Ep 39: Revealing Revelation

00:00Some of the features of Jewish apocalyptic text.

00:04This is usually a revelation given to somebody, to a human from some kind of divine being

00:09an angel or some kind of psychopomp is the pedantic order.

00:14Wait, I'm sorry.

00:15Some kind of what?

00:16Psychopomp.

00:17If that's not a German-like EDM group, I don't know what's happening.

00:23Hey, everybody, I'm Dan McClellan.

00:29And I'm Dan Beecher.

00:30You are listening to the Data Overdogma podcast, where we increase public access to the academic

00:35study of the Bible and religion and combat the spread of misinformation about the same.

00:41How are the vibes today, Dan?

00:42It's the end of the world as we know it, I think.

00:46And I feel fine.

00:47Yeah, that's somebody that goes Leonard Bernstein, right?

00:51I think so.

00:53Irving Berlin?

00:54I'm not sure.

00:55Yeah.

00:56I'm not afraid, and at some point we will be responsible for paying for, or you probably

01:03have to sing them.

01:04I don't know.

01:05Yeah.

01:06Don't tell the royalties, people, that we quote things, I think you can quote a little

01:10bit.

01:11Yeah, hopefully.

01:12Yeah, but it is the end of the world that we're talking about.

01:16Or is it, Dan, because we are, we're doing a chapter and verse that perhaps we should

01:24just call book.

01:26Book, yeah, my job is book.

01:29So and that book is the book of Revelation, or Revelations if you don't know what you're

01:36talking about.

01:37Right.

01:38Or if you've just been taught wrong your whole life, which is totally understandable, because

01:42everybody says Revelations, everybody pluralizes, and in fairness to them, there are many revelations

01:51in this book called Revelation, there are several of them.

01:55Well, the very first verse starts off the Revelation of Jesus Christ.

02:02But yeah, the Society of Biblical Literature, they sell t-shirts, says Revelations, and

02:07then there's a red X over the S, just as a little tongue in cheek reference to that.

02:16Yeah.

02:17So I think what we're learning is, if you want to drive a Bible scholar crazy, just

02:24keep bringing up Revelations, it'll, it'll, it'll work like a charm.

02:28Yeah.

02:29Or, or if you want to let them know, this is probably going to be a waste of time for

02:34me to engage.

02:35Right.

02:36Yeah, exactly.

02:37But that's the whole, today's whole episode, we are going, it is, we're, we're, we're doing

02:43a deep dive, baby.

02:44Going all in.

02:45Yeah.

02:46The Apocalypse, as it is known in more Orthodox-ish traditions and Revelation in more Protestant-y

02:53traditions.

02:54Oh!

02:55We're going to talk about some manuscripts, we're going to talk about dates, we're going

02:59to talk about authors, we're going to cover what the text is about.

03:04And we already have a whole show on, on the mark of the beast, so we'll address that,

03:08but we're not going to, we're not going to get stuck in the weeds there.

03:12That beast got marked.

03:13Yeah.

03:14We, we, we marked it.

03:15Yes.

03:16I wanted to start, yeah, with the, where we get this book of Revelation from, a lot of

03:22people don't know.

03:23This book was probably the least popular book of the Bible in early Christianity.

03:30But we do have some manuscripts of it that dates to the second century CE.

03:36Our earliest manuscripts are probably, I'm going to rattle off some numbers that aren't

03:43going to mean much to people.

03:44But we have one called Papyrus 47, which is from the Chester B.D. collection.

03:49And it's actually the majority of like chapter nine through chapter 16.

03:56That's probably third quarter of the second century CE.

04:01We got a little fragment called Papyrus 98.

04:04That is just a tiny little bit of a few verses in chapter one.

04:09We've got Papyrus 15, which is a bunch of little fragments scattered all the way from

04:13chapter one to chapter 14.

04:17The, we cannot reconstruct the entire book of Revelation every last verse until the middle

04:24of the fourth century CE when we have, when we finally have Codex Sinaiticus, which is

04:30considered the most, the earliest of what are called the, the great unseal manuscripts.

04:38And unseal is a pedantic way to say capital letter because it is a manuscript where it

04:47is written entirely in capital or magiscule Greek letters and there are no spaces or anything.

04:53It's all just jammed together.

04:55God, that's a nightmare.

04:58That sounds like literally the worst thing to read in the world.

05:02It is, it is a challenge.

05:04And we have three of these that have all of Revelation, Codex Alexandrinus is the next

05:09and then Codex Ephraimy Rescriptus is the third one.

05:13And that one we're getting into the fifth century.

05:16And that one is, it's called Rescriptus because it's what's called a palimpsest, which means

05:22that someone took an old, someone took this text and scraped the ink off of the vellum

05:28or whatever they were using and then turned it 90 degrees and then wrote another text

05:34on it.

05:35And somebody one day was like, I think I see lettering under this.

05:38And using like infrared lights, we're able to discover that we have an entire manuscript

05:45of the whole Bible.

05:47It's like when you find it, when they find that there was a, that, you know, Picasso painted

05:51over another painting for this thing, which surprisingly seems like everybody's had something

05:59painted over or something like that, yeah, yeah, yeah, or they cover, you know, they make

06:04a mistake or they don't like something and they cover it up.

06:06But you reuse the canvas.

06:09Yeah.

06:10Listen, paper back then was expensive.

06:11Yeah.

06:12Yeah.

06:13Yeah.

06:14And so we have, we have to wait until the fourth century CE now quotations from the early Christian

06:21authors.

06:22We call them the Patristic authors, the church fathers with quotations from them that begin

06:28in the second century.

06:30We can fill in most of it, but still probably about a little less than 10% of the text is

06:37absent until we get down to Codex Sinaiticus in the middle of the fourth century CE.

06:44So there's a lot of stuff that could be different.

06:48And even those manuscripts that predate Sinaiticus, those fragmentary manuscripts where we have

06:53two different manuscripts that cover the same passages, they don't always agree.

06:59There are differences from what we, we have reconstructed as the authoritative text of

07:03the New Testament in every single one of those manuscripts.

07:08So if you want to dig into textual criticism, that is a whole thing.

07:13And I find it fascinating, but I think we, we better move on before everybody turns this

07:19off.

07:20Yeah, get to the good stuff.

07:23I want some beasts and dragons.

07:25Yeah.

07:26Well, it's, it's loaded with beasts and dragons.

07:29The, the text most scholars think was probably written around the early 90s CE.

07:34Now, for a time, people interpreted what this intense persecution is probably happening

07:41under demission because there was a tradition that that was a period of intense persecution

07:47in the early 90s, scholars these days are like, eh, it probably wasn't that intense.

07:51Intense persecution, we're talking specifically of the followers of Jesus.

07:56Correct.

07:57On the part of the Roman Empire.

07:59And now scholars are like, eh, it's probably more sporadic, probably reactionary to, to

08:04things probably pretty isolated.

08:08And so that means that, that period of the reign of Domitian is not as, as handy an anchor

08:16for dating the text.

08:17But most scholars think it's probably right around there.

08:21There is a small minority of scholars who think it predates 70 CE that it predates the

08:28destruction of the temple.

08:30But the folks who like to argue this are folks who are in the Preterist camp, for the most

08:34part.

08:35And Preterism is the idea that all these prophecies about the end times were actually about the

08:40destruction of the Jerusalem temple.

08:42Okay.

08:43We're at the hand of the Romans in 70 CE.

08:46I see.

08:47So, so they're saying that all the, all of these predictions and bad things were culminated

08:54in the destruction of the temple.

08:55Got it.

08:56Right.

08:57And for that to be the case, the text has to have been written before 70 CE.

09:01Right.

09:02And so it's bad prophesying if you just prophesied backwards.

09:05Well, yeah.

09:06Well, an awful lot of prophesying is prophesying backwards X event to prophecy as is known.

09:14Yeah.

09:15You're going to, you're going to have higher accuracy.

09:17Yeah.

09:18Oh, yeah.

09:19Wait, but let's just hopefully.

09:20Yeah.

09:21Sometimes, sometimes it's not as high and, and that's embarrassing.

09:28So the, the very first verse of the book of Revelation identifies the genre of this text,

09:37apocalypse.

09:38And apocalypse is a Jewish genre.

09:42We see it a little bit in Ezekiel.

09:44Daniel is kind of one of the main apocalypses as we talked about in our episode on the book

09:49of Daniel.

09:50Right.

09:51Here, the, some of the features of Jewish apocalyptic texts, this is usually a revelation

09:56given to somebody, to a human from some kind of divine being an angel or, or some kind

10:02of psychopath is the pedantic word.

10:05Wait, I'm sorry.

10:06Some kind of what?

10:07Psychopomp.

10:08This is a, this is a German like EDM group.

10:12I don't know what's happening.

10:13Nine.

10:14What is a psychopath?

10:16I don't know what that is.

10:17That, that is a kind of like a, a divine guide in ascent and descent and apocalyptic.

10:24Oh my gosh.

10:25Yeah.

10:26Visions and journeys.

10:28So somebody make a rock group out of cycle, please.

10:32That would be a pretty cool one.

10:34But it does, it would need to be EDM too or something, something in that, some proximity

10:38to that or it just doesn't work.

10:41So the revelation is usually given within a narrative framework.

10:44Somebody's telling a story.

10:46It's mediated by this otherworldly being.

10:49Some kind of transcendent reality is communicated that reflects on temporal affairs and often

10:55climaxes with the escaton, which is the pedantic word for the end times.

11:01So this is something going on now is the catalyst for this text.

11:08And frequently it has to do with persecution, oppression, things like that.

11:12And frequently it is kind of a fantasy about God peeling back the fabric of reality to show

11:18us that God is really in control and that ultimately everything is going to be okay.

11:24God's the great poet once said, don't worry about a ting because everything is, every

11:30little thing is going to be all right.

11:32Yeah.

11:33Although the road to everything being all right in this particular eschatology is long.

11:41Yes.

11:42Crazy.

11:43And as another poet said, if you're going through hell, keep on going.

11:47And that's what we're doing in a lot of this book.

11:51One takes a shape of visions and journeys and things like that.

11:54Sometimes it's on earth, sometimes you're flying through the heavens and a scent motif.

11:59And the goal is usually to bring some kind of comfort to the persecuted and or exhort

12:04them to faithfulness in the face of suffering and also engage in boundary maintenance to

12:11say the good ones, the ones who are on our side need to be doing this.

12:15You need to be staying away from these bad folks over here.

12:17So it can serve a handful of different functions as we will see in this book of revelation.

12:26So we have an introduction and a conclusion.

12:28And then we have, it's usually divided into six different segments.

12:33And the first, the introduction is the first eight verses, and we'll talk a little bit about

12:38that in a second.

12:39But the, the first section is these letters that Jesus tells John to write to the angels

12:47of the seven churches.

12:49And this is John.

12:50This is not John.

12:51Oh, yeah.

12:52We've met before.

12:54So the text just identifies the author as John.

12:57And we have, we have no reason to think that the author of this text was not some dude

13:01named John, but there is absolutely nothing in the text that suggests this is a John.

13:07We know from previous Christian literature, former John's need not apply.

13:13Yeah.

13:14And the, the Greek of the book of revelation is famously awful, like unsophisticated, awkward.

13:23There are grammatical errors and things like that.

13:26Well, this surprises me because my understanding is that this is the one book that was actually

13:30written in Greece, wasn't it?

13:34No, it wasn't, wasn't Padmos, wasn't he John of Padmos on Padmos off the Western, off the

13:40Western coast of modern day Turkey.

13:44Oh, but yeah, I don't, I don't know if that island is, is part of Greece right now.

13:48But no, there would, there were, there were other books that were written in Greece.

13:52But yeah, this is, this is not someone who is a skilled writer.

13:55Okay.

13:56It is not nearly as sophisticated as the gospel of John or the epistles of John.

14:02Okay.

14:03The first person to actually suggest, Hey, what if this is the same John who wrote the

14:07gospel was Justin Martyr, about 150 CE.

14:12And there were debates.

14:13There were a lot of people who were like, yeah, no.

14:16And then there were other people who thought, Hey, that makes sense.

14:20Let's, let's go with that.

14:22So most scholars would say there is little chance that this was actually written by the

14:29same John.

14:32So yeah, we got the, we got the authorship question there.

14:36It starts with the appearance of this individual to John.

14:41And he's, he's in the spirit on the Lord's day, which is probably a reference to some

14:46kind of ecstatic trance or some kind of early Christian concept of, of being in the spirit.

14:54And the Lord's day is he, he made us kireaki, which is still the word for Sunday in Greek.

15:03Or it's one of the words that is used in, in Greek today, kireaki is the other word for

15:09Sunday.

15:11And he gives this little introduction at last, the first eight verses and ends with look.

15:19He's coming with the clouds every, I will see him, even those who pierced him and on his

15:23account, all the tribes of the earth will wail.

15:25So it is to be a man.

15:26And then we hear I am the Alpha and the Omega says the Lord God who is and who was and who

15:32is to come, the almighty.

15:35So this is not a reference right here to Jesus.

15:38This is a reference to God, right.

15:40But then he has a vision of Jesus and he says he heard of loud voice like a trumpet behind

15:49him telling him to write what you see and send it to the seven churches, to Ephesus, to

15:55Smyrna, to Pergamum, to Thyatira, to Sardis, Philadelphia, and out of Sia.

16:01And if you, if you look where these churches are, they're all in Western Anatolia.

16:05And they actually start with the city that is closest to Patmos on the Western shore and

16:10then goes clockwise around Anatolia is a modern day Turkey, modern day Turkey.

16:17Okay.

16:18And here's an interesting part.

16:19He sees seven golden candlesticks and in the midst of the seven candlesticks saw one like

16:25the son of man, closed with a long robe and when the golden sash across his chest.

16:31And it says his hair, his head and his hair were white as wool, white as snow.

16:37His eyes were like a flame of fire.

16:39His feet were like bronze burning in a furnace and his voiceless like the sound of many waters.

16:44This is actually taking two different figures that we saw in the book of Daniel and putting

16:50them together, this is actually Daniel seven nine describes the ancient of days as having

16:58clothing as white as snow, hair of his head like pure wool, throne was fiery flames and

17:04its wheels were burning fire.

17:05So this is the ancient of days, but, but the author of Revelation also says looked like

17:12the son of man, one like the son of man, which is the description of the son of man coming

17:18with the clouds of heaven.

17:21But they're the same individual and there's a reason for this in Daniel seven, thirteen,

17:28we have this statement that I saw one like a son of man coming with the clouds of heaven

17:32and he came to the ancient of days and in Greek, the, the preposition there is hails unto.

17:41There is a very old manuscript, the old Greek tradition of Daniel that's, does not have

17:48hails, but it has hosts, which is one letter different, but says that the son of man coming

17:53with the clouds of heaven came as the ancient of days and would suggest that the son of

18:00man in some way is to be identified with the ancient of days is manifesting the presence

18:06of the ancient days.

18:07Those are two different things.

18:08Yes.

18:09And so the author of Revelation is picking up that tradition and is combining the imagery

18:15of the ancient of days with the imagery of the son of man.

18:19And seven stars out of his mouth when a sharp two edged sword, we've heard about all this

18:26before.

18:27Yeah.

18:28Everybody knows about the sword in Jesus's mouth.

18:32It's we can just blow right past it.

18:34Yeah.

18:35Now, now you'll recall at the end of the introduction, the Lord God almighty said, I am Alpha and

18:41Omega.

18:42So Jesus here says, I am the first and the last, which is not the same title, but it's

18:48leaning into that title.

18:49Yeah.

18:50It seems to be indicating sort of the same thing, but a different way of saying it.

18:58But it's not quite there.

19:00It's not till toward the end of the book of Revelation that Jesus will say, I am the Alpha

19:06and the Omega.

19:07Okay.

19:08Or slow playing part of this idea that Jesus manifests the presence of God.

19:16And just to be clear for those who don't know their Greek alphabet, Alpha is the first letter

19:20in the Greek alphabet and Omega is the last, right?

19:22That is correct.

19:23It's literally just as simple as that.

19:25Yep.

19:26Okay.

19:27The beginning and the end, the first and the last, the author and the finisher.

19:30It's all all the same idea.

19:33Coming to end, and it's a, what's called a marism, which means you identify the beginning

19:40point and the end point of a spectrum as a way to refer to those points and everything

19:45in between.

19:46Right.

19:47So the first and the last and everything in between, I am everything.

19:55So John gets these instructions to write these letters to the churches in Asia and these

19:59letters, some of them praise the churches, some of them also say there's a little bit

20:05of a finger wagging going on, but they all end with this promise to those who overcome

20:11are going to get some kind of blessing.

20:14And these blessings are associated with concepts of deification, of theosis, somehow they're

20:21going to be united with God in a very unique way.

20:25For instance, in Revelation three, verse 21, says to him that overcomes is victorious.

20:32I will give to sit down in my throne with me just as I have sat down in the throne of

20:38my father.

20:40We have another part where it talks about the synagogue of Satan, which by the way, that

20:47is this, I see this passage used, there are two passages here that talk about the synagogue

20:51of Satan, people who claim that they are Jews, but are not, this passage gets deployed in

20:58a lot of phenomenally anti-Semitic ways.

21:01Yeah, you can see that coming just, just the phrase itself is just, can we not?

21:09Can we retranslate that or something, please?

21:12Because I see the danger instantly.

21:14Yeah.

21:15And, and this is, there's actually debate about what exactly is going on here.

21:20Some people think that the author is criticizing Christians who are, who think that they're

21:27better Christians because they are not converts from the Gentile community, but are, are Jewish.

21:35That's one reading of what's going on here.

21:37There are other readings, but basically, if you feel the need to try to accuse Jews of

21:44being the synagogue of Satan, just don't, and yeah, just don't.

21:49Right.

21:50Wrong.

21:51Yeah.

21:52And you have other promises to him that overcomes, I will give a, they'll get a new name and,

22:00and names and particularly names written on foreheads are going to come up and that's

22:05going to be interesting.

22:07But yeah, a couple of interesting things, we get these condemnations of Balaam and Jezebel,

22:15which seem to be encoded references to a movement or a group or some influential individual

22:21within some of these communities.

22:24And there's an actual argument that's been made.

22:26It's not a consensus view, but it's one of the main theories is that this is a coded reference

22:32to Paul because both of them, because what they're accused of doing is causing people

22:42to eat food sacrifice to idols and then sexual immorality.

22:47Now here's the thing, Paul was the one who said an idol is nothing in the world and it

22:53doesn't matter.

22:54There's nothing, you know, eating food sacrifice to idols doesn't mean anything.

22:59But if you're around weak Christians who might get scandalized, then don't do it.

23:06Just, you know, wet and roam.

23:11And so this would have been understood as allowing the consumption of food sacrifice

23:16to idols.

23:17Now in the book of Acts, after the Jerusalem council, that was one of the things they explicitly

23:20said, they basically decided converts from the Gentile community don't have to keep the

23:26law of Moses except for four things.

23:29Stay away from sexual or immorality, stay away from things polluted by idols.

23:34And so part of that is a reference to food sacrifice to idols, don't eat blood, don't

23:38eat things that were strangled and Paul rejects two and a half of those things because Paul

23:44says it doesn't matter what you eat.

23:46So the food sacrifice to idols that could arguably fit with what Paul's doing.

23:52Sexual immorality, Paul argues that it's not a big deal for a believer to be married to

24:00a nonbeliever that perhaps this is how you are going to save the nonbeliever.

24:05This was something that early Christian, some early Christians said was sexually immoral,

24:11that this was wrong.

24:13And so based on those two arguments, there are folks like Elaine Pagels and others who

24:18argue that this may be a coded reference to Paul, that the author of Revelation really

24:24didn't like Paul going around telling people these things are cool when he thought they

24:29were not.

24:30So, yeah, it would be really fascinating if that were the case that we have the book of

24:35Revelation coming out swinging against Paul when he was Paul, especially considering how

24:41many like modern day pastors and stuff use that term Jezebel.

24:46Well, and also evangelical Christianity today is basically Paul plus Revelation.

24:52And so it would be really hilarious if Revelation was like that Paul and you're in a fight with

25:01yourself.

25:02Yeah, condemning him as a bail him into the Jezebel and, but I don't think that's a question

25:10will ever get answered confidently.

25:13So those somebody go back in time and tell us, will you?

25:15Yeah, they're figured out.

25:18I get that question every now and then if you go meet any historical figure from the past,

25:22what would it be?

25:23And it's like, who wouldn't it be?

25:24Yeah.

25:25So many cool stuff.

25:27I'd be pretty excited to meet anybody.

25:29Yeah.

25:30Really, really horrible part of one of these letters is in Revelation chapter two.

25:35I'm looking for a, yeah, the NRSV I think has a decent translation here.

25:42This Jezebel, I gave her time to repent, but she refuses to repent of her fornication.

25:48Beware, I am throwing her on a bed and those who commit adultery with her, I am throwing

25:53in the great distress and less they repent of their doings.

25:57And I will strike her children dead and all the churches will know that I am the one who

26:01searches minds and hearts and I will give to each of you as your works deserve.

26:06Some people say I will cast her onto a sick bed.

26:11The idea being I will make her sick, but no, this is sexual violence.

26:17This is framing this personified figure as a sex worker and then saying, this is how we

26:25punish sex workers.

26:27We sexually violate them and then going to kill their kids.

26:32And then their customers, just as I'm throwing them into great distress, kids are dying.

26:41The woman is going to be sexually assaulted.

26:45And then the ones who are actually engaged in the main part of this sin, because they're

26:49dudes, you get a slap on the wrist of something.

26:53You guys are naughty.

26:55Yeah, don't do it again.

26:56So this is framing God as a sexual predator, as someone who is engaging in sexual violence

27:06against.

27:07Yeah, that's a lot.

27:09Yeah.

27:10That's kind of nuts.

27:12That's a lot and there are people go to all kinds of lengths to try to excuse this rhetoric.

27:20And I think the most parsimonious way to approach this is to just acknowledge that this is the

27:26author using the threat of sexual violence for rhetorical purposes.

27:30And that is awful.

27:32And don't do that.

27:34So fortunately, that's the only not okay part of the nation.

27:40But this is one of the things, this is one of the reasons that a lot of early Christians

27:45didn't like the book of Revelation.

27:47They come from, and we talked about this with Bart Erman, they come from the loving Jesus

27:52of the Gospels, the love your neighbor, the meek shall inherit the earth, the those who

27:58live by the sword will die by the sword, all of these things to get to Revelation.

28:03And this is grotesque fantasy about this God, who's going to sexually assault a sex worker,

28:12who is going to bathe their sword in the blood of their enemies that runs up to their ankles.

28:20It's just this grotesquely violent represent fantasy, revenge fantasy, really.

28:26That also includes, you know, the outcome, the blessings, everything on the other side

28:32of all of this tribulation is we get all of the gold and we get all of the goods and we

28:37get all of the land and we get all and all this abundance and everything like that.

28:42And that didn't mesh well with the asceticism of early Christianity as well.

28:46So people saw that text and were like, yeah, I don't really like what's going on here.

28:51Yeah, that's not that's not the Jesus I know.

28:55And here's a to do Dionysius of Alexandria was a writer.

29:01I want to say somewhere around between two and 300 CE.

29:05I don't remember off the top of my head, but he has this to say, some before us have set

29:09aside and rejected the book altogether criticizing it chapter by chapter and pronouncing it without

29:15sense or argument and maintaining the title is fraudulent for they say that it is not

29:20the work of John nor is it a revelation because it is covered thickly and densely by a veil

29:24of obscurity and they affirm that none of the apostles and none of the saints nor anyone

29:29in the church is its author.

29:32So yeah, revelation, not the most popular book until Athanasius of Alexandria, which

29:41we'll get to.

29:42Okay.

29:43Can't wait for the Athanasius stuff.

29:46Yeah, that's that's the that's the juicy part.

29:49So we have these letters to the seven churches and then we get this we're going through a

29:55door.

29:56We're starting on this journey of these visions that the three main things are seven seals

30:04and then out of the seventh seal comes seven trumpets and then out of the seventh trumpet,

30:10we also have seven bowls and in between, do we know what a seal is in this case?

30:15Yes.

30:16Imagine you have a rolled up document and everybody's seen those those Victorian era

30:22movies where somebody drips some wax on something and then pushes their thing into it.

30:27It's something like that, although it was probably more frequently was clay and the idea is as

30:34long as this is intact, you can be this was your, you know, your I forget what they call

30:41it, if you have a letter that is sealed that can function legally to show and you have

30:47the date or something like that on there that can function legally to show that that this

30:52was from before that time period.

30:54The idea is this is sealed.

30:56So this is valid.

30:58Whatever authority is on that seal.

31:00This is under their authority kind of thing.

31:03And so to break the seal is to say we no longer need this.

31:06We are now going to deploy or use whatever is inside here.

31:12So you have God sitting on their throne, 24 elders, all kinds of weird crap.

31:20And God has in their hand a, it says a book in most translations.

31:24This is a scroll and it is sealed with seven of these seals, probably clay, okay.

31:31And as these seals are opened, all kinds of crazy stuff is going on.

31:36And this is all very rich symbolism.

31:39And some of it is explained and some of it isn't where those symbolism, I assume you

31:44mean literally true things, literally meant to be taken as as literal actual what's actually

31:54going to happen.

31:55Yeah.

31:56And there's, and one of the reasons you probably shouldn't take that approach with the book

32:01of Revelation is because you've got places where it's like, and then the sun fell out

32:05of the sky and the sky, the stars all went dark and then like four chapters later, it's

32:09like, and then the sun went dark and some people will argue, you know, it's all cyclical.

32:17It's, it's the same series of events told in different ways and through different perspectives.

32:24And there's an argument for the cyclical nature of this, but trying to read this linearly,

32:29trying to say this comes first and this comes after and then we're going to go back and

32:32then we're going to do it all over again so that we can line certain things up.

32:36I think is a fool's errand because one of the things about explaining some of the imagery

32:43and then not explaining the other is that it's kind of teasing the audience.

32:49It's saying, you know, I'm going to explain this imagery here.

32:54And that makes them think everything has an explanation and we're just withholding it

33:00from you and that the key to unlocking this is to interpret all of the other imagery.

33:07Kind of like that, maybe you don't remember this.

33:09There's an old Gary Larson farside cartoon is called cow tools and it was just a cow standing

33:18there in front of a table with a bunch of just bizarre looking instruments on it.

33:24And one of them looked kind of like a saw and Gary Larson explained that he made the

33:31mistake of making one of them look like a saw which led his readers to believe that the

33:38key to understanding this cartoon was figuring out what all the tools represent.

33:44Since one of them obviously was supposed to be a saw and so in a very similar way, we

33:49go into revelation and they explain one symbol and then you're like, the key is to find the

33:54interpretation of all of the symbols.

33:56And a lot of it is just trying to evoke an emotional response.

34:01Right.

34:02I remember to your point, I remember being told as a young believer that the flying locus,

34:14I don't remember what it is, you know, it's got the scorpions tail and the blah blah blah.

34:20And that's actually attack helicopters that have been predicted from our time.

34:26And so we know that now is the time because they describe it's got the face of a man.

34:30And that's the guy.

34:31That's the pilot.

34:32And then it's got the, you know, the scorpion tail is just, they didn't know what he didn't,

34:37you know, he was seeing this spinning, you know, tail rotor and just thought, Oh, yeah,

34:43it's a scorpioner.

34:44Yeah.

34:45Yes, it's, we see that an awful lot, particularly with, so that's where the, the four angels

34:52that are bound at the Euphrates River are going to be released.

34:55And then they're going to go kill one third of humanity and they're going to be supported

34:59by a cavalry of 200 million mounted soldiers, right.

35:05And their horses have the heads of lions and they breathe fire and sulfur and they have

35:11the tails of scorpions and the mount and the soldiers have multi colored shiny breastplates

35:18and people are like trying to figure this out.

35:22It's obviously tanks.

35:23What are you talking about?

35:24That is a perfect description of an Abrams tank.

35:28And people are like, well, back then they wouldn't have known how to describe it.

35:32And it's like, well, they knew what a siege engine was.

35:35They would have described a tank as a siege engine.

35:37We have by reliefs and descriptions of siege engines.

35:42That's what they would have described it as not this.

35:45This is not just an encoded reference to something that's going to happen in the future.

35:49This is just a dude going, yeah, and they had the head of a lion and was breathing fire

35:57and it is intended to evoke an emotional response.

36:02People going, whoa, that's crazy.

36:06This is intense, that's the whole point there.

36:08Yeah.

36:09By the way, siege engine is also a great name for a band, probably a Swedish death metal

36:17sort of thing.

36:18Yeah, definitely not the title of a sex tape.

36:22All right.

36:26Keep going.

36:27It's like a comp either.

36:28Yeah.

36:29Okay.

36:30So just roll your siege engine.

36:31Yeah, please, but separating the seven trumpets from the seven bowls, we have the story of

36:37the dragon, the beasts, and the faithful.

36:40And this is what an awful lot of people like to focus on because they think that understanding

36:45what the beast was is going to help them to understand, to predict the geopolitical

36:51future.

36:52Right.

36:53And the beast we know is Hunter Biden.

36:58Hunter Biden's laptop, actually.

37:00Yes.

37:01Yeah.

37:02So yeah, as we discussed previously, the beast is a reference.

37:06There are two beasts, actually.

37:07The dragon is Satan.

37:11There are two beasts.

37:12One beast is Rome.

37:13The second beast is Nero.

37:16And this is just encoding this in a way that reminds people of these things, but also kind

37:22of throws it off into the future and is kind of like this, you know, nothing is new under

37:28the sun.

37:29The things that have happened before are going to happen again.

37:31We're going to we're going to squint at them.

37:33So the edges get blurry and turn it into the story about these beasts and all that.

37:40And yeah, if you want to hear more about that, our thing about the mark of the beast, we

37:44talk all about Nero and how 666 or 616 are our references to him.

37:53And yeah, the mark of the best was the title of that one.

37:58That's right.

37:59And one interesting thing to note here, the dragon here, a lot of people say there's a

38:04part that where it identifies, I think it's in chapter 12 that it refers to the dragon

38:10that ancient serpent and a lot of people suggest that this is a reference to the serpent from

38:16the garden of Eden and it is 100% not because the serpent from the garden of Eden was not

38:24identified as Satan until after the New Testament.

38:28And so the serpent here is actually Leviathan.

38:33So it refers to this.

38:34I was pretty sure you were going to say Joe Biden now because he's ancient.

38:41The there are ancient or okay out there.

38:45Yes, indeed, including Leviathan.

38:48So it talks about the ancient serpent and the dragon and Leviathan is the primeval, prehistoric

38:55chaos monster associated with the sea who in Isaiah 27 one in the Greek translation is

39:02referred to as both a dragon and serpent.

39:06And okay, it talks about the dragon that lives in the sea at the end of Isaiah 27 one.

39:11This passes is actually quoting a tradition that is also quoted in a Eucharitic text from

39:16500 years earlier where it talks about the wriggling serpent, the twisting serpent exactly

39:22as Isaiah does.

39:23And then it says the dragon with seven heads.

39:26The dragon in Revelation has seven heads.

39:29And Isaiah 27 one doesn't say the dragon has seven heads, but there's a part in Psalm 74

39:37where it talks about Adonai crushing the heads plural of Leviathan.

39:42So it's very clearly a reference to Leviathan. It is not a reference to the serpent in the

39:46garden of Eden.

39:52Anything else you think we need to treat on the dragon and the beasts?

39:58I mean, they they they cause a lot of ruckus.

40:03They they do rock things up.

40:06I mean, they're so their purpose in in in the sort of eschatology of of the book of

40:14Revelation is is what is it?

40:17They're they're they're wreaking havoc, but like they are the avatar of everyone who

40:25is persecuting Christians is because the serpent is empowering them, empowering Rome and empowering

40:34the emperors. It is they are the the villain in the story that we want to really, really

40:41hate and that we're going to be excited to see thrown into the lake of fire later on

40:48in the story.

40:49One thing I want to point out here is that when you'll recall that at the beginning, John

40:57was told to write the things you see, but John, you frequently see a contrast between

41:04what John hears. And then it'll usually say, and I turned and looked and saw, but what

41:11he sees is always different from what he hears. So for instance, when he hears the lion of

41:20the tribe of Judah has conquered, he turns and he looks and he sees a slain lamb. When

41:28he hears about their 144,000 are sealed, 12,000 from each of the 12 tribes of Israel, he turns

41:37and looks and it says he sees a numberless concourse of people from all nations, kindreds,

41:45tongues and peoples.

41:47And so that's interesting. I've never caught that. I've never thought about that. So like

41:52the 144,000 is almost is is is almost or could be seen as a red herring or or a misnomer.

42:02It's a more traditional going back to the Hebrew Bible expectation about the Messiah

42:08and deliverance where God is the lion of the of the house of Judah who roars and conquers.

42:15But then when he turns and sees, it's the lamb of God who conquers through their own

42:21self sacrifice. And then the 144,000 is salvation is just for the tribes of Israel. But when

42:28he turns and sees, cannot number the people there from every nation, kindred, tongue and

42:33people. And so one way to read this is to say that they're overturning expectations, that

42:41this is what we hear about, but John is writing what he sees and it is actually different.

42:47Now that causes some some interpretive issues because it's it's kind of trying to suggest

42:55that maybe this author was a little more enlightened than than it seems, but it conflicts with

43:03a lot of other representations of God as this vengeful, violent, ruthless deity. So that's

43:12just something to think about as you're negotiating with the text. That's something to think about.

43:18And then you also have the there's a song that's being sung, and then they sing a new

43:22song, and it's different. And so is an interesting little thing to notice. Let me find myself

43:32in the narrative. We talked about the mark. I don't think we need to to worry about that

43:37anymore. Toward the end of the book, we get well, we get the the the four horsemen, which

43:46a lot of people think there's a lot to be unpacked from the symbolism there. I know I'm

43:52not personally fascinated by by that issue. If you want to go see what has been what has

43:59been proposed, a really good text is the anchor Bible commentary on Revelation by an author

44:06named Craig. And it could be Coaster K O E S T E R. I apologize. I don't know how to pronounce

44:13the scholars last name, but it's a phenomenal discussion of all this imagery and what people

44:19have proposed this means. So go check that out if you're if you're wanting to to hear

44:25more about that. Toward the end, we have the culmination of all of this. We have the Oh,

44:33and the woman who brings forth the child that has the crown and the sun on her clothes and

44:40all that kind of stuff. It's not a constellation. How dare you? Oh, you're blowing our minds.

44:47I think back in September was it September when everybody was like September 22 is going

44:52to be the some star planet is going to be in the womb of Virgo or I don't know. It's

45:00all very exciting. I didn't I didn't think so, but you can go look in the ankle anchor

45:08Bible commentary if you want a good discussion of of that symbolism as well. It's a very

45:13thorough discussion. But we have basically God is saying things are gonna go gonna go bad.

45:22You're gonna have a bad time to the the dragon and we have in Revelation 20, the sea gave

45:30up the dead that were in it. Death and Hades. Hades here being one of the words that is

45:36used to refer to hell in the New Testament, frequently translated hell. The other one

45:41is Gehenna. Gehenna does not occur in Revelation, only Hades. Death and Hades gave up the dead

45:48that were in them and all were judged according to what they had done. Then death and Hades

45:54were thrown into the lake of fire. And when we think of hell, we think of the lake of

45:59fire as a constituent element of hell. Yeah, as a region in hell. According to Revelation,

46:08the lake of fire is where hell goes to be destroyed. So it's kind of an annihilation

46:14is take here. Are we talking about when you when you say death and Hades are thrown into

46:20the lake of fire? I picture because I know Hades is a Greek personified God. I'm picturing

46:28two beings being chucked into the house. Is there any chance that that's what the these

46:36are our beings? I think that the figures, the sort of the demigods of death and hell or.

46:45So I think that that lends some color to the imagery, but it also says death and Hades

46:51gave up the dead that were in them. So it also seems to be the abode of the dead. Yeah.

47:00And says then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death,

47:04the lake of fire, which I think we get a we notch a point on the side of annihilation

47:13ism or temporary torment followed by annihilation ism because if you if we understand Hades in

47:19the book of Revelation as a personification as an agent rather than a location, then there's

47:26no hell in the book of Revelation. There's just this lake of fire, which seems to be

47:31where things go to be annihilated. So there's or there's a hell that is eventually then

47:36destroyed. Yeah, you don't you don't get our modern concept of hell until you bring. Yeah,

47:43until you bring in all of the other passages that discuss Gehenna from a bunch of different

47:49perspectives and then you try to impose some kind of unifying framework and say, okay,

47:55so because of over here, it says this and over here, it says this, we're going to put

47:58those together and we're going to bring this thing over here and we're going to interpret

48:01it this way. And you you're you're constructing a conceptual package based on the idea that

48:09all of these different texts are just presenting different. It's it's the all the blind man

48:16feeling the elephant. Right. You're assuming there's an elephant there instead of just

48:21a bunch of authors who are describing something that is totally unrelated to the other things.

48:26So different ideas of of the afterlife or yeah, yeah, or the end or you know, as you

48:33say, annihilationism is the end of life. Yeah, of existence for for the wicked. And that's

48:40and that's something that we find elsewhere in the New Testament is something that we

48:42find elsewhere in early Jewish literature. And then we have Revelation 21 five and six.

48:49There was one seated on the thrones says, see, I am making all things new. And then he said,

48:54write this for these words or trustworthy and true. Then he said to me, it is done. I am

48:58the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end. So this is this is Jesus who has started

49:05off saying, I am the first in the last. And then once Jesus has sat on the throne, Jesus

49:12says I am the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end, which suggests that Jesus achieves

49:18some kind of unity or identification with God. Once all of this is over, it's not an

49:25eternal thing, but sitting on the throne is what allows Jesus to be identified as the

49:31alpha and omega. But we go back to those letters and we got Jesus saying to him who

49:35overcomes, I will give to sit in my throne with me as I have overcome and sat down.

49:41That's a big throne. Everybody sitting on it.

49:44Well, there's a, there's a text, the, the exegogae by Ezekiel the Trigetian, who talks

49:53about Moses has a horrible nightmare where he finds himself before a gigantic throne.

50:02And the figure who is sat on the throne steps down from the throne and then tells Moses

50:07to go sit on the throne. And Moses is like, I'm not worthy. We're not worthy. We're not

50:15worthy. Which most scholars would suggest is a dream about deification describing Moses

50:21becoming a deity, taking on God's authority, which is something that we find in the literature

50:29of this period, both inside and outside the Bible. So I should not be surprising to folks.

50:34I mean, and that's what this sitting on the throne with Jesus is, right? That's, I mean,

50:40it's some level of, of deification of the followers of Jesus.

50:44Yep. And in the Orthodox tradition, you have an idea of theosis of deification as well,

50:49uniting with the divine, the divine essence. And, and you see it in John 17, the intercessory

50:56prayer as well, three times in that chapter, Jesus prays that his followers would become

51:00one with him just as he is one with the father, which is, is basically saying, God gave God's

51:09glory to Jesus. And Jesus is saying, I want my followers to have that glory as well. So,

51:16and then after this, we get the new heavens and the new earth. And so according to the

51:22book of Revelation, we don't all float up to the skies and we're not issued harps, but

51:28we actually just live on a new heaven and a new earth. Uh, and there's a tree of life.

51:35There's, uh, the rivers of, uh, river of water, uh, with all these, you know, everything's

51:42just budding in bloom, very fertile all the time. Great times. Yeah. That sounds good.

51:50And then we get this conclusion. I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this

51:54book. And this is a reference to the book of Revelation, not the whole Bible. Anyone adds

51:59to them. God will add to that person. The plague is described in this book. If anyone

52:02takes away from the words of the book of his prophecy, God will take away that person's

52:06share in the tree of life and in the holy city, which was described in this book, uh,

52:12which is how you basically tied off, uh, literature that you wanted to be very authoritative and

52:18that you wanted to insist was inspired because we see the same thing in Deuteronomy. And we

52:22also see interestingly the same thing in, uh, the letter of Aristaeus when, which is about

52:28the, the translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek, the creation of the Septuagint. They

52:32have a big celebration at the end and they all announce cursed as anyone who takes anything

52:36out of this book or adds anything to it because this is God's will. Well, considering what

52:42we talked about earlier about every, every version of each of these books being different

52:47from the last, uh, bad news fellas. It didn't work. And, uh, I want, I want to end by talking

52:55about, uh, how this became canon. I don't know if we've discussed it before on the podcast,

53:00but I'm pretty sure it was just, uh, it was just Constantine at the, uh, at Nicaea, right?

53:08We know these things with the wrench in the council of Nicaea. Um, Athanasius of Alexandria

53:15was, um, a very powerful, uh, bishop who spent a lot of time fighting with the Arians, uh,

53:23was exiled numerous times, I think like seven times or something like that was exiled.

53:29Uh, but Alexander, uh, Athanasius was a big fan of the book of Revelation and he used it

53:34not to condemn Rome and to get to him to condemn non-Christians, but to condemn Christians to

53:41say the main message is we need to suss out the bad Christians and we need to, uh, get

53:48rid of them. Oh, uh, and so this was a very important book for his structuring of power.

53:53He wanted everyone to be under the authority of the church. Uh, was not a fan of the monasteries

53:58at the time. Monasteries were independent from the institutional church. It was a bunch

54:04of, uh, dudes going out and living in the desert and reading their Gnostic literature and probably

54:11smoking stuff. We don't know, but, um, they were happy to just, uh, do their chanting

54:16and, uh, and do their reading and, uh, Athanasius tried to get them under the authority of the

54:23church and they weren't having it. And then one of the things that he did to take over

54:27the monasteries was he wrote after a very, uh, famous monk who was very famous for opposing

54:33the institutional church died. Athanasius wrote a hagiography of this monk talking about

54:39how much he loved the institutional church. Just, just wrote the unauthorized biography.

54:45Yeah. And basically, uh, appropriated his voice to then declare that monasteries are, should

54:54be faithful to the institutional church and somehow this worked. Uh, monasteries came

55:01under the umbrella of the church, but he was the one who included the book of revelation

55:06in his canon from his, uh, festival letter from, uh, the year three, three 67, I believe

55:16CE, uh, he outlined his canon. And for the first time ever, we see the book of revelation

55:22actually endorsed as a part of the canon. And that's what would go on to become authoritative.

55:28You're telling me that a, an authoritarian was really fond of a book that was like basically

55:33a revenge, uh, fancy. Yep. Yep. That's how it was shocking. Who could have seen it coming?

55:40Mm. Uh, until now, nobody, but now now you know the doors off it. Yeah. The people need

55:47to know. Why is nobody talking about this? Oh my God. Well, there you go. Uh, revelation

55:53folks. That's, uh, it's a hell of a book. It's a, it's a, it's one Hades. It's one Hades

56:00of a book, uh, at least until it gets thrown in the lake of fire. That's right. Oh man.

56:06Uh, good stuff. Well friends, if you'd like to hear us talk a little bit more about this

56:11and whatever else we want to get to, uh, you can become a patron at, uh, at the $10 level

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56:33at dataoverdogmapod.com and other than that, we'll see you again next week. Bye everybody.

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