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Archive for the ‘Revelation’ Category

May 13th, 2013 by Joel

So, if we take Revelation 17.9 “futurist-literal” doesn’t this disqualify the Catholic Church

emblem of the Papacy: Triple tiara and keys Fr...

emblem of the Papacy: Triple tiara and keys Français : emblème pontifical Italiano: emblema del Papato Português: Emblema papal. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Again, following with the theme from the last post.

Got me to thunkin’. Revelation 17.9 says the city on seven hills is the bad city. The new Babylon. Who cares that Scripture already defines who/what the new Babylon is? I mean, clearly Scripture wasn’t written for them, but for us. Dullards.

So, as I search for the city on seven hills, we must first consider the Roman Catholic Church.

Rome itself had reached seven hills by the time John was writing, but since this book wasn’t meant for John’s Christians, but really for us, we can’t allow that the city of Rome is what John meant.

So, the likely example many Protestants since Luther throw out is the Roman Catholic Church.

But, I was disappointed.

See, the Roman Catholic Church, ruled from Vatican City, doesn’t sit on seven hills. It sits on one. Namely, Vatican Hill.

One hill.

Gosh dang it all to heckfire and back and then back to heckfire.

Oh well, back to Richmond.

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May 13th, 2013 by Joel

Will the South Rise Again as the Beast? (Rev. 17.9)

Official seal of City of Richmond

Official seal of City of Richmond – That’s the great whore right there

“Here is the mind which has wisdom. The seven heads are seven mountains on which the woman sits” – Rev. 17.9

This comes from two sources. First, we are reading through Revelation in Sunday School class; the other, this verse was mentioned via my Facebook wall on Saturday night.

Is Rome, i.e., the Roman Catholic Church, the only the city sitting on seven hills? Well, no.

Richmond, Virginia is as well. Further, there was a time called itself the New Rome. So, there you go.

Richmond, Virginia is clearly the city John envisions when he writes 17.9.

Clearly.

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April 29th, 2013 by Joel

Revelation in Pop Culture – Waylon Jennings – Revelation

Another use of Revelation in pop culture

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April 29th, 2013 by Joel

Revelation in Pop Culture – Johnny Cash – The Man Comes Around

So, our Sunday School class is going to start talking about Revelation. I am looking for various (mis)uses of the book surrounding us… This sorta fits:

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January 29th, 2013 by Joel

Does Anthony Le Donne hate Historical Jesus scholars(hip)?

Question: why is there so little use of this portrayal in historical Jesus study? here

I tend to, at the moment, place Revelation between 70ish and 90ish. It is not about the future, although, maybe, the ultimate future makes an appearance at the end. I tend to think that Revelation is a multi-leveled work, something I’ll explore later.

Anyway, I’m not sure I would use this so much as a portrayal of the Historical Jesus as I would the portrayal of the Historical Jesus Communities (/an/Christianity). Why? Because we rarely see Jesus. Granted, I do think that Revelation is our Fifth Gospel, interpreting not just the death of Christ (the sixth seal), but his resurrection and eventual exaltation. All of this is centered around the Jewish Revolt and in encapsulated in a Jewish liturgical hymn.

There you go.

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January 9th, 2013 by Joel

Revelation 17.11 vs. Micah 5.5-6

In listening to Micah the other day, I heard something familiar:

This One will be our peace.
When the Assyrian invades our land,
When he tramples on our citadels,
Then we will raise against him
Seven shepherds and eight leaders of men.

They will shepherd the land of Assyria with the sword,
The land of Nimrod at its entrances;
And He will deliver us from the Assyrian
When he attacks our land
And when he tramples our territory. (Micah 5.5-6 NASB)

The LXX references Nimrod as well.

This brought to mind Revelation 17.11:

“The beast which was and is not, is himself also an eighth and is one of the seven, and he goes to destruction.

First, Nimrod:

The mention of Babylon, Erech/Uruk, and Akkad/Agade points, on the one hand, to Babylonia. More specifically, the fact that Nimrod is based in Babylonia, from which he then extends his rule over Assyria (construing ʾaššûr in Gen 10:11 as the land, in the directional case, viz., “he went out to Assyria”), reflects, at the least, the long-standing cultural superiority of Babylonia over Assyria.1

The Hebrew Scriptures provides for a great deal of connection between Nimrod and Babylon. In Revelation 17, John speaks to the downfall of that city (Rome, by the way, and not the Catholic Church). What is missing in many — I haven’t checked all — commentaries is the connection between these two verses. Rather, I see a connection here I cannot find mentioned in many if not all commentaries. The connection, of course, is centered not just on the mention of seven and eight and neither is it just on the opposition between shepherds and men (beasts and kings), but also on the opposition between the Good Shepherd and Nimrod, or YHWH’s agent and Babylon.

Anyway, what are your thoughts on the literary connection, if any, between these two passages?

Seriously, they must have hated Nero to write these things about him… (psst… not convinced Nero is in view here, but a Roman emperor surely is).

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  1. Peter Machinist, “Nimrod (Person)”, in , vol. 4, The Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary ( ed. David Noel Freedman; New York: Doubleday, 1992), 1117. ↩

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November 26th, 2012 by Joel

Just a tiny bit… yes, a wee bit… on why I think Revelation is Markan

So, I am floated the idea verbally that Revelation is composed in the Markan Community.

I’ll give you just a few reasons.

First, the internal structure of Revelation 4 – 19 is one of circles within circles within a giant circle that is Genesis 2-3 and Revelation 21-22. This is a feature of Mark as well. There is also a noticeable pivot in both books, with Mark’s pivot on the Mount of Transfiguration and Revelation’s in chapter 16.

But more than that – there are the parenthetical hidden messages. For instance, in Mark 13.14 when the author turns to the audience to remind them that they need to pay close attention to what he is saying. We see this likewise in Revelation 13.18 and 17.9, 15.

Not only that, but the style of the Greek is… butchered.

Anyway, there you.

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November 26th, 2012 by Joel

Revelation 17 is a good place to start, but there are plenty of interpretive clues

James McGrath has a post up today about Revelation 17 a a key to understand Revelation.

I have mentioned before that Revelation 17:9-10 seems to me to provide decisive evidence against the futurist or “end times” approach to understanding the Book of Revelation.

Another clue would be Revelation 21.16 that describes the Heavenly Jerusalem as being 1400 miles wide (sure, not miles, but John would have used miles if he was reading the KJV). Why is this important? Because this was the ancient distance between…

wait for it…

Rome and Jerusalem!

And it was the distance if you took a boat. On Water. As in, on the Sea.

Boom.

Anyway, take a gander at this post.

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October 25th, 2012 by Joel

A Pet Project I would like to get off the ground… Revelation 16 as Liturgical Prayer

Actually, I’m working on turning the entire book into a book of prayer. But, we’ll see.

Anyway, it is not “edited” and I haven’t touched it in months, but here it is.

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April 1st, 2012 by Joel

Actually, I would rather a book on the myth of Revelation

The anti-Christ. The Battle of Armageddon. The dreaded Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

You don’t have to be a student of religion to recognize references from the Book of Revelation. The last book in the Bible has fascinated readers for centuries. People who don’t even follow religion are nonetheless familiar with figures and images from Revelation.

And why not? No other New Testament book reads like Revelation. The book virtually drips with blood and reeks of sulfur. At the center of this final battle between good and evil is an action-hero-like Jesus, who is in no mood to turn the other cheek.

Authors debunks four big myths about the Book of Revelation – CNN Belief Blog – CNN.com Blogs.

Elaine Pagels hasn’t caused the stir I thought it would, actually, but… I would really like a book to take Revelation from the cosmic view. Admittedly, I haven’t read Pagel’s book, and not likely too anytime in the near future, but I still don’t think she fully gets it.

Oh well… back to the drawing board…

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February 8th, 2012 by Joel

This is not what I intend by “Praying the Book of Revelation,” at least not for my book

I have a project which I hope to get published one day… it involves turning the book of Revelation into prayers. We hear about praying the Psalms a lot, so starting from there, I have taken John’s Apocalypse and, roughly for now, turned most of it into meditative prayers set around a call-and-response style. I noticed that someone has a book which purports to enable someone to ‘pray the Book of Revelation.’

Well now…

Anyway, so I did some more searching… and found this:

As a mentioned recently in praying the Bible, taking specific promises and warnings from a passage of Scripture and praying them can help us to really root the Scripture in our hearts.  It also helps us to develop a more clear picture of exactly what the Lord is saying to us in a passage.  At the bottom of this post is a link you can use to download a document on praying the book of Revelation…

Yeah… I don’t mean that either.

I mean praying, mediating, upon the Book of Revelation. Not in an eschatological sense, but in a mystical sense. There is no super secret code to it, nothing to gain – a la Prosperity Gospel/Spiritual Warfare – from it. In my opinion, the Book of Revelation is based on Psalm 2, and is Jewish-Christian enthronement hymn. It is also our fifth Gospel. As such, it should be mediated upon because it is the Gospel story told from the heights of the Cosmos.

Anyway, that’s just my thoughts.

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