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Revelations
- Visions, Prophecy, and Politics in the Book of Revelation
- Narrated by: Lorna Raver
- Length: 6 hrs and 27 mins
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Revelations
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Summary
Elaine Pagels explores the surprising history of the most controversial book of the Bible. In the waning days of the Roman Empire, militant Jews in Jerusalem had waged an all-out war against Rome’s occupation of Judea, and their defeat resulted in the desecration of the Great Temple in Jerusalem. In the aftermath of that war, John of Patmos, a Jewish prophet and follower of Jesus, wrote the Book of Revelation, prophesying God’s judgment on the pagan empire that devastated and dominated his people. Soon after, Christians fearing arrest and execution championed John’s prophecies as offering hope for deliverance from evil. Others seized on the Book of Revelation as a weapon against heretics and infidels of all kinds.
Even after John’s prophecies seemed disproven - instead of being destroyed, Rome became a Christian empire - those who loved John’s visions refused to discard them and instead reinterpreted them - as Christians have done for 2,000 years. Brilliantly weaving scholarship with a deep understanding of the human needs to which religion speaks, Pagels has written what may be the masterwork in her unique career.
Critic reviews
"Revelations is a slim book that packs in dense layers of scholarship and meaning . . . One of [Elaine Pagels's] great gifts is much in abundance: her ability to ask, and answer, the plainest questions about her material without speaking down to her audience . . . She must be a fiendishly good lecturer." (The New York Times)
"One of the significant benefits of Pagels's book is its demonstration of the unpredictability of apocalyptic politics . . . The meaning of the Apocalypse is ever malleable and ready to hand for whatever crisis one confronts. That is one lesson of Pagels's book. Another is that we all should be vigilant to keep some of us from using the vision for violence against others." (The New York Times Book Review, Editors' Choice)
"Pagels is an absorbing, intelligent, and eye-opening companion. Calming and broad-minded here, as in her earlier works, she applies a sympathetic and humane eye to texts that are neither subtle nor sympathetically humane but lit instead by fury." (Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker)
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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- Aquilina Christophorus
- 09-11-23
nothing much revealed
Mwah. Not quite sure why not. but not quite what I was hoping for. The book covers what it needs to, historically, theologically, askancely mentions alternative interpretations and addresses controversial responses but it barely goes into the comparative literary side to inquiry into possible alternative and esoteric readings of this mystical text: it is assumed to be a covert, anti-Roman manifest on what social factors and corrupt moral standards are making life unbeatable for the Jews at the time under Roman oppression.. The sources used by John to underpin his visionary conclusions are from the OT and persuasively summed up and also how he is at odds with Paul is given much attention. i can't quite figure out yet why this is relevant to deriving meaning from Revelations.
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