Apocalypse now? I don't think so.
Today the History Channel ran a fascinating program on the Book of Revelations... especially fascinating in that they went into great depth into why John of Patmos used the imagery and florid language he choose to use and what he actually meant by it as opposed to what the fundamentalists would have you believe it means. If you ask any legitimate biblical scholar, Revelations was never meant to be taken literally! During the days of the first century CE you did not want to write anything that might piss off the Roman authorities! No siree Bob! Pissing off the Romans was one way to cause your health to become very bad very quickly indeed!
And since John was already in not so good stead with Rome (having already been exiled to Patmos for God’s sake after all) he was not too keen to further piss the powers that be off any more than could possibly be helped. So he wrote in Greek for one thing. But every learned Roman read Greek so he borrowed from the imagery of the Jewish Book of David among others in order to assemble a set of metaphors the churches he was writing to would understand as relating to criticism of Rome and her Emperors, but the Roman authorities would take to be the raving of a religious nut case. Thus when he speaks of “the Whore of Babylon” he is actually talking about Rome, see? Now that makes sense. That is something I can fully understand and even admire. I mean you HAVE to admire the guy for coming up with this ploy! It’s positively brilliant! He could have used a code, but codes raise suspicions in and of themselves and can be broken far too easily. But no, he opted to use religious imagery that his enemies would overlook but his friends would be able to read as plainly as if he had written it in clear, everyday Latin! Brilliant!
And so for those FundaMentalist Christians who still insist that everyone take the Book of Revelations literally all I can say is BUHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! You really mean that??? BUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHA!
That's my opinion and you are welcome to it.
Julie Johnson aka “The Great Spoon“
And since John was already in not so good stead with Rome (having already been exiled to Patmos for God’s sake after all) he was not too keen to further piss the powers that be off any more than could possibly be helped. So he wrote in Greek for one thing. But every learned Roman read Greek so he borrowed from the imagery of the Jewish Book of David among others in order to assemble a set of metaphors the churches he was writing to would understand as relating to criticism of Rome and her Emperors, but the Roman authorities would take to be the raving of a religious nut case. Thus when he speaks of “the Whore of Babylon” he is actually talking about Rome, see? Now that makes sense. That is something I can fully understand and even admire. I mean you HAVE to admire the guy for coming up with this ploy! It’s positively brilliant! He could have used a code, but codes raise suspicions in and of themselves and can be broken far too easily. But no, he opted to use religious imagery that his enemies would overlook but his friends would be able to read as plainly as if he had written it in clear, everyday Latin! Brilliant!
And so for those FundaMentalist Christians who still insist that everyone take the Book of Revelations literally all I can say is BUHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! You really mean that??? BUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHA!
That's my opinion and you are welcome to it.
Julie Johnson aka “The Great Spoon“
posted by JulieDee at 4/24/2005 06:00:00 PM
1 Comments:
In what ways does the article challenge or question the conventional ideas surrounding apocalyptic scenarios, and what examples or evidence does it provide to support its perspective?Telkom University
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