Revelations

[B.H.]

Do you think Revelations was written as a result of Jerusalem falling to the Romans in 70 AD? Jesus didn't come again then like the gospels predicted and Revelations was written to keep people in the faith in the faith. Revelation, to me, predicts Rome's fall and then the end. The author was combining the fall of Jerusalem with the hopeful fall of Rome and trying to make them complimentary, trying to make them related events.

[FinallyFree]

I think so, B.H. I don’t thing Revelation is literal at all. There is no Rapture or earthly reign of Jesus.

[longdistancerunner]

From what I read it is just a crazy jewish apocalyptic genre writing by a person with knowledge and belief in Jesus, it is hard to understand how it is considered canonical (and many have challenged its status since its canonization. It portrays a God opposite of the one we see in the rest of the NT and it is hard to say what the writer was really trying to get across. If it hadn't been canonized we would just disregard it.

[B.H.]

Another idea is that there could have been two competing apocalypes making the rounds at the time. The gospels preserve part of one now lost where Jesus was going to come and destroy Jerusalem and usher in the new age. There was another where he was going to come down and whoopass Rome and then the end. When Jerusalem fell and no Jesus showed up the first apocalypse was discarded and Revelations stuck around. The gospels were too popular to abandon or edit so theologians mental masturbated around Matthew 24, ect. and when Rome did not fall and Revelation was too popular to discard it was explained away as applying to a being like the pope, a mysterious antichrist, the man who sold ice cream with liver in it, or the bad man who burped at the table.

[B.H.]

Another thought. The Bibles in supposed Catholic Churches and Orthodox Churches in ancient times often had books in them not in the Bibles of those denominations today. You can find this as late as the 900's AD in some places. I have a theory. It is that the church leaders junked books they thought spurious when few and little among their flock felt attached to those books. In congregations that used those spurious but beloved books and would be scandalized if they were not used or removed the church leaders allowed them to be used ever so often or be in the number of scrolls offically in the library so to speak to be read, but as the generations went on used them less to the point it was safe to abandon them all together. They basically played politics with the canon and got around it saying the church is the pillar of truth not the scriptures.