Revelations: Visions, Prophecy, and Politics in the Book of Revelation by Elaine Pagels
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Don’t Hold Your Breath for the End of the World

Many years ago - at least thirty but possibly as many as forty as far as I can recall with an ageing memory - I visited the cave on the island of Patmos where a certain John had his apocalyptic vision and wrote his account of it. The cave is now incorporated into a Greek Orthodox monastery and is curated by a group of rather surly and taciturn monks. Like most biblical landmarks it is simultaneously underwhelming and evocative. And so it is with the dense and often incoherent piece, the Book of Revelation, that was supposedly written there.

The Book of Revelation is liminal. It sits on several boundaries - in time, after the Good News of the gospels and explanatory letters to the emerging Christian cult, but before the establishment of Christian legitimacy; theologically it is on the edge of scriptural legitimacy in terms of authorship and continuity of tradition; and its content sits in no man’s land between surrealist reverie and mystical pronouncement. No one knows quite what it means. So it is typically interpreted tendentiously to prove a point, usually against one’s theological enemies.

But Pagels has identified another border represented by Revelation - that between the Jewish sect which considered Christ as the messiah of Israel and an entirely separate religion of Christianity. The writer of Revelation is most certainly a Jew; and according to Pagels’s exegesis he is a Jew who objects fundamentally to the presumption that Gentiles have equivalence to Jews in the matter of salvation, whether that salvation is material or spiritual. This puts Revelation in opposition to the Gospel of John, written at about the same time (but certainly not by the same John), which is pointedly anti-Semitic and is clearly meant for a group which no longer considers itself Jewish.

Pagels’s hypothesis is that the writer of Revelation is addressing a group of Jewish followers of Jesus who object specifically to the teaching of Paul of Tarsus. It was Paul who two generations previously had undermined Jewish exclusivity and the continuing relevance of Jewish tradition and liturgical practices. This generated a long-standing conflict among apostolic leaders that is smoothed over by the writer of The Acts of the Apostles but was likely never really resolved. Pagels’s reading provides a satisfying explanation for understanding some of the most difficult parts of the book, and opens an intriguing line of inquiry in early Christian history.

One of the most fascinating implications of Pagels’s analysis is the re-interpretation of the issue of the Parousia, or Second Coming of Christ. She makes a convincing case that one of the main concerns of the writer is to correct an obvious misconception of Paul that this event was to be expected imminently. Paul had stated that expectation explicitly about 15 years after the death of Jesus. Despite its non-occurrence, Paul’s expectation was repeated about 20 years later by the writer of the gospel of Mark (the first to be written) who expresses it in the purported words of Jesus. Writing 20 to 30 years after that, John considers that the Pauline expectation of an imminent end of the world is clearly a bust. It simply hadn’t happened.

So this imminent return of Christ is a not inconsiderable black eye for Pauline Christianity. But, as the writer of Revelation attempts to show, not necessarily for Jewish faith in the messiah. John first explains the need for the delay in the Second Coming. This will be a rather messy event he says. In order to ensure that the faithful are protected during the inevitable chaos and blood-letting of the transition to the Kingdom of God, it has been necessary to organise and deploy a heavenly host, an angelic cohort, which can ensure that believers are not mistakenly caught up in the slaughter. This has taken time. Apparently there are logistical constraints, even in Heaven.

Second, unseen by worldly eyes, the Parousia has already begun in a manner unanticipated by Paul. According to John, it is essential to understand that the Second Coming is a cosmic event not just an earthly one. It occurs in the spiritual as well as the material realm. Before it takes place on Earth, it must be completed in Heaven. That is, the demonic spiritual forces must be disposed of before the evil human forces can be neutralised. Christ is engaged as he writes in the conquest of his heavenly opponents.

When, then, can the visible triumph of Christ over the mundane army of evil be expected? In this John is more canny than either Paul or Mark’s Jesus. He doesn’t mention human lifespans. Rather, the relevant metric is that of the lifespan of the imperial regime, Rome itself, the whore of Babylon with its pseudo-Jewish clients. Before Rome passes away, the Lord will return in order to defeat it. So hang in there people. We can’t put a date on it; but we do know as long as Rome lasts, we can continue to expect the Lord’s arrival.

This conclusion may seem perverse. But it is actually a brilliant re-calibration of the ‘imminent’ Second Coming. We must still be alert. Christ has not been delayed so much as busy on the main front. He is still on his way. This is a message that finds its way comfortably into the New Testament canon, despite the lack of substantive commentary in Revelation on the life, death or resurrection of Jesus.

John provides a very handy explanation, therefore, about the obvious inaccuracies of Pauline teaching for Christians Jews. But longer term, through the symbolic interpretation of Rome as any civil government at all, he also allows the increasingly dominant group of Gentile Christians to gloss over these inaccuracies and push the Second Coming into an indefinite future. A win/win situation therefore - and a border wall even the most ardent Trumpist could be proud of.

View all my reviews