Lots of scholars believe that the “beast” (what Revelation calls the figure we’ve dubbed “the Antichrist” in current popular culture) is an allegorical representation of Nero.
What makes Revelation so hard for many Christians to understand is that they are largely unaware that Revelation is part of a literary genre called “apocalypse” and uses the conventions and tropes of that genre. This is because Revelation is the only full example of apocalyptic literature in the Bible (Daniel, Ezekiel, and some of the other prophetic books have sections that are apocalyptic, but not the entirety of those writings). But there are others (Shepherd of Hermas is one that nearly made it into the New Testament; the book of Enoch is one that is contained in the Old Testament of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, but not in any other church’s Bibles). So the weird language actually begins to make sense when you read it alongside other examples of the genre. It’s a kind of poetry that also serves as a kind of “code” to obscure what is really being written about (so that authorities get confused if they were to intercept these writings).
Daniel speaks of another beast figure likely based on Antiochus Epiphanes IV, a Greek ruler who desecrated the Jewish Temple (the story behind Hanukkah is about this). Revelation used that language to talk about Nero because the early Christians, rooted in the Biblical language of the Old Testament, saw Nero cast in a similar vein as Antiochus. And so “the AntiChrist” becomes a kind of symbolic figure that many throughout history can fit into. Trump is just the latest. He might be the “final” one. But what books like Revelation are trying to do is to help Christians avoid the kind of crap people like Trump represent. Unfortunately, antiChrist figures are good at what they do and, in this case, primed many Christians to read the Bible a certain way that precludes their ability to recognize THIS antichrist in their midst.
That’s really interesting, thanks for the context. So given this, why do fundamentalist Christians seem bent on bringing about the apocalypse? If it’s a cautionary tale, why are they taking it literally and trying to fan the flames of war in Israel? I’m referring specifically to Evangelical Zionists in the US who support Israel for prophetic reasons.
It’s because they read these things from the perspective of a theology known as “dispensationalism” that was developed by a guy named Darby in the late 1800s and made super popular by the Scofeld Reference Bible. It takes all of the various apocalyptic writings that are found in the Old and New Testaments, treats them at face value, and attempts to create a coherent narrative out of them. And what they believe is that the antichrist and Armageddon are all precursors to a time when Jesus will come and rescue the true believers from Earth before it is destroyed. So, at best, Israel is a footnote to the story, a means to a particular end.
Dispensationalism comes in a variety of flavors. But they all basically hold to an idea called “the Rapture” where Christians are instantaneously whisked away into heaven, leaving the world to destroy itself. This completely misses the entire point of Revelation (which is that heaven comes to earth) as well as hilariously misconstruing a teaching of Jesus (where He uses the example of Noah and the flood to talk about the end-of-days; the Rapture folks interpret this as Jesus taking the “good guys” away and the wicked are “left behind.” However, Jesus explicitly says that it is the righteous who are left behind, while the wicked are swept away–as with what happened with Noah and the flood). The Rapture is largely the product of the 20th Century. No Christian believed in such a thing until then.
Lots of scholars believe that the “beast” (what Revelation calls the figure we’ve dubbed “the Antichrist” in current popular culture) is an allegorical representation of Nero.
What makes Revelation so hard for many Christians to understand is that they are largely unaware that Revelation is part of a literary genre called “apocalypse” and uses the conventions and tropes of that genre. This is because Revelation is the only full example of apocalyptic literature in the Bible (Daniel, Ezekiel, and some of the other prophetic books have sections that are apocalyptic, but not the entirety of those writings). But there are others (Shepherd of Hermas is one that nearly made it into the New Testament; the book of Enoch is one that is contained in the Old Testament of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, but not in any other church’s Bibles). So the weird language actually begins to make sense when you read it alongside other examples of the genre. It’s a kind of poetry that also serves as a kind of “code” to obscure what is really being written about (so that authorities get confused if they were to intercept these writings).
Daniel speaks of another beast figure likely based on Antiochus Epiphanes IV, a Greek ruler who desecrated the Jewish Temple (the story behind Hanukkah is about this). Revelation used that language to talk about Nero because the early Christians, rooted in the Biblical language of the Old Testament, saw Nero cast in a similar vein as Antiochus. And so “the AntiChrist” becomes a kind of symbolic figure that many throughout history can fit into. Trump is just the latest. He might be the “final” one. But what books like Revelation are trying to do is to help Christians avoid the kind of crap people like Trump represent. Unfortunately, antiChrist figures are good at what they do and, in this case, primed many Christians to read the Bible a certain way that precludes their ability to recognize THIS antichrist in their midst.
That’s really interesting, thanks for the context. So given this, why do fundamentalist Christians seem bent on bringing about the apocalypse? If it’s a cautionary tale, why are they taking it literally and trying to fan the flames of war in Israel? I’m referring specifically to Evangelical Zionists in the US who support Israel for prophetic reasons.
It’s because they read these things from the perspective of a theology known as “dispensationalism” that was developed by a guy named Darby in the late 1800s and made super popular by the Scofeld Reference Bible. It takes all of the various apocalyptic writings that are found in the Old and New Testaments, treats them at face value, and attempts to create a coherent narrative out of them. And what they believe is that the antichrist and Armageddon are all precursors to a time when Jesus will come and rescue the true believers from Earth before it is destroyed. So, at best, Israel is a footnote to the story, a means to a particular end.
Dispensationalism comes in a variety of flavors. But they all basically hold to an idea called “the Rapture” where Christians are instantaneously whisked away into heaven, leaving the world to destroy itself. This completely misses the entire point of Revelation (which is that heaven comes to earth) as well as hilariously misconstruing a teaching of Jesus (where He uses the example of Noah and the flood to talk about the end-of-days; the Rapture folks interpret this as Jesus taking the “good guys” away and the wicked are “left behind.” However, Jesus explicitly says that it is the righteous who are left behind, while the wicked are swept away–as with what happened with Noah and the flood). The Rapture is largely the product of the 20th Century. No Christian believed in such a thing until then.