Revelations: Visions, Prophecy, and Politics in the Book of Revelation by Elaine Pagels Read Free Book Online Page B

Ruins
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).
37 See the discussion by Friesen,
Imperial Cults,
90–95.
38 Price,
Rituals and Power,
especially 1–77.
39 See Gaius Suetonius, “Divus Julius” and “Divus Augustus,”
The Twelve Caesars,
trans. Robert Graves, rev. ed. (London: Penguin, 2007), 1–103; Plutarch,
Lives
, trans. Arthur H. Clough (New York: Modern Library, 2001), vol. II: “Anthony,” 481–534.
40 Psalm 96:5 (95:5 in the Septuagint), translated from the original Hebrew into Greek, could suggest this reading.
41 In his fine study of visions in Jewish medieval sources, Elliot Wolfson comments that “one may presume” that these “were induced by specific visionary practices, though the records of these visions were often expressed in conventional imagery drawn from the theophanic traditions in Hebrew Scriptures,” in
Through a Speculum That Shines: Vision and Imagination in Medieval Jewish Mysticism
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), 28. For a discussion of such practices, see Dan Merkur, “The Visionary Practices of Jewish Apocalypticists,” in
Psychoanalytic Study of Society
14 (1989): 119–148.
42 Revelation 1:12–17. John’s vision seems to combine features that Daniel uses to describe the Ancient of Days in the vision he relates in Daniel 7:9b and the angelic presence he describes in 10:5–9.
43 Revelation 3:10.
44 Ezekiel 1:26–28.
45 Revelation 5:2.
46 Revelation 5:5.
47 For an intriguing discussion on the juxtaposition of the lion/lamb images, see Aune,
Revelation 1–5
, vol. 52A: 332–338; 349–355, and Friesen,
Imperial Cults
, especially part II, “Revelation, Resistance,” and “The Authority of the Lamb,” 135, 197–209.
48 Some of Jesus’ earliest followers, noting the proximity of his crucifixion and Passover, made this connection explicit, as did Paul of Tarsus, saying that “Christ, our Passover [lamb] has been sacrificed for us” (I Corinthians 5:7b), and the author of the Gospel of John, who actually narrates the account of Jesus’ death as if it had coincided with the slaughter of the Passover lambs (John 19:14ff).
49 Revelation 6:1–2. For discussion of what this means in the context of John’s prophecy, see Pierre Prigent,
Commentary on the Apocalypse of St. John,
trans. W. Pradels (Tübingen, Germany: Mohr Siebeck, 2001), 262f; Duff,
Who Rides the Beast?
83–125; Pagels, “The Social History of Satan, Part III: John of Patmos and Ignatius of Antioch—Contrasting Visions of ‘God’s People,”
Harvard Theological Review
99.4 (2006): 487–505.
50 John Marshall interprets such evidence to suggest that John wrote during—or directly after—this intense time of war and assassination; see
Parables of War: Reading John’s Jewish Apocalypse
(Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfred Laurier Press, 2001).
51 Revelation 6:16–17.
52 Revelation 7:13–17.
53 Historian Adela Yarbro Collins helpfully reminded me in a letter that John apparently took the ten plagues against the Egyptians in Exodus as his model for Revelation 8:8–9.
54 Revelation 8:8–9.
55 Revelation 10:1–6.
56 Revelation 11:15.
57 Revelation 12:1–4.
58 Neil Forsythe points out that this “is the only explicit reference in the New Testament to a war in heaven, and so the key text for the war in later tradition,”
The Old Enemy,
252; while, as my colleagueMartha Himmelfarb reminds me, the prophet Daniel refers to war between the angels of the various nations, including Persia and Israel. See also the work of Adela Yarbro Collins and, more recently, Pagels, “The Social History of Satan, Part III,” 487–494.
59 Revelation 12:7–9.
60 Revelation 12:18–13:4.
61
Enuma Elish
, 137.
62 Psalm 74:12–14.
63 For example, see Yarbro Collins,
The Combat Myth in the Book of Revelation
.
64 Genesis 1:1–2.
65 Genesis 1:21.
66 Much of this discussion is owed to the brilliant analysis of the Genesis accounts by Jon D. Levenson,
Creation and the Persistence of Evil: The Jewish Drama of Divine