Revelation and the Rest of Them
After seeing all the other posts on Revelation (a.k.a. The Apocalypse of St. John) I decided to insert my own two sense and a half bit.
A wide variety of interpretations for this book have been offered over the years. Most recently, the favorite is the "Left Behind" version. This is based on a very literal understanding of the book, complete with literal Locust and multi-headed beasts, etc. One of the fundamental tennets of this belief system is the idea of a Rapture, where the believers in Christ will be removed from the earth, either before, after, or during the Great Tribulation (dun dun dun)!
An interesting thing about this theory? A hundred-and-fifty years old. Yeah, no where near as ancient as the book itself.
One of the more literate, or intrespective interpretations of Revelation is that it is a commentary on first century Israel/Rome. The number 666, for example, can be acheived by adding up the numerical value of Nero (most ancient literate cultures applied numerical values to each and every letter, hence how we end up with the roman I,V,X,L,C,M). This theory states that Revelation is first about Rome in its apocalyptic senses, while about heaven in its spiritual sense.
Most people tend to ignore the fact that half of Revelation is spent discussing heaven and what it is like there. Within the Catholic tradition, almost all understanding of heaven is drawn from this book.
Personally, I'm a big fan of using this work as a guidepost of heaven, because it deals with the joy of the future rather than perpetual damnation, et al.
A wide variety of interpretations for this book have been offered over the years. Most recently, the favorite is the "Left Behind" version. This is based on a very literal understanding of the book, complete with literal Locust and multi-headed beasts, etc. One of the fundamental tennets of this belief system is the idea of a Rapture, where the believers in Christ will be removed from the earth, either before, after, or during the Great Tribulation (dun dun dun)!
An interesting thing about this theory? A hundred-and-fifty years old. Yeah, no where near as ancient as the book itself.
One of the more literate, or intrespective interpretations of Revelation is that it is a commentary on first century Israel/Rome. The number 666, for example, can be acheived by adding up the numerical value of Nero (most ancient literate cultures applied numerical values to each and every letter, hence how we end up with the roman I,V,X,L,C,M). This theory states that Revelation is first about Rome in its apocalyptic senses, while about heaven in its spiritual sense.
Most people tend to ignore the fact that half of Revelation is spent discussing heaven and what it is like there. Within the Catholic tradition, almost all understanding of heaven is drawn from this book.
Personally, I'm a big fan of using this work as a guidepost of heaven, because it deals with the joy of the future rather than perpetual damnation, et al.
posted by J.M.R. Burgard @ 1:32 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home