The Origins of Apocalypse

The Apocalypse of John, or The Book of Revelations, is one of the most influential texts in Western culture, and yet we know little about its author. We know that he received his vision on the Greek island of Patmos, where he is widely believed to have been banished by Rome for preaching Christianity. The text dates from the end of the 1^st century AD, under the reign of either Nero or Domitian.[i] The book either describes events of John’s own time, or cataclysms yet to come, or is a broad allegory of the struggle between good and evil. Institutional religion (the Catholic Church, for example) prefers the first or third interpretations, thus rendering the book irrelevant or subject to the church’s own interpretive authority. The second interpretation (or, I should say, interpretations, since no two are alike) is the perennial favorite of cranks and revolutionaries. Or there is the interpretation offered by playwright George Bernard Shaw: “a peculiar record of the visions of a drug addict.” Reading the bizarre, lurid images of Revelation, it’s hard not to have some sympathy with Shaw’s view. Chapter 9, for instance describes an army of locusts sent to torment all who do not have the seal of God on their forehead:

7. And the shapes of the locusts were like unto horses prepared unto battle; and on their heads were as it were crowns like gold, and their faces were as the faces of men.

8. And they had hair as the hair of women, and their teeth were as the teeth of lions.

 9. And they had breastplates, as it were breastplates of iron; and the sound of their wings was as the sound of chariots of many horses running to battle.

10. And they had tails like unto scorpions, and there were stings in their tails: and their power was to hurt men five months. [ii]

St. John Eating the Book by Abrecht Durer

But, strange and horrifying as the images are, one should remember that they are only symbols. Few people, even believers, expect an actual prostitute from Babylon to come riding in on a seven-headed beast at the end of days. The whore of Babylon is clearly an allegorical figure, representing the corruption and decadence of earthly political power. What Shaw’s dismissal of such imagery ignores is that, however much The Book of Revelations ups the ante, such visions have ample precedent in the Jewish apocalyptic genre, in texts like Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel. The book of Daniel is the most immediate precursor to John, in which the prophet interprets the dream of King Nebuchadnezzar. The king dreams of a statue with a head of gold, breasts and arms of silver, brass belly and thighs, and feet of iron and clay. A stone falls upon the feet, causing the stature to crumble and fall, after which the stone grows into a great mountain. Daniel interprets the dream eschatalogically, declaring that the rock represents the kingdom which god will establish at the end of time. The different parts of the statue represent the various earthly kingdoms god will destroy, the crown of the stature being Nebuchadnezzar’s own. The relationship to the John’s apocalypse is twofold: first, the narrative pattern of destruction followed by the setting up of the kingdom of god on earth, and secondly the historical context of the story itself. Daniel is typically dated from 167 BC, when the Jews were ruled by Antiochus IV of Syria, who had placed a pagan altar in the temple, and forbade Jewish religious practices. There was a revolt in Jerusalem led by the Maccabees after Antiochus’ death in 164, but when Daniel was written, things looked pretty dire. In When Time Shall Be No More, Paul Boyer writes that “The power of this vision, penned at a moment when Judaism’s survival hung in the balance, underlies the book’s continuing appeal.”[iii] Fast forward a couple hundred years, to the time when Revelations was written, and the situation looks similar for the Christians under Nero.

It is clear that the apocalyptic genre is, at least in part, the dream of ultimate power by powerless people. As Grant Underwood describes the political nature of this dream:

Apocalypticism is the dream of ‘the great reversal.’ Growing out of a profound discontent with the status quo and seeing society and its power brokers as evil and antagonistic, it promises that the first will be last and the last first. Because the forces of sin are felt to be in control, apocalypticists see little hope in working through ‘the system’ . . . only God can make the situation right, and such divine intervention is expected to come dramatically, even cataclysmically, as superhuman forces square off in the final showdown of good and evil.[iv]

         

Apocalyptic has appealed to revolutionaries of various stripes. There were medieval heretics such as Joachim of Fiore. Also Protestants Martin Luther and John Calvin, who believed the Pope was the Antichrist. But they did embrace Revelations nearly as much as the more radical protestant Anabaptists.  Self-declared prophet Jan Bockleson led an army and in 1534 declared the Westphalian (now German) city of Münster the New Jerusalem. He also declared communal property and compulsory polygamy. Some scholars have argued that Communism is a kind of secular apocalyptic, which offers a foreordained cataclysmic struggle, followed by a peaceful millennium.[v]

            

The novelist and literary critic D.H. Lawrence’s book on Revelations, Apocalypse takes a dim view of the apocalyptic imagination. It was certainly a distortion of Christianity:

Always the titles of power, and never the titles of love. Always Christ the omnipotent conqueror flashing the great sword and destroying destroying vast masses of men, till blood mounts up to the horses’ bridles. Never Christ the Saviour: never.[vi]

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[i]. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Revelation

[ii] http://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/book.php?book=Revelation&chapter=9&verse=

[iii] Paul Boyer, When Time Shall Be No More: Prophecy Belief in Modern American Culture (1992). Harvard University Press, Cambridge.

[iv] Grant Underwood, The Millenarian World of Early Mormonism (1993). University of Illinois, Chicago.

[v] http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard206.html

[vi] D.H. Lawrence, Apocalypse (1931). Viking Press, New York.