Elaine Pagels is best known for her works on ancient Christian heterodoxies such as The Gnostic Gospels and Beyond Belief. Several of her later books, however, use related research to invert the question, and to interrogate the sources and effects of orthodoxy. These titles include The Origin of Satan and Adam, Eve, and the Serpent. The 2012 volume Revelations belongs to this later class. It examines the Johannine Apocalypse in its original historical context and its early reception, up to and barely through the formation of the Christian scriptural canon. In the process, Pagels paints pictures of early Christianity that are likely to be unfamiliar to the wide audience to whom the book is addressed.

In particular, and contrary to standard Christian framings of the text of Revelation, she observes that its author John was almost certainly not a self-identifying "Christian." He was instead a Jew who identified Jesus as the Messiah. He was concerned with Roman persecution of Jews, and overtly resentful of gentile converts to Pauline proto-Christianity whom he regarded as pseudo-Jews. She contrasts John with his contemporary Ignatius Christophoros, a chief originator of the concept and pattern of the Christian orders of clergy. It is one of many ironies concerning John's Revelation that it would eventually be used by Christians to vilify Jews and to enforce the political structures of orthodox Christianity.

Given my own longstanding interests, I was especially tickled that Pagels spent nine pages on Apuleius of Madaurus, whom she used to provide a window on the pagan intellectual and religious context in the second century. In her account, Apuleius comes off rather like an ancient Roman Robert Anton Wilson.

Other key figures in the book include Irenaeus, a founder of Christian heresiological thought, and Athanasius, a Constantinian bishop at the core of the effort to unify "creed, clergy, and canon" (169). The history attempts to account for the fact that John's Revelation went from being one of many such visionary documents in circulation to its later status as the only "authorized" Christian text of its type. (It was, of course, still in the company of its Hebrew precedents in Isaiah and Daniel.) In a way, it became the vision to end all visions, a "seal" forbidding the canonization of other such writings and inoculating against them.

Only in a short "Conclusion" is there any treatment of more recent receptions of Revelation, and it pivots on the Reformation and the US Civil War. It doesn't even mention the subsequent widespread reading of the text as a curious species of allegorical science fiction, nor the way that it has been influential in the genesis of new religious movements--Christian and post-Christian--in the modern era. Inasmuch as the Revelation to John forms the locus classicus for many of the central mythemes of Thelema, I would strongly recommend this book to Thelemites. It supplies an overview of positive history to complement psychological treatments of the vision such as Lawrence's Apocalypse and esoteric exegesis like that of Pryse's Apocalypse Unsealed.

Contextualizes Revelation in a landscape of similar texts in jewish writings, christian apocrypha and beyond. Also covers the long history of interpretations of the content. Content rich, uses Pagels knowledge of the gnostic texts well, a lot more on point than Ehrman's [b:Armageddon: What the Bible Really Says about the End|61271799|Armageddon What the Bible Really Says about the End|Bart D. Ehrman|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1675608536l/61271799._SX50_.jpg|96610951]. ( )

At first, I thought I would not be interested in a mere descriptive interpretation of the Book of Revelation, or even in a discussion of the historical context in which Revelation was one of many visionary early Christian texts. But Elaine Pagels' essay is more than that. I found very interesting her discussion of how Revelation was used in the mid-second century by the orthodox and unorthodox alike. Justin Martyr seems to be the first on record to have attributed Revelation to the son of Zebedee. Not everyone agreed at the time. Montanism--perhaps the first major revivalist movement in Church history--used Revelation in support of their "New Prophecy." Opponents of the Montanists regarded this use of Revelation as "need-we-say-more" evidence that Revelation should not be adopted as scripture but instead rejected as the ravings of a lunatic. Indeed, by 150 A.D., it was as yet unclear whether the Church would accept or reject Revelation.

In her concluding chapter, the virtues as well as the limitations of Pagels 19 present work are on display. Speaking of John 19s Revelation, she writes, 1CEver since, Christians have adapted his visions to changing times, reading their own social, political, and religious conflict into the cosmic war he so powerfully evokes. 1D This is exactly what Pagels has made clear in her previous chapters, including the point she makes in the next sentence of her concluding chapter: 1CPerhaps most startling is how Constantine invoked John 19s vision of Christ 19s victory over Rome to endorse his own imperial rule. 1D Indeed, that probably is the greatest historical paradox. (Though this is close to a point that Bart Ehrman, John Dominic Crossan and others have made before, that Christianizing Rome and Romanizing Christianity took Christianity in an entirely different organizational direction from the simple communitarian and egalitarian one with which it began.)

In the end, Pagels admits that bringing her argument up to the present day 1Cwould require another book 14or many books! 1D (echoing the final chapter of the Fourth Gospel, perhaps), but she subsequently says, 1CWe need not rehearse the history of religious violence 14from crusaders fighting 18infidels 19 and inquisitors torturing and killing Jews to save their immortal souls, to Catholics and Protestants fighting religious wars from the sixteenth century on, or Christian groups engaged in vigilante violence to the present day, or the wartime rhetoric of world leaders 14to realize how often those who wield power and see themselves standing on God 19s side against Satan 19s have sought to force 18God 19s enemies 19 to submit or be killed. 1D If you think that in modern times that actually sounds like a stance more emphasized in some circles within Islam than in modern Christianity, Pagels does add that 1CSuch apocalyptic fervor, whether engaged in by Christians or Muslims, allows no neutral ground 1D; but this moral equivalence between Christian and Islamic absolutism, while popular in academia and leftist politics, does not address the chasm that has grown between Christianity and Islam whereby those who hold such a violently absolutist view have been marginalized almost to the point of extinction within Christianity while those who take such a view within Islam are on the verge of taking over that religion if they have not already done so, and they face little effective opposition by moderate voices. Of course, as Pagels admits, discussing religions outside of Christianity is off of her main topic, and she makes no effort to discuss how Islam came to adopt the kind of violent absolutism toward salvation and damnation that characterized earlier Christian rhetoric.

Tangential to this problem of discussing non-Christian religions is her reference to the similarity between Buddhism and the emphasis on 1Cenlightenment 1D by certain so-called Gnostic sects, even in the details of physical-spiritual practices. (Such 1Cspiritual exercises 1D are hardly limited to bygone sects but are still used by some monks to this day, including followers of St. Ignatius Loyola.) Pagels refers to Buddhists or Buddhism four times and in no case does she unequivocally show that there was any 1Ccross pollination, 1D as one might say, between Gnosticism and Buddhism. This speculation, to my knowledge, has never been supported. (Pagels does reference a book called 1CPhilosophy as a Way of Life 1D by Pierre Hadot, but it is not clear that she is saying that this book addresses the issue raised here; perhaps a look at this book would confirm or dispel my impression.)

Another interesting point is her use of the term 1CCatholic Church 1D to refer to the orthodoxy that consolidated under post-Constantinian Christianity. Ever since Walter Bauer 19s 1COrthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity 1D formulated his thesis that Rome was the center of an orthodoxy that grew to take over Christendom entirely and absolutely from a relatively early date, there has been a scholarly debate over where Bauer was right and wrong. On one hand, it has been argued that Bauer knew not how right he was about the extent of diversity of opinion among early Christians 14it was even more diverse 14but as to the earliness of Rome 19s primacy in determining theological purity, he was not quite as right as he thought; rather, the orthodoxy 14or proto-orthodoxy, as Ehrman and others prefer 14was more diffuse, as evidenced by the prominence of such orthodox leaders as Bishop Athanasius of Alexandria, Egypt, which Pagels acknowledges. Athanasius was the first we know of to list all of the books of the present New Testament in the year 367. As Pagels notes with particular interest, while most of the books listed by Athanasius had been listed by other cannon makers around the same time, he is the first known to have included Revelation on his list. Even so, calling Athanasius Catholic with a capital 1CC 1D rather than just orthodox or proto-orthodox smacks of begging a question that should be reserved for another book 14unless, of course, Pagels might be building here on a point she has previously argued, but of which I am unaware. ( )

(Review to come) ( )

Het laatste Bijbelboek, de Openbaring (van Johannes) heeft al eeuwenlang voor controversie en verwondering gezorgd. Wat moet de lezer maken van de beesten, schalen vol toorn, de ruiters, het duizendjarig vrederijk, de zeven brieven aan de zeven gemeenten in Klein-Azië, of de enorme kubus die uit de hemel als het nieuwe Jeruzalem neerdaalt en eeuwige poel van vuur waarin alle kwaadstichters, inclusief satan en de dood uiteindelijk naartoe veroordeeld worden? De Amerikaanse religiewetenschapper en schrijfster Elaine Pagels beschrijft in Het vreemdste Bijbelboek : visioenen, voorspellingen en politiek in Openbaring een aantal aspecten. Ze gaat in op het vreemde de auteur te vereenzelvigen met Jezus' discipel en broer van Jakobus, beide zonen van Zebedeus. Scherp is de analyse van de leerstellige verschillen tussen de Joodse gelovigen in het nog jonge christendom waartoe ook Petrus behoorde, en de lijn van Paulus c.s. die Christus bekend wilden maken aan de heidenen (niet-Joden) zonder de verplichtingen van de Joodse Thora.

Johannes heeft met zijn openbaring boek ook anderen geïnspireerd. Ook deze geschriften komen langs in de analyse. Is het Romeinse Rijk of de heersende keizer in bedekte termen beschreven, komt het vrederijk op aarde nog tijdens het leven van de gelovigen eind 1e eeuw, de 2e, 4e, 16e, 20e of 21e eeuw? Van de schrijver zelf tot Maarten Luther, de boeken van Hal Lindsey en de Left Behind serie van Jerry B. Jenkins en Tim LaHaye en de 144.000 Jehova's Getuigen die behouden worden; ze grijpen allemaal terug op de profetieën en visioenen in Openbaring. Politieke tegenstanders, scheiding van religie en politiek en verkettering hebben hun basis in dit Bijbelboek. In het vierde deel neemt Pagels de lezer mee in de geschiedenis van de 4e eeuw, waar keizer Constantijn christen wordt, concilies belangrijke theologische kwesties als de drie-eenheid, goddelijkheid van Jezus Christus en de rooms-katholieke hoofdstroom van het christendom proberen op te lossen.

De invloedrijke Athanasius van Alexandrië (296-373) heeft, strijdend tegen ketterse kloostergemeenschappen in Egypte, met het opstellen van een uitputtende lijst van Bijbelboeken Openbaring van Johannes opgenomen en als sluitstuk gemaakt, waar diverse tijdgenoten Openbaring als ketters zagen. Openbaring is anders dan andere Bijbelboeken. Samen met andere 'geheime' geschriften "nodigen, anders dan degenen die benadrukken dat ze alle antwoorden die ze nodig hebben al weten, deze geschriften ons uit om onze eigen waarheden te ontdekken, onze eigen stem te vinden en niet alleen te zoeken naar een voorbije, maar naar een voortgaande openbaring." Verwacht van Pagels geen exegese van Openbaring, wel een mogelijk ontnuchterende schets van de ontstaansgeschiedenis, interpretatie en zingeving ervan. ( )