My least-favorite book of the Bible -- by far, by far -- is Revelation. A provocative, well-written article on the subject, by the always-interesting and wide-ranging author Adam Gopnik, can be consulted here:
Aldaily also links to it today -- but in a very odd way. Here is their come-on:
Who but Elaine Pagels can drain the melodrama from the Book of Revelation, turning the climactic confrontation between good and evil into an anti-Christian polemic?...
As a Christian, I am certainly no shill for anti-Christian polemics. But this aldaily blurb is truly off. All I’ve read of Pagels so far is
The Gnostic Gospels; scholarly, non-polemical. The new book, don’t know, though from Gopnik’s summary, more along those same lines. But the real problem is, these ALD blurbs normally summarize the attitude of the article itself -- in this case, the one in
The New Yorker, and not the book that is there mentioned (and indeed, the article is more than just a review). And Adam Gopnik, in his sympathetic account, in no way whatever accuses Pagels of “draining the melodrama” from the Book of Revelation. -- A revealingly stupid phrasing, btw. “Draining the
drama”,
passe encore; the problem with Revelation is precisely that (to this finite mind at least) it is mostly (mere) melodrama.
[Note: Although I value Aldaily for its links, in its blurbs it does perpetrate stupidities with more than chance frequency: compare here:
http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2011/05/more-neuroscience-porn.html ]
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Well… une précision.
It is certainly possible that Revelation is divinely inspired, but in a way simply not proportional to our understanding: like a book in a language we cannot read. In that case, it were wise to demote its place in the canon, on the grounds that, ourselves being who we are, it is likely only to work mischief.
As always when in a quandary, I turn to my spiritual advisor, Dr. Massey. He explains the position of his own denomination thus:
The Orthodox Church does not specifically reject the Apocalypse as uncanonical. It does not, however, include a reading from it in any of her liturgies. The result is that, while the Orthodox technically accept the canon of the wider historical church, the book is virtually uncanonical in the sense that it does not, by definition, have any authority within the church.
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Pagels’ book apparently contains a lot of scholarly euhemerism; Gopnik compares “Revelation”, in this regard, to a political cartoon.
Pagels was not the first to notice the historical background to this or any other book of the Bible; nor is there anything anti-Christian about publishing whatever scholarship can afford. Thus, in the Catholic Bible de Jérusalem (translated as The Jerusalem Bible, a new and heavily annotated recension), we read, in reference to Rev. 8:2,
The rider on the white horse (symbol of victory) represents the Parthians, identified by the bow, their favourite weapon. They were the terror of the Roman world in the 1
st. cent.
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| Make ... my ... day ........ |
These are the ‘wild beasts’ of v.8 (i.e. victorious pagan nations; cf. Dt 7:22; Ezk 34:28; Jr 15:2-4 …) The Parthian invasion is described in the vision of 9:13f. One tradition identified the rider with the Messiah, as in 19:11-16.
Thus the wise and clear-eyed comments of the Historical Church.
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| Parthian, scaring the bejazus out of the Romans |
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The panoply of Christian denominations and currents of thought can scarcely be reduced to a linear formula. But it’s fun to try. Here is an attempted bijection between styles of thought and books of the Bible.
(1) Old Testament Christians.
These, originally, were the grim, dour Chapel folk who founded America.
In a completely different incarnation, there is the LDS, whose Book of Mormon is reminiscent of nothing so much as the OT. (Which is rather the problem, for ordinary Christians. It’s not as though More O.T. -- more tribes and begats -- was what we needed….)
(2a) Gospel Christians
[by this I mean: those taking inspiration principally from the four gospels]
(2b) Pauline Christians
Mainline Protestants, mainstream go-to-Mass Catholics.
(2c) Book-of-Revelation Christians.
These folks are dangerous. These are the ones who think it’d be just swell if Israel went off and nuked somebody -- Iran or whoever -- thus touching off Armageddon, a necessary step towards the Rapture, in which every parishoner in the (Paris, Texas) Good-is-Gold Two-Seeds-in-the-Spirit by-gum Holy Jesus Baptist Church (a split-off from the Silver-Spirit three-strikes-and-you’re-out My Messiah Anadunking Chapel), and no one else, is going straight to the good place, and y’all others straight to the bad place, Aye-MEN.
And so. Of the true meaning, and the true value, of the Book of Revelation, I know nothing, or less than that. But verily, verily, I say unto you: it should not be put into the hands of children and Teabaggers.
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Travaillant au noir,
le détective se trouve aux prises
avec le Saint-Esprit
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[Note: I am fudging a bit, in ascribing (or, rather, merely, matching-up) Chestertonian and Franciscan views -- those I most admire, those closest to my own -- to the Gospels. The souce of such visions as theirs, I imagine, is not so much Biblical as personal, experiential. Certainly I myself can cite no chapter-and-verse to justify such effusions as these:
Ducks;
Penguins;
Woodchucks.]
