Who Wrote the Book of Revelation, and when?

by ProdigalSon 33 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  Band on the Run

  This is exactly what Pagels taught us in New Testament. She explained it was only one of many apocalyptic books of its time. The genre, which is almost absent now, was plentiful. She also told us that the numbers and images relate to a Roman Emperor at the peak of Christian martyrdom. In fact, martyrdom became so popular within the church that people viewed their martyrdom dates as their true birth dates. Some churches believed one was only a true Christian when being munched by the lions. The Romans would feed you to the lions if you reported what happened. Somehow, though, if you wrote in a code, recognizable to most people at the time, the Romans would avert their eyes.

  She went through my most feared WT numbers and images. My heart was pounding. I did read Paul as a primary source b/c I hated him (I am such a Dudley Do Right so not reading a primary source was not me), feared demons so much I kept lights going which annoyed roommates, and was ready to leave the room with a panic attack. The mark of the beast, Babylon the Great, the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse had nothing to do with my present time, 1974. Rather, it had to with Imperial Rome. My heart calmed down.

  Soon, I was massively ill and could not work. Rather, than watch TV, I decided to catch up on projects, so I went to Union Theological seminary, part of what is called the Protestant Vatican, supported by the Rockefellers, and asked for their most comprehensive text on Revelation. I read the book so fast. Delicious freedom.

  Pagels had such an influence on my life. She was so young to be a professor and wore ultra miniskirts to work - no one else did. Her influence on me was so profound. My whole life opened up because of her work. It went far beyond religious history. Writing this made me think of her. Rather than just write complaint letters, I am going to draft a letter to her tomorrow. It wil prob. sound so trite to her, but I was so awed. In fact, she acnowledged that b/c we are not taught religous history or studies in public school, we were in awe. She could tell us any bull and we would never know.
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  Room 215

  What does David Aune make of all of this Sybilline business?
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  Band on the Run

  I've been to the Sistine Chapel. It would have been nice to have opera glasses and a matress so I could see it as in art history slides. I purchased several large scale art books on the chapel ceiling. The Sybil does have a prominent part. I was shocked that he used pagan symbols. Evidently, the church travelled far from the break with East over the use of flat icons. Early Christian art is purposely flat. They knew how to paint and sculpt as much as any pagan.

  Michelangelo, though, is High Renaissance. With Da Vinci and Raphael, he personfies it. So 1400+ is very removed in time from 1st century CE. I believe I fully understand that academic work only gets one so far, esp. with spirituality, morals, and character. I wish someone on the esoteric side would explain to me what is so bad about academic work. If you make a statement that the church reworked existing esoteric writings from outside their own culture, can't you provide a reference to a neutral source that backs up your point.

  I chose my profession b/c of my temperament. When I took the Briggs-Meyer or is it the reverse, 95% of people in my field tested in that category. So I am probably academic to an extreme. What is wrong with missing rigorous scholarship and using that scholarship to make leaps? I'm not only talking about Bible analysis. What is so evil about Western medicine? It seems to me that Western medicine and alternative medicine can learn from each other to the benefit of patients. Diss one and you close the door on the helpful items in the other. Friends are adamant against medication. Very rarely does anyone give me specific reasons. It is so obvious to them they can't tell me their reasoning in a few sentences.
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  Leolaia

  Prodigal Son: The depiction of the Cumaean Sibyl on the Sistene Chapel has no bearing on whether the text you posted, the one I was commenting on, is in fact an actual ancient text, as opposed to being a modern rehash of Revelation. That Bushby is known to have made up stuff (such as his laughably unhistorical account of the Nicene Council) and that Szekely is known to have composed modern apocrypha is certainly more pertinent to the genuineness of the text you posted (unknown to biblical scholarship) than whether Michaelangelo depicted a well-known figure in Greco-Roman culture in the Sistene Chapel.

  Room 215: Precisely the sort of question one ought to ask. Aune's massive three-volume commentary makes no reference to the text Prodigal Son posted, nor are the "scholars" associated with the text mentioned in the relevant literature. I doubt they exist. The text itself is a rather lazy rehash of Revelation. If one wants to investigate further, one could compare the text with modern translations of Revelation and see if there are translation choices that reflect that the text is derivative of English translation. Or even better, see if the text eschews the textual variants themselves eschewed in a particular modern critical text of Revelation (indeed, the text of Revelation is the most variable of all the books in the NT), betraying the text's derivation of a translation based on a critical text (or a particular received text). But that would be a waste of time to engage in such analysis for a text as dubious as the one posted above.

  Bear in mind that there were actual ancient Sibylline oracles compiled together in Late Antiquity; these are well-known to scholarship, and some are very pertinent to scholarship on Revelation, particularly the fourth and fifth Sibylline Oracles, which is clearly cognate to Revelation (in much the same way 4 Ezra is), composed around the same time and incorporating many of the same themes (such as the contemporary Nero redivivus myth), although there is no literary evidence of direct influence between the two books. This work of course is recognized in Aune's commentary. The text that Prodigal Son posted is completely unrelated.

  Joey Jo Jo: Yes. The book clearly addresses the precarious situation between Christians and imperial Rome, sketching a vision of the near future reformulating the foretold persecution by the eschatological antagonist (a theme derived from Daniel, with Rome replacing Greece as the fourth kingdom) as something that Rome would accomplish in the near future. The coded language may have been with an eye to the Roman authorities (recall how the Oracles of Hystaspes, a possible source for Revelation, was popular among Christians in the middle of the second century and it was banned by the imperial government as seditious, such that a person who read it would be liable for the death penalty), but may also be a feature of the literary genre. Notice the overt interpretation of the signs in ch. 17, similar to pesher and what is found in ch. 8 of Daniel.