Two schools
of thought exist concerning the Bible’s origins:
1. It is the actual word of God,
issued directly from a Divine source.
If one
wanted to ride the fence on the subject (and not offend either side), one could say that the source material was
passed ‘from above’, and then adapted, translated, and annotated by the willing
recipients of the _______church (fill in yours).
For this
short piece, however, we will say that the current version of the western Bible
(King James being the most well known translation) is the direct descendant of several early councils of the Roman Catholic Church, which decided the
final, definitive form Christian biblical canon would take. The Old Testament’s sources were a direct
import of the Hebrew Torah, the Five
Books of Moses. (The Torah is also referred
to by its Greek name, the Pentateuch, which
translates into ‘five books’. These books are part of a larger collection of
Hebrew canonical text called the Tanakh,
or Hebrew Bible. Many of them were sources for the Old Testament.).
Being of an
older tradition, and more ancient, Hebrew sources (the previously mentioned Tanakh), with a different persona of
God, or ‘Jehovah’, (called the ‘War God’ by some, or the ‘Lord of Hosts’),
the Old Testament depicts a wrathful
God presiding over dire times; all fire, dreadful storms, and ‘laying waste’, war and conquering, rape,
abduction, duplicity, revenge, and sacrifice. Some of that goes on in the New
Testament as well, before and after Jesus, but the overarching message of
that later testament is mostly held to be one of peace, at least peace from
‘above’, in the form of Jesus, called the ‘Prince of Peace’, (Isaiah
9:6, Old Testament.). In the New Testament, God, through Jesus, becomes
a more loving and benevolent (and forgiving) deity.
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| (Actor Cliff Curtis as Jesus from the movie 'Risen', 2016) |
The New Testament’s councils, many and meticulously
contested, were hashed out over several hundred years. The first seven, as listed by Wikipedia, are:
These
ecumenical councils were to begin the centuries-long process of deciding, in
the broadest and most detailed scope, the manner and way the Church would embrace
and spread its influence in the world. (The word ‘catholic’, from the Greek, means ‘all-encompassing, embracing,
including a wide variety, inclusive: all terms also meant to define to the
Church.) However, that ‘all-inclusiveness’ did not include every book that could have gone into the Bible; several
source materials were left out, all for reasons political to the Church itself,
and the consolidation of its power. (The process has been long; the total number
of such councils is twenty-one, spread over a period of roughly seventeen
centuries.)
(Note:
This short, informal essay is by no means exhaustive or authoritative, rather it is a
reflection on, and a simplification of the origins and versions of the Bible, excluding
mentions of the versions (and books) of the other offshoots of Catholic
Christianity, such as Protestantism, for the sake of brevity.)
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| (A Parchment from the Dead Sea Scrolls) |
These ‘lost
books’ of the Bible are referred to by two names, each which gives a brief clue
to their original mode of having been
written: The Pseudepigraphs or Pseudepigrapha, (‘false writings’) and
the Apocrypha, or ‘secret, non-canonical’
writings.
The Pseudepigraphs are what their name
implies, works by what were then modern, mostly anonymous writers, but falsely
ascribed to earlier (mostly Jewish or Hebrew) patriarchs of the Bible, or
‘written in the style of’ those historic figures. Apocrypha are similarly described, being of ‘unsure or unknown
origin’. The two terms (Pseudepigrapha
and Apocrypha) are sometimes used
interchangeably. Each refers to texts of questionable origin.)
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| (The Nag Hammadi Parchment Books) |
The Apocrypha were books that were included
in the Latin Vulgate Bible (and Septuagint), and could have
gone into the Catholic Bible as well, but were, for various reasons, left out
or rejected by those early Councils. Because these collections of writings were,
for all intents, considered somewhat more legitimate than the Pseudepigraphs, they are sometimes
included in various versions and copies of the Bible even today, under the
separate heading of Apocrypha,
usually at the back of the book. Why they were left out say much about the
times in which they were written, and the thought processes of the Councils
that rejected them, or at least, decided not to use them when compiling the
Book. The exclusion also says much about the offshoots of Christianity that
would not accept them, as well.
Many of the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha come to us by way of the Dead Sea Scrolls, first
discovered by shepherds in Qumran hidden in a cave, right after the end of WWII
in 1946 or 1947. That other collection of ancient texts, the Nag Hammadi, is a collection of Gnostic writings by
another ancient and mysterious sect of the same name. Some of the Apocrypha have been attributed to this
collection as well. (The Nag Hammadi documents
were found a year earlier than the Dead Sea Scrolls, near the town of Nag
Hammadi in Egypt in 1945.)
The best
analogy with today’s literature would be to compare these types of ‘unofficial’
narratives of biblical stories (no matter what their source) to a form of what
is now called ‘fan fiction’: stories based on established literary or film
sources but written by people other
than the original creators. In their texts are stories about Jesus as a back-sassing,
murderous adolescent, Jesus in a gay encounter with Lazarus, and also with John the Apostle, and in The Secret Gospel of Mark, a ‘flying wizard battle’ (between Peter and Simon Magus), an infant Noah, inhumanly perfect in birth, shining like an angel and talking, straight out of the
womb, and Daniel defeating a dragon.
With so many tales that involve controversial subject matter and the supernatural, its easy to see what the church fathers found it prudent to just leave most of it out. After all, why would anybody come to church for spiritual guidance when they could just 'whip up' some Christian magic, and perform miracles and healing (and absolution) themselves?
With so many tales that involve controversial subject matter and the supernatural, its easy to see what the church fathers found it prudent to just leave most of it out. After all, why would anybody come to church for spiritual guidance when they could just 'whip up' some Christian magic, and perform miracles and healing (and absolution) themselves?
So, given the
subject matter, and the literary approach, it seems that a text such as The Book of Revelation could also have come from one of these
largely forgotten, ignored, suspect, and decidedly sensationalistic sources, yet
it still somehow made it into the Bible anyway. It is as if the
Councils, tired after 1700 years of debating, decided to throw caution,
decorum, and any lingering doubts of losing control over the earthly salvation
of its followers to the wind, and ‘rubber-stamped’ The Book of Revelation
without editing, censuring, or reading it.
Of course,
that was far from the case. Revelation was
perhaps the most rigorously debated book to be considered for inclusion into
the Bible. It was, at various times,
almost universally accepted, and (universally) denounced (and accepted again) before finally settling into its final home at the end of the
Book.
This final chapter
is odd, for several reasons. It is a series of epistles (letters) written by a
one ‘John of Patmos’, to the Seven Churches of Asia, (‘satellite’ worship centers and their Christian populaces,
which had gradually spread out from Rome). Scholars were, at one time, were not
definitely sure who he was supposed to be, a conflict that was eventually
resolved and is no longer a concern. (Patmos
is a small Greek island in the Aegean Sea, which during biblical times, was
used as a penal colony and point of exile, mostly for bothersome upstarts from
various Christian sects, of which there were many.).
His book is
full divinely inspired visions, of dire prophecies and grim warnings, with
their central theme being the so-called End Times, Judgment Day, and the
millennial return of Christ. With nightmarish imagery second only to that found
in Dante’s Inferno in Classic literature,
Revelation may well be the most brutally descriptive of all the books of either
testament. However, what was the true meaning of these passages, and how did
they make it into such an auspicious place in the Bible (as the end chapter)
when other, relatively tamer books, (and perhaps less controversial), by
comparison, did not?
Who Was the
Author of the Book of Revelation?
During biblical
times, ‘John’ was a rather common name. The author of the book was, at one time
or another, suspected of being any one of them; John the Apostle, John the
Evangelist, John of Patmos, and even, John, “the disciple whom Jesus loved” (Gospel of John). Eventually,
all those candidates turned out to be the same person, the Apostle John, once
the youngest of Jesus' disciples, and brother of James Zebedee. This realization
was the resolution of the first mystery of the Book of Revelation: the identity of its author. (The question of
authorship is no longer considered to be in doubt as it has been in the past, at least not by the majority.)
If John of
Patmos was the same ‘John’ as John the Apostle, then that would have made him
the youngest of the original twelve apostles, and conceivably able to have
survived (into old age) to become John of Patmos. Considering the fact that he’d
already been ‘martyred’ by being boiled alive in oil before being banished to Patmos, that survival was not
without its challenges. (He somehow emerged from the ordeal completely unharmed,
causing an entire Coliseum of spectators to spontaneously convert to
Christianity en masse.) John the
Apostle then became John of Patmos, and eventually got himself banished to
that island for being a trouble-making rabble-rouser of one of the new, troublesome sects that all went under the general heading of ‘Christianity’.
The most recent research verifies that the
‘Patmos’ John, who is also John the Apostle, is the one generally accepted as the author now.
What,
exactly, is the Book of Revelation?
The Book of
Revelation takes the form of letters, or ‘epistles’, addressed to the 'Seven Churches of Asia’, and contains some of the most fantastic and allegorical
imagery to be found in the Bible. These images come to him in the form of prophetic visions, mostly about the ‘End of Days’, Judgment Day, apocalyptic
battles, and the Second Coming of Christ.
(The Seven Churches of Asia Minor, while they initially spread during end of the first century A. D., eventually flourished during the rise of the Byzantine or Eastern Roman Empire. Some time after Christ’s crucifixion, Christianity, at first a minor Jewish cult, spread into Asia Minor from Rome proper, right after it had split itself into two distinct entities known as the Eastern and Western Empires. The division into two halves of the once mighty Roman Empire occurred around the year 284 AD. under the Emperor Diocletian. That means that John of Patmos would have written his seven letters to each of them during the very earliest years of their histories, between 70 A. D. and 96 A.D.)
(The Seven Churches of Asia Minor, while they initially spread during end of the first century A. D., eventually flourished during the rise of the Byzantine or Eastern Roman Empire. Some time after Christ’s crucifixion, Christianity, at first a minor Jewish cult, spread into Asia Minor from Rome proper, right after it had split itself into two distinct entities known as the Eastern and Western Empires. The division into two halves of the once mighty Roman Empire occurred around the year 284 AD. under the Emperor Diocletian. That means that John of Patmos would have written his seven letters to each of them during the very earliest years of their histories, between 70 A. D. and 96 A.D.)
Post-biblical
writers and researchers all have various opinions on what the allegories mean,
ranging from actual future visions of end times, to allegorical representations
of political upheavals (and wrong-doings) in the Church at the time John set
his (supposed) visions down with quill and scroll. (John of Patmos would have
lived around the time of the reign of the Roman Emperor Titus Flavius Caesar Domitianus, (Domitian)at the end of
that particular millennium.) It was most likely that emperor that had him banished to Patmos.
Whatever the
passages mean, allude to, or predict, they sound more like the apocrypha and
pseudepigrahpa that had been purposely left out of the Bible by the various
Councils. So how did the last, defining chapter of the Book of books come to be
composed of such fantastic material?
To answer
that question, it is important to remember that the word ‘Revelation’ itself comes from the Greek word apokalypsis, which means ‘revelation’. So, there is at least one
chapter, the final one, which is part of the apocryphal tradition, but one that
still made it into the final cut of the Bible. Moreover, it does not hurt that
one of the original Apostles of Jesus was supposed to have written it. As such,
the Book of Revelation came with sterling credentials, after years of scholarly
debate and research had verified its author to be John, the ‘last’ apostle of
Jesus.
When and Why
Was the Book of Revelation Added to the Bible?
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| ('The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse' by Albrecht Dürer, 1498) |
Like many of
the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, The Book of Revelation, (also known as ‘The Book of the Apocalypse’) was not always roundly accepted by all
factions
of the still ‘factious’ early Catholic/Christian Church. Although it is true
that its first reception had been a remarkably good
one (as far as potential new candidates for addition to canon go), it later hit
a bumpy road, as many doubted its authorship, and its message of a millennial reign
of Christ, among other things. (This aspect of Christ’s return, as presented in
The Book of Revelation, is considered
by some to be a militant, or 'zealot’ form
of millennialism, which many early theologians and Church Fathers rejected.) This
doubt would eventually spread throughout the various factions of the religion,
with many either accepting it or rejecting it along similar lines.
Some
churches still rejected Revelation,
again, for many of the same reasons it was rejected in the past: Lingering
doubts about authorship, the fantastic and bizarre storytelling style (again,
much too much like the other rejected texts of the Bible). It was also rejected
because of the fact that other less well-accepted factions of the church
accepted its prophetic visions, which had too often been called into question
by other, majority member-churches of early (Eastern) Christianity. (Also,
the very idea of a ‘militant’ Christ, at the head of an avenging army did not
sit to well with them either.)
Leading
thinkers of the church from Dionysius to Martin Luther and John Calvin (1509-1564)
did not have a high opinion of The Book
of Revelation. The same doubts
about Revelation’s value and meaning still exist, yet it was added to the
books of the Bible as it is known today at the Synod (or ‘council) of 397 (during the Third Council of Carthage),
by its alternative name, ‘The Book of the
Apocalypse of John’.
In addition,
to further the confusion, there were other ‘books of Revelation’, most notably,
the Apocalypse of Peter, found in the
Nag Hammadi Library. Like John’s Revelation,
the Apocalypse of Peter had its
supporters and detractors, and spent time in and out of the favor of various
churches and theologians, before finally receding into the relative obscurity
of the other Apocrypha texts.
Yet the
question remains: why was such an admittedly contested and ‘odd’ book of John’s
Revelation eventually added to the
Bible, when so many others like it, the so-called ‘lost and forgotten books’
had been rejected?
The reason
is simple: The author of the book, elderly, hoary old John of Patmos, had once
been the youngest of Jesus’ disciples, known as John the Apostle. Now elderly
but still ‘graced’, the last living follower of Christ, having survived being
boiled alive in oil and banished to the island of Patmos by the Emperor
Domitian, had received dire, ecstatic visions from a divine source, apparently
from Christ himself.
As a direct
link to Jesus, the old sage was well positioned to bring the world a final,
apocalyptic message as if it were couched in Christ’s own words, and from his
own lips, about his final return. For many of the Church’s early fathers,
theologians, and patriarchs, that proof of authorship (eventually) gave The Book of Revelation an unassailable pedigree. (And, unlike so many other rejected texts of the apocrypha and pseudepigrapha, which often offered supernatural ways to 'work around' the authority of the Church, Revelation seemed to offer only the church as a final salvation against eternal damnation and the fires of hell.)
The firmly established fact of author's identity had been more than enough to have ‘The Book of the Apocalypse of John’ accepted as the final chapter of the New Testament, written by the last living disciple of Christ and from Christ's own words, by he who had in turn been called 'John the Apostle', 'John, whom Jesus loved', 'John, the Evangelist', and finally, John of Patmos.
The firmly established fact of author's identity had been more than enough to have ‘The Book of the Apocalypse of John’ accepted as the final chapter of the New Testament, written by the last living disciple of Christ and from Christ's own words, by he who had in turn been called 'John the Apostle', 'John, whom Jesus loved', 'John, the Evangelist', and finally, John of Patmos.
Further Reading: 4 Big Myths of the Book of Revelation
