Reddit reviews Revelations: Visions, Prophecy, and Politics in the Book of Revelation
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Penguin Books
Ok, so first things first, stop saying it in the plural - Its the Revelation to St. John, so "The Book of Revelation."
Secondly, some fun tidbits.
FOr a good lay treatment of the text by a scholar, try pagels - https://www.amazon.com/Revelations-Visions-Prophecy-Politics-Revelation/dp/0143121634
>Well as a Christian if you don't think it's a lake of fire he throws people in, you're wrong.
You're claiming that the Eastern Orthodox Churches (and Oriental Orthodox maybe?) aren't Christian? That's a bold statement, Cotton.
Besides that, Revelation is about the persecution that the author's readers were going through. A pretty accessible book on that would be Revelations: Visions, Prophecy, and Politics in the Book of Revelation by Elaine Pagels. Even if you don't accept that view, apocalypses and visions are known to use metaphors and allegories.
Now, in regards to other ideas of the "fate of the damned", there's multiple words that are used: Gehenna, Hades, Sheol and one instance of Tartarus (in Petrine letters). Gehenna is a literal physical place of burning, Hades is the Greek underworld and Sheol was just your grave, nothing else (later it picked up a connotation of an afterlife "realm" where all souls went after death). Once we understand that, it's not too hard to see that they're all being used as metaphor - this shouldn't surprise you because Jesus is presented as using that literary device as well as parables throughout his life. Understood as such, it's quite easy to see that the wicked/damned/whatever experience a sense of lostness, burning (like desire but the opposite?) Etc. In this case, they could be in the same "realm" as the sanctified, but experience it differently.
But that also neglects what the Greek (in the New Testament) actually says about those descriptions. For instance, the words for "eternal punishment" could be (and most likey should be) translated as "ages/age of discipline". So not only is it not "forever", it's a discipline not a punishment. And I'm perfectly inline with early Christian thinkers on this. Here's an Academic Book and a more accessible book outlining people throughout history with that interpretation. I have PDFs of the academic books, if you want to read them. A good translation with all this is mind would be this one by David Bentley Hart.
Once again, even knowing all of the above and still believing what you said , you haven't explained how people get there. Rejecting God? How could one do that? People can only reject an "idea of God". But, your view on this "lake of fire" is just one big misunderstanding.
>their "loving" God.
Just a nitpick: God is not "loving". To say God is loving is to say that there is a metaphysical order (Love) above God, which is absurd. God "is" Love, in the sense that to be "loving" one participates in the Divine.
Any typos and weird phrasings are because I'm typing on mobile at work.
> Aune suggests the book was written in two stages, with the first stage being in the late 60s, and the second stage (that resulted in the current text) in the 90s.
Elaine Pagels also agrees with this assessment. She paints a a fascinating portrait of John of Patmos in her book, Revelations: Visions, Prophecy, and Politics in the Book of Revelation
https://www.amazon.com/Revelations-Visions-Prophecy-Politics-Revelation/dp/0143121634
I recommend Elaine Pagels, Princeton. u/zacharmstrong9
Revelations: Visions, Prophecy, Politics
There's a Catholic Encyclopedia commentary here. Scroll down to where it says "interpretation."
For a good book on the subject, try Elaine Pagels' Revelations: Visions, Prophecy, and Politics in the Book of Revelation.
Also, one more really great book. Elaine Pagels: Revelation: Visions, Prophecy, and Politics in the Book of Revelation
As it turns out, I just finished reading the book Relevations by Princeton professor Elaine Pagels. It's a fun read, and it tells all about what we know about the book's origin and why it was included in the New Testament canon. Highly recommended!
The book of rev was discarded as heresy until it was championed for it's ability to target heretics by labeling them anti-Christs. There was a ton of other apocalyptic literature at the time that never made canon for good reason. Any Christian who's done research on the early church, yet still believes in the rapture doctrine, is fucking 110% delusional by their own standards; at least Islam is consistent in their madness. Elaine Pagels wrote a fantastic, short book on the subject:
http://www.amazon.ca/Revelations-Visions-Prophecy-Politics-Revelation/dp/0143121634
There are so many awesome texts out there!
I'm really partial to the character of Enoch, and the more weird, apocalyptic sorts of books. I'll throw a few of those out there for your perusing pleasure.
I'm using two Wiki links to give a general overview of the two texts I'll talk about, but please
The Book of Enoch, or First Enoch - this book is regarded as canon by Christians in Ethiopia/Eritrea, but not by other churches. I think it is particularly interesting because Enoch is taken around on a grand tour of the cosmos: he sees the world, up into the heavens, and even down to Sheol. It's pretty cool to read how people reckoned the cosmos worked back then. There are weird visions of angels, a few parables and even an astronomical calendar text thrown into the mix.
Slavonic Enoch, or, Second Enoch is unrelated to First Enoch (i.e., different author, very different date and region) but contains a lot of the same sort of stories about good old Enoch. There's also some stuff about Melchizedek, whom you probably recognize since it seems you're interested in Gnostic stuff. (the Wiki link for this one isn't as strong as the first- please check out more sources for better analysis of the text)
More information on the books of Enoch:
Jewishencyclopedia.com
Detailed analysis by Andri Orlov
If you are looking for more fun Gnostic stuff to peruse, and haven't checked out Apocalyptic/Gnostic scholar Elaine Pagels yet, you're missing out:
Youtube Discussion about the Book of Revelation
I'd definitely check out her books on the Origin of Satan and Revelations