Revelation is supposed to be an apocalypse,” an unveiling. If so, why is it so obscure at so many places? Good question, and we get a partial answer by following the flow of the book as a whole. Once we get past chapter 17, with its obscure references to kings and mountains and horns and kings, the book becomes remarkably straightforward. Babylon falls in cheaper 18 and different groups lament. Nothing obscure there. Then there’s worship and warfare, and another... Read more
In a wide-ranging and pungent critique of the theology of today’s adoption movement, Cumberland Law School’s David Smolin points out the differences between Roman and modern American adoption. Roman adoptions occurred among the upper classes, did not necessarily involve orphans, were usually a way of elevating an already upper class Roman to an even higher position, and did not involve a severance with the family of origin. Smolin writes, “The men ‘adopted’ by the Roman emperors were already related to... Read more
Bede offers several explanations of the number 666 in his Bede: Commentary on Revelation . The number is the number of the Greek word “Titan,” a “giant,” because “it is thought that Antichrist will usurp this name, as if he excelled all in power, boasting that he is the one of whom it is written, ‘he rejoiced as a giant to run his course.’” The name “Antemos,” which means “contrary to honor” is also a 666, and the verb “I... Read more
The harlot of Revelation 17 is dressed like a priest – robes of blue and scarlet, precious stones, an inscription on her head. So is the bride of Revelation 21: She is a city adorned with precious stones with streets of gold. Why would a female city be dressed like a priest? Because both cities are priestly cities – the old Jerusalem named Babylon, and the new Jerusalem that comes out of heaven. But we might, as one of my... Read more
In an aside, John informs us that the angel measuring the walls of new Jerusalem measures according to human measurements (measure of man), which are also angelic measurements (Revelation 21:17). One of my students, Kameron Edenfield, suggests that this is another indication late in Revelation that angels and humans have been equalized, or even switched places. Human and angelic measurements are now equivalent. In addition, the comment might indicate a contrast with the measurements of earlier sanctuaries. Paul tells us... Read more
Rebecca Maloy’s Inside the Offertory: Aspects of Chronology and Transmission is mainly about Gregorian chant in the offertory, but early on she summarizes current opinion regarding the origins of the offertory. Contrary to some earlier liturgical historians, “A lay offering during the liturgy of the early church . . . cannot be substantiated.” She elaborates the evidence: “While Early Christian writers do admonish the laity to offer gifts, their offering probably took place before the service. The Testamentum domini ,... Read more
Contrary to popular impressions, racial ideology does not constitute the center of Afrikaner nationalism, according to Donald Akenson’s God’s Peoples: Covenant and Land in South Africa, Israel, and Ulster , a study of the modern afterlife of biblical covenant theology. Racial beliefs did not constitute the “central vaulting arch” of Afrikaner ideology but “merely one tetrahedron in a fairly compact geodesic dome.” More central, he argues, was the drive for purity: “Afrikaners interpreted purity to include the need to keep... Read more
Revelation loomed large in the political conflicts of seventeenth-century England. On every side, the images of whore and bride were deployed to defend one church and condemn another. Una and Duessa in Spenser are one version of this battle. According to Esther Richey’s The Politics of Revelation in the English Renaissance , Donne also entered the lists in the battle, but with a very different ecclesiology and a very different reading of Revelation. Instead of assigning the labels whore and... Read more
In her contribution to To Train His Soul in Books: Syriac Asceticism in Early Christianity , Susan Harvey describes how the “emergence of the ascetic single-sex household – and later its organized communal form, the monastery – appears to have brought a sea change in the (male) awareness of and attunement to the nature of mundane housework.” Ephrem the Syrian, for instance, “portrays God as an effective housekeeper, likening God’s work in the defeat of heretics to that of the... Read more
My colleague Jonathan McIntosh pointed me to Anselm’s discussion of God’s relation to time in the Monologion (available in Anselm of Canterbury: The Major Works ). It’s a complex discussion. On the one hand, the infinite nature cannot exist finitely ( determinate ) at a particular place or time, so it must exist everywhere and always, “in every time and place.” But it cannot exist in part in every place and time, since God has no part. But how can... Read more
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