Who Wrote the Book of Revelation, and when?

by ProdigalSon 33 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  Leolaia

  ...so because Tony Bushby has "made stuff up", then Revelation really was written by John the Apostle on the Island of Patmos, and it really is about Jesus of Nazareth, and we can go back to our Orthodox Box... is that correct?

  No, are you trying to posit a false dilemma here? It's either Bushby's BS or the traditional, devotional account? What about critical scholarship? There has been a lot of research on the composition of Revelation over the years, and I have always been an advocate of higher criticism. I don't like the intimation that if I am critical of a peddler of pseudohistory like Bushby, then I must be an apologist. I got that from Shawn10538 when I pointed out the dishonesty in Zeitgeist and I got that from skyman when I did the same wrt the "Kolbrin Bible". It's stupid and annoying.

  If Revelation and the Gospels were written around the same time, why does the Revelation contain so much Old Testament symbolism? If it didn't have "Jesus" in there, I would look at it and think it belongs at the end of the OT, not the NT.

  I don't understand your question because the gospels are densely intertextual with the OT as well. And this was very typical with apocalyptic works like 1 Enoch and Revelation, which equally are dependent on OT texts, but since Revelation is probably dependent on 1 Enoch (just as the gospels are), Revelation is definitely later. Revelation belongs with other contemporaneous apocalypses and not with the non-apocalyptic literature of the OT, although it also imitates the genre of prophecy. Many scholars do believe that some units within Revelation have a non-Christian Jewish origin, and it has been pointed out that the reference to Jesus in these units is redactional (see Aune's commentary). This is the sort of thing you'd find in critical scholarship, not Christian apologetics.

  As for the book's acceptance into the canon, it was controversial because it is a Gnostic writing

  Revelation is hardly gnostic, LOL. The gospel of John is much closer to gnostic ideas than Revelation, which is one reason why people in the early Church doubted that Revelation was written by Apostle John because the language and conception is so different from John. The realized eschatology in John (which is far more cognate to what is found in gnostic literature) contrasts with the imminence and chiliasm of Revelation. It is in the shift away from the kind of eschatology in Revelation that you find more overt gnostic ideas. So the Gospel of Thomas in its present form is quasi-gnostic, but as April DeConick shows, many of these logia originally had a more imminent eschatology that later was recast in more realized terms. Revelation represents an eschatology rather akin to Matthew that still expects very soon the events concluding the eschaton. It has no "typical" gnostic ideas, like the pursuit of self-knowledge for spiritual liberation from flesh, or a demiurgical view of creation, or the procession of aeons from the true God, etc. The earliest opponent of chiliasm was in fact the gnostic Marcion.

  It was controversial because it was chiliast and chiliasm was a big no-no after the third century AD. Just look at Eusebius' criticisms of Papias.
• 

  cyberjesus

  check mate
• 

  ProdigalSon

  "Revelation is hardly gnostic, LOL"

  It's fine with me for you to have your opinion Leolaia, but there's plenty of evidence to the contrary...

  http://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&channel=s&hl=en&source=hp&q=is+revelation+a+gnostic+book&btnG=Google+Search

  ~PS
• 

  cameo-d

  Very interesting stuff, Prodigal Son. I will have to think on this.

  One thing that strikes me on the surface is this: " If it didn't have "Jesus" in there, I would look at it and think it belongs at the end of the OT, not the NT."

  I have always had a peculiar feeling in reading Revelation, because it does not really mention Jesus per se. It seems to be an assumption that it is Jesus divulging the Revelation, but it actually says "one like the Son of man". Could this indicate an imposter?

  Revelation 1:

  12 And I turned to see the voice that spake with me. And being turned, I saw seven golden candlesticks;

  13 And in the midst of the seven candlesticks one like unto the Son of man, clothed with a garment down to the foot, and girt about the paps with a golden girdle.

  14 His head and his hairs were white like wool, as white as snow; and his eyes were as a flame of fire;

  15 And his feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace; and his voice as the sound of many waters.
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  Leolaia

  It's fine with me for you to have your opinion Leolaia, but there's plenty of evidence to the contrary...
  
  http://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&channel=s&hl=en&source=hp&q=is+revelation+a+gnostic+book&btnG=Google+Search

  What is this?? Argumentum ad google? What is a list of Google results supposed to show? Some of those results are from modern-day gnostics (not the same as early Christian gnostics) giving a gnosticizing interpretation of Revelation, while most of the other hits have nothing to do with Revelation. On p. 2 of the search results, there is a sole reference to the critical literature, a 1973 JBL article by Elisabeth Fiorenza. And this article argues that libertine proto-gnostics (the Nicolaitans) were the opponents of the author(s) of Revelation, i.e. that the book is attacking a form of early gnosticism. I have made similar observations myself about the passages and themes that Fiorenza underscores. Revelation is not just non-gnostic but anti-gnostic in certain tangible ways. It is against realized eschatology, it is against libertinism, it is against a soteriology that regards salvation as a given and accomplished fact, it is against teachers of "deep" (bathos) knowledge, etc.

  So when you claim that Revelation is a gnostic book, I want to know: How is it gnostic? What features can be readily categorized as gnostic? Modern gnosticizing interpretations are no substitute for this. How does it compare with early gnostic literature in terms of themes, terminology, and motifs? Because it doesn't look very gnostic at all. It instead looks very much like a typical Jewish apocalypse. I listed in my last post some themes that are "gnostic" that are the opposite of what we find in Revelation. I am sure there are many more. So what is this "evidence" you speak of? I am curious. For there are other books in the NT that are far closer to gnostic ideas than what we find in Revelation.
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  Leolaia

  It seems to be an assumption that it is Jesus divulging the Revelation, but it actually says "one like the Son of man". Could this indicate an imposter?

  This phrasing is simply that from Daniel 7, which refers not to a "Son of Man" but to "one like a son of man". It is in post-Danielic interpretation, particularly in the Enochic Book of Parables, where this figure becomes called the "Son of Man".

  The reference Jesus is pretty much integral to the outer shell of Revelation, e.g. ch. 1-3 and ch. 21-22 which share features not found elsewhere in the book. This is a later Christian layer, whereas the individual oracles (which often have little to do with each other) may well have non-Christian origin, at least in the case of some. It is here where over and over again the references to Jesus appear to be redactional.
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  mentallyfree31

  I recommend the book "History of the End of the World" by Jonathon Kirsch. I really enjoyed it.

  The important thing I learned about Revelation is that every person who has ever wrote about what the book of Revelation means has been wrong, and all of those people over centuries are now dead. Just like everything the WT said about Revelation from 1879 to 1950 was wrong, and everything they are saying now will one day be thrown out because it's wrong.
• 

  LockedChaos

  Leo!!

  My Idol
• 

  ProdigalSon

  Leo, I think the problem here is that we have different ideas about what constitutes "gnostic". For me, it means ANY hidden, esoteric meaning, that is applicable to oneself, or the human body....in other words, the epiphany comes from WITHIN. Perhaps you are limiting your view to the Gnostics of the early Christian era, and I understand that. However, I don't, because I know that the Gnostics have ALWAYS been here and the term covers a WIDE RANGE of views.

  As for the Book of Revelation, it is an esoteric treatise of Gnostic Kabbalah and Alchemy, and can only be properly understood in light of those ancient sciences when combined with meditation. You say it is more Jewish and you are right, because it is Kabbalistic, like MOST of the OT. If I'm wrong, please point me to a link interpreting the book that makes more sense than this one:

  http://gnosticteachings.org/courses/the-book-of-revelation/

  Peace,

  Jimmy C.
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  Leolaia

  Thank you for your last post, I think I understand more where you are coming from. You are using the term in a modern "New Age" sense that really has little relationship with the constellation of themes and beliefs that are typical of the "the Gnostics of the early Christian era," as you refer to them. Modern New Age philosophers may use the term as a self-label, but this causes confusion when this use of the term is imposed on ancient Christianity, where the reference should be to the groups of ancient gnostics whose ideas were very, very different from what is found in Revelation. The book is esoteric and mantic and mystic (as is the case with apocalyptic literature in general), but it certainly does not embody gnostic ideas as held by "the Gnostics of the early Christian era" (as typical in, say, the Nag Hammadi library). Your use of the term does however lead to a slippery slope towards the more usual understanding of the term in the history of religion, when you say things like:

  As for the book's acceptance into the canon, it was controversial because it is a Gnostic writing, and the Gnostics were the bane of the Roman church. In fact, most of them were killed during the first two centuries of the common era, and of course, their writings burned.

  This definitely has reference to "the Gnostics of the early Christian era" whose gnosticism embodied the ideas I outlined above (as widely discussed in the anti-gnostic treatises written by the second and third century AD heresiologists), ideas which are NOT those shared by Revelation. Hence my understanding that you indeed were talking about "gnosticism" as it is generally understood (not the popular, non-academic New Agey sense).

  I also see that you are reading Revelation through a lens of eisegetical interpretation, as represented by the "GnosticTeachings.org" link in your last post. To you, this interpretation is what the author of the book of Revelation was really writing about. With then by virtue of this "gnosticizing" interpretation, the book itself is categorized as "gnostic". And this kind of current syncretistic philosophy is very, very different from the actual gnosticism of the "early Christian era" (e.g. its focus on the body and chakras vs. the ancient gnostic view of the body as a sham, a delusion, as something to be ignored). This reading of Revelation is not something that would naturally result from exegesis but is something imposed from outside, it becomes the "key" to unlocking the meaning of the book. I see this as just as eisegetical as the JW reading of Revelation as "really" about the twentieth century and about modern Jehovah's Witnesses, although such ideas again do not naturally arise from the text. The same goes with Zeitgeist's use of an arbitrary "astrotheology" as a unitary key to unlocking the meaning of the (homogenized) story of Jesus. Revelation is the most eisegetically abused book there is, beyond Daniel and the quatrains of Nostradamus. The bulk of modern critical scholarship takes a measured exegetical approach to the book and endeavor to understand it within its own literary and sociohistorical context. Virtually all agree in understanding that the book is an apocalypse pertaining to a specific situation in the late first century wrt the persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire refusing to participate in the imperial cult (and condemning those Christians who do participate by, among other things, eating meat sacrificed to idols), and it gives an updating of the Danielic scenario of the end of the world and the resurrection of the dead by casting Nero redivivus as the eschatological opponent. This understanding is based directly on the direct internal and external context of the book. This puts it in very close company with its closest apocalyptic cousins, the Oracles of Hystaspes, the fourth Sibylline Oracle, and 4 Ezra, all envisioning the end of the Roman Empire (which is why it was punishable by death to possess a copy of the Oracles of Hystaspes). Similarly, the book of Daniel is not about Jehovah's Witnesses or President Putin or Saddam Hussein or UFOs or what not, but clearly relates to the persecution of Jews in the second century BC by Antiochus IV Epiphanes, something that eisegetical approaches may readily miss.