I finished reading The Book of Revelations last evening. I like how much math is involved in it.
8:7 The first angel sounded, and there followed hail and fire mingled with blood, and they were cast upon the earth: and the third part of trees was burnt up, and all green grass was burnt up.
8:10 And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters.
8:11 And the name of the star is called Wormwood: and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter.
With all the stars falling (an actual star falling I think would cause a bigger disaster than what is here described), and grasses getting burnt up (humanity is said to arrive along with the birth of grasslands, as our ability to stand up in the grass gave us an advantage over monkeys and other low creeping thangs).
There are also all these cool quotes. Manson used to run around citing this one:
9:21 Neither repented they of their murders, nor of their sorceries, nor of their fornication, nor of their thefts.
Rainbows abound, and seven of this and seven of that. Dragons pop up out of nowhere, and a woman has two wings like a great eagle. 666 appears as the sign of the Beast of the Apocalypse. It's a very cool book. Plus, Jesus speaks again, and he is quite specific about all those who are misleading others about his project:
2: 20: Notwithstanding I have a few things against thee, because thou sufferest that woman Jezebel, which calleth herself a prophetess, to teach and to seduce my servants to fornication, and to eat things sacrificed unto idols.
This isn't exactly the Sermon on the Mount, in which love conquers all. Jesus says,
2:23 And I will kill her children with death; and all the churches shall know that I am he which searches the reins and hearts: and I will give unto every one of you according to your works.
That last word must have bothered Luther, because it continually appears as the final arbiter of good and bad, and Luther didn't want that to be the final arbiter. He wanted faith as the final rubric. So he denied this book in his youth, but later came to believe it was a truly Christian book. What changed his mind?
It's a lovely strange fiery book, with imagery that seems allegorical to a degree that nothing else in the Bible seems to portend. But finally it is works that matter in this book.
20:13 And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works.
What works, exactly? Not sleeping with Jezebel is seemingly a good thing. Not playing ball with 666. Fighting against Gog and Magog counts. Listening to the still small voice of faith rather than worldly inducements, in general. Not blaspheming God while He destroys the earth with hellfire seems to be a goodly thang.
A certain number from each of the 12 tribes are sealed, which I think means saved, but it doesn't seem to depend on anything they did. It was foretold. They are saved from hunger and thirst (7:16), and they will cry no more.
But Jesus says he wants us white hot with faith, not lukewarm 3:16.
But not hot in the body, hot only in the spirit. Anyone who teaches or learns fornication (sex outside of traditional marriage?) is going to get it.
Jesus is also quite elderly now, with a snowy white beard and hair (white like wool, as white as snow -- 1:14). But he's tough as heck: 1:16 "And he had in his right hand seven stars: and out of his mouth went a twoedged sword: and his countenance was as the sun shineth in his strength."
This was supposedly written by John, who also wrote the fourth Gospel. He calls himself John four times. He is imprisoned on Patmos, an island. It takes place somewhere between 60-95 AD, and is thought to be an attempt to send comfort throughout the Christian west, which has been under siege by the Romans for decades now, and yet the light continues to spread. It's a beautiful book, and I think it's my favorite book. The only book that touches it in sheer beauty is John's own Gospel, and some passages from St. Paul when he's talking about love and angels. Is 666 meant to be Rome, or it some aspect of each of us?
59 comments:
Kirby,
Just some quick follow-ups.
The Book of Revelation (note, no 's') is apocalyptic literature, as is Ezekiel, much of Daniel, and indeed, one particular pericope in the synoptics (Mark 13 and parallels thereof). It's not unique, but it is unusual. The basic metaphoric structure of Revelation is well understood, which doesn't prevent "new interpretation" books from appearing with regularity.
There is an irony in the naming of the genre. Apocalypse literally means an "uncovering of what has been hidden," yet the actual texts rely heavily on metaphor which is readily understood by its intended audience, but obscure to others. So apocalyptic literature is really all about selective uncovering.
The numerological aspects are also well understood. The numbers 3, 4, and especially 7 are good, 7 denoting completeness. The number 6 is especially bad, denoting incompleteness. There's also a simple adjectival system in Hebrew in which a duplicated adjective is a comparative, and a tripled adjective is a superlative. Thus, 666 is symbolically "most evil."
There are ancient texts of Revelation which give the number as 616, which coincides with a numerological calculation based on the name of Nero, a great enemy of the early Christians. But it seems most reasonable to interpret 666, like the city on seven hills, as being a veiled reference to Rome, and more specifically to the (essentially mandatory) cult of emperor worship that Rome imposed on everyone but the Jews.
There are few today who believe that the author of the Apocalypse is the same as the author of the eponymous Gospel. The books are wildly different in literary structure, in theological concerns, in audience, and in grammar. They are, by some statistical measures, the two most unlike books in the New Testament.
The Jezebel of Revelation appears to be a specific individual in the congregation at Thyatira, very likely a gnostic whose "secret knowledge" was carnal.
What I love about Revelation is its theatricality. There are so many Christian hymns that draw inspiration from Revelation that it's a wonder that no one has yet put on "Revelation, the Musical."
I went into the classroom to discuss Revelations when one of the students said I have a revelation for you. Senate Bill 1867 was passed and it gives President Obama the right to murder any American citizen he wants. The government can pick you up and black bag anyone and drop them in the sea just like they did to Osama Bin Laden. There are 23 students in the class. Four or five of them, mostly older students, weren't signing on. It turns out that this came from Alex Jones, who Brett had previously warned me about. I looked around at the terror and the fury of the students. One quiet shy student who never says a word in class but has a brain stayed afterword and I said, "What did you think of all that?" She shrugged.
I mean, it was just plain demented, but perhaps that's the kind of nuttiness that Revelations calls forth. I was less than sanguine. We did notice that the ten angels and the lack of belief provided a nice closing to Pharaoh and the ten plagues.
But we couild have and should have done more. the students were just gushing with alex Jones.
I looked up Senate Bill 1867 and it's a spending bill primarily that doesn't authorize any new domestic war powers but the ACLU made a wild misstatement to say that it does, and that Alex Jones stepped off into the beyond to turn it into the apocalypse, replete with mentions of Mao and Stalin and so much other blather that I wondered about the mental health of this country by the end of it. How do you teach critical thinking skills to people who could ever take Alex Jones seriously?
Kirby,
The student is wrong in detail, but essentially correct in implication. There's no law that permits the extra-judicial execution of American citizens by the US government, but there is an unpublished memo from the Office of Legal Counsel that has that effect, which was used to justify the murder of Anwar al-Awlaki. Here's a link: Secret U.S. Memo Made Legal Case to Kill a Citizen.
Evidently, the argument of the memo embraces and extends both Bush's flawed theory of the unitary executive, and the old Holmes opinion regarding shouting 'Fire' in a crowded theater. In my opinion, this memo is as irresponsible as the Yoo memos. The reason we have enumerated rights is specifically so that "common sense" won't degrade into tyranny.
This all comes around to what I argued during the Bush administration: Republican boosterism of Bushes illegalities would come to roost during a Democratic administration. The only real question was be whether or not Democrats would object to the use of these extra-legal powers by 'their' administration.
This Democrat does. I don't expect any such principled action from the Republicans, who beat the drum of patriotism when they're in power, and whine when their not.
Kirby,
I've done a bit more digging. SB 1867 is a defense reauthorization act, and it does contain language about detention under the context of various AUMFs. The bill itself is very specific (cf. line 15ff on page 362) that no authority is granted to detain UC citizens in military custody, nor to detain lawful resident aliens for things they do while in the US.
The one worrisome provision is found on line 16ff of page 373, which limits regular legal reviews to the question of whether or not the detainee represents a threat, and which specifically excludes the question of legality of detention. Of course, no law can supercede the constitutional requirement of habeas corpus, and so any reasonable reading of this provision would apply only to reviews mandated by this law, and not to reviews initiated for other reasons.
There is, and I say this with sympathy, a tendancy to read laws as if they will be interpreted in perverse and/or extreme ways -- after all, we have the corporate personhood interpretation of the 14th Amendment as a particular execrable example of legislation from the bench. But I do not consider this bill as written to be a threat to the Occupy movement.
"The ravings of a lunatic" according to founding Cracker, Th.Jefferson.
Nietzsche's comments on the BoR weren't quite as polite as TJ's.
To add to what Stu said above, here's a few more observations on Revelation.
1. If you study the history of the canon, you'll discover that Revelation is late in getting accepted into the canon, and those who were deciding on which books are scripture and which are not, had quite a time of it before they agreed to finally give their approval of Revelation as scripture.
2. Apocalyptic literature is often born out of a historical context of persecution. The early Christians in the Roman empire were likely under persecution when it was written, and therefore it is in the genre it is because you need to think of it as an underground code language that the Christians at the time would likely understand and be able to read without it getting censored by the Roman authorities.
3. Another grand sweep motif of Revelation is the employment of conflict, good vs evil, Christ vs antichrist, etc.
4. The ultimate message of Revelation is: Yes, life is tough in a persecuted empire hostile to Christianity. However, ultimately the whole cosmos is moving forward and God will act to redeem/save those who are faithful to the end. God is ultimately in control, and good shall win out against evil, so don't give up, don't lose your faith in God, stay the course and soldier on.
5. Another thing to note is that the writer of Revelation was very familiar with the Hebrew Bible (OT), apocalyptic literature like Ezekiel and Daniel, as well as the beautiful visionary material of Isaiah, which is reworked by the writer of Revelation.
6. As Stu mentions, there are some hymns in Revelation, and in our LBW liturgy, the hymn of praise, "This is the feast" is based on Revelation.
Dim Lamp
Looks like Old English for wormwood is wermud, apparently the source for what the French now call vermouth. A little more or less determines whether your martini is wet or dry. It's also an ingredient in absinthe.
As an herbal concoction it's been used since Egyptian times to prevent malaria, kill mice and induce abortions. The Swiss pharmaceutical company, Novartis, owns the patent on it as a malaria drug.
Some of Erickson's novels can be described as apocalyptic. They present the slow obliteration of the world in which his characters live. Often it is nature that turns against people (the long winter in Paris, sand storms in L.A. and the disappearance of water in Venice and the Mediterranean region in Days Between Stations; the earthquake in Amnesiascope; the lake that floods L.A. in both Rubicon Beach and Our Ecstatic Days). The characters of the novels usually live in metropoles: L.A., New York, Berlin, Paris or Tokyo, in which the unexpected natural phenomena cause chaos and show how brittle civilization actually is. Erickson makes occasional use of somewhat supernatural elements, such as the extraordinary gifts of some of his characters (Catherine from Rubicon Beach) and bizarre artifacts (a bottle with human eyes from Days Between Stations). The most powerful force of Erickson’s universe is love, often passionate, sensual, overpowering, unstoppable. Lovers hurt each other but at the same time cannot live without each other. When the love is lost, people become empty, bitter or full of hatred. The affection is almost like possession.
Erickson’s characters often appear in multiple books. Adolphe Sarre from Days Between Stations comes back in Amnesiascope and is alluded to in Zeroville. Lauren and Kara from Days Between Stations appear in Arc d'X; Kara also appears in Tours of the Black Clock. Carl appears in Days Between Stations, Tours of the Black Clock, Amnesiascope and The Sea Came in at Midnight. Lauren and Jeanine from Days Between Stations and Catherine and Leigh from Rubicon Beach are mentioned in Tours of the Black Clock, as characters appearing in the mind of the latter book's writer protagonist. Wade and Mallory from Rubicon Beach emerge as major characters in Arc d’X. Kristin features in both The Sea Came in at Midnight and Our Ecstatic Days. Jainlight from Tours of the Black Clock reappears, in an altered incarnation, in Our Ecstatic Days.
From the Wikipedia entry for Steve Erickson
Dim Lamp, I was particularly happy to get this bit of data with regard to This is the Feast, and how it refers to Revelations 5. I found this vid that shows a service similar to our own. I can't tell why the people aren't drinking from the cup before they sit back down again. They appear to be receiving a communion wafer but are denied the wine for some reason?
http://cantusmundi.blogspot.com/2010/04/this-is-feast-of-victory.html
Kirby,
I found this vid that shows a service similar to our own. I can't tell why the people aren't drinking from the cup before they sit back down again. They appear to be receiving a communion wafer but are denied the wine for some reason?
I've looked at this, and I'm seeing something slightly different.
This is clearly a US Lutheran congregation, using the LBW, almost certainly ELCA (or a predecessor body) or LCMS. There are 5(!) visible communion stations: two at the head of the main aisle, two further down, and the fifth station by the rail.
The function of the four main aisle stations is clear -- they're distributing bread. Don't be confused by the chalices, they're holding the wafers. This is easiest to see in the stations half-way down the main aisle. At first, I thought that the fifth station was distributing gluten-free host. but on closer examination, the people that are stopping at the fifth station also stopped at the host station, so I'm thinking that this is where wine is distributed. An obvious symmetry assumption places three more wine stations in the flanks where they'd be out of view.
But here's the thing -- it looks to me as if a relatively small minority, something like 1 in 6, stop at the wine. Most folks just walk by.
I have a suspicion that this is a congregation which has made a conscious decision to control the length of the service, and so has taken some unusual steps to expedite the distribution. There is a strong Lutheran preference that communion be offered in both kinds, cf., AC XXII, so the overall approach, which provides communion in both kinds, while subtlety discouraging the taking of wine, seems theologically un-nuanced. I'd be interested in other analyses.
the book of revelation is the salt and pepper of the eucharistic prayers
...also the most misinterpreted book in the whole canon
...luther might well be embarrassed to think peopel gained access to this one
....we should have left it to the professional clerics and scholars
...but NOOOOOOOO !
...apocalypso...the new island music
on the fly
jh
Kirby,
I looked at the video and only saw one person administering the cup on the right hand side in the green, what looks like choir robe. Not many seem to stop to drink the wine. Very unusual for a Lutheran congregation. Yes, I would agree with Stu re AC XII, us Lutherans definitely emphasise receiving the sacrament in both kinds. Some may not wish the wine for personal or health reasons, however it is always offered for the congregation.
I am only speculating on the why of the practice in this video - perhaps they are wanting to move closer to the Roman Catholic practice of Communion with only one kind rather than two, pure speculation though, I admit. Leaves me scratching my head as to the why and how they are practicing/came to practice Communion with one kind.
Re book of Rev.: Do you trust Jefferson and the founding fathers (and indeed most modern philosophers post-Locke)--who did not accept the BoR. as authoritative (or,really, any miracles), or do you trust jh and the Romanish church?
Hint: uno.
I thought not drinking wine was weird, but I couldn't figure out what was going on. Body, but not blood. Maybe someone was afraid of vampyres.
as for J's question: I like the Book of Revelation a lot, and it's beautiful and impossible, so of course I believe it. I love the bizarre sprawling pictures of the scorpions with women's faces! Ooh la la!
And their sting lasts for five months!!
Jefferson was like a eunuch who couldn't get past reason. Reason, of course, is the devil's whore, as Luther said.
Faith either takes wings, big huge leathery wings, or else gets nowhere.
Nearly all Enlightenment thinkers opposed inerrant/dogmatic readings of Scripture (including the BoR). Not only Jefferson, Madison et al, but Spinoza, the french Encyclopedists, Hume, and a bit later Kant and Hegel (not to say the scientists of the time). Would need to check but most of the religious figures (e.g. Wesley) disagreed with literal readings of the gospels as well. Of course, all wussie lib-ralls (Hegel excepted who generally laughed at the crusaders and mocked the scholastics). Luther was a madmen hisself (not to say pal with the tyrants of the time) but even ML at times did not accept the BoR.
Luther had trouble with several books in the Bible, apparently.
"Luther had a low view of the books of Esther, Hebrews, James, Jude, and Revelation. He called the epistle of James “an epistle of straw”, finding little in it that pointed to Christ and His saving work- though he later revised his opinion of James, seeing it as more compatible with Pauline teaching later in his career than earlier. He also had harsh words for the book of Revelation, saying that he could “in no way detect that the Holy Spirit produced it.” He had reason to question the apostolicity of these books since the early church categorized these books as antilegomena, meaning that they weren’t accepted without reservation as canonical. Luther did not, however, remove them from his edition of the scriptures."
Jefferson had more trouble and thought BoR was the work of a nut.
I don't know hardly anything about the reception of the book. Jefferson wrote a letter to someone in 1825 to thank him for attributing the book to Cerinthus, rather than to John. Thomas liked John's Gospel, but thought the BoR was the work of a raving lunatic.
Since most of the book is in the future tense, we can't really know what will come to pass. Perhaps all these things will come to pass. Soon, in theological time, is difficult to intuit. Soon might mean later than now, and still be soon. Maybe soon will always be around the corner.
Arc d'X is the first of four or five Erickson novels I've read. It was published in 1993 and deals with Thomas Jefferson's relationship with Sally Hemings. Erickson grew up in Hollywood with both parents in the industry. Strange that after twenty-five years none of his novels have been adapted to the screen until now. I guess Zeroville is in production and scheduled for release in 2012.
I haven't heard of this author. How did you come across him? I find it interesting when people find authors no one has much heard of, and then go ahead and read many of their books. I really enjoyed a book sent to me from Portland two years ago. I loved reading it! I forget the author's name but the title of the book was about a bicycle's name in Hungarian. It's funny how knowledge goes around. That os many of my students had heard of SB 1867 and were certain of its contents is quite bizarre. What on earth happened to create that junkpile in their foreheads?
I found Arc d'X in a bookstore in Auckland while learning how to drive on the wrong side of the road from the wrong side of the car. He's definitely a latter day surrealist.
catholics believe that christ is fully present in both species
if wheat is a problem taking the wine is a complete communion
most people partake of the body and the blood these days
i don't have time to think these days
i love this conversation thought
that craig hangs in with his tangents is a cool thing
and j
what's that cat doing here again
he seems almost civil
maranatha brothers
jh
jh,
catholics believe that christ is fully present in both species
if wheat is a problem taking the wine is a complete communion
most people partake of the body and the blood these days
Actually, Lutherans believe and practice this too. The notion that a communion in one kind is complete is theology that pre-existed the split, and which Lutherans retained. But Lutherans as a matter of practice have emphasized communion in both kinds, and viewed with suspicion practices which limited distribution to one kind.
At least as Lutherans tell history, the Catholic church of the mediaeval period consecrated bread and wine, but the wine was reserved to the clergy, ostensibly out of a pietistic concern that it not be spilled. I still see this from time to time, e.g., at my mother-in-law's funeral, communion was offered to the laity only as bread.
Part of what makes me doubt that this account is complete has been a visible adoption of contemporary Catholic distributional practice by Lutheran congregations, which coincided with an increase in the frequency of communion in the Lutheran Church. To review the bidding here, when I was young, most Lutheran congregations communed relatively infrequently: monthly, or even quarterly. The most common service was what was called ante-communion: it was essentially the service of the word, with the blessing and dismissal tacked on to the end. When Lutheran congregations of that era did commune, it was typically a cumberous affair: kneeling at the rail, with little glass cups, and bread distributed separately, and only ever by the Pastor. In the 80s, there was a movement to increase the frequency of communion. This did not seem to be top-down, and in practice, each congregation fought its own battle. Part of the argument against more frequent communion was that it took so long. This lead most Lutheran Churches to adopt intinction (which had not previously been used, and indeed there was a tendancy to look down on it as being a characteristically Catholic practice), during most if not all services. And here is where the doubt creeps in: obviously, intinction was being used in the Catholic Church, and obviously this implies communion in both kinds was common, if not ubiquitous.
Stu said: " In the 80s, there was a movement to increase the frequency of communion. This did not seem to be top-down, and in practice, each congregation fought its own battle." Dim Lamp says: Actually in Canada it was the top down; it came more in concert with the publication and acceptance of Lutheran Book of Worship in 1978, and the standard Sunday service is even titled "Holy Communion Settings I, II, & III." Stu said: "Part of the argument against more frequent communion was that it took so long. This lead most Lutheran Churches to adopt intinction (which had not previously been used, and indeed there was a tendancy to look down on it as being a characteristically Catholic practice), during most if not all services." Dim Lamp says: No, in Canada, at least in my synod, intinction is not widely practiced, often a pouring chalice is used with the small glasses or drinking from the common cup. Although at our synod and national conventions we often do practice intinction. As for intinction being Catholic practice, I have personally not seen it there, rather, it is Eastern Orthodox practice.
I was readng through the Kermode edited book Literary Guide to the Bible. They had a chapter on Revelation from a scholar at U. of Chicago who gave a very thorough history of interpretations including that of Luther. He thought the Catholic church was itself 666. The Catholic church tended to think on the other hand it was the Protestants. Some think it's an inward sinfulness. Others locate it elsewhere. Reformation England tended to locate it again within the Catholics, but the Catholics shot back that the Anglicans were lukewarm worms that should be shot out of the mouth as wishy washy wussies.
I tend to see it as the Foucauldian feminists. Which reminds me. I wonder if any of them have publicly supported Sandusky and Fine. I shall google.
Dim Lamp,
You raise some excellent points. I'd forgotten about pouring chalices!
There is little question that the changes in the hymnal have been important.
In the SBH (Service Book and Hymnal, 1958), the service is laid out with the ante-communion ending first. This reflects a practice in which the short ending of the service was the norm. There's a rubric at the beginning of the short ending, "If there be no communion... ." BTW, Phil Hefner told me that the SBH was controversial in its day because it re-introduced one of the standard mass prayers -- I think it was the Preface.
The LBW (Lutheran Book of Worship, 1978) inverts this, placing the communion ending before the shorter ending, but it still accomodates the ante-communion service -- you'd just jump from rubric 21 to 44. You're correct in noting the change in title -- in the SBH, we have "The Service," whereas in the LBW we have "Holy Communion." But I'll note that the SBH was already a bit schizophrenic here: the even page headers for the service are "The Service," but the odd page headers are "The Communion."
I think it is fair to claim that the SBH viewed the ante-communion ending as the normal/common case, and it was organized to facilitate its use. The LBH, in flipping this around, anticipated and facilitated a norm of weekly communion. That said, my experience was that the changes in communion frequency took place over the course of years and even decades after adoption of LBW. Congregations moved from quarterly communion to monthly, from monthly to monthly plus festivals, from monthly plus festivals to twice per month plus festivals, and from twice per month plus festival to every Sunday. But this was hardly a deterministic process, and congregation-specific issues (arguably the most sigificant was the extent to which Altar Guilds were supportive of or resistant to these changes) had an important effect. This meant, for example, that having worked through the process in one congregation in the 80's, my wife and I got to do it all over again in another congregation in the 90's.
The ELW (Evangelical Lutheran Worship, 2006) continues this trend by essentially deprecating ante-communion. It provides ten(!) settings for Holy Communion, entirely without supporting rubrics for ante-communion, and a separate "Service of the Word" in one setting for ante-communion.
As regards specific distributional practices, I believe that congregation size and worship attendence are huge factors. The congregation I belonged to in the 80's was relatively small -- we had one service, and worshipped somewhere around 70 per Sunday. This meant a small (and politically entrenched) Altar Guild, but also a relatively modest stress in terms of service length. So the pouring chalice was a very reasonable compromise -- it mitigated the strain on Altar Guild, it was fast enough if there was a practiced hand holding the chalice, and it permitted retention of the piety of kneeling during communion. The congregation I joined in the early 90's (and to which I still belong) was worshipping around 250 in a single service in those days, and the distributional overhead meant that while ante-communion services ran 50-55 minutes, communion services could run as much as 1:20. During the transitional period (two Sundays plus festivals) there was a brief period of experimentation with various distributional approaches during the third Sunday. Our first experiment with intinction was a revelation: distributional times for the congregation fell from 20 minutes to 10, and required significantly less effort by Altar Guild.
As regards antecedent uses of intinction: the word itself seems to be built around Latin roots, which argues for RCC usage, if not exclusivity. I've witnessed intinction in both RCC and Orthodox settings.
Our service generally goes 1 hour and fifteen minutes. Is there a suggested norm? Does each denomination alter the amount of time used up in the service? Whose services are the longest? I'm surprised some denomination hasn't instanced a drive-through service where you slap five with the pastor and get a communion wafer with your Diet Coke.
Kirby,
I'm not aware of any suggested norm for the length of services. But your humor lags practice: drive-through churches (even wedding chapels) have been around for a while. In terms of long services, I'm told that it's routine in both African-American and Orthodox services to have worship last hours. I've done Easter vigils that have approached three hours.
In terms of my current congregation (and I'm sure this is true of many others), there is the complexity that comes from having more than one service on Sunday. So our schedule is first service (8:15), education (9:30), second service (10:45). Anything much more than 1:10 for first service cuts into education time, and might mean that teachers are still in service when (young) students are in the classroom. So as much as we'd like to say, "worship takes as much time as it takes," there are practical constraints.
I'm always astonished that almost anything I can dream up is already in practice somewhere. My wildest dreams are someone's daily reality.
"Want ketchup with that?"
Stu & Kirby,
I appreciate this thread, thanks for your thoughtful and creative and humorous comments and observations.
Stu, you mention the old SBH. I too grew up with it, and indeed enjoyed the hymns in it, many of the wide array of hymns and hymn tunes in it I thought ranked among the best of Lutheran hymnody tradition. You too are correct re the frequency of communion with the SBH. I remember those days in the late 60s and early to mid 70s where communion was only once a month. In some congregations, it was only three or four times a year, during the festival days in most cases.
You are right also Stu in stating that some churches gradually moved from infrequent to frequent communion services. Yet, I witnessed the opposite end of the spectrum too. For example, in some of our churches here in my synod, after seminars and workshops were offered introducing the LBW and, for that matter, the new ELW, congregations then made the change to the new hymnals. Although, as you most likely know, the Hymnal Supplement and With One Voice books were prep bridge books to the new ELW for a lot of churches.
In terms of administering the sacrament, in my neck of the woods there are still quite a few congregations that preserve the piety of kneeling at the altar rail.
Kirby, as for length of services and there being a "norm," I've not heard of one, although for communion I think it is difficult to keep within an hour unless the congregation is very small. I think we should take lessons from the Eastern Orthodox Church and those African churches - i.e. 3 to 5 hours likely being the "norm."
Dim Lamp,
Stu, you mention the old SBH. I too grew up with it, and indeed enjoyed the hymns in it, many of the wide array of hymns and hymn tunes in it I thought ranked among the best of Lutheran hymnody tradition.
I remember my father telling me how controversial the LBW hymn selection process proved to be. Evidently, they'd done a simple-minded tally of how many congregations sung each hymn at some point over the course of the year, and selected old hymns based simply on that frequency. This was a disaster for the Suomi synod, since there were relatively few Finnish-descent congregations to vote, and it really didn't matter that they each sung Finlandia 43 times a year, it still only got one vote from each of their congregations, so it and all of the other Finnish hymns fell by the wayside. It wouldn't surprise me if they still keep SBHs around, just for the hymns. Certainly, in their shoes, I would have.
I expect that the ELW will be the last "traditional" hymnal, and that when it becomes due for replacement in another thirty years, we'll have moved firmly to either electronic publishing or print-on-demand. This should remove the length constraint, and so (if we assume that the licensing issues can be dealt with) have the salutary consequence of allowing the reintroduction into the hymnal of what we've lost.
But I will note what seems to me to be a real loss associated with the expansion of the hymnal (even as some traditional hymns have been elided). Back in the day, you could count on Lutheran congregations singing hymns in four parts, which reflected longstanding tradition supported by a modest, but common and well-mastered repertoire of hymn tunes. This was a beautiful symbol of how a community as a whole has capabilities that no individual by themselves has. Even today, it's a poor Lutheran congregation that can't achieve some harmony on "A Mighty Fortress," but it's a rare one that can do much more. Generally speaking, folks just pick their octave, and sing melody. It really is a shame, as a well-harmonized rendition of "Es ist ein rose entsprungen" will send shivers up your spine.
My guess is that there were two strains, which proved collectively too powerful for the tradition of four-part singing to overcome. The first was the adaption of the SBH, which contains many more hymn tunes (and so was correspondingly more difficult to master) than the CSB. The second was the widespread popularity of radio and television, which supplanted hymn sings and revivals as entertainment.
I wish the book of Revelation had been written by the Gospel Writer. It would be far sweeter to have these two books closer together. In the 1950s it was still the case that they were largely thought to be one and the same writer. But now, there is a tendency to want to break up the writers of the NT and to destroy their authenticity thereby. There is a lot of power in the two writings taken as being by one writer. But if you separate the two writers, they lose this power. How much of the division is about weakening the power of the gospel itself, and how much of it has some authentic search for truth behind it? It seems that many of our theologians just try to neuter the NT's power, and to slice out everything that doesn't accord with socialism. I see socialism as the 666.
7 throughout Revelation is the good number. 6 is one less and is thus a kind of almost but not quite number. It is also the number that the ELCA got in their vote to change the pastorate.
If God exists then everything is meaningful and symbolic.
The last post was a response to an early posting by Stu in which he wrote, "There are few today who believe that the author of the Apocalypse is the same as the author of the eponymous Gospel. The books are wildly different in literary structure, in theological concerns, in audience, and in grammar. They are, by some statistical measures, the two most unlike books in the New Testament."
I suppose these things come and go.
Is there any powerful theologian who still maintains the liaison between the two books?
Kirby,
But now, there is a tendency to want to break up the writers of the NT and to destroy their authenticity thereby.
I don't buy this at all, either as a motivation or as an effect.
Instead, we've gained a much better understanding of the historical development of the early Church, and the characteristic difficulties it experienced at different times.
How much of the division is about weakening the power of the gospel itself, and how much of it has some authentic search for truth behind it?
The search for truth stands behind efforts to understand the NT better. I'll acknowledge that few of the folks doing textual studies are biblical literalists, but I think that comes with the territory. It's hard to accept theological claims about error-free transmission once you've seen physical evidence to the contrary. And once you understand that eror-free transmission is a chimera, you see much more clearly the hand of man in forming and transmitting these texts, and with that, the sense that they contain a mixture of divine wisdom and human folly. This is the death of literalism, but not the death of faith.
Luther had the advantage of recent publications of Erasmus's Greek New Testament (based on Byzantine texts) and the masoretic text of the Old Testament, and he made a lot of theological hay over the differences between these "original" texts and the Vulgate, e.g., in "penance" vs. "repentance." He thought, of course, that the GNT-MT represented the original form of the NT, and the masoretic text represented the original form of the Old Testament. These days, we know of the great Codexes, Papyrii, Dead Sea Scrolls, etc. It is a more complicated world, and I understand that you long for a simpler one. But what you're objecting to is Luther's method, as applied to more complete textual evidence than Luther had.
I suppose these things come and go.
Sometimes, but I think not in this case.
Is there any powerful theologian who still maintains the liaison between the two books?
I'm doubtful. It's not like the Pauline epistles, where knowledgable people can in good faith find reasons to disagree over which are authentic, and which are pseudepigraphic.
There is little reason to believe that the Apocalypse and the Gospel have the same author, save for the coincidence of a common name, and myriad reasons to doubt.
Stu,
This was a disaster for the Suomi synod, since there were relatively few Finnish-descent congregations to vote, and it really didn't matter that they each sung Finlandia 43 times a year, it still only got one vote from each of their congregations, so it and all of the other Finnish hymns fell by the wayside. It wouldn't surprise me if they still keep SBHs around, just for the hymns. Certainly, in their shoes, I would have.
I agree, and would empathize with the Finns for their wanting to keep the SBHs and sing their hymns. Although I'm not a Finn, I still miss some of the tunes we sung in the old SBH, which the LBW did not include.
I expect that the ELW will be the last "traditional" hymnal, and that when it becomes due for replacement in another thirty years, we'll have moved firmly to either electronic publishing or print-on-demand. This should remove the length constraint, and so (if we assume that the licensing issues can be dealt with) have the salutary consequence of allowing the reintroduction into the hymnal of what we've lost.
I hope it is not the last "traditional" hymnal, but you could be right. Indeed, the ELW allows for some electronic publishing now, and yes, it likely is the wave of the future with our high tech world in which we live.
But I will note what seems to me to be a real loss associated with the expansion of the hymnal (even as some traditional hymns have been elided). Back in the day, you could count on Lutheran congregations singing hymns in four parts, which reflected longstanding tradition supported by a modest, but common and well-mastered repertoire of hymn tunes. This was a beautiful symbol of how a community as a whole has capabilities that no individual by themselves has.
Yes! It is very sad that today no one wants to sing anymore, but only listen to music as spectators rather than participants. As a pastor, I especially notice this at funerals. Even the funeral homes sometimes encourage having only a soloist to "perform" at the funeral service rather than include the congregants in singing the hymns as an act of worship. I always continue to try to encourage families in their planning of funeral services to include congregational singing. I believe this is integral to the funeral worship service and the act of singing hymns facilitates healing and counsel of souls.
My guess is that there were two strains, which proved collectively too powerful for the tradition of four-part singing to overcome. The first was the adaption of the SBH, which contains many more hymn tunes (and so was correspondingly more difficult to master) than the CSB. The second was the widespread popularity of radio and television, which supplanted hymn sings and revivals as entertainment.
I think I agree. The universal access to mass media has reduced worship to "entertainment." Here I'm reminded of Neil Postman's thesis several years ago, namely: We are entertaining ourselves to death. The media judges events and is willing to make them known only if they have entertainment value. Consequently, those addicted to the media incorporate this same value as the media moguls, so there is a dumbing down process that is now prominent in our society. Although I recognize an irony here, and hypocrisy on my [our?] part as we utilize this high tech to communicate herein and are, in various degrees, addicted to it.
The exegetical experts themselves are divided on the authorship of the Apocalypso. There are some who place in the 1st century (ala Stu's points), time of Nero, or Caligula, etc but some suggest a later date (and thus not the same Ioanni Patmos as as that of the gospel). We suggest it's later, written during plague time, perhaps from Aurelius's reign (there were numerous plagues...the Justinian the ugliest). The horrorific imagery indicates as much--the hot mamacita on the beast with 7 heads, scorpions, cup of abominations etc--many images of pestilence. Yet the emperor's consorts would still be getting down with their bad selves. The writer's obviously miffed--but there is a method to his madness (and its written in fairly eloquent greek, and carefully arranged). Not a Manson, more like a Koresh...or Blake. Madness nonetheless.
""the Pauline epistles""
Jefferson omitted the Sauline klassix from his New Testament (abridged NT). Nietzsche... considered Saul as sort of a Moe Howard figure.
Kirby,
If it's any consolation to you, some scholars believe that the Letters 1,2 & 3 of John were likely written by the same author or community of authors as the Gospel of John. Earlier scholarship thought the letters preceded the Gospel, while most Johannine scholars now believe the Gospel was written first and then the letters at around 100 A.D.
Dim Lamp
Dim Lamp, could you name some of the scholars that place 123 of John as being written by the same writer who penned the Gospel of John? I really like the Gospel of John a lot. I also really enjoyed reading the Book of Revelation. I was amazed by so much in it! Christ appears as a hoary old man in 1:14: "His head and his hairs were white like wool, as white as snow; and his eyes were as a flame of fire;"
And I love how he appears almost like a Tarot card as designed by Dali:
1: 16: "And he had in his right hand seven stars; and out of his mouth went a sharp two edged sword: and his countenance was as the sun shineth in his strength."
Then Christ proceeds to say he's going to kill all kinds of people who've disobeyed. 2:23 "And I will kill her children with death; and all the churches shall know that I am he which searcheth the reins and hearts: and I will give you every one of you according to your works."
Everybody's going to get what they deserve. This Christ is coming back with a vengeance and is going to wipe out 666 and all those associated with such things as fornication.
They will all be cast into a lake of fire along with Satan. (This is not a Unitarian Universalist Gospel!).
Moreoever, the earth is going to be switched for a new earth.
20:2: "And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan, and bound him a thousand years
2:10 "and the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night for EVER AND EVER."
20:15 "And whoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire."
21:8 "But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death."
21: 1-2: "And I saw a NEW HEAVEN and NEW EARTH: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea. And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepapred as a bride adorned for her husband."
But the entire new Jerusalem shall be 1300 square miles, surrounded by a wall 200 feet high which is adorned with jewels. And most mercifully of all, there will be NO DOGS IN THE NEW JERUSALEM. All their barking shall cease. It says so quite plainly.
22:15 For without ARE dogs, and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers, and idolaters, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie.
DOGS ARE GONE FOREVER, along with LIES!
It doesn't say anything about cats.
Kirby,
Here's a list of some scholars.
1.Johannes Beutler, in Global Bible Commentary, and in German: Die Johannesbriefe: ubersezt und erklart von Johannes Beutler.
2. Raymond Brown, The Community of the Beloved Disciple; and: The Epistles of John - Anchor Bible series by Doubleday.
3. R. Alan Culpepper, 1,2, & 3 John in Harper's Bible Commentary.
4. Kenneth Grayston, The Johannine Epistles: Based on the Revised Standard Version.
5. J.L. Houlden, The Johannine Epistles.
6. C.H. Dodd, The Johannine Epistles.
7. Gail R. O'Day, 1,2 & 3 John in The Women's Bible Commentary.
8. Robert Kysar, I, II, III John Augsburg Commentary on the NT series.
9. Pheme Perkins, The Johannine Epistles.
10. John Painter, 1,2, and 3 John.
Blessings,
Dim Lamp
In other words, think Bosch-land. Bonedaddies, with swords. Jason and the Argonauts. At least until the Lamb appears (supposedly), the horns play, etc.
Per the "New Advent" St. Jerome did not consider the Apocalypse apostolic ...or even genuine. (Then Jerry may have been a wussie as well). Other leading lights of the 2nd-3rd century had their doubts as well.
There is a lot of animal imagery. Many colored horses, and scorpions with men's faces. Purple is the prevailing color of secular ruin, and prostitution, while Christ says that those who are with him shall wear "white raiment," (2:18), and the armies of heaven shall ride white horses, and be arrayed in white (19:14). Christ is represented as a lamb throughout, but also as a lion (5:5) but the other side has lion imagery as well (13:2) and (4:7).
Thanks for the list of Johannine material, Dim Lamp! Is any of it particularly salient or amusing? I admit I like to read amusing things and am not particularly enchanted by dry dusty things. I would love to read a brief penetrating account. Would you care to single out one thing I should definitely have a go at?
also, is there one book on BoR that I could have a profitable go at? I confess I like penetrating, amusing, and am not averse to charm, or difficulty.
Hume on the alleged miracles of New Testament (and Old, actually):...(T)here is not to be found, in all history, any miracle attested by a sufficient number of Men of such unquestioned good sense, education, and learning as to serve us against all delusion in themselves; of such undaunted integrity as to place themselves beyond all suspicion of any design to deceive others; of such credit and reputation in the eyes of mankind as to have a great deal to lose in case of their being detected in any falsehood, and at the same time attesting facts performed in such a public manner and in so celebrated a part of the world as to render the detection unavoidable...
Hume may have been a philistine, perhaps a scoundrel (tho' an eloquent one). The argument remains, however: reasonable people might have doubts about an ancient book that features stories of harlots riding 7-headed beasts (and the dead coming back to life). That was the view of the Founding Fathers. AS evidence ..or jurisprudence the Book of Revelation has no standing ( I would not say that is necessarily..a-theism, but reasoned skepticism: the viewpoint (however..cold) of one opposed to inerrant views of scripture and/or theocratic views).
John of Patmos foresees these things. Hume is talking about the past. He's talking about what HAS happened. Hume never suggests that the future might not be different. Remember, he is against causality because he claims that even if the same thing happens the same way a billion times, the next time it might happen differently. Christ COULD go into the New Jerusalem on a rhinoceros.
The vision is essentially not falsifiable.
does this mean that it's not true? We don't know. We won't know unless it happens, and there are tiny errors in the account.
Until then, the vision is a prophecy, not an account of something that's happened.
Remember, he is against causality because he claims that even if the same thing happens the same way a billion times, the next time it might happen differently.
Yes, but with qualifications, per the "uniformity of experience" IIRC. Normal humans have not witnessed angels, demons, jezebels on monsters, etc. Thus we have no good reason from a subjective POV to accept the reports of alleged supernatural events (especially with no good evidence--say a fossil/skeleton of a 7 headed creature) and better reasons to consider the testimony mistaken (or...possibly a hoax, or madness, intoxication, etc). When you see the bonedaddy you change your belief system.
It's positing some kind of end time when there are lakes of fire, and it's conceivable to have a 1300 square mile city that's 200 ft. high. It does test belief, since there's nothing like that, and not enough jewels to augment the walls. The bad is also exaggerated versions of what could be possible. But the whole earth has been changed. The universe as it is? It's inconceivable in its immensity, and in terms of the number of things that already exist (billions of different kinds of beetles). It IS possible to think of these things as allegorical, as is done with Jason and the Argonauts (matriarchal/patriarchal) or some other paradigm can help us separate the images into good and bad. I like how you aim at the standard of reasonableness, but that standard wouldn't seem to apply here. You can't get in the door with that viewpoint.
You have to a suspension of disbelief.
Love stories typically condense what's believable.
Real life isn't like that or doesn't end there.
It's fun to test this book with Hume, though. Bette thna Nietzsche, but Hume had the same intention, more or less.
at any rate, we're not sure how far into the future we're going.
If you started with seaweed it would be hard to predict humans living in cities and going to Burger King.
Perhaps a billion years from now there will be further evolutions.
In geological time, soon is hard to interpret.
I tend to like this kind of book. I really like Jason and the Argonauts, too.
The idea of a ship with a mast that talks is a bit of a stretch, but I like it.
In dreams it's quite easy for this kind of thing to happen. Are prophecies more like dreams than they are like history, and more like poetry than like ... like scientific examination?
The Bible as allegory and literature, sure. Hume would allow that, most likely. Does the fundamentalist preacher, or priest? I don't think so.
There's another point contra- miracles however that many believers overlook. Would a loving, benevolent God who could perform miracles (even say, answering prayers for the sick, or soldiers at war, etc) be so stingy?? Or something like that. Ie, no angels or demons appeared when the panzers or Red army rolled, or over concentration camps or gulags. Yet "God" allows the Fatima vision? Unlikely. The veteran who comes back without his legs won't be growing new ones, even if catholic ladies say novenas for a year. Rather obvious, but ...dems the facts. ( a RC priest posted that somewhere online)
It seems that god puts a lot of people to the test. Job got tested, and rather severely. Some get tested far more so. Solzhenitsyn had it fairly light compared to some, and yet so many managed to retain belief through the Dark Ages of Stalin and his boys. Something similar happened in Romania. Even on the very night when the children were shot down in Timisoara, Eastern Orthodox priests, and many families, brought out more children, to sing, "God exists!" It's one of the strangest things in human history. Without ANY fragment of evidence, people continue to believe that there is an ultimate good. I do, too.
Where do we get this from?
The Darwinians say there isn't: it's just different life forms eating other lifeforms in a random world.
Part of it might be that the very notion of a world that is liveable is a miracle. Part of it might be wish fulfillment. Part of it might be some bizarre hunch that is common to us, some sense that there is something beyond.
What is it that Christ speaks to? It's not to our scientific judgement. It's not even to our reason. It's not to the part of us that likes poetry. It's seemingly to that least scientific of concepts (completely unable to be found in a tangible form in spite of all the attempts of the medievals to discover it) the soul.
Doesn't weigh anything.
If it does, it's the lightest thing in the world.
and yet, it has always oriented human life, and without it, people are morally insane.
And it's weird: just as the world gets to be the darkest at the darkest hour, is when it shines most brightly. It appears to be a paradox that is beyond our understanding, and yet which completely orients and protects our understanding.
Thanks for the list of Johannine material, Dim Lamp! Is any of it particularly salient or amusing? I admit I like to read amusing things and am not particularly enchanted by dry dusty things. I would love to read a brief penetrating account. Would you care to single out one thing I should definitely have a go at?
also, is there one book on BoR that I could have a profitable go at? I confess I like penetrating, amusing, and am not averse to charm, or difficulty.
Depends on what you mean by salient and amusing - we all have our ideas of those kinds of descriptive words. So don't know exactly what you mean. If you mean they are poetry or allegory, then I'd have to say nope, I doubt whether you find much of that in such comentaries.
As for a B of R commentary, you may want to try these.
1. G.B. Caird, A Commentary on the Revelation of St. John the Divine.
2. A.Y. Collins, ed., Early Christian Apocalypticism: Genre and Social Setting.
3. A.Y. Collins, Crisis and Catharsis: The Power of the Apocalypse.
4. Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza, The Book of Revelation: Justice and Judgment.
5. E. Schussler Fiorenza, Revelation: Vision of a Just World.
Again, I'm not sure whether you'll find these salient and amusing or dry or something else. All the best.
Dim Lamp, I shall browse through these, and choose one or two. Last night I ordered this:
"Breaking the Code - Participant's Book: Understanding the Book of Revelation"
Bruce M. Metzger; Paperback; $4.93
The reviews said that the first 30 pages were excellent and it was spotty after that. But it's only a 100 pages long, and I thought I could handle that in the space of one or two hours.
My 2nd grader said to me last night: "Dad your idea of being weird is to read a weird book. Why don't you wiggle your body in a weird way?"
He then wiggled his body to demonstrate.
I went behind a wall and said I was wiggling like that. He laughed, but he knew I wasn't.
IMO Kierkegaard offers about the most salient explaination of religious thinking (and faith). The rational, Aristotelian explanations fall short (ie is the black plague part of Providence?...the Queequeg lemma)--or at best suggests a type of deism. The historical view runs into Hume & Co's criticism (ie, as evidence of the supernatural, Scripture does not suffice). Ergo SK believes..."credo que absurdum"--the viewpoint of the honest zealot (not saying he's correct, and in fact it's a sort of Enthusiasm), and that keeps the sunday school bidness going (at least until ...the subversives and radicals appear).
Kirby, Dim Lamp,
Let me just put in my assent to what Dim Lamp wrote regarding John's Epistles.
From what I've read, while there are scholars who are skeptical about the traditional belief that the authors of the Gospel of John and John's Epistles are one in the same, the nature of the argument is an absence of evidence of association rather than a preponderance of evidence of difference. Their argument is that the titles given to the books of the bible came long after their composition, and so the fact that a letter is titled, say, the 2nd Epistle of John, is weak evidence that John wrote it, especially in a culture where attributing texts to highly regarded predecessors was a common technique for increasing their authority.
But I'm not aware of any useful insight that flows from positing that the author of the Gospel of John is different from the author of the Epistles of John. They have a broadly similar theological perspective, similar literary style, they seem to speak to similar audiences, and they seem to have been written within a decade of one another. Even the "splitters" tend to believe something along the following lines: the Epistles were written by the apostle, while the Gospel was written soon after his death by his immediate followers as a way of preserving the his ideosyncratic insight into the life, death, resurrection, and significance of Jesus of Nazareth. It's a nice story, and plausible, but the evidence is less than compelling, and the tradition that the Gospel preserves an apostolic witness stands either way, so there's not a lot at stake.
As for Revelation, I have a practical theory. Persecution of the early Christian Church was for the most part episodic and regional. Revelation was written to support the early 2nd century Christian church in western Asia Minor as it faced such a persecution, and it's a book whose value has always been most apparent to persecuted churches. But, even in the 2nd and 3rd century, this was not a common experience, and for churches that were not being persecuted, Revelation was enigmatic and sometimes even problematic, much as it still is today. Unlike the gospels, it doesn't speak of Jesus's life and ministry. Unlike the Epistles, it doesn't speak to the situation of most churches. So it was controversial. But as the broader church experienced systematic persecution during the 2nd half of the third century, the utility and significance of Revelation became more generally apparent, hence its eventual incorporation into the New Testament.
I'm a bit surprised given your commitments that you went with the Metzger commentary. Metzger is one of the biblical scholars that literalists love to hate. He takes a liberal stance w.r.t. scriptural authority, and he writes a lot of popular books that involve around textual studies and variant texts. I've read at least one Revelation study by Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza, but I can't remember which. I remember it as scholarly and good, but not a "hit the ball out of the park" experience.
The Revelation commentary that for me came closest to "hitting it out of the park" is "The Rapture Exposed: The Message of Hope in the Book of Revelation," by Barbara Rossing of LSTC. I should warn you, though, that Rossing's book began as an essay against the misuses of Revelation by dispensationalists and their ilk, so it is a book that has a definite agenda, which Rossing is entirely upfront about.
Stu, I just need to read around and sample different perspectives at this point. I haven't settled on one, but will probably end up reading something from some pastor in Kansas in 1840 or thereabouts that seems to me to be the truth. But for now, I'm even quite interested in J's bringing up of TJefferson and Neitzsche --. The ravings of a drug addict school seem quite wrong to me, as the whole thing seems very tightly focused. I did read a very fine account online this afternoon by someone who isn't literalist (that the exact things will happen) but explained in detail what each item meant to his own understanding. I'll try to find and post the link.
My understanding of the Bible is shaky and certainly nowhere near that of any theologian of any stripe. I did read something by Rossing years ago on Revelation. It seemed to me that she emphasized an ecological reading in that she pointed out that the New Jerusalem would be on this earth, which implied that we had to take care of it. It is on this earth, but it will also be "made new" according to one of the later verses, and presumably it will be enlarged somewhat given the gigantic city that the New Jerusalem will be (1300 sq. miles, and it will be 200 ft. high, or at least the wall will be).
At one point it says all the bad guys are going into a lake of fire, but then at the end there are still liars fornicators and dogs outside the city walls but they can't get in due to the angels guarding it. As a cyanophobe, I'm certainly glad that there are no dogs in the town. Thus there is also no scooping.
After years now of digging into the materials and having read the whole Bible through and some books many times I feel as though I might qualify as a Biblical pink belt. I would need to read at least ten books from different viewpoints to get closer to understanding Revelation. I also like to read older books -- books from people writing in the 12th century, in the 17th, and other periods. This is partially amusement, and partially to get a sense of how the book can be used in contemporary battles of various kinds.
I'd also like to read from various areas. It would be amusing to read a South Korean theologian, for instance, or someone from Namibia.
However quaint or un-PC they were, nearly all the Founding Fathers, not only Jeff., opposed the inerrant view of Scripture (indeed one might say empiricists as a whole did). Those sections in accord with Reason they accepted; those that aren't (ie supernatural), they didn't. The evidential problems are not as trivial as many biblethumpers think (ie, to claim ..that people rise from the dead, virgin birth--or the Gandalf-magic of JC's conversion of water to wine, loaves to fishes, etc-- don't you say...pigs fly, more or less? Seems like it).
I'm about half way through Metzgar's book on Revelation. He says 7 because of the days of the week. He says the dogs that are outside the city in the last part are actually not dogs but a reference to Sodomites (because they do it in a similar way). He explains the 24 wise men as 12 leaders of the tribes plus the 12 disciples. He seems to have an answer for a lot, but not all of the images. He names the 7 churches (they are all within 10 miles of Ephesus). He gives accounts of all 7, and focuses on the Laodicaeans, who were notoriously for being empty Christians. He said the Thyatus lady was just a Gnostic, but not necessarily a licentious one.
It's a fun book to read. I'm on p. 60 and there are only 109 pages. He teaches at Princeton Seminary.
I meant to write 100 miles, not 10.
I'm about half way through Metzgar's book on Revelation. He says 7 because of the days of the week. He says the dogs that are outside the city in the last part are actually not dogs but a reference to Sodomites (because they do it in a similar way). He explains the 24 wise men as 12 leaders of the tribes plus the 12 disciples. He seems to have an answer for a lot, but not all of the images. He names the 7 churches (they are all within 10 miles of Ephesus). He gives accounts of all 7, and focuses on the Laodicaeans, who were notoriously for being empty Christians. He said the Thyatus lady was just a Gnostic, but not necessarily a licentious one.
It's a fun book to read. I'm on p. 60 and there are only 109 pages. He teaches at Princeton Seminary.
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