Courtesy of Viking Adult
A perhaps surprising bestseller right now is a biblical scholar’s take on the Christian Bible’s final book: the “Apocalypse,” aka, “Revelation.” As someone who has done my own writing on this dramatic text (see Unveiling Empire: Reading Revelation Then and Now [1999]), it is exciting to see this fascinating book put into popular, intelligent discussion. However, a recent interview with the author, Princeton professor Elaine Pagels, made the hair on my neck stand up and my heart pound.
Pagels’ argument seems to be that the book of Revelation is not “Christian” because it is “too Jewish.” She positions the author, John of Patmos, as someone seeking to preserve a “Jewish” way of life over against the supposedly less Jewish approach of the apostle Paul. And given this premise, she concludes that Revelation became part of the canonical New Testament by “mistake.”
I’ll put aside the fact that Pagels has spent much of her scholarly career seeking to raise the status of the so-called “gnostic gospels” over that of the canonical ones. What I’m concerned with here is her juxtaposition of “too Jewish” with “not Christian.”
There has been a mountain of excellent biblical scholarship in recent decades by both Jewish and Christian writers showing the impossibility of understanding Jesus of Nazareth apart from the core reality that he was completely immersed in the scriptural tradition of ancient Israel. Contrary to the some-times explicit and often implicit anti-Jewish ideology of many pre-Holocaust German scholars, more recent work has largely overcome the dichotomous thinking that seeks to separate “Jews” from “Christians” in the writings of the New Testament. Daniel Boyarin, for instance, has written insistently that the “parting of the ways” didn’t really take place for centuries after the life of Jesus. Similarly, Amy-Jill Levine has written of Jesus as the “misunderstood Jew.” From the other end of the bridge, renowned Christian scholar, Brigette Kahl, has powerfully shown how the “law” that Paul was juxtaposing with the Gospel of Jesus was not torah at all, but Roman law.
As someone who seeks to claim both my Jewish upbringing and my love for Jesus, I find Pagels’ approach deeply disturbing. The message of Revelation is a powerful, hope-filled call to “come out” of allegiance to death-dealing, idolatrous empires and find life and joy in the God-given gift of the holy city, New Jerusalem. Yes, the book is filled with lurid images of violence. They flow out of the deeply Jewish apocalyptic tradition that stubbornly insisted on God’s exclusive sovereignty in the face of human usurpers. Revelation unveils the consequences of relying on human-made systems of power that are grounded in violence and exploitation of the poor and the earth. It proclaims the possibility of a renewed relationship among all God’s creatures, where harmony and true peace abound in God-given abundance.
That Pagels’ popular book calls for the removal of this wondrous text from the New Testament reveals a lot about her own preferences. I hope, however, it will not serve to undo the great work done by many scholars, activists, rabbis, and ministers to heal the centuries of unnecessary pain and suffering that flow from putting “Christian” over against “Jewish.” If we are seeking to join forces in a spiritually grounded movement that opposes “empire” with more life-giving options, we need biblical scholarship that continues to build bridges, not to tear them down.
Thanks for the warning. I happen to be half-way through Pagels’ very interesting book. Accidentally, since a UU friend who had bought it decided, out of the blue, to lend it to me yesterday and it had been farther down on my to-read list. So far, Pagels is rather persuasive that John of Patmos (or whoever the author of Revelations was) was very unsympathetic to the kind of Jesus movement that was emerging from the communities founded by Paul.
Thanks for your comment, Jan. I see no conflict at all between the vision of John of Patmos and that of Paul. They are both apocalyptic Jews (see, e.g., Galatians 1.12 and Acts 9) who see God’s people as inclusive of all, expressive of the original divine plan in Genesis 1. They both see the “ekklesiai” (churches) as communities of those “called out” from the surrounding Roman imperial world to live fully within God’s sovereignty. They both call for rejection of the exploitative and status-seeking ways of the Roman empire. And in doing so, they both call upon the texts which I refer to as the expressive of “the religion of creation”: Genesis, Exodus, the prophets, and the apocalyptic tradition. On Paul, see also the excellent work of Neil Elliott in his “Arrogance of Nations: Reading Romans in the Shadow of Empire.”
Once again I thank you, Wes, this time for your take on Pagels’ take on Revelation. Though I have not picked up the book yet, I do want to offer my own take on having attended synagogue in a messianic Jewish community for a couple of years in D.C. under the leadership of Rabbi Dan Juster (you may recognize the name — author of Jewish Roots). It was a vibrant mix of people of formerly Jewish and Christian backgrounds, trying faithfully to follow Yeshua as the apostles had — as in the First Century, not in the “apostolic tradition” as it developed over the centuries. It was there that I saw the very real sadness around the abandonment [particularly at Nicaea] of our Jewish roots. I lack the academic credentials to critique the Pagels book, and leave that to you. What I can offer is a 21st century witness to the real first schism. Unfortunately, as you know, the trajectory led to the conclusion that the Body of Christ was too Christian to be Jewish. Blessings!
Jesus was not a Jew as no Jewish community existed during his time. He was from Hebrew tribe of al-Imran and related to prophet John the Baptist by his mother Mary’s side. The historic Palestine was a province of Roman empire and the followers of Moses Law (Torah) never called themselve ‘Jews’.
The New Testament (NT) has nothing to do with Jesus’ prophetic message as he is quoted as saying that he “only came to the House of Israel”. The NT has 27 books which include four books from the Old Testament and 14 books written by St. Paul. The four Gospels were written by people who never met Jesus. The nearest thing to Jesus’ message could by the Gospel of St. Barnabas. Late Dr. Robert Funk, internation authority on NT wrote in 1991 that 80% of the statements attributed to Christ in the NT – are fake.
Paige Turner MD, a former born-again American Christian for 22 years, she devoted her life in studying Bible and holy Qur’an to find material to apply to convert Muslims to Christianity. However, to her great surprise – in her comparison, she found many historical lies and distortion of the so-called “Bible bieng the Word of God”. In her book “How to Prove That Christianity Is Not True” published in 1992 – she wrote that “nothing in the Old Testament pertains to Jesus”, which the priests quote to ignorant Christians.
http://rehmat1.com/2009/01/10/searching-for-jesus-as-eh/
Rehmat proves that intolerance towards Jews is welcome here.