Judgment Day

Reviewed by Jay Tolson
Sunday, November 12, 2006

A HISTORY OF THE END OF THE WORLD

How the Most Controversial Book of the Bible

Changed the Course of Western Civilization

By Jonathan Kirsch

HarperSan Francisco. 340 pp. $25.95

The question of whether religions have historically done more harm or good is one of those debates that persist well beyond their proper sophomore-year expiration date. But there is a less futile variation on the argument: What is it in specific faith traditions that can lead to dangerous interpretations?

In the five years since 9/11, much time has been devoted to identifying the elements of Islam that lend themselves to a hateful jihadist ideology. Less has been devoted to what is incendiary in the other two Abrahamic traditions: Judaism and Christianity. Jonathan Kirsch, the author of several acclaimed books on religious themes, goes some way toward remedying that deficit in this thoughtful history and analysis of the most controversial book of the New Testament, the Book of Revelation.

A work so problematic that many early Church Fathers found it unfit for inclusion in the canon, it also troubled many later Christians. "There is one sufficient reason for the small esteem in which I hold it -- that Christ is neither taught in it nor recognized," wrote the great reformer Martin Luther. Even those Christians who made an uneasy truce with the book urged caution: St. Augustine, for example, warned against any literal interpretation of its symbol-strewn wordscape.

Unfortunately, Kirsch shows, Augustine's admonition has been honored more in the breach than in the observance. The book's notion of the imminent end of the world and its "phantasmagoria of words, numbers, colors, images, and incidents" describing the end-times have been employed in works of high art, as well as in some of the wilder fantasies and fulminations to issue from pulpits, religious tracts and popular fiction. The Antichrist, the Great Whore of Babylon, the Battle of Armageddon, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, the number 666: These have been picked up by zealots bent on any number of religious, political or cultural crusades, from the art-destroying Savanarola in 15th-century Florence to contemporary figures as different as the Waco cult leader David Koresh and the hectoring Moral Majoritarian Jerry Falwell. "Above all," writes Kirsch, "Revelation is now -- and has always been -- a potent rhetorical weapon in a certain kind of culture war, a war of contesting values and aspirations that has been waged throughout human history."

Although apocalyptic themes can be traced to the Zoroastrian religion of ancient Persia, it took the Hebrew idea of a God working through history to give the vision real purchase. Apocalyptic writing actually emerged rather late in the Hebrew tradition, though it borrowed from the earlier literature of prophecy. But instead of pointing to a future earthly kingdom under a god-anointed king, as the prophets had done, apocalyptic visionaries proposed an otherworldly paradise and offered a new explanation for evil in the world, elevating Satan from a mere tempter (Genesis) or accuser (Job) to the full-blown adversary of God and the source of all evil.

But what accounts for the emergence of apocalyptic writing? Part of the answer, Kirsch helpfully explains, is a culture war that erupted in Judea in the 4th century B.C. between strict Jews and those who had adopted the Hellenistic ways of their Greek conquerors -- ways that included participation in Greek athletic games. Finding the conspicuous hedonism of these Hellenized Jews repulsive, the other faction launched a moral crusade against it.


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