remove that “one like” which must be from the Masoretic texts.
(2)Also when “Heaven” is in a singular number it refers to the earthly realm:that which can be seen with the human eye. When in the plural number it refers to the supernatural realm beyond the earthly realm:that which requires some serious NASA technology.
My analysis of it: 🤷♂️
Daniel 7:13 LXX Matthew 26:64 is literally describing a human being here on Earth as King. (not some kind of supernatural event and entity)
Jesus was not a false prophet. He had predicted that the Sanhedrin and Second Temple would be defeated by someone else: a Gentile king, son of man.
Tactic:
Ignoring the book of Revelations. 🫣
When you grow up in the Christian church, you don’t realize how isolated you are. We are told the same narrative over and over by people we trust and respect. When we have doubts, we are constantly reassured that everything is as we have been told.
One of my biggest realizations has been the degree to which our truth-finding is driven by our social bonds.
As a Christian, I knew the non-orthodox scholarly conclusions, but I found ways to write those scholars off (they are godless unbelievers, or they have been brainwashed by an anti-Christian academy).
And although I knew that there were bad or just gullible Christians, I tended to take a Christian’s word at face value. They were the good guys, they were my people.
We find our tribe, our people (think of the way a Christian might describe someone as good Christian folk); then we implicitly trust and instinctively defend that tribe. Conversely, we discredit and villainize those who are not part of it.
Now that I’ve seen it, I see it everywhere. History, politics, science in the popular discourse.
I don’t understand why Revelation 20:1 must be translated as “angel”. και ειδον αγγελον And I know:saw a messenger (doing something verb) from the earth realm. (Heaven:singular number definition)
And verse 4, μεταχριστου 🤨
The μεταχριστου is the Church Community. Christianity has been around for like 2000 years now. All these passages in Daniel 7 son of man ερχομενος and Revelation 20 μεταχριστου are about freeing people from slavery. That was the mission for the Church. Slavery no, 👎 the people want Freedom ελευθερος
No more slavery in the metaphorical sense of ancient Egypt captivity, and the Exodus, and Law of Moses.
Prophecy fulfilled. Preterism.
In processing sensory input our consciousness both accepts signals and screens them out. That “filter” is of course both biological and cultural. We still do this even when it’s brought to our attention that we’re doing it. A feature not a bug. So if “objective” consideration is not possible then what is to be done? One solution is to deliberately expose yourself to as many varying points of view as possible in the hopes that the signals you’re screening out will be available through someone else with a differently tuned filter. People who only accept their own point of view and always surround themselves with others who agree with it already are worse than blind. That this approach is standard operating procedure in our culture and media is very bad. We even celebrate holding onto a single point of view in the face of contradictory evidence as a virtue, i.e., “faith”. Unfortunately, it usually requires some kind of trauma to force us to reorient our thinking.
The usual criticism of the skeptical approach is that it turns you into a kind of Hamlet, unable to make definitive choices and act upon them. I would simply point out that we’ve seen how the “damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead” approach has served us so badly. More Hamlets! More doubts, less certainties!
Revelation 20 is where the assimilation with Genesis occurs. The serpent, devil, Satan is the serpent of the Garden of Eden. The serpent is responsible for Adam and Eve having to work the fields and produce offspring. That causes slavery. The serpent is responsible for causing slavery. To escape from slavery the serpent must be removed from Earth. The serpent has enslaved all of humanity.
Then backwards in time to Ezekiel 36:35 and the land like the Garden of Eden, and Zechariah 3:1.
Are you now year 2025 a freedman or still enslaved by the serpent:Ο οφις (?)
BDEhrman
FreedomBen
evgendob
Robert
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