Elaine Pagels - Revelations: Visions, Prophecy, and Politics in the Book of Revelation

ALSO BY ELAINE PAGELS

Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas

The Origin of Satan

Adam, Eve, and the Serpent: Sex and Politics in Early Christianity

The Gnostic Gospels

Reading Judas: The Gospel of Judas and the Shaping of Christianity

(with Karen King)

Elaine Pagels

Visions, Prophecy, and Politics in
the Book of Revelation

VIKING

VIKING

Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street,
New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto,
Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephens Green, Dublin 2, Ireland

(a division of Penguin Books Ltd)

Penguin Books Australia Ltd, 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell,

Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)

Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre,
Panchsheel Park, New Delhi110 017, India

Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632,

New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)

Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue,

Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

First published in 2012 by Viking Penguin, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

Copyright Elaine Pagels, 2012

All rights reserved

Frontispiece: Albrecht Drer (14711528). Saint Michael fighting the dragon. Woodcut from The Revelation of St. John (Rev. XII, 79). 1498 (B.71). Bibliothque Nationale, Paris. Photo credit: Bridgeman-Giraudon / Art Resources, New York.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA

Pagels, Elaine H.

Revelations: visions, prophecy, and politics in the Book of Revelation / Elaine Pagels.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-101-57707-3

1. Bible. N.T. RevelationCriticism, interpretation, etc. 2. Eschatology. I. Title.

BS2825.52.P34 2012

228.06dc232011037551

Printed in the United States of America
Set in Adobe Jenson Pro
Designed by Francesca Belanger

No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the authors rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

ALWAYS LEARNING

PEARSON

To James
with love

T he Book of Revelation is the strangest book in the Bibleand the most controversial.

Instead of stories and moral teaching, it offers only visionsdreams and nightmares. And although few people say they understand its powerful images and prophecies, the book has been wildly popular among readers for two thousand years. Even today, countless people throughout the world turn to it to find meaning, and many Christian groups claim to see its prophecies of divine judgment being fulfilled before their eyes. Millions fear being left behind when the end comes, as Tim LaHayes best-selling book series warns, and believe that they are seeing its prophesied battles playing out in catastrophic events of recent history. Its visions of heaven and hell weave through literature from Miltons Paradise Lost to the poems of William Butler Yeats and the stories of James Baldwin, and have inspired music ranging from Battle Hymn of the Republic and African American spirituals to the Quartet for the End of Time, which French composer Olivier Messiaen wrote and first performed in a Nazi prison camp. Filmmakers and artists today graphically picture its visions, as Michelangelo, Goya, Bosch, Blake, and Picasso did before them. Christians in America have identified with its visions of cosmic war since the 1600s, when many immigrating to the New World believed they had arrived in the new Jerusalem promised in Revelation. Many have seen America as a redeemer nation that is to bring in the millennium, while others see its present military and economic system as evil Babylon. Political rhetoric still appeals to our nations sense of divine destinyor damns America for its sins.

How did this book speak to people when it was written two thousand years ago, and how does it continue to do so today? These questions led to this book, for, whether we love or hate it, the Book of Revelation speaks to something deep in human nature. I began this writing during a time of war, when some who advocated war claimed to find its meaning in Revelation, which was itself written in the aftermath of war. Exploring how this book has fascinated readers for two thousand years tells us much about ourselves and about how religion evokes such powerful responsesfor better and for worseto this day.

Controversy about the Book of Revelation is nothing new: Ever since it was written, Christians have argued heatedly for and against it, especially from the second century to the fourth, when it barely squeezed into the canon to become the final book in the New Testament. Many Christians never speak about it; some refuse to read it in worship; others talk about it all the time. The story of the Book of Revelation and how Christians have read it takes us from the time when Jesus followers were a marginal and persecuted minority to the emergence of a flourishing movement and then the establishment of the New Testament canon, after the emperor Constantine suddenly took Christ as his patron and made Christianity the dominant religion of the Roman Empire.

Who wrote this book? Whyand howdo so many people still read it today? And what is revelation? Are any socalled revelations what they claim to be: messages from God? How can we know whether these visions actually communicate truth about reality or only one persons projection or delusion? Asking such questions, I realized that what complicates our story is the long-hidden cache of ancient Christian writings discovered in Egypt in 1945a discovery that includes not only the socalled Gnostic gospels but also about twenty other books of revelationmost of them quite different from the New Testament Book of Revelation. Many of them speak less about a Judgment Day at the end of the world than about finding the divine in it now. But before we explore these, lets look at what we find in the New Testament Book of Revelation.

This book opens as its author, John (often called John of Patmos, since he says he wrote it on the small island of Patmos, off the coast of Turkey), tells how he was in the spirit John says that Jesus announced that God is about to make war on the evil powers that have taken over the world and that, although the coming cosmic war will destroy the entire universe, ultimately God will prevail, throw evildoers into a lake of eternal fire, and welcome the righteous into his kingdom.

John says that he heard a voice telling him to come up here!apparently a summons to ascend into heaven through a door he saw standing open before him.