The Revelation of Jesus Christ (Chapter 1)

If I understand your question correctly, Pierre, you are asking what purpose or reason there would be for writing a fifth gospel, especially one so obscurely hidden.

That is an excellent question. Matthew seems to have been leveled at a Jewish community facing questions of procedure and order; Luke seems to have been leveled at a Gentile community with a few more philosophizing-types. John, as we've seen, was leveled at a Jewish-Gentile audience, and had multiple layers of allegory and teaching that would reach both audiences.

Mark... on a basic level, Mark paints Jesus as Elijah, in counterpart to Matthew's Jesus-as-Moses. But Mark does something else, if you glance through the structure--the parable of the sower and the seeds seems to be the mini-map of the entire book; it serves as the metaphorical model on which Mark operates, three "fails" and a forth success... I'm getting way off subject here, but: Mark's Gospel is essentially apocalyptic in nature.

Apocalyptic--the "end" or "revealing of the end." Mark's Gospel and the Book of Revelation (with John sandwiched in between) have that in common; they are apocalyptic in that they describe Jesus in a way that, for those with eyes to see, reveals him as "the end of things." We know this to be true on a number of levels--we call him, after all, the fulfillment of the law and the subject of the prophets.

According to tradtional accounts, Revelation was written during a time of intense persecution; Christians were not a popular group in Rome. Neither were Jews, but theirs was still a state-sanctioned religion. So what does the Book of Revelation do? It takes almost all of its material from a state-sanctioned religion. This is not actually that different from Luke-Acts, which seems to have been written to show the 'sect of the Nazarene' as a branch of Judaism, and not a new religion altogether.

Further, while firmly anchoring the Gospel within the Judaic tradition, Revelation hides the message of that gospel. Counter-intuitive? Counter-productive? If John the Revelator is trying show Christianity as a part of Judaism (or the fulfillment of Judaism) why go through so much work to hide the message? Two reasons, I think. The first is obvious--if he came right out and said "Jesus rules over Caesar," he would be toast, along with the rest of the Church. So the driving message "Jesus is Lord," is buried deep within texts only "decodable" by people already familiar with the Jewish scriptures.

But there is a second reason, I think, as well--there was a developing split in the early church, between the more-traditional Jews and the non-traditional Gentiles that were rapidly outnumbering the original members. John's Gospel is so deeply Jewish that it forces people who want to understand the gospel to first understand the Jewish tradition, to appreciate its scriptures, to master the law and the prophets; it's easier for us today, with our electronic search-engines and our chapter-and-verse references systems, but for early readers, mastery of the highest kind was necessary to "get" the message of Revelation; Revelation cements together Judaism and Christianity.

Unfortunately, the split was inevitable, and mastery of the scriptures fell by the wayside; reading the early Fathers, they clearly knew what the scriptures said, but sometimes they missed the mark as to what the Spirit intended. But that's just a matter of opinion, really, and my opinion is that this loss of familiarity with the Jewishness of Revelation is responsible for the popular but sometimes misguided readings of Revelation over the past, oh... 1800 years? Now I AM being arrogant :).

Justin Staller - Moderator
justinstaller@yahoo.com

Search the scriptures--for in them ye think ye have eternal life: They are they which testify of me--and ye will not come to me, that ye might have life. (John 5.39-40)