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Crisis and Catharsis: The Power of the Apocalypse

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this is a wonderful book if you want to find out about the psychological meaning behind the symbolic language of the book of revelation
this is a must to read for those who seek to explore narrative techniques of the apocalypse.

*****
"The disinclination to accept the apocalypse was due not mainly to doubts about the identity of the John who wrote it with John the apostle; it was due much more to the antipathy which was widely felt in the Greek world to its millenarianism." F. F. Bruce, The canon of scripture



Because of its unusual symbolic language, the Book of Revelation is hard to understand, and for many faithful it seems alien to Christian teachings on love and forgiveness. Early Christians in the south and eastern Mediterranean cities, with a Jewish Diaspora, were more accustomed to the complex nature of the apocalyptic literature. Such conventions would have seemed less strange and cryptic, and they limited their expectations of the situation and the symbols that were used to portray it. So, for the original audience of the Revelation of John, all these strange scenes would have been tolerable.

The Apocalypse of John was written about the end of the first century in Asia Minor. The author was from Ephesus Christian congregation identified as "John the Elder." According to the Book, he was 'exiled' on the island of Patmos, near the coast of Asia Minor, an allusion that he was a confessor of the Christian faith. The author then says a voice asked him to write what he was about to see, the revelatory vision that is at the center of the book. Ephesus was both the capital of the Roman province of Asia and an early center of Christianity. The book next contains seven short letters of exhortation to the Christian churches in the seven leading cities of Asia Minor, a key area for the expansion of Christianity into the western part of the Roman empire. This intersection created the problem for the community, as it called for Christians to regard the Roman administration as agent of the anti Christ.

What the modern reader or biblical scholar has to try do when reading the text with an antiquity understanding, by learning the way old literature worked and the situation out of which it came. Martin Luther wrote, "As for Revelation, it 'lacks everything that I hold as apostolic or prophetic'." This has been the position of the Church of Alexandria since Papa Dionysius who blamed Napos of Arsenoi for literal interpretation of Revelation. Based on its theology, it was never included in the church lectionary, to this day, in all the orthodox churches who used to follow Alexandria. Dionysius, Bishop of Alexandria condemned the literal interpretation of the Apocalypse, and his church never accepted the millennium kingdom.

Professor Adela Collins takes a psychological view of the purpose and outlook what the author of Revelation wrote in order to resolve this crisis by alienating them from the enticements of participation in pagan society and the imperial cult. That was the situation then threatening the Asia Minor Christians, triggered by the new emphasis on Domitian's imperial cult in Ephesus. She suggests that there was a threat of harsh punishment or even death for Christians who refused to take part in the cult's religious festivals. So she proposes there was an existential crisis facing these Christians, that was more of a crisis of faith precipitated by the contradiction of their faith and their social experience of alienation. She argues, then, that the work is even more metaphorical or symbolic in its approach; it offers a kind of drama of catharsis (or cleansing) that resolves the internal conflicts of the hearers. Yarbro Collins is perhaps more in agreement with how most modern Christians would appropriate their "faith struggle" of Revelation, recognizing this comes from understanding how to read this kind of apocalyptic literature.

Professor Adela Y. Collins is an expert on Apocalyptic writings, between her other publications are Cosmology and Eschatology in Jewish and Christian Apocalypticism; The Apocalypse; and The Combat Myth in the Book of Revelation.

The Combat Myth in the Book of Revelation