Interesting Article About Apocalyps of John

[Foster Zygote]

In followed the link in Quinn's OP about the seven reasons Catholics are leaving the church, and I found this link to an article about common misconceptions regarding the Book of Revelation based on an interview with Elaine Pagels. What I find most fascinating is the part regarding the theology of John of Patmos (He was much closer to the original, apocalyptic followers of Jesus) and the politics behind its inclusion in the cannon. It seems that the rambling, confusing, acid-trip ambiguity of the book lends itself to extremely flexible interpretation and it has, no doubt, seen many widely varied interpretations throughout history.

[Hokulele]

She has a whole book about that which I am currently 2/3 of the way through. It is well-written and has plenty of footnotes.

[Foster Zygote]

Originally Posted by Hokulele

She has a whole book about that which I am currently 2/3 of the way through. It is well-written and has plenty of footnotes.

Is that Revelations: Visions, Prophecy, and Politics in the Book of Revelation? I'm halfway through Bart Ehrman's Forged, so I'll pick up Pagels' book as my next read.

[tsig]

Originally Posted by Foster Zygote

In followed the link in Quinn's OP about the seven reasons Catholics are leaving the church, and I found this link to an article about common misconceptions regarding the Book of Revelation based on an interview with Elaine Pagels. What I find most fascinating is the part regarding the theology of John of Patmos (He was much closer to the original, apocalyptic followers of Jesus) and the politics behind its inclusion in the cannon. It seems that the rambling, confusing, acid-trip ambiguity of the book lends itself to extremely flexible interpretation and it has, no doubt, seen many widely varied interpretations throughout history.

The idea that Revelations refers to contemporary events is rather common.


The seven heads of the beast are seven emperors. Five of them the Seer says are fallen. They are Augustus Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and Nero. The year of Nero's death is A.D. 68. The Seer goes on to say "One is", namely Vespasian, A.D. 70-79. He is the sixth emperor. The seventh, we are told by the Seer, "is not yet come. But when he comes his reign will be short". Titus is meant, who reigned but two years (79-81). The eighth emperor is Domitian (81-96). Of him the Seer has something very peculiar to say. He is identified with the beast. He is described as the one that "was and is not and shall come up out of the bottomless pit" (17:8). In verse 11 it is added: "And the beast which was and is not: the same also is the eighth, and is of the seven, and goeth into destruction".

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01594b.htm

[Hokulele]

Originally Posted by Foster Zygote

Is that Revelations: Visions, Prophecy, and Politics in the Book of Revelation? I'm halfway through Bart Ehrman's Forged, so I'll pick up Pagels' book as my next read.

Yep. It is an easy read, and most of the last third seems to be focused on the politics involved around including it in the New Testament, where the first third was about Revelation itself and its origins. I should be finished with it this weekend.

[Foster Zygote]

Originally Posted by tsig

The idea that Revelations refers to contemporary events is rather common.


The seven heads of the beast are seven emperors. Five of them the Seer says are fallen. They are Augustus Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and Nero. The year of Nero's death is A.D. 68. The Seer goes on to say "One is", namely Vespasian, A.D. 70-79. He is the sixth emperor. The seventh, we are told by the Seer, "is not yet come. But when he comes his reign will be short". Titus is meant, who reigned but two years (79-81). The eighth emperor is Domitian (81-96). Of him the Seer has something very peculiar to say. He is identified with the beast. He is described as the one that "was and is not and shall come up out of the bottomless pit" (17:8). In verse 11 it is added: "And the beast which was and is not: the same also is the eighth, and is of the seven, and goeth into destruction".

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01594b.htm

I knew that it was written in a kind of code about contemporary events. After all, naming Nero Caesar directly was likely to get the author, or even anyone simply caught in possession of a copy of the text, a quick taste of death, and a gruesome, exemplary death at that. But the idea that the text was written by someone who was in stark opposition to the form of Christianity that later came to include his book in their official cannon is new to me.

[Foster Zygote]

Originally Posted by Hokulele

Yep. It is an easy read, and most of the last third seems to be focused on the politics involved around including it in the New Testament, where the first third was about Revelation itself and its origins. I should be finished with it this weekend.

I'll have to go pick it up. With a 17 month old in the house, I hope to finish Forged in a couple of weeks.

[Hokulele]

Originally Posted by Foster Zygote

I knew that it was written in a kind of code about contemporary events. After all, naming Nero Caesar directly was likely to get the author, or even anyone simply caught in possession of a copy of the text, a quick taste of death, and a gruesome, exemplary death at that. But the idea that the text was written by someone who was in stark opposition to the form of Christianity that later came to include his book in their official cannon is new to me.

Pagels' thesis is more that one has to remember that Revelation was written by a Jew, and not a Christian, as Christianity didn't really exist, certainly not as we knew it, at that time. The latter half of her book is how Revelation was interpreted by later Christians as being against "heretical" sects, and how it could be used against different "heresies", even though it was the same book!

[HansMustermann]

Originally Posted by Foster Zygote

I knew that it was written in a kind of code about contemporary events. After all, naming Nero Caesar directly was likely to get the author, or even anyone simply caught in possession of a copy of the text, a quick taste of death, and a gruesome, exemplary death at that. But the idea that the text was written by someone who was in stark opposition to the form of Christianity that later came to include his book in their official cannon is new to me.

Well, as you undoubtedly understand already, for a while there was no canon. The first that we know about that even tried to have one official Christian bible was Marcion, and most people disagreed with that one so strongly (although apparently it was an just an early Luke, or whoever Luke plagiarized from, but apparently didn't have enough miraculous stuff, plus a couple of epistles) that he gets called "the first-born of Satan" to his face.

For all we know, the gang that culminated in Irenaeus writing the official lists of gospels, actually got their idea from Marcion. Someone looked at it and pretty much thought, "Hmm, I hate his guts for the actual choice, but he's kinda right, you know? We really ought to have an official version. Just, you know, the proper one. The version that WE like."

Before him, there was just a large bunch of tiny churches, and not only they were diverging in their beliefs from each other, we know from Paul that he was writing to address mini-schisms and heresies within such tiny churches as early as the 50's and 60's, i.e., right from the friggin' start. And I mean, within congregations that could meet in some dude's living room. But among those, what, maybe a dozen or so early Christians in such a community? There were already pretty significant differences if you look at what Paul has to address or threaten. AND some of those were already forging their own fake letters from Paul to prop their own position against the other half a dozen guys who were getting their own crazy ideas.

It's hard to really wrap my mind around it, with the experiences of a modern man from the age of print and Internet. But there seemed to be utter chaos.

So when they form a church cartel that would eventually become catholicism, pretty much all they had was a lot of books that disagreed with each other. There were dozen of gospels, dozens of apocalypses, dozen of Acts, and a bewildering number of epistles. And the best they could do was find some which sorta agree with what they wanted to believe. And even then, yes, the differences were big enough for most of them that the debate continued for another 3 frikken centuries as to whether to really include one or the other.

And the others still didn't disappear overnight. To get a grasp of how massively varied the beliefs were, consider this: in the 4'th century Epiphanius of Salamis in his Panarion lists 60 Christian heresies. (And 17 pre-Christian ones.) Just listing them with relatively few details took seven volumes.

And to compound the problem, it's not just the people diverging with it. It may have started rather disjointed right from Paul even on basic theological points. For example:

- If we believe Luke to know anything about it, Acts 17 has Paul telling some pagan Greeks that, basically, it's ok, people began worshipping idols from ignorance, and God overlooked it, but NOW God decided he wants everyone to repent and they better start, you know, repenting. So let me reiterate: pagans were ignorant of the Abrahamic God, and God ignored it. But

- Romans 1 has Paul say something radically different. He says that those pagans knew that God is the real thing all along, and just didn't want to honor him. (The "you're just rebelling against God" idiocy we still see to this day.) And God didn't ignore it at all. Oh no. God punished them for it.

Bart Ehrman, who I should credit with spotting that, seems to think that basically Luke talks out the ass. And, really, I'll even agree as a possibility: Luke may well be talking out the ass. Not in those words, but he takes the Paul from Romans 1 as the true Paul, and the true theology of Paul, while Luke is basically wrong. And, again, I'm definitely not discounting that out of hand.

But as a "what if" scenario, remember that Paul himself describes using what we now call con-artist tactics: he presents himself as whatever gets people to relate to him and have confidence in him. This would fit exactly under that heading. Romans 1 is written to his believers in Rome, and he has no problem damning the pagans to those, while the speech to the Greeks is to pagans, and he's changing is message to a less insulting and more accomodating one.

If that is the case, and it's a big if, the the Church may have gotten a bunch of conflicting doctrines from day one. I mean, that's a basic theological point: did the pagans know about God or not? Did God ignore them and stick to the Jews until the ministry to the pagans, or did God hate them and inflict various punishments on them for it? It's a very different view and doctrine of WTH God was up to for a couple thousand years, and what his character and attitudes were.

If that is the case, and it's a big if, all those people coming with different messages to Paul's flock in various places, may not even come from some other source than Paul himself. I can see the guy who openly professes pretending to be a Jew to the Jews, and a (former) pagan to the pagans, and so on, being frustrated no end if some guy that heard him being all for circumcision to the Jews comes and teaches his gentile church in, say, Galatia that they need to circumcise after all. It would certainly explain the bewildering whirlwind of divergin opinions and mini-schisms at the time.

But at any rate, even without that last paragraph, imagine the frustration of the future church trying to make head or tails of that array of beliefs, if even such basic theological points may have been conflicting from the start.

Note that assuming Paul would actually be contradictory, is not so far fetched, and in fact he's not even the only one trying to play both sides of some issue among the early Xians. You can see for example a more supportable example -- in that it's right in the frikken bible -- in 1 John, by the way, this one is actually the same John who wrote the gospel, not the Revelation guy. Within the first 3 pages, he tries to argue both:

1. the guilt angle that, we all sin and we need Jesus to make it right. In fact, whoever says they have no sins, is a liar and makes light of God and Jesus. Really, it's not even interpretation, he says exactly that on the first page of the epistle.

And on page 2 we see him urge them not to sin, but, ah well, if it's still happening, Jesus makes it OK. So he's allowing the possibility that those Xians sin. In fact, in his own words, that's why he writes them the epistle: to keep them from sinning (more.) And really, if they didn't, well, then there'd be no reason for him to write that.

2. by the 3rd page however, he claims that those who are "born of God" (born again) can't possibly sin any more, and are all good and righteous. In fact, those who still sin are first said to have never known Jesus in the first place. Then by the next paragraph, oh-la-la, you can tell who's "born of God" and who are Satan's children. Those who can still sin are obviously Satan's gang.

But, wait, didn't he just say they're liars if they say they don't sin?

Anyway, whether or not that applies to Paul too, nevertheless you see an early Christian text where not only it contradicts some other text, but page 1 and page 3 of the same frikken epistle contradict each other.

That's the kind of contradictory mess that selecting a canon later had to deal with, really. Stuff that even contradicts itself, never mind contradicting other texts.

You can probably see how, if they were to set the bar for concordance too high, they wouldn't have much of an NT left. They had to allow some pretty generous tolerances.

[DOC]

The author in your link says it is a myth that the author of Revelation was a Christian. That seems odd since the author of Revelation was writing messages from Jesus to 7 Christian Churches. Here are verses 4 and 5 of the very first chapter.

Rev 1:4 John to the seven churches which are in Asia: Grace [be] unto you, and peace, from him which is, and which was, and which is to come; and from the seven Spirits which are before his throne;
Rev 1:5 And from Jesus Christ, [who is] the faithful witness, [and] the first begotten of the dead, and the prince of the kings of the earth. Unto him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood.

[Hokulele]

Originally Posted by DOC

The author in your link says it is a myth that the author of Revelation was a Christian. That seems odd since the author of Revelation was writing messages from Jesus to 7 Christian Churches. Here are verses 4 and 5 of the very first chapter.

Rev 1:4 John to the seven churches which are in Asia: Grace [be] unto you, and peace, from him which is, and which was, and which is to come; and from the seven Spirits which are before his throne;
Rev 1:5 And from Jesus Christ, [who is] the faithful witness, [and] the first begotten of the dead, and the prince of the kings of the earth. Unto him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood.

DOC, read Rev. 2:8-9. They considered themselves Jews.

[joobz]

Originally Posted by DOC

The author in your link says it is a myth that the author of Revelation was a Christian. That seems odd since the author of Revelation was writing messages from Jesus to 7 Christian Churches. Here are verses 4 and 5 of the very first chapter.

Rev 1:4 John to the seven churches which are in Asia: Grace [be] unto you, and peace, from him which is, and which was, and which is to come; and from the seven Spirits which are before his throne;
Rev 1:5 And from Jesus Christ, [who is] the faithful witness, [and] the first begotten of the dead, and the prince of the kings of the earth. Unto him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood.

DOC, a couple of points:
1.) I would be interested to find out how Pagel supports her claim that "He[John] doesn’t even say Jesus died for your sins", when rev 1:5, as you point out, seemingly refutes this claim.

2.) The passage you quoted didn't state "Christian Church", it simply says church.

3.) While popularly translated as church, the earliest koine greek copy of the book of revelation ( the codex sinaitinus, and the language I believe it was written in) says "εκκληϲιαιϲ", which is closely related to "a popular assembly of people" or a congregation of people. Clearly, the terms have its roots in what a church means, but does not indicate that church must be a Christian church.

http://artflx.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/e...torder=Keyword

4.) The actual full argument listed in the text article you reference inherently discounts your objection as it clearly seems that the author does not consider nonjewish christians (the Paulian approach) to be true followers. As the idea that anyone can be a follower of christ can enter heaven is central to modern christianity. Indeed, the 12,000 from the 12 tribes now makes complete sense when looked at in this light.

5.) I predict that you will simply read point 1 and act as though this refutes all of Pagel's arguments. This would be a bad approach as this is a minor issue in her whole argument. Even if you accept that John believes in this death, his exclusionary vision of Christianity would put him at complete odds with what modern Christianity is. I placed this argument at position 5 as I do not believe you will read this whole post and will simply cherry pick the points you wish to comment on and ignore the rest. This is built upon your habit of only responding to short posts and intentionally ignoring detailed support of what people write. Walls of text are likely to further disincline your desire to read. We shall see if I am correct or not.

[Foster Zygote]

Originally Posted by joobz

DOC, a couple of points:
1.) I would be interested to find out how Pagel supports her claim that "He[John] doesn’t even say Jesus died for your sins", when rev 1:5, as you point out, seemingly refutes this claim.

2.) The passage you quoted didn't state "Christian Church", it simply says church.

3.) While popularly translated as church, the earliest koine greek copy of the book of revelation ( the codex sinaitinus, and the language I believe it was written in) says "εκκληϲιαιϲ", which is closely related to "a popular assembly of people" or a congregation of people. Clearly, the terms have its roots in what a church means, but does not indicate that church must be a Christian church.

http://artflx.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/e...torder=Keyword

4.) The actual full argument listed in the text article you reference inherently discounts your objection as it clearly seems that the author does not consider nonjewish christians (the Paulian approach) to be true followers. As the idea that anyone can be a follower of christ can enter heaven is central to modern christianity. Indeed, the 12,000 from the 12 tribes now makes complete sense when looked at in this light.

5.) I predict that you will simply read point 1 and act as though this refutes all of Pagel's arguments. This would be a bad approach as this is a minor issue in her whole argument. Even if you accept that John believes in this death, his exclusionary vision of Christianity would put him at complete odds with what modern Christianity is. I placed this argument at position 5 as I do not believe you will read this whole post and will simply cherry pick the points you wish to comment on and ignore the rest. This is built upon your habit of only responding to short posts and intentionally ignoring detailed support of what people write. Walls of text are likely to further disincline your desire to read. We shall see if I am correct or not.

This is interesting: Revelation 1:6 and made us to be a kingdom, priests serving his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen.

Note that it reads, "...his God...". There is no mention of Jesus as God. This is entirely consistent with an apocalyptic sect that regarded Jesus as a messiah, a descendent of David who would drive out the invaders of Israel and establish a proper, autonomous Jewish religion and state, once and for all.