Revelations: Visions, Prophecy, and Politics in the Book of Revelation

by Elaine Pagels Narrated by Lorna Raver

Overview

Elaine Pagels explores the surprising history of the most controversial book of the Bible.
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.
**** 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. 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.

Editorial Reviews

Dwight Garner

…a slim book that packs in dense layers of scholarship and meaning…One of [Pagels's] great gifts is much in abundance…her ability to ask, and answer, the plainest questions about her material without speaking down to her audience…She must be a fiendishly good lecturer.
—The New York Times

Ron Charles

Suspiciously slim for such a complex and fraught subject, this five-chapter book whisks us through centuries of religious conflict, ecclesiastical maneuvering and textual scholarship. It's easy to imagine that Pagels's obscure academic competitors say mean things about her behind her back—How dare she be so accessible!—but she's one of those rare scholars who can speak fluently to other professors or to curious people who decide on a whim to learn something about the Bible…Lay readers…will take this book and eat it up.
—The Washington Post

Publishers Weekly

Many Christians today believe that the Book of Revelation (which some mistakenly call “Revelations”) was written by the same “John” who wrote the Gospel of John, speaks to an audience of persecuted Christians, and stands in harmony with the rest of the New Testament. In this fascinating study, Pagels challenges all of those assumptions, arguing instead that the visions recorded by John of Patmos function as antiassimilationist harangue that explicitly countered Paul’s teachings that keeping Jewish law was no longer necessary. Pagels situates John of Patmos within a competitive marketplace of New Testament prophets, some of whom had similar prophetic visions that were omitted from the canon but rediscovered in the 20th century. Why did Revelation survive while other revelations were passed over or even suppressed? The answer, she says, lies in the way the prophecy was reinterpreted after Constantine’s unexpected conversion in the early fourth century; Revelation proved surprisingly adaptable even after the Roman Empire turned out not to be the whore of Babylon after all. Pagels offers a sharp, accessible, and perceptive interpretation of one of the Bible’s most divisive books. (Mar. 6)

From the Publisher

"Revelations is a slim book that packs in dense layers of scholarship and meaning . . . One of [Elaine Pagels's] great gifts is much in abundance: her ability to ask, and answer, the plainest questions about her material without speaking down to her audience . . . She must be a fiendishly good lecturer."
— The New York Times

"One of the significant benefits of Pagels's book is its demonstration of the unpredictability of apocalyptic politics . . . The meaning of the Apocalypse is ever malleable and ready to hand for whatever crisis one confronts. That is one lesson of Pagels's book. Another is that we all should be vigilant to keep some of us from using the vision for violence against others."
— The New York Times Book Review (Editors' Choice)

"Pagels is an absorbing, intelligent, and eye-opening companion. Calming and broad-minded here, as in her earlier works, she applies a sympathetic and humane eye to texts that are neither subtle nor sympathetically humane but lit instead by fury." — Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker

"Any book in the Bible that can be cited simultaneously by deeply conservative end-of-times Christians who see the Apocalypse around the corner and by Marxist-friendly Christians looking forward to justice at the End of History must have a compelling back story. That back story is told well and concisely by Elaine Pagels in her new book, Revelations." — The Boston Globe

The Boston Globe

"Any book in the Bible that can be cited simultaneously by deeply conservative end-of-times Christians who see the Apocalypse around the corner and by Marxist-friendly Christians looking forward to justice at the End of History must have a compelling back story. That back story is told well and concisely by Elaine Pagels in her new book, Revelations."

Adam Gopnik

"Pagels is an absorbing, intelligent, and eye-opening companion. Calming and broad-minded here, as in her earlier works, she applies a sympathetic and humane eye to texts that are neither subtle nor sympathetically humane but lit instead by fury."

The New York Times Book Review (Editors' Choice)

"One of the significant benefits of Pagels's book is its demonstration of the unpredictability of apocalyptic politics . . . The meaning of the Apocalypse is ever malleable and ready to hand for whatever crisis one confronts. That is one lesson of Pagels's book. Another is that we all should be vigilant to keep some of us from using the vision for violence against others."

The New York Times

"Revelations is a slim book that packs in dense layers of scholarship and meaning . . . One of [Elaine Pagels's] great gifts is much in abundance: her ability to ask, and answer, the plainest questions about her material without speaking down to her audience . . . She must be a fiendishly good lecturer."

(Editors' Choice) - The New York Times Book Review

"One of the significant benefits of Pagels's book is its demonstration of the unpredictability of apocalyptic politics . . . The meaning of the Apocalypse is ever malleable and ready to hand for whatever crisis one confronts. That is one lesson of Pagels's book. Another is that we all should be vigilant to keep some of us from using the vision for violence against others."

Library Journal

Pagels, who changed forever how we look at Christianity with books like The Gnostic Gospels, here rethinks the Book of Revelation, which has always been regarded as a near-fantastic vision of the world's end. Pagel instead sees it as an attack on Roman decadence at a time when Jews were rebelling against the Roman occupation of Jerusalem. Only later was it repurposed by the emerging Christian sect as a sword thrust to anyone challenging its primacy. Of tremendous interest to educated readers.

OCTOBER 2012 - AudioFile

Expertly wending her way through myriad biblical names and places, Lorna Raver takes listeners on a journey through the Book of Revelation, or rather Books of Revelation. Although it’s no surprise that there’s more than one book of revelation in Christian history, Elaine Pagels’s text painstakingly describes the many candidates for inclusion in the present-day Bible and the process that occurred in the fourth century that led to the inclusion of the version by John of Patmos. Raver’s crisp delivery takes the listener through this process with ease and clarity. The text is both intriguing and thought provoking, and Lorna Raver’s delivery is discriminating. E.E.S. © AudioFile 2012, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews

Multidimensional reading of "the strangest book in the Bible--and the most controversial." The Book of Revelation, a dark and enigmatic account of an apocalyptic end-times vision populated by warring demons and many-headed beasts, has given rise to more competing interpretations than most of the rest of the Bible combined. Even its authorship is disputed, with specialists unsure of whether the John referenced in the text is the Apostle John or a separate individual. Pagels (Religion/Princeton Univ., Reading Judas: The Gospel of Judas and the Shaping of Christianity, 2007, etc.) explores Revelation's outsized role in the development of Christian thought and places it in the context of its creation. Arguing that its language depicting battles in heaven and destruction on earth is a thinly veiled political screed against the pagan Roman Empire, Pagels identifies John as a Jewish refugee from Jerusalem following the destruction of the Temple. Viewing the Book through the prism of the Gnostic Gospels and the other accounts of prophetic visions that proliferated at the time, she advances the modern theory that Revelation is a Jewish Christian document fighting back against Paul's mission to abrogate Jewish law and bring Christ's message to the Gentiles. Pagels' compelling, carefully researched analysis brings to life the multitude of factions that quickly arose in the nascent Christian community after the death of Jesus. The struggle to canonize Revelation was intensely controversial; to this day, believers fight over how to interpret the vision of John of Patmos, "reading their own social, political, and religious conflict into the cosmic war he so powerfully evokes." Scholarly but widely accessible, the book provides a solid introduction to the one book of the New Testament that claims to be divinely inspired.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940169059144
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	03/06/2012
Edition description:	Unabridged

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