The final book in the Christian Testament is a problem generally, and especially in the context of the English-speaking United States, where white Christian nationalists view its violence as a literal game plan.
Among the problems, for example, is the name. It is often called “Revelations” or “The Book of Revelations,” when it is actually the revelation, singular, “to or of” John, the “to or of” being unclear in the ancient manuscripts and Koine Greek, and maybe not really that important.
The English translation revelation is itself a problem, for in Koine Greek it is “apocalypse,” and the English cognates have diverged, with apocalypse no longer meaning what is revealed, but instead referring specifically to this vision of destructive re-ordering, of catastrophe. These days, a revelation, say that a politician is corrupt, is not an apocalypse. Its just Tuesday.
And which John? We almost all know more than one person by that name in real life, but when it comes to the Bible story, we engage in a sometimes absurd reductionism. It doesn’t help that it was accepted practice at that time to write and publish fraudulently in the name of someone with authority, the reason new texts were produced in the prophet Isaiah’s name centuries after the son of Amoz was dead, the reason we have texts written in the name of Peter and Paul that were definitely not written by Peter or Paul. There are multiple Marys in the gospels, but somehow fundamentalists insist on only one John.
The Gospel traditionally attributed to the actual disciple John, the brother of James, the three letters attributed to John, and this “revelation” to or of John are not from the same author, nor from the same decade or region. It is unlikely that the fisherman from Galilee actually wrote any of them, though the gospel at least seems to have come from a community associated with him.
It is best to refer to the author of this text, the revelation, as John of Patmos, the Greek island off the coast of modern-day Turkey that the author identifies as the site of his visions.
And all of that before we even get to the content of the revelation, this fever-dream of a great battle between good and evil, good being the followers of Jesus, of course, evil being both Rome and Jews. The text has helped fuel centuries of Christian antisemitism, and plays rather well with the greatly exaggerated narrative of Christian victimization, especially popular with America’s white Christian nationalists who believe having to compete on an equal footing with others makes them victims.
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