Loading...In my previous post I started giving the lecture I gave recently to a group of professional biblical scholars about how my views of Revelation have changed. After thinking that the book predicted our future (I gave up on that one forty years ago!) I began to think that the book was a positive message for true followers. In this reading – which I held for many, many years — the point of the book is that God is sovereign, just, and loving toward his faithful, and in the end truth will prevail. Above all, Revelation is a book of hope.
I no longer see it that way and am a bit surprised I did for so many years. The book of Revelation is not principally about hope, let alone the love of God. Words for hope — ελπις / ελπιζω – occur some 80 times in the New Testament, but not once in this book. And God himself is never said to love his followers in this book and they are never referred to as the beloved: αγαπητόι – a word that otherwise occurs over 60x in the NT. Instead they are regularly called his slaves, δουλοι. It is also worth nothing that εἰρηνη, peace, appears just once in the book after John’s salutation, and that’s to indicate that it has been taken *away* from the earth (6:4)
The terms that dominate Revelation are not “hope,” and “love” or “peace,” but war (15x, almost twice as often as in the rest of the NT combined); blood αἱμα (19x), wrath θυμος (10x), and anger οργη (5x). What is this book ultimately about? It is about the “wrath of God” (6x altogether) and, more striking, the wrath of both God and his lamb” (6:16-17).
As we all know well, there have been, and still are, long and hard debates among New Testament scholars about whether the book of Revelation should be considered a violent book. Anyone who is not a New Testament scholar would surely find the debate astonishing. How could one say
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I will claim it is not evil as I think it is all about human inner progress and psychic growth. The symbols, places, creatures are not physical, but spiritual processes and influences.
In my apocatastatic view, the Revelation doesn’t give a good and meaningful paradigm unless consider it as a human self-transcendence. This is also in line with a view most people in the earth had around 0 BCE who lived in south Asia.
Revelations is grindhouse revenge porn. There is no unmotivated argument against this. It is gratuitous in its depictions of violence, antithetical to the messages of forgiveness found in the rest of the NT, and is shamelessly self-serving to wounded egos in the Christian community.
Other than that, it’s a great bedtime read.
Yes. Anyone who ever thought revelation is about hope was obviously indoctrinated into thinking so.
It’s always made my skin crawl with its author’s sick and ugly psychopathic fantasies.
I hope this comment isn’t deemed as too harsh or disrespectful to approve, because frankly, I can’t put it any more diplomatically than that.
Is it of any use to translate δουλοι as “servant” rather than “slave”? One often hears apologists claiming that slavery in that era was “not so bad” compared to the enslavement of Africans in the New World.
Given the cultural and historical context, is this a distinction without a difference?
I am really enjoying this thread and can’t wait to read the book!
Well, it was a sdifferent kind of institution, but it depended ENTIRLEY on what kind of slave you were, as at most times thourhought human history. You did not want to be sent to the salt mines…. But no, “servant” isn’t right. THese people were owned.
Well, I’m reluctant to write things like “what an extraordinary article” but this time it’s hard not to do so … waiting for your book about Revelation!!!!
My god, revelations should never be in the bible, that is for sure after reading your today’s post. During boring sermons in church, when I was young, I read parts of revelations and I became afraid. Today, with the world’s situation as bad as it is, I even become more afraid, since billions of people believe the words and countless of them actually are striving to make these words a reality. I hope your investigations and insight in this text will be widespread and acknowledged by the majority of people. In this respect I gather your new book on revelations comes just in time and will be your most significant book in this day and age. I hope -well, let’s hope- it will free the Christian world of all fears in their beliefs and pointing them to the human wisdom, also in the bible as well as in many other human scriptures, of loving your fellow-man as yourself. Thank you for your studies and sharing these with all who can see and hear.
In the story of the burning bush, God tells Moses that his name is “I am who am.” What is that thought to mean? Does it have a special or profound meaning? Or maybe it’s just a reference to the fact that Jews aren’t supposed to say God’s name? Some mid-20th Century Catholic Thomistic philosophers seemed to have thought it was the occasion when God revealed that he was pure being/existence/actuality. That was very similar to Thomas Aquinas’s idea of God.
It’s in interpreted in a number of ways. “I am the one who self-exists”? “I am the one who brings all things into being”? “I am the one who is always”? etc.
The insistence of some scholars that Revelation “isn’t violent” reminds me of the insistence of many people (including Gandhi) that the Bhagavad Gita is a “pacifist” text, even though it’s set on a battlefield and Krishna directly urges Arjuna to follow his duty and kill, even when his opponents are his own beloved relatives, friends, and teachers. I was astonished and deeply taken aback the first time I read it. It’s as pro-violence a text as anything I’ve ever read, but try telling that to people who are adamantly convinced that Hindu scripture MUST be pacifist. (Of course the narrative can be applied more widely, but on the basic level of the storyline, there is no doubt that the Gita condones, even enjoins, violence.)
If the ethics and values expressed in the so-called “Sermon on the Mount” go back in some form to the historical Jesus why do we have Jesus traditions from which they seem to be missing? Mark seems not to know of it and as you point out, “love your enemies” is not the first thing that comes to mind when we confront the ferocious apocalypticism of Revelation.
Because the vast majority of things Jesus said and did are not recorded in Mark or the other Gospels. They heard tons of things they didn’t report and they didn’t hear even more tons of things in the first place.
Do you also view other apocalyptic literature as not providing hope?
In your historical introduction to the New Testament you cite Daniel, 1 Enoch, 2 Baruch, 4 Ezra, the Shepherd of Hermas, and the Apocalypse of Peter as examples of apocalyptic literature that, like Revelation, “…encourage those who are experiencing the forces of evil to hold and keep the faith.” In other words, to have hope, with hope being one of the purposes of apocalyptic literature as they were composed during times of distress.
So, I was curious if it is only Revelation that you now feel no longer is a book of hope.
I think ever book in a genre needs to be discussed on its own terms (just as I don’t think every novel has a happy ending) (though I much prefer the second ending Dickens gave to Great Expectations than the first!)
Oof. Big evangelical energy here. This guy probably would have been saying muslims worship Satan are are going to get wrecked by God’s son in the final era. This sounds like a really angry screed of someone who is raging. More enraged than hurt.
It is indeed a very odd book.. did you cover why scholars think it was accepted into the canon? And what the arguments were pro and con at the time?
Yup, that’s the final chapter of my book.
Recently I reread the story of Moses and the burning bush. It struck me that this shows indications of being “otherworldly,” ie, taking place in a world different from the ordinary world in which Moses lived. Besides the encounter with God, there are references to it being beyond the wilderness, by the mountain of God, the burning bush itself, holy ground, Moses removing his sandals. the giving of miraculous powers.
It reminds me of stories like: Odysseus in Hades, or the hero setting off on a quest and finding a magical land, or finding a sleeping princess in a remote, overgrown castle.
If what I’m saying is accurate does this kind of passage in the Bible have a technical name, eg, is it a specific genre?
In case it’s not clear, I’m not claiming historicity for the main part of Exodus–just that many of the other miraculous things in Exodus are isolated incidents that are said to occur in our ordinary world. On the other hand, the whole story of the burning bush-and probably some others in Exodus-might be more or less completely otherworldly.
For us it seems like it comes from “a different world”– or, more normally, we would say it is “supernatural” (i.e., beyond and above the natural world we live in). But in the ancient world there was no such thng. They didn’t talk of or think about some *other* world. God/the gods were in this world as much as we are.
Bart, thanks for allowing me to comment.
Many textbooks have quizzes tests, case studies at the end. What do you think of the possibility that God put Revelation at the back of the Bible to test his followers understanding of the “do” part?
Summarized as love God, love neighbor, for the OT and believe in Jesus and love one another for the NT.
Do any scholars take that point of view?
No, don’t believe so. Historical scholars who study the text do not speculate on what God may or may not have done; they stick to historical questions that have historical answers.
I have subscribed to Great Courses and started your lecture on Historical Jesus, but I got distracted and also began Craig Koesters series on the Apocalypse. He clearly seems to fit the category of one who interprets hope out of much of what I always thought of as doom. I have to admit his entire approach seems very refreshing and grounded in historical clarity. Yet I wonder if it is a bit of a whitewash. As I carefully followed along in the text it seems at times he skips certain points of detail that might be inconvenient to his narrative.
Is this the rehabilitation of Revelation and how long has this been going on and how widespread is it in the scholarly community?
Yes, he’s a fine historical scholar with sanguine views about the book. I’d say his views are pretty typical of the liberal Christian community.
The word “sanguine” always confuses me. It’s ambiguous like “sanction,” which means two opposite things. I think you used sanguine to mean “soothing.” My dictionary spends time first on its derivation from blood and the color of blood, and on the medieval theory of humours, then mentions red faces of passionate people – passionately angry or intense. The 4th and last meaning is “eagerly optimistic; cheerful” apparently from ruddy-faced, jolly folk (like Santa Claus ).
Revelation is such a violent, bloody book that a “sanguine” view of it could mean either extreme. It’s a very ambiguous word. If you chose a different word, what would you use?
In thi scontext it normally means optomistic.
Perhaps it’s good that Christian translators, commentators, and layfolk in general refuse to believe that Revelation is calling for them to exercise violence on others. I imagine if the Christian world came to be dominated and assaulted from non-Christians forces (imagine Iraqi drones and bombers flying over the US), then probably lots of Christians would indeed use Revelation to go out and do exactly what it is telling them to do. But thankfully we don’t live in such a world, so let’s let Christian folk continue to have a pacifist (even if it’s wrong) view of the book so the rest of us can be safe! 🙂