Discussion on the book of the Apocalypse

[Kyriakos]

καὶ ἐν ταῖς ἡμέραις ἐκείναις ζητήσουσιν οἱ ἄνθρωποι τὸν θάνατον καὶ οὐ μὴ εὑρήσουσιν αὐτόν, καὶ ἐπιθυμήσουσιν ἀποθανεῖν καὶ φεύγει ὁ θάνατος ἀπ’ αὐτῶν.

During those days people will seek death but will not find it; they will long to die, but death will elude them.

This thread is meant as a multi-faceted discussion (literary, theological, philosophical, and religious) of the book of the Apocalypse, as composed by St John on the island of Patmos in the end of the first century AD.

I find a lot of the passages from that book to be quite interesting. Most of the New Testament is written in rather boring attic Greek, but the Apocalypse has more vibrant tones, along with the obviously more ominous icons it comprises of.

You can take part in the thread by mentioning your own view of the Apocalypse, from the perspective you approach it. As usual all views are welcome as long as they remain civil. While my intention is not a heavily religious debate, the subject of the thread clearly allows for religious views to be noted too.

 

[classical_hero]

That is an interesting verse. The things is that often when people suffer they want an easy way out and often death is one way to easy the suffering. Now this won't be an option for a period of time, since in Revelation God is pouring out his wrath on mankind and his rejection of God';s offer. Also it is a time when God is punishing Jews for rejecting Jesus n]and push them to realise that Jesus is the messiah. It won't be a good time to be around when God pours out his wrath, just as it wasn't to those except the 8 in the ark when God judged the old world with a flood.

 

[timtofly]

I realize that my first question is slightly off the topic, but what is the reasoning that the last week of Daniels prophecy concerning the Jews is one of punishment on the Jews themselves? God allows the times of the gentiles to come between the 49th and 50th week, so that the Jews have one more chance to lead the world before all human governments come to an end, and God rules personally over the earth.

There will be conflict all around, and according to chapter 7 (which is in parenthesis) between chapter 6 and 8. There will be 144,000 Jews who are marked who will not die (nor punished) during the rest of the judgments. It is the time of Jewish "leadership" while the rest of the world is severely punished. The "punishment" that the Jews asked for when they said his blood be upon us has been ongoing for 2000 years. They gave up being the chosen ones in favor of the chance that there will be chosen ones from the Gentiles.

 

[warpus]

This thread is meant as a multi-faceted discussion (literary, theological, philosophical, and religious) of the book of the Apocalypse, as composed by St John on the island of Patmos in the end of the first century AD.

I wonder if anyone knows why all this was written in the first place? I mean, what was the purpose? What was St. John attempting to achieve?

Was it a "The people are partying and sinning too much and even eating bacon. We need to scare them a bit into behaving better"

 

[timtofly]

I think that he was dreaming... a "lucid" dream.

 

[Kyriakos]

I wonder if anyone knows why all this was written in the first place? I mean, what was the purpose? What was St. John attempting to achieve?

Was it a "The people are partying and sinning too much and even eating bacon. We need to scare them a bit into behaving better"

From what i read of Patmos in the period, it was some sort of mine colony along with a penal colony. The island is very small and quite isolated (Kos was probably the only larger island city near it in that era as well, and to the opposite direction there was Samos).



John was supposedly very old by the time he found himself on the island, and i read that he was banished there so as to not cause more problems with preaching christianity.

 

[timtofly]

John was supposedly very old by the time he found himself on the island, and i read that he was banished there so as to not cause more problems with preaching christianity.

Little good that did if his letters were smuggled off of the island.

 

[warpus]

This might be a stupid question, but did these books end up in the Bible then? I could google it, but I'm on my way out.

 

[BvBPL]

It is my understanding that much of the book was written as a coded diatribe and warning against Nero. For example, the seven heads of the Beast represent the seven hills of Rome. That the Beast came from the sea calls to the power Rome was able to exert on the Levant and Greece via its navy, that is to say that for Israel Romans literally came from the sea.

The Mark of the Beast supposedly calls to the requirement that merchants would need to be licensed by Rome. What's more, the term used for the Mark in the original Greek can be translated as "minted money," money from Rome that would have the emperor's face on it. Where Roman money was the only acceptable currency, one could not engage in commerce without using the emperor's money, ie the Mark of the Beast.

and made it illegal for anyone to buy or sell anything unless he had been branded with the name of the beast or with the number of its name.

The use of the number 666 as the number of the Beast again calls back to Nero. Hebrew (and I think Greek) assigns numeric values to its letters. The Hebrew Qabalistic tradition equates words that have the same numeric value as being same or corresponding to each other. So my copy of 777 states that 273 is the numeric value for "the stone that the builders rejected," and "the hidden light," and "rebuked." Qabalistically, the stone that the builders rejected was rebuked but is also the hidden light, which is in keeping with the Christian tradition that the stone that the builders rejected (Jesus rejected by the Jewish powers at the time) became the corner stone (of Christianity) and is the (hidden) light of the world.

Anyway, 666 apparently is the numeric value of Nero's name. I'm pretty sure that's true in Hebrew, but I'm not sure about the Greek. John's primary audience were Greek speakers, but ones that had at least a passing familiarity with Hebrew and Hebrew traditions.

So when John talks about 666 he's talking about Nero and when John is talking about receiving the Mark of the Beast being necessary to conduct commerce he's talking about the necessity to obtain Roman licenses to operate businesses and to trade in coin w/ Nero's face printed on it.

Now John wrote the Book at a time when Christians were persecuted a great deal by Nero. Nero or his agents would apparently torture Christians for some length of time. This seems to call back to the verse Kyriakos cited about wanting to die but being unable to do so. That is, one is being tortured for a length of time and might desire the release of death but the Roman torturer would never give it. Plenty of other travails of the eschaton as described by John may also be analogous to the indignities put upon Christians by the Roman state at that time.

Keep in mind that John was writing from prison so his mail and such was being read. A naked attack upon Nero would not have been released. However, by using coded poetic language he was able to communicate concerns about Nero and Rome without overtly discussing either.

So that's some historical and linguistic background into the Book.

 

[JollyRoger]

That was written so long ago that it is possible that God has changed his mind on the subject by now.

 

[Kyriakos]

Regarding numerals, yes Greek numerals (which were the Greek letters) had obvious links to words, either by chance or not.
666 is not (as far as i know) a very evident in its 'meaning' number in Greek numerals. Those numerals formally ended in 999, and then repeated in a circle with the addition of the "1000" letter/sign next to them.
This would make the middle of the Greek numerals be at 500, including the zero used in division (not the same symbol as the arabic one).
666 can be said, i suppose, to be a sort of inverted end (inverted 999 etc). I am sure other geometric understandings of it would have existed at the time John was writing the Apocalypse, but i am not aware of what of those would be alluded to (if any) by him when he claims that 666 is the number of the beast.

 

[BvBPL]

I briefly did a little more research on 666 and found that gematria, which is the correspondence of the numeric values of words to other words with the same value as described above, was not limited to Hebrew. There was apparently a Greek tradition of gematria that was contemporary with the writing of this Book.

That said, I'm not seeing a lot of Greek gematria associated with the Book or at least the number. I think that most scholars have focused on translation from the Greek (or Latin) into Hebrew, indicating that it was Hebrew gematria via a Greek (or Latin) source.

So you might discount the Greek association with 666 and Nero except in the context that Greek was the means by which the message was sent, but that the message was intended to be interpreted through a Hebrew lens.

The situation may be analogous to a cipher by homonyms. Imagine a German possessed of an understanding of English writing to another German with the same understanding "all's been read" in German. Both parties understand that the phrase should be translated into English and then substituted for homonyms. The plain message is "the entirety was perused," but the hidden message is "the leather puncher's box is crimson." (obviously this would be complicated by the use of a conjunction versus a possessive as well as some slightly nonstandard grammar, but I think the example sufficently communicates my point)

 

[classical_hero]

In the Bible the number "7" is the number of God, so it is normally associated with perfection, and "6" is the number of man, since it falls short of God's number and thus is imperfect. So 666 is a representation of the unholy trinity as opposed to God's trinity.

 

[El_Machinae]

I never really studied the book in depth. I was raised in a church that had a ... detailed ... mythology regarding the End Times, stories we told ourselves. I remember reading Revelations in church and was able to 'follow' the metaphors (interpreting them in the light that I was taught) for about halfway through the book, and then couldn't follow the metaphors any longer. I tried again when I was older, but was never able to put together a 'coherent' idea of what John was trying to say, even when I tried to be an 'independent thinker'. I don't think that that author was heavily using allegory, but he might have been going a wee bit too far.

 

[JollyRoger]

Deleted - for RD reasons.

 

[timtofly]

It is my understanding that much of the book was written as a coded diatribe and warning against Nero. For example, the seven heads of the Beast represent the seven hills of Rome. That the Beast came from the sea calls to the power Rome was able to exert on the Levant and Greece via its navy, that is to say that for Israel Romans literally came from the sea.

The Mark of the Beast supposedly calls to the requirement that merchants would need to be licensed by Rome. What's more, the term used for the Mark in the original Greek can be translated as "minted money," money from Rome that would have the emperor's face on it. Where Roman money was the only acceptable currency, one could not engage in commerce without using the emperor's money, ie the Mark of the Beast.



The use of the number 666 as the number of the Beast again calls back to Nero. Hebrew (and I think Greek) assigns numeric values to its letters. The Hebrew Qabalistic tradition equates words that have the same numeric value as being same or corresponding to each other. So my copy of 777 states that 273 is the numeric value for "the stone that the builders rejected," and "the hidden light," and "rebuked." Qabalistically, the stone that the builders rejected was rebuked but is also the hidden light, which is in keeping with the Christian tradition that the stone that the builders rejected (Jesus rejected by the Jewish powers at the time) became the corner stone (of Christianity) and is the (hidden) light of the world.

Anyway, 666 apparently is the numeric value of Nero's name. I'm pretty sure that's true in Hebrew, but I'm not sure about the Greek. John's primary audience were Greek speakers, but ones that had at least a passing familiarity with Hebrew and Hebrew traditions.

So when John talks about 666 he's talking about Nero and when John is talking about receiving the Mark of the Beast being necessary to conduct commerce he's talking about the necessity to obtain Roman licenses to operate businesses and to trade in coin w/ Nero's face printed on it.

Now John wrote the Book at a time when Christians were persecuted a great deal by Nero. Nero or his agents would apparently torture Christians for some length of time. This seems to call back to the verse Kyriakos cited about wanting to die but being unable to do so. That is, one is being tortured for a length of time and might desire the release of death but the Roman torturer would never give it. Plenty of other travails of the eschaton as described by John may also be analogous to the indignities put upon Christians by the Roman state at that time.

Keep in mind that John was writing from prison so his mail and such was being read. A naked attack upon Nero would not have been released. However, by using coded poetic language he was able to communicate concerns about Nero and Rome without overtly discussing either.

So that's some historical and linguistic background into the Book.

At what point in history was this brought forth as a concept?

What point was there to state that it was a dream?

 

[Arakhor]

This article makes for interesting reading, though I'm even more interested by the fact that you called Revelation "Apostle John, Apocalypse". As far as I understand it, St John of Patmos is not now believed to be St John the Apostle - is that different in Orthodox tradition?

 

[timtofly]

So man's finale triumph in geometry and math will be his downfall?

 

[BvBPL]

At what point in history was this brought forth as a concept?

Luis de Aclasar is the probably the earliest modern scholar to purpose the idea that Revelations was a historical account of the early church, rather than strictly a prophecy of a future eschaton. His work on the subject was published in 1619. There is some evidence that earlier scholars believed it to be an account of time contemporary with the writer as well.

What point was there to state that it was a dream?

Probably to continue to hide the contemporary history of the church as allegory from Roman jailors.

As far as I understand it, St John of Patmos is not now believed to be St John the Apostle - is that different in Orthodox tradition?

Tradition has it that Revelations and the Gospel of John were both written by John the Apostle. However, this seems unlikely as we can date Revelations back to the 60s or 90s which would make John the Apostle very old at the time.

The parallels between the Gospel of John and Revelations are quite significant. Taken together, the two are the most symbolic and poetic books in the New Testament.

It is possible that the Gospel and Revelations may have been written by the same party who was not an apostle but instead received information from an apostle. This would help to explain discrepancies between the Gospel of John and the Synoptic Gospels as well as help to explain the characterization of John as an uneducated fisherman in Acts. However, the Gospel of John explicitly says that it was written by the disciple that Jesus loved, so that complicates matters.

 

[timtofly]

Luis de Aclasar is the probably the earliest modern scholar to purpose the idea that Revelations was a historical account of the early church, rather than strictly a prophecy of a future eschaton. His work on the subject was published in 1619. There is some evidence that earlier scholars believed it to be an account of time contemporary with the writer as well.

Thanks for the name. He seems like an interesting person. It also seems that from Arakhor's link that from the time people read about the mark of the beast they were trying to figure out who fits the numerology. Even to the latest president.

His contemporary Joachim of Fiore, may have been the first millenarian and the first one to attempt a prophetic date, which would make him a false prophet. He did point out that the millennium would have no need of the church and that did not set well and his teachings and followers are considered heretics. He thought that the millennium would start in 1260.

Probably to continue to hide the contemporary history of the church as allegory from Roman jailors.

The first few chapters to the churches has been viewed as a blueprint for seven different church ages, but I don't think that the purpose of most of the book was for contemporary times. It makes more sense that like the OT prophets he had visions and dreams that would give the church hope through any difficulty it would face in the long road ahead.

Tradition has it that Revelations and the Gospel of John were both written by John the Apostle. However, this seems unlikely as we can date Revelations back to the 60s or 90s which would make John the Apostle very old at the time.

The parallels between the Gospel of John and Revelations are quite significant. Taken together, the two are the most symbolic and poetic books in the New Testament.

It is possible that the Gospel and Revelations may have been written by the same party who was not an apostle but instead received information from an apostle. This would help to explain discrepancies between the Gospel of John and the Synoptic Gospels as well as help to explain the characterization of John as an uneducated fisherman in Acts. However, the Gospel of John explicitly says that it was written by the disciple that Jesus loved, so that complicates matters.

From what I have read, the Revelation was considered the first book. Like we somewhat agree it was written to guide and comfort 7 different churches of the day. Churches that had been established by Peter and Paul. However some of Paul's writings to his churches may have already been at those churches, but had not yet been copied and circulated like the letters of John, Peter, and James. I do not see age as that big of a factor. John was chosen by God for a purpose and was promised life to that end.