Loading...I recently gave a plenary talk at a regional meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature. The president of the group asked me to give a talk on Revelation, since that is what I’ve been working on recently, and I cobbled something together based on my book and a few other things. It was about a 45 minute speech, and I thought it would be useful to reproduce it here in chunks over the course of a few posts.
My audience was scholars of religion, most of them professors of biblical studies from the Northeast. Since there were a wide range of interests and expertise represented there, I decided not to go too heavy with the scholarship. It’s always hard to gauge an audience you’ve never seen before.
Anyway, here is how I started the lecture.
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When I first read the book of Revelation, in August 1973, I did so out of fear, not hope. Not fear for the fate of the world in light of the coming apocalypse, but fear of my own imminent Day of Judgment. In two weeks, I was heading off to Moody Bible Institute and I knew there was to be an entrance exam. I was no Bible scholar, but I had read the rest of the New Testament and had a reasonably good grasp of what was in it, at least for a seventeen-year-old. But I had never ventured into the deep waters of Revelation. They were too murky and I wasn’t sure what I would find down there. But I had heard it was scary.
Still, I did not want arrive at a bastion of Biblical knowledge without having read the final and climactic book of Scripture. If Revelation was on that entrance exam, I did not want to reveal my complete ignorance. So I read the book. Probably in the Living Bible.
And like most first-time readers, or, truth be told, hundred-and-first-time readers, I couldn’t make heads or tails of it. I knew it was bad news for people who, unlike me, did not believe in Jesus. Beyond that, it was a mystification unlike any other.
I realized right away that Revelation is one of those books you won’t understand unless someone gives you a road map to explain how to get from point A to point B along with tips for interpreting the road signs along the way. As it turns out, Revelation was not on the exam. It was devoted to more weighty issues. The one question I distinctly remember was: Who was the only left-handed judge?
In any event, it did not take long for me to find my road map. After I started the semester I found the best one available: Hal Lindsey’s Late Great Planet Earth. Like most of my new friends I
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In luke you have “because they dont know what they are doing”
In misquoting jesus i am sure you said that the people who hand jesus over know fully well what they are doing in mark and matthew,is this correct?
This is a Lukan motif — a veyr interesting and important one — that those guilty are ignorant. In teh bok of Acts Luke gives a number of speeches by Jesus’ apostles with just this theme — aleays in reference to the Jews (not the Romans): they didn’t realize what they were doing in rejecting Jesus, but now God has given them a chance to repent. And that’s right, it’s not a motif in any of hte otehr Gospels. Interestingly, a number of scribes deleted this line from their manuscripts of Luke. Apparently they couldn’t accept teh idea that Jesus would ask God to forgive the Jews for what they were doing, since they knew full well!
The question of ignorance and guilt I’ve noticed is somewhat “ambiguous” in the NT. Mark 4: 9-12 “Then Jesus said, “Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear.” When he was alone, the Twelve and the other disciples asked him about the parables. Jesus said, “The mystery of the kingdom of God has been granted to you. But those on the outside get only parables so that, “they will see without ever perceiving, and always hear but never understand; otherwise, they might turn and be forgiven. John 12:39-40 “This is why they could not believe, because, as Isaiah has said,” He has blinded their eyes and He hardened their hearts, so they could not see with their eyes, nor perceive with their hearts, nor turn and be forgiven.”
Silly me, I always thought the purpose of the parables WERE to “open” our eyes and ears so that we COULD turn and be forgiven.
Yup, it’s a remarkable passage. Unlike in the other Gospels, in Mark Jesus tells parables so people WON’T understand and repent!
That was also my view for decades, but not anymore. Revelation is related to human inner progress and psychic growth. It is about the convergence of many into one and it reflects God in our conciousness, a process within. This is a process of the “way” toward a new mode of human conciousness particularly described in chapter 21 and 22 toward the new conciusness within towarddevine oneness, after confronting the part ego of the self (in particular chapter 16-20) which have become a stumbeling stone to man.
it is the process by which God works from within to lead to a higher consciousness and reunion.
That is how the book of Revelation present itself to me.
Dr. Ehrman –
I just saw your appearance on Paulogia’s YouTube channel, which I enjoyed very much. However, I’d like clarification on a point you made. You commented that Mark was “a Greek who didn’t know Jesus and had never been in Israel, probably.” I’ve seen other scholars, though, who argue that there was a Levantine origin for Mark’s gospel. A paper I read by Christopher B. Zeichmann, “The Date of Mark’s Gospel apart from the Temple and Rumors of War: The Taxation Episode (12:13-17) as Evidence”, has a fairly extensive list of examples. I’d like to know what you think of the Levantine provenance idea, where you see the state of the scholarship on this question, and what convinces you that the author hadn’t been in Israel. This seems like an interesting and important question in our understanding of the formation of the New Testament.
Thanks!
I’d say there’s no good evidence of it. Where in the Levant do they say he was from, and on the basis of … what? I’d say he certainly wasn’t Jewish and lived in a Greek speaking part of the world. What would make one think he had been to Israel? Evidence he hadn’t been is that he doesn’t seem to understand Jewish customs (as when he says that “all Jews” wash their hands before eating; simply not true).
Zeichmann’s paper assumes that Mark’s author was located around Galilee or Judea. Other scholars (for instance Joanna Dewey in “A Galilean Provenance for the Gospel of Mark?”) have argued that the Aramaisms in Mark – both explicit Aramaic words and Aramaic influence on the text – point to an area where Aramaic was spoken. (I’ve seen other analysis, such as Maurice Casey, that also make heavy use of Markan Aramaisms to place material very close to Jesus’s actual time.) Dewey also lists the positive portrayal of Galilee, the rural setting of much of the Gospel, the likely marginal social position of the Gospel’s audience, and Jewish assumptions of the Gospel, as reasons to think that the materials could have developed in or around Galilee and been written down somewhere nearby (giving Bethsaida as one possible location). I don’t think this is a knock-down argument, I just found Zeichmann’s paper (which argues that the tax in Mark 12:13-17 is likely to be an anachronistic reference to the fiscus Iudaicus after 70 CE and relies on this provenance) interesting and was surprised when you definitively placed Mark’s composition outside of the Levant.
My view is that we don’t know where he was writing, but his ignorance of Jewish customs suggests he was not in what Romans latr called Palestine. I’ts not at all clear that he knew Aramaic. Two nights ago I said Eloi Eloi lama sabachthani, but I don’t know Aramaic.
‘Liberal’ must mean something different in the USA to here in England. The view you describe pretty much aligns with the view I was taught as an evangelical. But perhaps it depends what you mean by this sentence: ‘The forces of evil and all those who align with them will be destroyed in a show of divine force’.
If you mean bad people will get their just deserts then maybe liberal Christians would agree with that. But if you mean that anyone not believing in Jesus will be thrown into eternal hellfire then that is definitely not generally a ‘liberal’ interpretation!
Nope, that’s not a liberal view anywhere in the world! But I’m speaking of a specific liberal view, that Revelation provides a metaphorical message of hope for those who try to do what is good and the love of God for his people.
“I no longer see it that way and am a bit surprised I did for so many years. …”
One thing I have admired you for over the years has been your willingness to change your views in the face of evidence.
Did professors at Moody Bible Institute widely believe in a rapture that was relatively soon? Did they factor this into the longevity of their own institution?
Oh yes, they did. And no, just because everyone *before* us was wrong about the date doesn’t mean *we* are!
Of ALL the roadmaps… of ALL the false premises to base ones faith on…
Dr Ehrman, if THAT is what i thought revelation was about, after about 10 minutes in a university class i would immediately leave the faith.
Hal Lindsey may be the worst student of the Bible i ever heard of.
“I no longer see it that way and am a bit surprised I did for so many years. …”
Good thing you decided to write your book! (and I’m glad I perhaps played my own small part in encouraging you to do so back when you were still mulling it over as a possible book topic here on the blog) 🙂
Maybe it is hopeful! Just combined with tons of (right or wrong) hatred
In my quest for the obscure author of Revelation I found in the blog some very interesting articles about Papias and his sayings quoted by Eusebius.
In particular in (https://ehrmanblog.org/papias-and-the-eyewitnesses/)
you explain this
“The sequence goes like this: Jesus → apostles → elders → companions of the elders → Papias → us. When we listen to Papias, we do not have access directly to Jesus or his apostles. ”
Ok,this is in relation to “what Andrew or Peter had said, or what Philip or what Thomas had said, or James or John or Matthew ” but what about “Ariston and the elder John” ?
Papias called them “disciples of the Lord” as the apostles themselves, so could it be that Papias knew people in his own time that said they were Jesus “disciples” about a century ago? It may sound crazy but early christians believed that people from the time of Jesus lived until the emperor Hadrian reign and Papias himself was quite a gullible (I’m thinking in the legend about Judas’s fate) guy so perhaps he also believed what Ariston and the elder John said to him about being “Jesus disciples” .
It’s usually thought that, since these two were not among the twelve, he means “disciples” in a looser sense as two of JEsus’ well-known followers after the time of the apostles
I think scholars refuse to think Papias was so gullible as to believe that Ariston and the Elder John were Jesus’s “disciples” in the sense the twelve were even when he clearly said that.
I don’t want to be disrespectful with your fellow scholars but I can’t understand that a graduate from a university in the first world could think that the “Resurrection of Jesus Really Happen”, it’s hard to believe for me , but it happens in my own times, so what about 2000 year ago? Pliny the Elder a man from la creme de la creme of the roman society wrote in his Naturalis historia about human “monstrous races – the Cynocephali or Dog-Heads, the Sciapodae, whose single foot could act as a sunshade, the mouthless Astomi, who lived on scents” so Papias, the local leader of a cult in a tiny village could perfectly believe in the supernatural extended lives of Ariston and the Elder.
Devout Christians have always been claiming the end was finally near? That claim sounds like a bit of an oversimplification to me. In particular, the medieval Catholic Church seems to have kept its distance from specific prophecies about the end times. I’ve seen rather little discussion of the subject by Thomas Aquinas, for example. Martin Luther is also famous for remarking that no one truly understood the Book of Revelation.
I’m getting speculative here, but my suspicion is that “end-times” thinking has always surged during periods of rapid social change, and it especially revved up during the early nineteenth century with the beginning of industrialization. If anything, social change has only gotten faster since then, with a commensurate increase in the number of Christians who think the end must be near. (Of course, there have always been plenty of other Christians who were content with “Of that day and hour knoweth no man.”)
I”m not saying that ALL devout followers have said that!!
Bart, Jesus said the first of the two greatest commandments is to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength?” (Mark 12:30). What did Jesus believe a person would have to do to follow that commandment besides, I assume, passionately following the Torah?
For eternal life? That would be it. Love God and love your neighbourr as yourself. But REALLYT to do it.
If you could give any advice to Hal Lindsay today, about interpreting apocalyptic literature, what would it be?
Please stop.
Well, gee.
I knew who the only left handed judge was, lolol. (It’s *such* a great story!)
Maybe I’ve been doing this Bible stuff too long, Bart?
Thanks for your good work! <3
WHOA!!!
So here’s a question related to the 666 of Rev 13:18…
It was said to be “the number of a man”, and I’ve read that people of the time would likely have understood that as a code for Nero, since the number transliterates into his name. However, Nero was apparently long deceased when Revelation was written. So my question is, would this be related to a contemporary legend of Nero’s resurrection?
Earlier in the chapter, the beast with seven heads seems to refer to seven Roman emperors. One of the heads appeared to be killed, but came back to life. Would that correspond to Nero, with a nod to the resurrection legend?
Or to turn the question around: might Nero’s resurrection legend have come about due to this interpretation of Revelation?
Yes, it’s connected with the Nero redivivus myth — that Neor would come bac from the dead, the “mortal wound” mentioned in Rev. 13.
Hi Dr. Ehrman — re Rev. 12 and the War in Heaven. The Catholic Catechism, para. 328 describes angels as “spiritual, noncorporeal beings”, which I think is the belief most all Christians hold. The Bible also has instances of angels suddenly appearing before humans out of nowhere, saying something important, and then disappearing again. Since angels don’t have bodies and can appear and disappear at will, doesn’t Rev. 12 raise an obvious theological question — how exactly would angels conduct a war in heaven? If they lunged at one another, they would simply pass through each other. Swords or bullets would be useless, unless angels were vulnerable when they made angelic appearances. But if threatened, an angel could simply disappear again, like Frodo in Lord of the Rings. Skepticism aside, how do theologians reconcile the war in Rev. 12 with their conception of angels? Is it interpreted as a war of ideas, rather than genuine combat?
Angels throughout the Bible, at least when engaging with humans, are fully tactile beings who can eat, drink touch, and destroy.
The author of Revelations mentions that he had visions of what he was writing down. We know that when people in the antiquity said they had visions, we don’t know whether they were dreaming to seeing them while awake. But he say specifically he was “in the spirit” when something was revealed to him. Do you think he has dreams/visions or that was meant figuratively?
In the spirit in this context usually means that he was in some kind of trance or ecstatic prayer; I don’t believe it’s the normal way of describing sleep.
So he was probably in heavy prayer when he saw these things were revealed to him?
I don’t know what really happened; all we have is what he said. He appears to be saying he was deep in prayer or in a trance. Whether he actually was or not, there is not way to know.