Here now is the conclusion to my lecture on the ideology of domination in the book of Revelation.
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I conclude with several more focused reflections on whether the Revelation of John represents the Gospel of Jesus. To sum up what I have been emphasizing: there is not a single word in all of Revelation about God loving others and no instruction to the followers of Christ to do so either. Instead, they are called to be “conquerors” – and once they overwhelm the rest of the earth with divine military might, they become its rulers, kings who control “the nations with a rod of iron.” Whether John meant this literally is beside the point. This is how he sees God, Christ, his followers, and the rest of the human race: powerful rulers and abject subjects.
Is this what Jesus meant when he told his followers to abandon all desire for greatness? To live lives of service to others? To become slaves? In the book of Revelation Christ’s followers are slaves, but only to God. They despise everyone outside their rank and want their blood to spill, just as Christ himself is explicitly said to hate those who are not true believers – even members of his own churches. The slaves of God are not instructed to love, serve, or help anyone – even when they have the power to do so. They live in the new Jerusalem, a city constructed of gold, jewels, and pearls, where their every need is met and life is so good that they no longer ever shed a tear, for all eternity. Do they use the city’s wealth to help those outside? No. Those outside don’t matter, except to the extent that they bring their own wealth into the city. But no one who engages in abomination or falsehood can do so, because no sinners could possibly set foot in the golden city where Christ resides. Was that Jesus’ view? Did he shun sinners? In Revelation, Jesus and his followers do not come to serve and to give their lives for others. They come to destroy the lives of others and to be served. It is difficult indeed to see how Jesus would countenance such a view.
John of Patmos is certainly a committed Christian. He is a passionate follower of the Lamb who wreaks vengeance on earth, a slave of God to the very end. But is he the kind of Christian that Jesus would recognize?
In his Quest of the Historical Jesus, Albert Schweitzer famously argued that each generation of scholars has painted Jesus in their own image. That is to say, the historical and cultural contexts of biblical scholars affect how they understand Jesus; they invariably portray him as a person of their own time who proclaimed their own perspectives. Enlightenment scholars who rejected the supernatural wrote accounts of a non-miraculous Jesus, where his alleged “miracles” were simply misunderstood by the pre-Enlightenment authors of the Gospels, and so on.
Schweitzer’s view has been borne out with a vengeance over the past forty years, including, ironically, among scholars who read and cite his analysis. More than ever, it has become de rigueur to portray Jesus according to one’s own ideological perspectives. And so we have scholars (not to mention preachers) who celebrate the Capitalist Jesus, the Marxist Jesus, the Feminist Jesus, the Counter-cultural Jesus, and the Political Revolutionary Jesus. The Nazis had an Aryan Jesus. Among us today there is a White Nationalist Jesus. Name your ideological preference and write your book.
This phenomenon has real-life consequences. Not only do people interested in Jesus paint him in their own image, they also model their lives on the image of Jesus they have painted. Those who see Jesus as a pacifist tend to oppose war and work for peace. Those who see Jesus as an advocate for the poor and needy often engage in volunteer work and generously share their own resources. Those who take to heart Jesus’ teaching, “Judge not lest you be judged” are often open to the opinions and perspectives of others – not to mention their gender identity, race, nationality, religion, and everything else about them that makes them human. Those who see Jesus as one who loves and saves all people equally often work to bring justice and equality to the world. Scriptural portraits of Jesus in these modes can and do make the Christian message a beneficial reality.
But what about a portrait of Jesus that shows him as vengeful? Filled with wrath against those who do not believe in him? Infinitely powerful and determined to use his almighty force to dominate those he disapproves of – to harm them, torture them, and massacre them? The Jesus who once suffered and is now out to destroy his persecutors? The Jesus who is interested in material wealth, whose followers will be rewarded with power and domination and allowed to rule the peoples of earth with “a rod of iron”?
This is not the Jesus of the Gospels, but it is the wrathful Lamb of the Apocalypse. It is also the portrait of Christ many people prefer today. It is a portrait that enables and encourages Jesus’ followers to embrace violence, vengeance, domination, and exploitation — to do whatever it takes to assert their will on others. Some of these people have been our neighbors. Some of them have been our leaders. Some of them very much want to be our leaders.
What would the Jesus of the Gospels make of them?
For those of us who choose to follow Jesus – whatever kind of Christian we are or even if we do not identify as Christian — whether we are fundamentalist Christians, evangelicals, liberal main-line Protestants, Catholics, Orthodox, agnostics and/or atheists, or anything else our understanding of Jesus will almost certainly affect how we model our lives. Is he the loving, peaceful Jesus found in the Gospels, ever attentive to the needs of others? Or is he the wrathful, vengeful Jesus of the Apocalypse, who seeks to hurt and destroy everyone outside his band? Each of us has to decide.
All the best for the debate today!
Have there ever been any serious proposals to remove Relevation from the canon?
Martin Luther placed it in an appendix of his translation of the NT (along with James 2 Peter and Jude).
On what grounds did Luther object to the canonicity of the Revelation? Given his anti-Semitic rants and out bursts against the peasants, it seems he would have no objection to the portrayal of Jesus as harsh militant vengeful Lion.
He did not think that it “preached Christ” (in his words). That is, it did not sufficiently teach that Christ’s death was the only way of salvation. He also on occasoin said he didn’t understand the book but what he understood he didn’t like. Except when he claimed that hte pope was 666.
Really enjoyed this comparison and thoughtful take, Bart. The take-no-prisoner John view vs the servile Jesus approach: one leads people to fuel a destructive fire, the other prompts people to feed the hungry. A duality that many Christians accept without question or concern. Have you ever compiled a pie-chart-like assessment of the Bible as it pertains to this “badassery” vs “meek-n-mildness?” Or a “counselor vs conqueror” comparison? Just wonder if it’s as simple as the assemblers of the texts including stories where prospects can find the type of hero they prefer (in order to cast a wider net).
I haven’t, but it’s an interesting idea. I image there’s a good deal of variation thoruhough the biblical books, not just one extreme or the other.
Revelation portrayed the Christians being so mighty that even “those of the synagogue of Satan who say that they are Jews and are not, but are lying—I will make them come and bow down before your feet, and they will learn that I have loved you.” (Rev 3:9 NRSV)
Are there contemporary Christian theologians whose work you find especially compelling and resonant, even though you’re an atheist-agnostic? Can you provide a couple recs?
Those I respect really like theologians Stanley Hauerwas, Alistair McGraph, and Rowan Williams.
Alister E. McGrath King‚s College, London quoting Augustine of Hippo.
For Augustine, God is the intelligible sun who gives light to the mind and therefore brings intelligibility to what we see. Yet the human eye must itself be healed by grace if the divinely illuminated landscape is to be seen properly.
Its interesting that these scientists of religion can dissect and isolate the the affects of salvation to such a degree and then describe the implications. Just like the scholars Bart mentions above the salvation of that Christian occurs in his generation and culture(naturally!) so that conversion is “divinely illuminated” in that context.
https://www.academia.edu/8295039/The_Church_as_a_Visionary_Community_Ecclesiology_and_Intellectual_Aesthetic_and_Moral_Discernment_A_lecture_given_at_the_conference_on_Returning_to_the_Church_Catholicity_Ecclesiology_and_the_Mission_of_the_Church_of_England_at_St_Stephen_s_House_Oxford_on_5_January_2009
Admittedly John of Patmos and his community went a bit overboard but wasn’t this apocalyptic dichotomy between love and peace for the insiders and wrath for the outsiders implicit in the Christian message right from the beginning?
Yes, I deal with that in my discussion of the teachings of Jesus. ANd show the differences.
There are episodes of the God of wrath in the Hebrew Bible. I imagine some common psychology might imagine a wrathful Jesus. This Revelation describes what will happen in the final Judgement. I suppose it was included in the Canon because it was important to some people to keep an image of Jesus wielding the power. God loves us but he will express his anger with those who displease him. Wisdom is born in the fear of the Lord?
John of Patmos’ times were akin to those of contemporary Ukraine, and desperate times call for desperate measures, which I guess includes desperate scripture written in code. Unfortunately, neither J of P or Athanasius thought to include a disclaimer or footnotes to the text.
I don’t think there’s any evidence of widespread, or indeed any, slaughter (let alone rape and torture) of Christians at the time John was writing is book.
I enjoyed the debate today between Bart and Mike Licona and took many things away from it. One of the main things was that Mike felt the need to express his “fear of God” and that seeking the “truth” about the resurrection put one’s “eternal life” on the line (not exactly what he said, but what I heard). I argue that within the Gospels there is evidence that Jesus had a violent side, evidenced by his warnings about his bringing a sword and that he divided families, not to mention his “righteous anger” at the moneylenders and pointing out that he could “damn,” as he did to the fig tree (whether metaphorical or whatever). Revelation seems to pick up that thread with, well, a vengeance.
I understand appreciating the Bible and the New Testament, particularly as a document of how ancient people thought about the world and their place in it – for the life of me, I do not understand how the religion has endured for 2000 years with such devout followers in this scientific age.
In thinking about how every generation reads their own social beliefs into Jesus’s sayings, can we know what Jesus actually stood for?
I try to show what we can probably know in my book Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium (and how we can know it). And yes, I caught that too in Mike’s talk. Very interesting but also kind of sad.
My overall sense was that Mike Licona wanted believers to feel they were not being unreasonable in trusting the reality of the resurrection and presented what looked like well-constructed scholarly research with his “Resurrection Hypothesis” supported by “facts” and “methods.” But it was all narrow, bordered, and cherry picked for that effect on believers, not to convince any historian.
I almost felt he went into the debate and tossed out ideas that it was reasonable to believe in God , appealing to design, uniqueness of life, inscrutability of consciousness, etc (fallacies all), quoting whoever he could (poor Francis Crick), and that it is important to “fear God” (as he does) and see God’s “hand” coming into the world as if it were part of natural occurrences (as he seems to believe miracles are) — to witness to those of us listening whose eternal lives are in jeopardy.
It was interesting. I really appreciated your forceful closing remarks which were spot on.
Deep thinking Christian believers in the CS Lewis and GK Chesterton camp tend to portray non-believing intellectuals as above-it-all snobs who dismiss the supernatural, God, and the Resurrection out of hand because it is unfashionable rather than because of any lack of tangible evidence. Such snobbery is considered as one step from justifying death camps and gulags. I used to find this kind of characterization compelling.
Me too.
You probably know of even better summaries, but this is succinct and accords with what I have come to believe – that the resurrection stories stemmed from a failure to mourn by the close followers of Jesus, such as Cephas/Peter, and all the other claims are exaggerations.
https://bibleinterp.arizona.edu/articles/lud368017
According to Orthodox Jewish tradition, the Messiah will be a unifier, not a divider.
Great teaching and right on point!
In order to follow the path of proposed interpretations in this thread about the Revelation, one must at least exclude free will. It seems to suggest that things, beings and events are predetermined ,,, not only for humans, but also the angeles, Jesus and even God seems to be subjected to a predetermed reality.
Well, that! is a difficult concept for for me who is not a bibilcal scholar!
Great 😊 article👏👏👏.
As the varying communities nowadays recreate their own version of Yeshua, Also, all assemblies schooled by Saul Paul created their own local version of Yeshua.
Saul Paul with his apparent psychotic episodes lead his followers to open the flood gates of human imagination 💭 to form their own superhero.
This is why irreconcilable and often contradictory views are recorded within the gospels and in general term ALL the SCRIPTURES.
In the The Didache it speaks about not aborting an unborn child or leaving it out in an unpopulated area to die, which the Romans are said to have done if the child was the wrong sex or somehow not healthy. Do we know with certainity when it was written and by whom? Is it true that some thought it should have been included in the Canon? How reliable is The Didache for the teaching of the early Xtian church?
It’s certainly reliable for it’s own community, or at least for what its author(s) wanted his/their community to think and do. The final product is probalby abuot 100 CE; it is based on at least three earlier texts by different authors. It never had much of a shot to get into the NT.
Hi Prof. Ehrman, thanks for always responding to my questions! Here’s another: Do you know when in history Christians started “doubling up” their eschatology, that is, believing both in a Heaven and Hell of metaphysical space and a Last Day of eschatological time at the same time?
In my book on Heaven and Hell I suggest that Paul is the first on record to start doing so. He originally thinks Jesus will return in his lifetime, but as time goes on starts to realize he may die first; but begins to think that surely when he dies he will surely be in the presece of Christ in the interim. Thus Philippians 1 and 2 Corinthians 5.
Excellent post! Enjoyed that thoroughly!
I experienced a disconcerting coincidence this week. I read your posts regarding the violent nature of Revelation, and in the same week rehearsed and sang parts of the anthem “The Holy City” by Stephen Adams. The third verse of the piece clearly refers to Rev chapter 21 with the new heaven and new earth. The incongruous words are these: “The light of God was on its streets, The gates were open wide, And all who would might enter, And no one was denied.” What a contrast to the words of John throughout the book! It seems as though I should say something more, but I don’t know what *to* say. Sigh …
Yes, would that all *could* enter… But alas, not for John.
I really enjoyed reading your posts about Revelation. I find this to be a terrifying book for multiple reasons, and I wish it were never canonized. My grandfather was obsessed with it, and he would read to me from it when I was young. I was left with the impression of a God who terrorized humanity (and a grandpa who terrorized children, but I digress…). I’m wondering about the portrayal of this vengeful, violent Jesus in Revelation versus the Jesus of the gospels. I know scholars think that not everything attributed to Jesus in the gospels are his actual teachings, and I’m wondering if the teachings that are probably not his map onto this violent/vengeful portrayal (e.g., coming to divide families, not bringing peace but a sword, the episode with the moneychangers, and possibly others). And if these types of teachings were not really Jesus’s, do scholars have a sense of when they were added to the gospels? I’m wondering if this would be around the same time as the writing of Revelation and if there was something political/cultural happening at that point that would prompt such a portrayal of Jesus.
Violence, dominance and politics were linked to chrisitianity from the very beginning.
The three historical characters that we can certainly link with the origin of christianity , John the Baptist, Jesus and his brother James were killed by the authorities.
The gospels deal with the deaths of the first two in the gospel’s way.
About John the Baptist, Josephus wrote: “…many people came in crowds to him, for they were greatly moved by his words. Herod, who feared that the great influence John had over the masses might put them into his power and enable him to raise A REBELLION ,for they seemed ready to do anything he should advise” Antiq [18.118].
We are talking about a leader that made people act blindly (“they seemed ready to do anything he should advise”) even “to raise a rebellion”… A REBELLION , that’s what Herod feared so HE KILLED HIM. In the gospels version on John death we have a commonplace story about a drunken Herod and a dancer …
The rebellion Herod feared was finally led by Jesus until that night when a traitor conducted the roman soldiers to his hideout , the sentinels were sleeping and the band was captured , the romans did not know whe the boss was but the traitor pointed to him.
In the gospels version on Jesus death the scene is transported to Jerusalem, the “wilderness” becomes a garden , the sentinels were non violent disciples that fall asleep even when his master urges them not to do so (all we reading the passage understand that we are approaching the climax of the story ,but Jesus’s disciples were too much tired and prefer to sleep!) , then comes Judas with “a crowd armed with swords and clubs, sent from the chief priests, the teachers of the law, and the elders. ” (Romans totally out of the scene , Pilate himself will ask later “Why? What crime has he committed?”) the game is over and an astonished Jesus asks “Am I leading A REBELLION that you have come out with swords and clubs to capture me? ”
Did any later Christian writers use Revelation to justify conquests by divinely ordained kings?
I wouldn’t be surprised, but I don’t know of any evidence they did.
Bart; I did enjoy your conclusion summary. Your point about the extreme differences between how Jesus is portrayed in the Gospels verses Revelations has always been a problem with me as well. I put a lot of focus on the Gospels as a whole, and found Jesus had real distaste on how, or the process the Pharisees were using to judge those they saw as unfit. John’s Gospel seems to stay away from that observation, except in Chapter 9; 1-34. His work also displays a dual personality in Christ’s character, such as referring to himself as the Son of Man 12 times, but continues to claim that he and the Father are one. If that wasn’t enough, my research revealed to me, that many professionals and theologians were knowingly aware of this problem. That being said, it always left a bad taste for me, knowing that he was also the writer, (or believed to be), of Revelations and a great many rely heavily on John’s work. My question is, do you agree, this could explain the different profiles between those of the Gospels and those of Revelations?
I”m afraid I’m not sure exactly what you’re asking. Scholars today are confident that the author of Revelation was not the author of the Fourth Gospel (if that helps).
Prof. Ehrman, you replied: “I don’t think there’s any evidence of widespread, or indeed any, slaughter (let alone rape and torture) of Christians at the time John was writing his book.”
The reason I made a comparison to Ukraine was from something I read online about why Rev was written. The author said:
“it is important to clarify that Revelation was an anti-Roman tract, a piece of war propaganda. It was not about the end of the world but the fall of the Roman Empire. It was a letter of encouragement to the followers of Jesus who had recently endured a complete defeat at the hands of the Romans, who stormed Jerusalem, burning down its sacred temple and leaving the city in ruins in 70AD. This was particularly troubling for the followers of Jesus, as they were awaiting his promised return before that generation ended (Luke 21:32), and 70AD was already pushing the limits to meet that time frame.”
Whether this is accurate or not I have no idea, but I’d just thought I’d follow up with it as an explanation for why I invoked contemporary Ukraine.
Something that has troubled me in reading this confusing Christian book is what should my reaction be to terrible things happening on the earth? “Surely I come quickly…Even so Come, Lord Jesus.” As a person I hate to see war, famine and all the other terrible things that regularly happen to people on the earth, but from a Christian perspective could a calamity happening on the earth be the beginning of the end? Maybe this is the start of all the terrible things that have to happen for Christ’s kingdom to come on the earth. Seems it puts Christians into a position of having to want terrible deaths and awful things to happen to billions of people to get Christ’s kingdom on the earth. Hard to reconcile.
Bart; Yes, your note indicating today’s scholars do not feel the Forth Gospel and Revelations are the same authorship, does help. Thank you.
Hi Bart I’m a silver member, I think that allows me to ask a question? In the introduction to the Englishman‘s Greek Concordance of the New Testament (1979), discussing the nuances of translating Greek to English, it says “no English word is an exact equivalent of any Greek word; nor is any Greek word the precise equivalent of a single English word“ Do you think that’s a fair assessment of one of the challenges in rendering Greek into English? I like to use that when I debate evangelicals about interpreting the NT literally, but I wonder if that view is a little extreme? Some Greek words seem to have pretty close English parallels, but I’m not even close to knowing Greek to say that’s accurate, that “no Greek words have exact English equivalents”.
Yes, strictly speaking that’s rougly true of every language (not just Greek and English). Every language uses words that mean what they do in their own linguistic and cutlural contexts, and those are always connected to the language, even if other languages have comparable words. But I WOULD say that there some words that have almost direct correpondensees. “Book” can mean the same thing; but tere are ways the word can be used in some languages that are not common in others (as when you “book” a table at a restaurant; other languagss won’t use the word that way. I assume)
Dr. Ehrman, I’ve been reading your book ”how Jesus became god” and some materials on apocalypticism and now I have a question: given the context of second temple Judaism, do you think that Jesus and his apostles believed in an intermediate state of the soul when they died? Kind of like a Sheol for bad people? I’ve been reading 1 Enoch and the book was written at least 2 centuries before Jesus and in it, we see that the spirits of the giants drowned in the flood became the unclean spirits. We have other literature confirming this believe. Do you think that Jesus had some kind of afterlife believe besides the resurrection when the son of man came?
I think some Jews did, and I think tthat Paul eventually did; butmy sense is that most Jews thought that at death a person ceased to exist. 1 Enoch would be a big exception. Jesus and his followrs appear ot have had the standard view: “life” would be resumed only at the resurrection, not in an interim state. (I talk about this at much greater enth in my book Heaven and Hell.)
Would you say John of Patmos’ portrayal of vengeance toward Rome is harsher than for example the writer Isaiah’s attitude toward Edom? Rivers of pitch, smoke uprising forever, Lilith and all hangin out there etc. or the writer of Daniel’s attitude toward the Seleucids?
I suppose it’s not a contest. 🙂 They’re both severe. But Edom wsa not the world force Rome was.
–an ability to see God in all things is not a natural human capacity, but a habit or skill that is to be acquired from God. We can only see the world rightly if we are trained to see things in certain ways that are not themselves given in the natural order of things.—Alister E. McGrath
https://www.academia.edu/8295039/The_Church_as_a_Visionary_Community_Ecclesiology_and_Intellectual_Aesthetic_and_Moral_Discernment_A_lecture_given_at_the_conference_on_Returning_to_the_Church_Catholicity_Ecclesiology_and_the_Mission_of_the_Church_of_England_at_St_Stephen_s_House_Oxford_on_5_January_2009
of course without this gift of vision to see god in all things one might conclude there is no god! But with this vision how might your understanding of revelation change? Revelation is written to the church (not historians!) and starts with a rebuke of the church. What if the book of revelation is a vision of the world where the church failed its calling? A rebuke! What if Is60 is a vision of the world where the church fulfilled its great commission? Oh that we might receive sight! Grasp the vision and pray it into existence.
Since so much of Revelation is contrary to the proto-orthodox teachings of Jesus, even criticizing respected churches, a question seems relevant: Why was this text deemed authoritative to the early Church? It seems a peculiar addition to the New Testament.
Many of the proto-orthodox found it completely acceptable — in part because they too criticized members of respected churches. In any event, I deal with the question of why it eventually made it into the canon in my book. It turns out that it’s visoin of a powerful God who took over the empire was very suitable for many Christians.
Hi Bart: I am reading a wonderful book published in the 1950s: Norman Cohn, the Pursuit of the Millennium; It is a study of violent messianic/Sybelian and other apocalyptic movements from the first millenium AD and into late medieval times. Again and again the fantistists use the Book of revelation to justify violence. Mostly they get killed by the authorities, but wreak horror on millions over time, including during the Crusades.
Yup, it’s terrific — a real classic!