Bk of Revelation a response to 79CE Mt Vesuvius eruption?
Posted: Sun Oct 13, 2013 3:41 pm
James Tabor has recently blogged asking - "Can A Pre-Christian Version of the Book of Revelation Be Recovered?"
Josephine Masssyngberde Ford's volume on Revelation in the Anchor Bible Commentary series (now Anchor Yale Bible Commentary, edited by J. J. Collins); and
G. R. Beasley-Murray, "How Christian is the Book of Revelation?""
http://jamestabor.com/2013/10/13/can-a- ... recovered/ = now 404'dIn my recent post on the destruction of Pompeii by the volcanic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE I suggested that one of the authors/editors of the New Testament book of Revelation was reacting to this specific disaster and giving it an apocalyptic interpretation in the materials we now find in chapter 18–the “Fall of Babylon the Great.”
- One thing I had noticed in my own work on the book of Revelation over the years was that the explicit references to either “Jesus” “Christ,” or “Jesus Christ” outside the letters to the churches of chapters 2 & 3, are mostly clustered in chapters 1 and 22, with few in the middle chapters.
- But what is even more astounding, to me at least, was the observation that nearly all of these references can be easily removed without detracting in any way from the structure or flow of the passages in which they occur. In other words, one could get the distinct impression that references to Jesus Christ lay quite lightly on the text and could even be seen as secondary interpolations.
Josephine Masssyngberde Ford's volume on Revelation in the Anchor Bible Commentary series (now Anchor Yale Bible Commentary, edited by J. J. Collins); and
G. R. Beasley-Murray, "How Christian is the Book of Revelation?""