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The Revelation of Jesus 1

Introduction to Revelation
Main Divisions
Prologue
Visions of Heaven

Abstract

The myth of Jesus is convincingly explained from the historical fact of apocalyptic fervour among some Jews in the first century. Jesus obviously thought the end of the world was due and that it was his duty to help defeat the cosmic forces of evil by defeating them here on earth. The forces of evil to Jews at the time were their idolatrous Roman oppressors, and the Jews who collaborated with them. If the seven epistles and the epilogue are removed from Revelation, and obvious cosmetic additions made by Christians, such as blasphemous references to Jesus as God also, what remains is a Jewish apocalypse—nothing less than the beliefs of Jesus. If Christianity began with an apocalyptic Jewish sect, it would hardly be surprising that it had an eschatological tradition and mythology behind it. The Jewish sect was the Essenes, who saw themselves as prophets because they were forever watching for signs of the end of the world.

Introduction to Revelation

Apocalypses were written by Jews in uncertain times to buttress faith. The genre is a recounting of past tribulations, a prophecy of worse to come and an assurance of ultimate victory and reward with proper punishment for former oppressors. Examples are Isaiah 24-27; Ezekiel 38-39; Dan 2:7-11; Zechariah 12-14; Mark 13 (Mt 24-25). Christians were fond of the apocalyptic type of writing when they were from time to time persecuted by Romans but it is accepted that Christians did not write their own. They read and adapted Jewish apocalypses like the scriptural examples and the Ascension of Isaiah and 4 Ezra. Revelation is the main apocalypse of the New Testament and might be thought to be a Christian work. It is, only in the sense that it is edited by Christians, but the bulk of the content is from earlier Jewish sources.

We now recognize that Apocalyptic was a particular interest of some of the Jewish sects from the Maccabees to the Jewish War. The main among these were the Essenes. If there ever was a fashion among the Pharisees for Apocalyptic, it was expunged after the Jewish wars of 70 AD and 132 AD when Judaism was badly battered as a result of apocalyptic fancies. These were large scale conflicts but we know from Josephus and the Books of the Maccabees that Palestine was a rebellious place for about 300 years. Did lesser incidents arise out of the apocalyptic notions of the Jews before their final abandonment of this way of thinking?

Historically, rather than theologically, the myth of Jesus is most convincingly explained from this historical fact of apocalyptic fervour among some Jews in the first century. Jesus obviously thought the end of the world was due and that it was his duty to help defeat the cosmic forces of evil by defeating them here on earth. The forces of evil to most Jews at the time were their idolatrous Roman oppressors and the Jews who collaborated with them. As an Essene Jesus believed that the time of the End had arrived and he had to act to demonstrate to God that Israel was not apostate by accepting foreign rule. He led a band of his followers called Nazarenes in an attack on Jerusalem and, probably with the help of many pilgrims attending the temple at Passover, he succeeded in defeating the Roman garrison of Jerusalem.

Naturally, Christians, who are not interested in history unless it supports their mythological beliefs, reject all this, but the Revelation of John is valuable evidence in this argument. It is the best source we have of the beliefs of Jesus himself, once the fairly obvious Christian alterations are discarded, and some of those Christian changes actually confirm that a victory was won.

Again Christians will concur, but claim the victory was the spiritual victory of perfect goodness in the form of God incarnate over mankind’s wickedness, represented mainly by the believers in the same God as the Christians, earlier chosen by God as His people—the Jews. Yet no one who reads Revelation could pretend that it is other than extremely violent and unforgiving. It is retained because Christians have never wanted or supported theological clarity. Christianity is a religion of lies and obfuscation and, by keeping this Jewish eschatology in their bible, Christian priests and parents can scare their charges into submission, while generally pretending that their god is purely love.

Nevertheless, the Apocalypse got into Christian tradition somehow, and the historical explanation is that it is how the Christians originally thought. Was it how their leader and, later, their God thought? We shall examine it here to show that the Apocalypse is nothing less than the beliefs of Jesus merely updated slightly in the 70 years after his death. If Christianity began with an apocalyptic Jewish sect, it would hardly be surprising that it had an eschatological tradition and mythology behind it. The Jewish sect was the Essenes, who saw themselves as prophets because they were forever watching for signs of the end of the world. The author of this book sees it as prophecy and no less a person than Paul the apostles declared that prophecy was one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit.

Revelation is still not too logical and many a scholar has suggested that bits have been misplaced but, since the Dead Sea Scrolls have been found revealing the sectarian literature of the Essenes, it is plain that the original apocalypse is very like some of the literature in the scrolls, notably the War Scroll, the Temple Scroll and some of the imagery in the hymns. Essene literature is not noted for its logic. It is emotional stuff—so is Revelation. It makes little effort to look tidy or complete but leaves the joins between its sources—so does Revelation.

Though it is given the name of John, the apostle who supposedly composed the fourth gospel, it is written in Greek described by scholars as “barbaric”. The author of John’s gospel had a limited Greek vocabulary but wrote what he wrote in a didactic style that shines through the translations, and is manifestly quite different from the style of this apocalypse. Similar phrases in both books here and there do not serve to prove a connexion. Christians quite deliberately used the New Testament just as Jews used the Old Testament, and all these parallels show is that some of the editors had gospels before them. Few people will deny that the poor Greek is a rendering of an Aramaic original, by someone untutored in Greek.

In parts, the author displays some subtlety of Greek grammar, showing that editors have been at work. There are some links with the fourth gospel notably the use of the title, “Logos”. Rather than proof of the author’s identity, this more likely shows a fashion in the milieu that both books were written—probably some eastern church. Far more significant, but not clear in the phony Christian translations, is the different Greek word used for “lamb”. In the gospels it is “amnos” except for one place in the fourth gospel (Jn 21:15, verses that look as though they have been added to puff the claim of the book to be written by the apostle John) but in the apocalypse it is “arnion”. The use of “arnion” is almost exclusively that of the author of this book.

The identity of the “Watcher” with John is made three times in Chapter 1 and twice in the last two chapters, suggesting rather that they are flaunting additions to assert authorship.

Main Division

Revelation is in several parts but two main ones can be distinguished by any reader—the division between what seem to be letters to seven churches and the rest of the book that is largely a description of the end of the world. If the seven epistles and the epilogue are removed, and fairly obvious cosmetic additions made by Christians—such as adding references to Jesus alongside or instead of references to God—are also removed, the result is a barely unadulterated Jewish apocalypse. Sometimes we read of the uniformity of the tone of the book, but the main division at Chapter 4 is plain to see, uniform tone or not. Such a notable scholar as Harnack vouched for this.

Modern Christian scholars do not deny that the author drew on Jewish sources to compose the work, but claim that the Christian content was too deeply integrated to be merely editorial. However, this becomes much less convincing if it is accepted that Christianity evolved from the Essene sect and did not emerge fully formed with the birth or baptism of Jesus. The Christian oriented choice of scriptural allusion that Christians see as so intimately woven into the fabric of Revelation as to be inextricable was there originally, but was Essene not Christian.

A peculiarity of the book is the number of Old Testament allusions in it—about 300 in 400 verses. Christians might not think this is odd, but for a book that is stylistically so early, it shows it was written for a Jewish audience. The first gentile Christians would mostly have known nothing about the Jewish scriptures, and Mark’s gospel, for example, eschewed such references. The growth of Christianity created the gentile interest in the Septuagint until scriptural references could be understood. Conceivably a book newly written about 100 AD for a learned audience might have been replete with scriptural references, but the style and poor grammar prove that was not the case. It therefore was a book written for Jews by Jews.

Alfred Loisy, the French scholar, said of Revelation:

The best that can be said of it is that for centuries men have taxed their wits to find in it a meaning which is not there, for the simple reason that the meaning that is there was immediately contradicted by the course of events.

The point is that the original authors of Revelation believed that the Eschaton, the End of Time, would be “soon”—then! Their successors realised they were wrong and made some alterations that appear particularly towards the end of the book, to push the Eschaton much later in time. Unfortunately, all subsequent Christians have done the same. A prophetic industry has been created in which interpretations of Revelation as supposedly “current” are made every generation. The foolishness of it all is that Christians continue to follow these “prophets” even though all their predecessors were quite wrong including the original ones recorded in the Holy Book!

The visions in Revelation are all aspects of the Essene theory of the End Time when the corrupted world is destroyed and replaced with an incorruptible world. Satan is imprisoned and ultimated is tortured for eternity but refuses to be converted. The wicked city, Rome, falls unrepentent. Nevertheless, Christian commentators say, the work is not dualistic because evil is routed. The same commentators say that Mazdayasnism (Persian religion) is dualistic even though the outcome is the same! They lie themselves silly to distinguish Christianity from its precursors because they insist on believing, contrary to all evidence and common sense, that Christianity was “revealed” once and for all and without any parents.

Some commentators will note with wonder that Jesus or the lamb is given honour in Revelation that is normally reserved for Yehouah. They do not want to consider that a Christian editor has simply changed Yehouah or some aspect of Him into Jesus and the lamb. Where this substitution has not occurred, the “lamb” has been simply added to “God”. Jesus and the Essenes expected Yehouah or his heavenly lieutenant, the angel Michael, to arrive with the hosts of heaven. Michael was however identified with the Messiah, and, when Jesus was thought to have been the Messiah but yet no hosts of heaven had arrived, they claimed he would return as Michael at the head of the hosts. The idea of the Christian Parousia was born out of God’s miracle at the End.

The main testament to the non-Christianity of Revelation is its partisanship—it makes no attempt at universality except in parts that are plainly later, Christian additions. The author declares he is a member of a brotherhood and writes for his brethren.

The emperor worship mentioned in Revelation 13:15 places the work in the time of Domitian, Christians say. Domitian was the first emperor to use the title “Lord and God”. But emperors from Augustus were claiming divinity under different titles as a way of obtaining loyalty. It was a device akin to having American schoolchildren swearing allegiance to the US flag. The title of the first emperor, “Augustus”, implies divinity. Zealous monotheists like Essenes and early Christians are hardly going to be more offended because a ruler already claiming to be a god does so under a new title.

Pliny tells us that Christianity was persecuted throughout the empire under Domitian, whereas the earlier persecution under Nero had only been local to Rome. No one considers that the work refers to persecution of the Essenes, and light editing was undertaken to make the earlier work topical at the end of the century. What reason could there have been for writing about a temple in a late Christian work? In Revelation 11:1-2 the reference to the temple implies that the work is pre-Christian and written before the Jewish War of 70 AD.

S H Travis in Christian Hope and the Future of Man sees “parallels in Parseeism (Zoroastrianism) to several doctrines of Jewish apocalyptic—dualism, universalism and individualism, resurrection of the dead, structured course of history, infuence of evil in the good world and eschatological victory of the good”. Not surprisingly, Travis thinks these ideas got into Judaism after the exile, under Persian influence but, needless to say, he does not think they are the “dominant factor”.

Why? Because Jewish apocalyptic was pessimistic, expected an immediate End and denied that all men would be saved! It is gratifying to know that Jesus, as a believer in Jewish apocalyptic, expected an immediate End—Christians mainly deny it because it proves that he was wrong. But there is nothing in these supposed differences.

Since when did Zoroastrians believe that all men would be saved? Any apocalyptic is pessimistic for the wicked because they get punished, but it is joyful for the Righteous who are rewarded with everlasting life in the presence of God. The end of the world must come at some time. Presumably those who believe in it might come to the conclusion that it might be “soon”. Jesus did, but then so did Zoroaster himself. Both were wrong and so their followers in both cases had to change the timetable.

Zoroastrian apocalyptic ideas preceded Jewish ones. Who then took their ideas from whom?

Prologue

1:1 The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him, to shew unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass; and he sent and signified it by his angel unto his servant John: 1:2 Who bare record of the word of God, and of the testimony of Jesus Christ, and of all things that he saw. 1:3 Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written therein: for the time is at hand.

The first sentence could scarcely be clearer in telling the reader that this is the “Revelation Of Jesus Christ”. Yet every Christian will insist it is the Revelation of John the Divine. Christians like to think that the “Watcher” in the drama is John, the author, and the revelation is delivered by the heavenly Jesus to him. Admittedly, in parts, the book tries to give this impression—notably in the last few verses—but here the revelation is declared to be God’s revelation to Jesus. The testimony is that of “Jesus Christ, and of all things that he saw”. The importance of this, that has been ignored by everyone for years, is that it is the set of beliefs that led Jesus utimately to the cross! There could be no more important document for understanding the historical Jesus, but Christians prefer to obfuscate this.

In other words, this is not, as it is offered to the faithful, a mysterious vision of the distant future shown by Jesus to a loyal disciple but the very vision of the near future held by the historical person of Jesus, as he believed God had delivered it to him. The disciple, whoever he was, is simply telling us what motivated the leader of the Nazarenes. The declaration is that things must “shortly come to pass” and “the time is at hand”, and the prologue tells us that this is “prophecy”. Christians do not understand adverbial phrases of time because they still take it to be prophecy 2000 years later. Jesus thought these things were at hand then!

The Greek word for “time” implies an extended time not an instant in time. It means exactly what the Essenes thought—the End Time being a period in time preceding the end of the world. Once the End Time had started the End could be soon but no one knew precisely when. Their esoteric reading of the signs from their biblical pesharim gave them signs of the times but did not give an exact time. If they were confident in the signs of the times, it was up to the leader to judge when the time would be. That is what Jesus did. He expected the End of the World as he watched in the Garden of Gethsemane. At the Last Supper he is described as using the same expression when he meant within a single night, so the extent of the period need not be long.

Lesser gods called angels are Persian inventions, beloved by the Essenes—and Christians! The disciple, supposedly John, received the revelation from an angel, which just means a messenger in Greek. Christians always want to suggest the supernatural, but there is nothing in the least supernatural here. The author received from a third party—apparently in the form of old scripts—the vision that Jesus had of the future in about 20 AD that led him to revolt against the Roman enemy and led to his crucifixion. There is not the least reason, if this is an early first century work, that it should not have been associated originally with John the Baptist, and maybe that is why the name John arose in its connexion. Whoever he was he is more modest in the Greek than our Christian translators suggest, for he does not vouch for “all things that he saw” but “as much as he saw”, a rather less assured declaration.

Apocalypses are always written as pseudepigraphs, books written in the name of an earlier figure and not under the author’s own name. By chosing an authoritative figure of the past, the author can give his book kudos and he can also make prophecies within the text that he knows have already happened, thus giving the false author prophetic credentials for prophecies as yet unrealised. Christians, of course, tell us that this apocalypse is an exception—the author really is who he claims to be! It is just another example of Christian gullibility and special pleading. All other examples are forgeries, except their own!

The fate of John the Apostle, if he is not entirely fictional, is that he was killed with or after his brother in the brief reign of Agrippa. He never appears again in Acts after his brother’s reported death. Later Christian tradition about John is contradictory but has it that he lived to over 100 years old. The legend was obviously necessary to account for the late appearance of the fourth gospel and Revelation.

It has long been speculated that the author was a John the Elder who was a disciple of John the Apostle. If true, it would be a hypothesis that removed the need for the author to have lived to over a hundred. John the Apostle might then have been the “angel” that passed on this old codex or scroll. Essenes sought to be angelic by being perfectly holy or saints, and equated themselves, as saints, with the angels of the heavenly hosts. In this early school of Christianity, saints might still have been called angels.

The prologue ends at verse 3 and the Revelation should begin but we find inserted seven letters to churches in Asia, of a rather different nature. Repetition of words like “witness”, “testimony” and “keep” are often taken as prove that the author was the same as the author of the fourth gospel but they might well have been simply sectarian words lost in the more westernised synoptic gospels and later works. The message of Revelation 1:3 is that of Luke 11:28, less succinctly expressed:

Blessed are they that hear the word of God, and keep it.

The bulk of Revelation is an Essene apocalypse from the time of Jesus or just afterwards. It tells us what Jesus expected at the time and it tells us a little about what happened at the time. The confusion has arisen because some Christian editors took it in the years up until about 100 AD and made some quite unsubtle Christian additions and alterations. They are often cosmetic, quite distinctively Christian relative to the Jewishness of the rest, and often betray later time clues.

Thus, the messianic name Jesus Christ only appears three times in this book, all in the first five verses, and the name Jesus alone only appears twelve times in 400 verses. Every appearance is in the obviously added prologue and epilogue or in a few cosmetic additions in the body of the book.

Visions of Heaven

At verse 1:10, the letters have been slipped in. The Watcher speaks of being “in the spirit” on the “Lord’s Day”, but the “Lord’s Day” he meant was the day he was about to describe—the day of the Vengeance of God. Christians seem to think he meant it was Sunday! He is actually taking the reader directly into his vision as the other references to the spirit (Rev 17:3; 21:10) prove, if the great voice that he hears is not sufficient evidence.

He is told to write what he sees into a book and send it to the seven churches, and this is repeated at 1:19, but then the speaker dictates the letters. This reveals a join in the text. With the exception of the description of the archangel Michael in verses 1:12-16, everthing from the list of churches in 1:11 to the end of the chapter looks like the join, though it draws on apocalyptic imagery.

In Revelation 1:12, the Watcher turns to see the voice speaking and saw seven golden lampstands—not candlesticks. Lampstands are not candlesticks and link to Persian and Babylonian traditions. The figure the Watcher sees is identified with the “one like a son of man” of Daniel, not the supposed messianic title of Jesus, and the “one like the son of man” in Daniel was the archangel Michael, the guardian spirit (Persian, fravashi) of the Jewish people. In Persian mythology, the seven spirits are aspects of God, and were put into Judaism after the exile. They then transposed into the archangels. Seven stars (Rev 1:16) also appear in Mitraism, another religion derived from Zoroastrianism. Conceivably, the Essenes had seven churches or principal centers. The two edged sword in his mouth pre-empts the apocalypse.

The description is that of a sun god—whiteness, gold, a furnace, flame and fire, burnished bronze or brass, a face like the sun, and stars in his grasp being mentioned in a few brief sentences. Michael is effectively the face of God and the instrument of His justice. He wears a golden girdle, the girdle being associated with Persian religion but most people take it to mean the breastplate of a priest because the Essenes saw themselves as priests.

The original work resumed at verse 4:1.

4:1 After this I looked, and, behold, a door was opened in heaven: and the first voice which I heard was as it were of a trumpet talking with me; which said, Come up hither, and I will shew thee things which must be hereafter.

Thus the superfluous letters to churches can be excised along with a bit of linking material with the minimum of fuss and leaving no visible seam, and restoring the basic work. This has all been known for a century but until the Dead Sea Scrolls were found there was no clear basis for extracting the apocalypses. Now that we know of at least one strongly apocalyptic sect in first century Judaea, we have a reason for seeking the originals behind Revelation.

The vision draws on Daniel 7:6, Isaiah 6:1-3, Ezekiel 1:26-28 and 1 Enoch 14:15, where the door was not “open” but “was opened”. The Watcher, Jesus (originally—not John who is only relating the original vision as passed on to him) is then offered a vision of the End Time. When the door of heaven had opened the Watcher was ordered to ascend to see the future and he sees the throne of heaven. Most Christian commentators call the Observer, the “Seer”, but the Essenes called themselves among other things, the “Watchers for the kingdom”, and there can be little doubt that they are depicting the hero of this drama as a Watcher for the kingdom.

God is described as sitting on the throne looking like a precious stone surrounded by a rainbow. The whole description seems to be intent on generating an image of a prismatic kalaidoscopic effect in which the rainbow colours are multiply reflected. The Jewish god, like the Persian god, was a god of heaven, who had a voice of thunder, was associated with lightnings and had visual characteristics like the sun.

Before the throne are seven lamps of fire, like the lampstands again strongly mindful of the Persian religion where fire was considered holy. The number seven occurs about 50 times in Revelation. As a magic number it comes from Zoroastrianism also, but the Essenes were interested in all forms of astrology and numerology, because of their interest in prophecy, and for them seven was the number of the Eschaton, when earth (4) and heaven (3) merged.

Seven is thought to represent the seven planets, including the sun and the moon, known in antiquity, but seven is also associated solely with the moon, being a week, the number of days for each phase of the moon to develop. The Essenes, it might be protested, used a solar calendar not a lunar one, but that did not mean they were not interested in the moon. The Qumran “brontologions” proved that the Essenes used the moon for prophecy. Brontologions were tables for making predictions from thunder. Deciding what constellation thunder comes from in the sky is impossible but noting what constellation the moon is in at sunset on the day that thunder occurs is straightforward.

It is worth noting that, in this apocalypse, God is never called Father, the Christian name for Him. It might suggest a pre-Christian origin for this piece, but also that it preceded the proto-Christians, the Essenes, who themselves, or a sub-sect, had adopted this habit. Father appears in Revelation 14:1 but merely as a statement of a relationship not as a name of God. It might be, though, that the name “Father” for God had been suppressed in this work because the Romans knew those who called God “Father” were fanatical rebels. They did not want to incriminate themselves through this literature. Jesus was Barabbas!

In verse 4:4, 24 seats occupied by 24 Elders are described as surrounding the heavenly throne. The Babylonian religion had 24 star gods and the Jewish religion has 24 priestly courses, probably related at source when the Persians created Judaism out of Canaanite Baal-Yehouah worship. Elders watch Yehouah in his glory in Isaiah 24:23 which either was an Essene composition or profoundly influenced Essenism. Elders are evidently a select body of God’s Chosen Ones with whom Essenes would certainly have identified. The title “Elder” seems to have been taken forward into Christianity, so might have been an Essene title beforehand. Interestingly they are wearing victors’ crowns (stephanos). The theme of victor or conqueror runs through the apocalypse. In Hebrew, it is “nasach” (nasah) one of the punning meanings behind the name “Nazarene”.

Four peculiar beasts are described round about the throne, presumably meant to be at each of its legs—they are cherubims like those that commonly decorated the walls, gates and thrones of Babylon and Susa, and even Egypt. Many of the sources of this apocalypse are found in the Enochian Literature, particularly popular at Qumran. The four creatures are obviously zodiacal images representing the four quarters of the zodiac, representing the full span of the heavens and therefore the cosmos. When the Christian canon was fixed, years after the composition of Revelation, the four beasts were declared to stand for the four evangelists—another Christian fraud. The beasts had many eyes possibly a romantic reference to stars, but sun gods usually have many eyes, their rays from which no injustice can escape, the reason why sun gods were associated with justice, judgement and retribution, as here.

Verses 9 to 11 get quite Pythonesque. Every time the four creatures call out “Holy, Holy, Holy” the 24 Elders fall flat on their faces before the throne whilst throwing off their crowns and praising the occupant of the throne. They call Him “Lord and God”, the title chosen by the emperor, Domitian. Since none of these verses have any scriptural precedents, they are unlikely to be original, and the praising of God at the end of verse 8 is the natural end of the section. One is tempted to think that a humourous gloss written at the end of the first century, mocking Domitian’s sycophants, has been later included by an unintelligent copyist.

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Last uploaded: 12 May, 2008.