The Book of Revelation: the end of the world as we know it

In a recent amusing youtube video, US President George W Bush acts out his apocalyptic fantasy to the tune of REM’s It’s the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine). It is amusing, partially because the makers have cleverly synched his words to the song, and partially because it taps in to the greatest apocalyptic fantasy of all. That fantasy is the biblical Book of Revelation. The story of Revelation is told in the fascinating book “A History of the End of the World” by American author Jonathan Kirsch.

Revelation is the last book of the Bible. Revelation is Latin for the Greek word apocalypse (“unveiling”). It is a roadmap to the end of the world, according to first century thinking. It is the Omega to the alpha of Genesis. The ‘alpha and omega’ is one of the many images that have seeped out of Revelation and embedded themselves in modern culture. Others include the Antichrist, The Seventh Seal, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Armageddon, the Whore of Babylon, Gog and Magog, and of course, 666, the fabled number of the beast. In short, Revelation is a treasure trove of the eschatology of endtimes.

However, the book is a serious anomaly. Revelation is a violent fantasy that sits awkwardly at the end of the mostly peace-loving Christian New Testament. The story of the lives of Jesus and his early followers segues uncomfortably into this misogynistic fire and brimstone Old Testament-style story of how history will end in catastrophe. Revelation’s moral calculus has been a crucial factor in the lives of many key Christians over the eras and remains a strong force especially in the religion-drenched politics of the US.

Revelation, also known as Apocalypse, has always divided the critics. The pious call it the revealed word of Jesus while feminist theologian Schussler Fiorenza called it “apocalyptic pornography” and literary critic Northrop Frye said it was an “insane rhapsody”. Thomas Jefferson was no more impressed and dismissed Revelation as “merely the ravings of a maniac”. The book was written by a man called “John” in the Romanised Asia Minor (now mainland Turkey) for an audience of early Christians. Revelation is traditionally ascribed to John the Evangelist, but no evidence supports this. However he is likely to be born a Jew from Judea, and a bitter witness to the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 CE.

But John is a Jew who has converted to Christianity and he turns Revelation into a curious mix of anti-Semitism and Jewish history and tradition that made some scholars describe him as a “Christian Rabbi”. The book’s apocalyptic theme is borrowed from the Old Testament Book of Daniel. Revelation is responsible for giving Satan (which the Old Testament merely saw an “adviser”) such a bad reputation. Satan is backed up by a memorable cast of bad guys including plagues of locusts, a seven-headed ten-horned red dragon and the Great Whore of Babylon. The drunken whore is straight out of Freud, a sexual monster with whom “the kings of the earth have committed fornication”. Most intriguingly she keeps a mysterious golden cup full of “abominations and impurities”.

According to Revelation, the abominable and impure endtimes will be presaged by the “Tribulation”, with its plagues and pestilence, earthquakes and floods, comets and eclipses, and battles in Heaven and Earth. Jesus will return to Earth at the head of an army to fight a battle at a place called Armageddon. After defeating Satan and his followers, Jesus will rule for a thousand year Reich. But then Satan will escape, and with his allies Gog and Magog fight a second almighty battle. He is defeated again and cast off to eternal torment in a lake of “fire and brimstone”. Everyone on Earth is killed but the Elect will be resurrected and granted eternal life in the “new Jerusalem”.

The timetable of Revelation has long been a boon to millenarianists ever since the book was written. But it suffered some early embarrassments. In the book, John reserves his wrath for the Roman Empire. The “mark” of the beast was actually a Roman coin, which “branded” Christians when they fell into their hands. The 666 (or possibly 616) was an alphanumeric code which some say refers to Nero (although he died two years before the temple fell). This anti Roman sentiment was inconvenient by the time Emperor Theodosius declared Christianity the state religion in 391 CE. The book probably would not have made the cut of “approved” books in the Christian canon if not for the belief that the author “John” was John the Disciple (who, by another tradition, was the author of the Gospel of John).

Augustine then legitimised Revelation by giving it a spiritual and metaphorical reading. But the book’s supporters were always excited by its promise that the “end was nigh”. A medieval monk named Joachim of Fiore fomented apocalyptic revolution based on his interpretation of Revelation. He saw the Muslim warrior Saladin as the latest incarnation of the Anti-Christ. His visions inspired Crusaders such as English King Richard the Lion-Heart who visited Joachim for inspiration on his return from Palestine.

In the 1490s, Dominican friar Girolano Savonarola urged the citizens of Renaissance Florence to toss their paintings and perfume into the Bonfire of the Vanities to bring forth Judgement Day. He was a religious reformer who preached against the moral corruption of the clergy and the pope. His vision of New Jerusalem held Florence in rebellion for three years before he was excommunicated and hanged in 1498.

By the time Savonarola died, Columbus had begun his voyages to the Americas. The ideas of Revelation were quick to follow the first European immigrants. The Puritans saw the English civil war as a battle between Christ and Antichrist. They took their millenarian message across the Atlantic where the apocalyptic message spread quickly. Revelation was the text of choice of the Seven Day Adventists, founded in 1863 by Ellen White and her husband James. Many turned to a new variation called “The Rapture” which believed that the virtuous would be plucked from Earth without being inflicted by the horror of the Tribulation.

The idea was imported into the US by Irishman John Nelson Derby who led a dissenting group called the Plymouth (or “Exclusive”) Brethren. Derby’s plot twist on the Revelation (the Rapture is not mentioned anywhere in the text) has proved immensely appealing to American fundamentalist Christians. Vernon Howell (rebadged in biblical fashion as David Koresh) followed the Savaranola template when led his followers into martyrdom at Waco. There he believed the battle of Armageddon was about to start.

The Rapture is also responsible for America’s love-hate relationship between Christian fundamentalists and the Jewish people. It states that Israel will be restored to the Jewish people before bringing the world to an end. The rise of Darby’s ideas in the 19th century coincided with the rise of Zionism. While early Zionists were prepared to site their nation in Argentina or Uganda, Christians pressed Zionist claims to Israel itself as a precondition of the Second Coming. To this day, Christian Zionists regard peace in the Middle East as an obstacle to their plans, and their ideas match those of the hawks and hardliners in Israel. An uneasy marriage of convenience exists between fundamentalists Christians (who tolerate Jews only as a necessary conduit to Judgement Day) and government of Israel (who think the Christian ideas are crackpot but value their support and money).

Meanwhile Ronald Reagan brought the ideas of Revelation into mainstream American politics. In 1980, he said “we may be the generation that sees Armageddon”. He surrounded himself with people who had similar beliefs. His Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger admitted he read Revelation and said “I believe the world is going to end…every day I think time is running out”. Reagan spoke of the Soviet “evil empire” which predicted would die out with human history itself whose “last pages are even now being written”.

Reagan was only half right. The end of Soviet Communism did not presage the end of history or the last man. And while no president since him has been so outspokenly apocalyptic, the two Bushes and Clinton have all been forced to declare themselves to be “born-again Christians”. Many of the leaders of the End Time movement are rich, well-connected and very powerful. And 46 per cent of all Americans claim to be "born-again" according to a 2002 Gallup poll. George W Bush himself was converted by Billy Graham in 1985 after a drunken weekend at the Bush compound. His core constituency is the fundamentalist voting bloc. While he himself has not openly declared himself, his language is often apocalyptic, such as when he describes the 'war on terror' as 'the epic struggle of good and evil'. His actions in the Middle East show that his government’s support of Israel is a pivotal issue. As it always was, the fate of the New Jerusalem is intricately tied with the old one.

Thoughts on the First Book of Moses

“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth”.

According to Genesis 1:1 that was the very first thing that happened. That was for starters.

God made himself a universe and then he went and made us one too.

Admittedly our planet 'was without form and void’ and thus not exactly homely, to begin with. We were far from lock-up stage yet.

Not that it mattered greatly yet, we couldn’t see what we were doing because ‘darkness was upon the face of the deep’. We needed something to brighten the place up, and God’s lick of paint, Light, was called into action.

And lo, for there is always an enlightening lo in such lore, there was light. It was such a valuable resource, it had to be carefully rationed. Thus day and night was the compromise solution(no word at this stage about the sun, the source of all this luminosity).

And then our Master Builder addressed himself to the problems of a watery planet and decided the dolphins couldn’t have it all to themselves. Land was created and upon it was put grass, herbs and trees. The stage was set to support carnivorous beings.

It took him three laborious days to get this far. On Day Four, only now is the Sun created (what source provided all the light for previous two days is never explained.) The Moon too gets its papers on this day.

With the working week in full swing, its time to populate the planet with animals to eat all those succulent plants, herbs and trees. Hence cattle and creeping things, whales and the rest. Two whole days were spent (an activity which was to have major consequences for Noah later in the game, not to mention long queues) putting all the beasts in the fields.

That left day six to make his piece de resistance, the creature in his own image, Man.

Thus the question is, if man is created in God’s image, what is the size of God’s honker? He ignored that question, instead he slyly commanded ‘Be fruitful and multiply’ to his newly created replicates.

He also, dubiously, handed them the keys to the kingdom. Six days it took him all up. No wonder he needed a break, no wonder he was so keen to relinquish control. He did bugger all on the Seventh Day.

From there on in the time period becomes hazy. We have no idea how long it took to build Eden and that most sinister of constructs ‘the tree of knowledge and evil’. More of which later. We do know that he went and built 4 rivers Pison (in Hasilah likely to be modern Saudi Arabia), Bihon in Ethiopia (the white Nile?), Hiddekel in Assyria (Tigris?) and the only one still known by its modern name, the Euphrates. Man was plonked into the middle of this riparian garden.

But this knowledge tree was bothersome. God left specific instructions. Don’t eat the fruit, he commanded in the World’s first council by-law. Poison was the official reason ‘Eat it and you will die’ was the unambiguous message. It is not clear why it was so planted with its killer propensities unless it was deliberate provocation.

Meanwhile, in week two and beyond God was turning his mind to some of the other problems of his making. Man must have his mate, he reckoned. So, while old Adam snoozed, God ripped out one of his ribs and showed great dexterity to turn it into a woman.

Did Eve ever realise she was just one rib away from oblivion? Anyway, when Adam awoke he found they were naked together but, pointedly, unashamed of this condition. They didn’t know any better. They were also possibly aroused, but this is not mentioned.

Unless it is, in the allegorical form of the snake who enters the dramatis personae at this point. The snake slithers up to Eve and gets into her ear about the forbidden fruit. He whispers casually that he frankly doubts God’s edict that the fruit is poisonous (and after all, we only have God’s word for it).

So tempted is she by the snake’s reasoning, she ignores the injunction and eats the fruit. So does Adam, showing at an early stage who was really wearing the trousers in Paradise. But as we know, neither is wearing trousers. The very first effect of this reckless fruit-eating is to ‘open their eyes’ and immediately notice their nakedness. This causes shame to kick in. They rush to find some fig-leaves and press them into service to hide what will soon be immortalised as ‘naughty bits’. The practice will be repeated for time immemorial against works of art by scandalised clergy and laity.

There was another immediate reckoning. Adam was hauled into the boss's office for a ‘please explain’ session. Why did you break my specific order? Adam did the obvious thing and blamed the underling – it was Eve’s fault. So she too was called in for an interrogation. She took the same tack as Adam and blamed the beguiling snake. God wringed his hands, the list of suspects was growing by the minute. The snake was hauled in too for questioning. After listening to all the evidence, God pronounced his stentorian judgement. The snake was cursed and forced evermore to march round on his belly (we are not told how it managed its movements beforehand and the fossil record is inconclusive.)

The woman’s sorrow was multiplied in a way that will impact her oncoming conception (this bit of the judgement, Woolly Days found obscure and difficult to follow.) More importantly God ruled that the husband would henceforth rule over her. Adam himself, despite winning dominion over woman, did not escape God’s wrath. His precious property, the Garden of Eden itself, was to be turned into a dustbowl - Adam and Eve would become the world’s first Okies.

Adam lost his godlike status and was turned into a mere mortal because ‘for dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return’. Adam and Eve were grounded in crime and punishment and banished from Eden (though given its now dustbowl status, that may not have been altogether a bad thing.) God hired bouncers called Cherubim to enforce the ban and armed them with madly flashing and flaming swords which turned every which way to make sure the nasty vermin stayed out.

With Judge God presiding, the court had ruled that original sin was in place and humans would not easily be allowed to forget it. In fact it would to be carried until some convenient time is found to expunge it by Christian baptism.

Manna Born

In the Old Testament book of Exodus, there is the story of manna, the miraculous food from heaven which sustained the Israelites in the wilderness.

It has entered the English language to mean any unexpected gift or windfall. It is also the sweet substance obtained from ash trees (fraxinus ornus – flowering ash or manna) of Southern Europe used as a laxative.

In Exodus, Moses and his people had successfully fled Egypt and were wandering the desert in search of the Promised Land. God was clearly on his side because he agreed to rain bread from heaven for him.

Each morning as the dew raised from the ground, the Israelites saw a small round thing which they called 'manna' (the Hebrew word for man).

Moses had to explain to his suspicious kinfolks it was edible bread.

There were specific instructions. They were to gather it, an omer each to a man. An omer is one tenth of a Hebrew ephah which is approximate to a bushel or 33 litres in total. That makes an omer about 3.3 litres. That's a lot of bread.

Manna was to be found on the ground six days out of every day. Even God’s gardeners rest on the Sabbath.

The Israelities lived on manna for a full forty years until they blundered into Canaan, Israel – the land of milk and honey. Manna had outlived its usefulness. For that matter, so had Moses. He died having never set foot in the promised land.

Pentateuch
semi conscious, unsure
The other half is there bathed in wan kitchen light
The silent tide is neapwalking
And the blood on the pot is beating out
Grotesque in gigahertz
Struck down by Sundays
Lesser slumpenproletariat
Sheriffprompt and houseproud
Detectives of ruby and earls
Turning ugly by the gasloads
Fierce and financial
Physical forceloads
Kinetic commentary
Stranded skyharbours
Suspicions in peanut demeanour
Raising the not-halves of the north
Demi-derriere sansculottes
Nipped in the buddha by a nervous notary
Counting down the power of the hours
Impounding warlock warrants
Scouring sterling beliefs
Odds against the evening
Long dead drunk
Crapulence in crepuscule
Clumsy treachery
Mirror obsidian
Secretly set on fire by
Saintly architecture
Simon stylite’s stylistic skylight
Stubborn styx and stonehenge
Watery Neolithic victims of
Zen, a phobia of
Johnny forensic
King of the Kitchen pershing
Soiled by the undertaker of the
Reverse paternity typist
Overlapping dromedary
Miracle of the mass serpent
El gran senor, por favor
Phillipic filibuster
Alma matter of fact
With a deafening degree of difficulty
Sentenced to secular suicide
In the tomb of the templar
Lies the sin of the superficial
Diaspora of the dynamite
Liquid to the limit
Largely unspeaking in original syndicate
Slim adds fat to the flavour of
A hemisemidemiquaver
Thalydomide rabies
Rintintinpot touch of scabies
Volumetric imperialist
High density water living
Fit for wanderpigeons
Chalky shit on Will the concrete-eater
Lotus override on a parkinson meter
Chancellor’s chin with the bill
Round trip to Mars via the mill.
Boardwalk boulevards of broken bollywood
In with the given, and I aint mistaking
Among things seep within us
Are blisters of mercy
In torchlight touch tennis
ghetto vendetta inhaling
knives out, priced and impaling
leaves lobsters, willing tasman on the floor
goer for the leaves and the door

Scroll Patrol

As far as biblical parchments go, none have quite the cachet or mystique as the Dead Sea Scrolls. The name alone, so exotic and so exquisite - with its subtle hint of a drowning afterlife – is redolent of magic and mystery. Their history has also contributed to a glowing legend.

They were discovered in Qumran on the east bank of the Dead Sea in Jordan in 1947 and they were quick to capture the public imagination. This was heightened because of excessive secrecy involving the deciphering of the material and the length of time it took for them to enter the public domain.

The vacuum of time created a rich volume of conspiracy theories. Most notable of the works of the time was ‘The Dead Sea Scroll Deception' by Bagnent and Leigh (who also co-operated to conjure up the nonsense of the Holy Blood and the Holy Grail in which the Scrolls also had a starring role) which claimed the Vatican was deliberately suppressing the scrolls.

Now that they have finally been released, most of the theories have been unmasked as nonsense – not least because the scrolls mostly deal with events BEFORE the life of Jesus. What they do tell us about are the origins of Jewish christianity and the impacts of Greece and Rome on the Near East.

The scrolls were found in a number of caves scattered along the inaccessible cliff-faces that dot the region. According to Stephen Hodge (who writes about them in the excellent and unbiased ‘The Dead Sea Scrolls: An Introductory Guide’) they can be divided into three sections. They are the Biblical works, the Sectarian works and the Non-Sectarian works. The Biblical works contain copies of the Penteteuch (the Torah or the first five books of the Old Testament: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Deuteronomy and Numbers), the Psalms and also cover non standard books such as the book of Enoch which is not included in the Old Testament canon. It also contains the Book of Jubilees covering the existence of evil in the world and also various pieces of eschatological writing.

The so called Sectarian works are probably the works of the mysterious sect called the Essenes. Hodge is not one hundred percent certain that it is the work of the Essenes and prefers to simply call them ‘The Community’. It concerns their teachings and disciplines and what is called ‘Pesher’ which is the expounding and interpretation of prophecies.

The third part of the Scrolls are the Non Sectarian works. The main work in this category is the Temple Scroll concerning the building and use of a vast temple. There are also works related to a Hebrew calendar. The scrolls date from 380 BC (the testament of Qahar) to 60 AD (the Thanksgiving Hymns).

The scrolls are the only known surviving Biblical works that predate 100 AD.

Flavours of Vladimir
“I am the shadow of the waxwing slain
by the false azure of the window pane”
I got stuck after 2 lines of Pale Fire
Nabokov’s flame could shoot me no higher
wondering, waxwing, butterfly, right?
Powerful suicidal folly in a false glass night
Until the dictionary made me out a liar
Pointed it out as a feathered flier
This waxy wing wanes as passerine songbird
Cross-referenced to perching this other new word
So two lines blazed a trail of ignorance
Perhaps just put down to casual chance
But before I commit to flagging standard
Of stumbled-upon knowledge deliciously rendered
What life lessons can it possibly show
Will out of little corniness, great jokes grow?
Dismiss it absolutely with spluttering adorn
Call it mealy-mouthed, great cereal “Killer Corn”
A wrestling tag with its own finality
A great plant damned with banality
A trial trivialised by rampant sensation
Pronounced abundantly guilty by association
Found in the vicinity of a rustic deception
Accessory after the fact of gauche perception
saccharine sophisticates pour out sweet scorn
on folks unluckily not so urbane born
yokel attributes to plants compared
and mirrored back to paradox squared
absurdity chained to another corny atrocity
‘corn ball’ stupid in its cloying ferocity
enslaved in a deep southern dessert sleaze
honeychile, another ball a popcorn and molasses, pullease
it makes me want to reach for an emetic
rather than humour this sad diabetic
time to play my occasional bit part
a sticky passion for a tired rhubarb tart
windows overlooking almost everything
set in motion by a dead waxwing

Nabatea

Between the 6th century BC and the first century of the common era (according to Yeshua, the fulcrum of the calendar) lived a people called Nabateans. They flourished in the south and east of Palestine from Petra in the north in modern Jordan to Hajaz in the south in modern Saudi Arabia. Petra was their capital and they had a sophisticated pantheon of Gods including Al-Azzi, the female deity. It was suggested and suspected that they were leaning towards a single deity towards the end of their power. They spoke Aramaic and would have been a profound influence on Judean culture in Maccabean times. The last remnant of post Alexandrian power was waning across the region and the new Roman masters were to destroy the power of Jew and Nabatean alike. Only Yeshua and his supporters were to flourish from this crossroads of history, politics and power.

Unsexed
I don’t complain I’ve lived simply
but styleless find me guilty
lacking in quintessential arts
Barry’s constant is not in
the formula of cloths to appearance
squeezing out goodness at the chapel of being
I’m a spinster spider
the web in which I lead
my life in others