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Discussion Notes
Week 1: Reading Revelation
1: Types of literature
A letter
A prophecy
Apocalyptic
2: Reading through
a lens
Modernity and the lust for tidiness and facts.
The reduction of any text into a source of useful facts.
3:
How might the modernist lens affect our reading?
Literalism in interpretation
Political subversion displaced by Collusion with the Empire
1: Types of Literature
Of all the books to consider
in a reading group, the ancient Book of Revelation, sometimes
called Revelations or the Apocalypse, is probably the worst
choice. It is full of bizarre imagery, which can mtical value
at all, or c.) lends itself to being misinterpreted by those
with an axe to grind. It has been a battlefield of interpretation,
and I have to say, that is why I find it an attractive book.
It was written by Christians, in a world
where it was dangerous to be a Christian, where a dominant
and unrivalled empire put pressure on Christians both overtly
through direct persecution, and covertly, by causing them
to buy into the ideology of the empire. And the text as a
whole is carefully crafted to address those issues. But such
issues are not easily addressed in an empire – and this
is why the book is unique. It does not fall directly into
any single genre – just like when the Gospels were written
they did not fit into any recognisable form of literature.
But Revelation combines three different literary forms in
order to communicate a clear message to Christians living
under the shadow of an empire.
In the first instance, it is a letter. That
is, a real letter, written by a real person, to real people.
It has specific relevance to people in a particular situation.
And that is what a letter must always have. Before it addresses
anyone in the church of the twenty first century, it addresses
a small number of communities living in specific region of
the Roman Empire in the late first century, and it is a letter
designed to offer practical guidance and encouragement. But
to twenty first century readers, it does not read like a letter
that makes much sense at all – the reason being that
the imagery it employs is simply not familiar to us in the
way it was to those who first heard it. The earliest recipients
of this letter had grown up with a deep awareness of the Jewish
scriptures – and would be sensitive to the allusions
that run throughout the letter – that so easily pass
us by. And since the letter has a religious purpose, it falls
also under another literary category.
Revelation is, secondly, a prophetic text.
To the modern reader, it can often be assumed that prophecy
is simply to do with foreseeing the future. This has never
been its primary meaning in the scriptures of Jews or Christians,
although it is often a secondary dimension of prophecy. A
prophecy is rather a perspective on what is happening in the
world today, that enables you to look at it differently. The
prophets were believed to have brought God's perspectives
on the events of human history. Because prophecies usually
address the situations that face entire communities, it cannot
help but be political.
In an age where it is often thought that
religion and politics don't mix, this can sound a little odd.
And by politics, we don't simply mean party politics and politicians.
Rather, politics refers to the way that wider forces dictate
the habits, and assumptions, the culture and the economics
that so deeply shape the real life of real people. Prophecy
has an eye on the politics of the day, but does not lose focus
upon the little people who are affected by it, nor upon the
character of God who is held to be in ultimate control. It
is that God-centred focus that forms the third literary form
of Revelation:
Apocalypse: it is a Greek word mean something
that has been brought out of hiding – it means that
something has been dis-closed, un-covered, re-vealed. It refers
to a peep behind the curtain of history, to look at precisely
what is happening. But it employs a great deal of imagery
and symbol. This is because, if one were just to write in
a straight-forward way about the empire under which one endures
– there is going to be trouble. But for those who run
the empire – like for many 21st century readers –
the imagery is meaningless, and it can read just like a harmless
text that makes bizarre claims. Sadly, this is precisely how
it is often read by many who sincerely believe they are taking
it seriously!
2: Reading Through
The Modernist Lens
Nobody comes to any type of text with a clear,
uncluttered mind. We are shaped by our environment, so that
this affects the meaning we extract from a text. Our upbringing,
our television watching, our habits, our friendships, all
shape the way that we read a text, and affect the sense we
make out of it. This usually happens in ways that we might
not realise.
One of the important characteristics of the
modern age, is to keep everything neat and tidy – to
tidy the world up into fact and fiction, right and wrong,
good and evil. It is a quest for order, and precision, and
factual knowledge.
One of the great tendencies of the modern
reader for instance, is to assume that the text has something
called a meaning, which can be carefully extracted from it.
It usually turns books – and in particular the Bible,
into a collection of facts. The kind of literature is irrelevant
– what counts are the facts that can be deduced from
it. And you hear this all the time in Christian preaching.
Jesus tells a parable, and instead of allowing its story to
impact you, you can draw out points a-f of spiritual meaning.
You see it with Genesis, where it is read as a scientific
set of facts, instead of as the kind of text it actually is.
And there are many many examples of how we bring a blue-print
to the text, to make it give us the kind of meaning we search
for.
And the problem is that when it comes to
Revelation – the imagery is treated by many as a set
of facts. Alternatively, it might be understood to explain
the sequence of events at the end of time, and the symbols
will be interpreted so as to give us the facts. And to treat
any book in this way is utter failure to listen to what the
text actually has to say to the reader. If Revelation were
simply a set of facts about the end of time, then it would
have been written in a much more straightforward way!
3: The Lens Affects
How we Read
When this is the context in which we read,
it is hardly surprising that Revelation has become an area
of such controversy. Many people have brought a set of facts
which map out what will happen at the end of time.
And so the interpretation gets really complicated.
In the last century, a collection of factual sounding categories
sprung up – premillenial, postmillennial, amillenial
– and so on. The debate is all to do with a thousand
year reign, and whether Christ comes before or after it. And
it is often assumed that if you read Revelation, you have
to fall into one of those categories. But again, the entire
assumption is that Revelation is a collection of facts designed
to describe the end of the space time continuum!
And there is of course, the whole issue of
the Left Behind series of novels about the so called end-times.
It is an attempt to try to describe how the second coming
described in Revelation, would look if it happened today.
So there is "the rapture of the church" (a 19 th
Century phrase!) which leads to people on aeroplanes disappearing,
foetuses being miraculously teleported out of the womb, young
children vanishing, and all good born again Christians going
up in a puff off smoke, leaving behind only their clothes.
And of course, they have been taken to heaven by Jesus. Now
quite apart from the fact that it is a whole line of interpretation
which no serious biblical scholar could conceivably regard
as legitimate, more importantly the line of interpretation
it follows is a frightening demonstration of how the book
of Revelation has been interpreted to have its opposite meaning:
The text of Revelation is one of political
subversion. The authority of the age – that is, the
Roman Empire , is being severely critiqued and displaced by
the authority of God himself. The ultimate power that the
empire claims to wield, is shown to be in the hands of God
himself – not in any earthly Imperial pretence to absolute
power. But the prevailing line of interpretation found in
places like the Left Behind series of novels, is one that
looks more like collusion with the empire.
The United Nations are demonised –
as are Jews and Catholics. Ecumenism is evil – so is
the desire for arms control. In fact, evil is the description
of anyone in the world today who disagrees with the political
views of the author. Open democratic debate is wrong, assassination
is a valid pursuit, and in the end – what you have is
a series of books that is a defence of the extreme Christian
right. What looks like a subversive series of books (in defence
of a Christian minority in the face of conspiracy and oppression)
is actually the most conservative defence imaginable of the
only Empire in the world today – the very opposite intention
of the book of Revelation.
Conclusion
Well, that is just one example about how
Revelation can be interpreted. Our focus over the next few
weeks will be to try to hear this book how a first century
Jewish Christian would have heard it, because only then can
it have any relevance for twenty first century Christians.
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