medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture


On Dec 27, 2004, at 7:39 PM, Terrill Heaps wrote:

> medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and
> culture
>
> I would recomend _Revelation_, by J.(osephine) Massyngberde Ford. It
> is volume 38,
> in _The Anchor Bible_.

which, on the topic in question, says...?

>  The general editors are William J. Albright and David Noel
> Freedman, 1975, Doubleday. I also agree with Kerry Inman.
>
> Terrill
> -------------------------
> V. Kerry Inman wrote:
>
>> You missed my point entirely.  Revelation is a text.  It is worthy of
>> study as a text.

i am unaware of anyone who has argued this.  i thought the question
was: who thought it was by john of the gospel?  that's what i've
addressed.

>> I am interested in the text as such, not its pre-history.

this is not pre-history, this is part of the history of how that text
became canonical.

>> If it was not
>> written by John, even though it claims to have been written by John,

it doesn't.  others made that claim later to give it credibility when
the text was under attack -- an attack which marks a critical moment in
both the history of this text and of the church, including a major
split btw east and west on this topic.

>> this does not diminish its value as a text.

again, i don't know who or what you are arguing against. i certainly
consider it one of the most powerful texts ever written and pay a lot
more attention to it than most historians do.

>>   Altogether too much time, during the late 19th
>> and 20th century was spent on preliminary matters.

i'm sorry, this i have to disagree with.  these preliminary matters are
critical to historical inquiry.  i want to know as much as i can about
the text in its original and subsequent cultural circles, when i gauge
its impact on the historical actors that i study (eg it matters to my
analysis and therefore i wd want to know if a believer in the book of
revelation thought it was by john the evangelist, and if i cd do
quantitative, i'd be interested in correlating beliefs about authorship
with various schools of exegesis and eisogesis).

>>  Very little time was actually
>> spent on the text,

by the documentary critics in the 19th and 20th cns?  there's plenty of
attention to the meaning of the text.  i strongly recommend a reading
of the relevant chapter of John Gager's Kingdom and Community (i think
3) on the role of Rev. in the early xn movt.  lots of good work to work
with.  good comparisons to be made with the role of the "Left Behind"
series on current xn [disappointed] apocalyptic expectation.

>> which is certainly considerably more than a 'bizarre bit of
>> sci-fi.'

it's certainly more, but it does have qualities that it shares with the
sci fi imagination, eg a cosmic fascination with the shape of the
future in which time collapses into a brief and intense drama, an
apocalyptic narrative.  it's certainly a derogatory remark, but i think
it can also be viewed as a usefully informative joke, rather than a
purely disparaging comment.  now i know that part of the culture war
right now is over whether this is just kooky stuff or whether it's
prophecy, and i'm aware that my own work has been caught in the
crossfire, but i don't think it helps us to react in that mode.
culture wars impoverish.  i'm certainly not interested in belittling
any of this stuff.

>> [This is not personally directed at you or anyone else it is just my
>> gut.] I get irritated when the first reaction to any biblical text

this is not "any" biblical text.  this sounds like culture wars
rhetoric.  "oh, haven't we heard enuf of x...?"

>>  is to attack it as not authentic.

i certainly did not either suggest or think that to do an historical
critique of a biblical text is to question its authenticity.  my
comment about apologetics was precisely because so often i think that
the people who argue for evangelistic authorship think that if it
isn't, that calls its authenticity into question.  these concerns about
authenticity via authorship are not issues for me as a scholar.  the
text draws my attention and analysis because it has been taken
seriously by the people i study.

>> Grow up!  This is not Sunday School any more!  Get past it.

i'm puzzled here.  i never thought it was sunday school, which is one
place one might encounter the idea that the evangelist wrote this text.

>> What does the text say?  Try a structuralist approach,
>> post-structrualist
>> approach, deconstructionist approach, any approach exceptthat now,
>> lame,
>> post-Hegelian history of religions approach.

well i don't think it's so lame.  indeed i think we need it to stay out
of sunday school.  but  i agree with you, we shd hardly stop there.

so if i look at the book of rev., as a historian of millennial movts
often inspired by just such texts -- indeed one might even call
Revelation the single most powerful of all millennial texts -- i am
struck by a remarkable number and disturbingly vivid images of violence
and vengeance that permeate the text.  now this does not distinguish it
fundamentally from many millennial texts (vengeance is a favorite
apocalyptic theme of how we get from here to there, from this world to
the millennial kingdom).  but they are, even for that literature, very
intense, and they also clash remarkably with the sentiments attributed
to jesus by the evangelists.  the text is brilliant, no doubt.  it's
played a critical role in the survival and constant mutations of
millennial beliefs in the west (where it became unquestionably
canonical).  that impact has had both constructive and destructive
results.  the better we understand it and appreciate both its origins
and its reception history, the better we can help contemporary readers
relate to it fruitfully.

>> Okay? Peace!   --V. K. Inman

do you consider this a peaceful response?  i'd be glad if you did.

r

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