Digest urth.v028.n185

Alice Turner · 18 Apr 2000, 23:56 · from urth-v0028.mbox · original

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From: "Alice Turner" <akt at attglobal.net>
Subject: (urth) Re: Digest urth.v028.n185
Date: Tue, 18 Apr 2000 23:56:40
Message-ID: <urth-v0028-0915 at digest.urth.net>
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Rostrum rote:

> On Sun, 16 Apr 2000, Richard Horton wrote:
> > On Wed, 12 Apr 2000 06:10:41 -0700 (PDT), you wrote:
> > >Even fewer people know there is no such book as "RevelationS". :-) It's
> > >the Revelation of St. John, or the Apocalypse of St. John, or Revelati=
on,
> > >or Apocalypse, or The Revelation of Jesus Christ.
> >=20
> > Attributing it to "St. John" is controversial as well, as contemporary
> > scholarship seems to agree that John of Patmos, the author of
> > Revelation, is not the apostle John.
>=20
> I don't think "contemporary scholarship" is that monolithic.  A lot of
> those authorship debates seem to me to be based on too little evidence.
> Some of the arguments I've seen for that position could be used to prove
> that the Gene Wolfe who wrote the New Sun books is not the same person who
> wrote the Long Sun books (significant stylistic differences, a large chunk
> of vocabulary unique to one series or the other, different tehological
> ideas and concerns, etc.)

The scholarship is not that "contemporary" regarding Revelation. It was sus=
pect from the gitgo, with several more sober bishops strongly objecting to =
it when the 4th century canon was put together. It crawled in because of po=
pular superstition that John the gospeleer wrote it, though  more educated =
folk with a good "ear" even at that early time found this highly unlikely, =
and said so. There were lots of similarly apocalyptic texts around, this on=
e being an anti-Rome rant with historical references to Babylon, Israel's p=
rior primo peeve. Modern textual analysis makes the two completely incompat=
ible. "John of Patmos" is the name given to the unknown author of what Haro=
ld Bloom (and his insignificant follower, me) call a "rancid" book. OTOH, a=
s a heathen, I do think that it has pepped up the religion considerably! Fo=
r TV evangelists, say, suicidal cults, and plenty of morons everywhere!

-alga

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