Revelations: Visions, prophecy, & politics in the Book of Revelation - Elaine Pagels (First edition)

In this startling and timely book, Elaine Pagels explores the surprising history of the most controversial book of the Bible. In her previous books, Pagels brought readers to the suppressed biblical texts known as the Gnostic Gospels and illuminated their place in the early history of Christianity. Now she turns to a text that is firmly, dramatically within the New Testament canon: the Book of Revelation, the apocalyptic vision of the end of the world. Where did it come from? What is the meaning of its surreal images of dragons, monsters, angels, and cosmic war? Why were other books of revelation discarded while this one survived?

To give its original context, Pagels returns to 66 C.E. In the waning days of the Roman Empire, militant Jews in Jerusalem had waged an all-out war against Rome’s occupation of Judea, and their defeat resulted in the desecration of the Great Temple in Jerusalem. In the aftermath of that war, John of Patmos, a Jewish prophet and follower of Jesus, wrote the Book of Revelation, prophesying God’s judgment on the pagan empire that devastated and dominated his people. Soon after, Christians fearing arrest and execution championed John’s prophecies as offering hope for deliverance from evil. Others seized on the Book of Revelation as a weapon against heretics and infidels of all kinds; the book has fascinated saints, mystics, and artists to this day.

Even after John’s prophecies seemed disproven—instead of being destroyed, Rome became a Christian empire—those who loved John’s visions refused to discard them and instead reinterpreted them—as Christians have done for two thousand years. Throughout the centuries, readers and artists have taken John’s Book of Revelation seriously without taking it literally, as each generation sees its own conflicts, sufferings, and hopes reflected in John’s powerful images of cosmic war and divine victory.

Pagels then introduces us to a wide range of other books of revelation written around the same time—some recently discovered—many of which, instead of prophesying the end of time, speak of how to find the divine in it now. Pagels shows how these other “revelations” came to be excluded from the canon while John’s book, although intensely disputed, finally gained its prominent place in the Bible.

Brilliantly weaving scholarship with a deep understanding of the human needs to which religion speaks, Pagels has written what may be the masterwork in her unique career, and the most urgent. Her insights help us understand the roots of dissent, violence, and division in the world’s religions but also its more humanistic possibilities. Examining how this book has held readers for two thousand years tells us much about ourselves—how religion still evokes such powerful responses, for better or worse, to this day.