Loading...I move on now to discuss Revelation’s view of ruling the world. If at the end of time God destroys everyone other than his followers, whom will they rule? I begin by picking up my final question in the last post.
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Where does the book of Revelation stand on the morality of domination? There is really not much doubt. When the catastrophes have run their course, Christ’s followers are granted world dominion.
To understand what that might mean for John of Patmos we have to consider one of the stranger anomalies of his narrative. After the wrath of God has been satisfied: what remains of the population of earth? At the last judgment in ch. 20 everyone whose name does not appear in the “book of life” – that is, anyone who is not a follower of Jesus – is sent to the second death in “the lake of fire” (20:11-15). Doesn’t “everyone” mean everyone? John stresses that it does: after earth’s entire non-Christian population is cast into the fiery lake, so too are Death and Hades themselves. There will be no more death, no more realm of the dead, no more people to sin and die. Only those who follow the Lamb are left, and immediately the prophet sees the new heaven and new earth appear, the “holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God” (21:1-2).
So that is that. Except it’s not. In the next chapter, when John describes the glorious new city of gold, we learn that “the nations will walk by its light” (21:24). But why are there nations? We also learn that
Here is one of the least-understood features of the book of Revelation. Wanna read more? Join the blog! Click here for membership options
It is Psalms 2:9, not Psalms 2:7
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While I’m quite skeptical of remote psychoanalysis, particularly across twenty centuries, it might be interesting to get a read on John from someone like the late Jerry Post who specialized in getting inside the heads of foreign leaders.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerrold_Post
Modern day Christianity certainly does seem to be fixated on domination and putting non-believers under their heel– the iron heel of whatever denomination is left standing after the others have been stamped out of existence. Nasty stuff, in my view. Temporal power disguised as God’s seems to have become an objective early on. I’ve always found the imagery of a huge cube, 1400 miles on a side, descending to earth, ludicrous in the extreme. Not quite so bizarre in the primitive flat earth cosmology of those days, but now obviously, and completely, unphysical. It’s hard for me to see how any sane person could take that seriously today. Streets of gold? Precious gems all over the place? Jasper here and onyx there? It’s an afterlife as cold and uninviting as a marble slab in an early mortuary. John of Patmos strikes me as a raving lunatic.
I am curious as to why this book was accepted into the canon, given its clear stance in opposition to the Jesus of the gospels, for example, and also its clear internal inconsistencies that you have pointed out here. I know Eusebius argued against its inclusion, but by that time it was already widely accepted within many churches. What was there about this apocalypse that was different from the others that didn’t make the cut?
I am not planning on dealing with that on the blog, but it’s in my book!
John sounds like an angry man. Why was he so angry?
Lots of people who feel done by are angry. ANd some are just born that way….
What kind of mushrooms grew on Patmos? Methinks maybe John did some bad ones!
Bad. Good. It’s a subjective judgment. 🙂
A pastor whose appreciation of scripture I deeply respect once commented that “Revelation is not where the Sermon on the Mount goes to die.” Dr. Ehrman’s evaluation of the text here certainly challenges that position.
The text says what it says, and it makes perfect sense to try to suss out how Christians contemporary to its production would have engaged with it and understood it. It appears that the tendency of Christians to align themselves with the Empire; or to appropriate the Empire to their purposes, is deeply rooted in the history of the faith. Christianity morphed into Christendom repeatedly over many centuries.
We can ponder what might have gone differently if Revelation had not been accepted into the Canon. I suspect not much, given that so much of the history of Christianity amounts to searching for loopholes in the Sermon on the Mount.
(Philippians 2:10-11)
…At the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, and that EVERY tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.…
(1 Cor 15:25-25)
Then comes the end, when He delivers the kingdom to God the Father, when He puts an end to ALL rule and ALL authority and power. For He must reign till He has put all enemies under His fee.
I think world domination was in the very DNA of christianity long before John’s Revelation, so it’s not so strange the cult was persecuted since the very beginning, there is very thin evidence about early chrstianity, not a Roman source from the first century, then we have Pliniy theYounger ,Tacitus and Suetonius, all speaking about persecution of christians , we know almost nothing about those early chrsitians except that they were severely persecuted …
And yet artists in the Eastern churches took the words Christ Pantocrator and turned them into something John of Patmos could never have imagined; yes, Christ Pantocrator is undoubtedly almighty and all powerful, but he is also kind, benevolent, and loving.
The visual imagery is unequivocal, and it originated long before representations of the crucifixion became the dominant imagery of Christianity, predominantly in the western churches, in the process of turning Christianity into a death cult. Nobody can stand in the Palatine Chapel in Palermo, look up at the mosaic of Christ Pantocrator in the dome of the sanctuary, and see in it a being proposing not only to condemn the vast majority of humanity to never ending torture, but to enjoy doing so.
To make matters worse, from the perspective of John of Patmos, the Palatine Chapel was built in a society in which three different religions – two forms of Christianity and the Muslim faith – managed for fifty years to get along without slaughtering each other. Christian and Muslim craftsmen built the Chapel together, using both Christian and Muslim building techniques and imagery, and it is beautiful.
John of Patmos would have hated it.
Just….weird. Charles Manson articulated (well, maybe not “articulated”) a similar credo.
How do Biblical literalists try to reconcile the extremely violent Lamb in Revelation with the merciful, loving, forgiving Jesus of the gospels? Or do they ignore the conflict?
They say that the Lamb conquers by his willingness to be slaughtered; and that the results of his conquest promote the justice of God, but are not acts of blood vengeance.
Personally, the argument that people will be brought back to be ruled over in 21:4-7 seems fairly weak. Especially in light of the previous chapter where it is quite clear only the followers are left. Is there anywhere else where it is implied that ‘subjects’ will be brought to be ruled over? Or is this just using the language already used, ‘nations’ are now just the followers, ‘kings’ are just the good kings which are left. Obviously no abomination etc will come in because they all got thrown into a burning lake!
I’m not sure they will be “brought back”; it appears they are simpyl still there. Revelation has a lot of strange inconsistencies, and this is certainly one of them.
Off topic q:
Matthew lists the twelve as “Peter and Andrew his brother and James of Zebedee and John his brother … ”
Luke lists them as “Peter and Andrew his brother and James and John … ”
Mark as “Peter, James of Zebedee and John his brother and Andrew …”
Acts lists them as “Peter and John and James and Andrew … ”
If the change in ordering is understood as a change in order of precedence isn’t it easier to understand Luke as having the original ordering (Peter Andrew James John) in his gospel and the subsequent raising of James and John above Andrew in order of precedence as being a later development, being the version found in Acts and Mark? Rather than Luke seeing Mark’s version reverting to the seemingly original ordering then reverting back to Mark’s ordering later with Acts?
I’d say it’s always hard to know why one author prefers one name ordering over another. But if I were simply looking at this and imagining, I’d think that it’s more likely that if an author saw a list that could be better organized — e.g., by putting the brothers in pairs — he would probably reorganize it. That would make Mark more likely the first. ANd it’s the kind of change two people could easily both make in their own ways
But the problem with this is that if Luke had a preferred ordering of list of the 12 for his edited version of Mark then he reverted away from his preferred ordering when writing Acts.
Better to think something happened after writing the gospel that caused him to change the ordering in Acts and that this would likely be the same for Mark (ie writing later).
In Acts he puts John second after Peter (and before James) – the explanation would have to be down to the more prominent role of John in Acts over James. So the conclusion should be that reordering by precedence is the later development (Andrew originally placed second next to his brother but loses precedence as others in the church become more important).
Hello Professor Ehrman, it is great talking to you again. I was reading something interesting, an apologist put forth publications from Peter Schafer, Daniel Boyarin, and Benjamin D Sommer that early Judaic theology and Christian thought had a sense of fluidity, so ideas like the Trinity and other christian theological ideas were fluid between Early Jews and Christians. What are your thoughts on this?
Thanks again Dr. Ehrman!
I think there was indeed fluidity, but I don’t agree with people like Daniel Boyarin (a long-time friend) that they were almost completely fluid. My sense is that most Christians understood they were not Jews and most Jews understood they were not Christians already by the end of the first century.
Very interesting, thank you for that reply Dr. Ehrman, but what I meant was that is Ancient Judaic thought contiguous with current Christian theological ideas? This is what I meant by fluidity. Ex. If we were to time travel to ancient pre-Christian times, we could take ideas like the Trinity, incarnation and the ancient Jews would have no problem accepting these ideas, unlike modern rabbinical Judaic thought.
I hope I was clear and look forward to your thoughts. Thanks again for everything Dr. Ehrman!
The vast majority of Jews would have found these views incredible. But some would probably have been open. It’s a bit like asking what modern Christians think about something (Baptists, Roman Catholics, Russian Orthodox, Mormons, Jehovahs’ witnesses, Methodists….)
Everyone is ruled by something. Everyone slaves for and serves something. There is no freewill.
Better to serve the One Who abolishes death and serves righteousness.