As the findings from Nag Hammadi make clear, there were a lot of competing manuscripts vying for usage by the different Jesus movements in the decades following Jesus' death. Many of these manuscripts had very different messages than those have come down to us through the centuries. Why did a few of these books make it into the New Testament while most did not? I think Elaine Pagels makes it clear that it comes down to a couple of early church bully boys that were seeking to consolidate their own power and their own vision of the gospel. Not only did they get the Revelation of John into the New Testament, but they managed to stand his message on its head. Pagel's book on the writing and inclusion of the Revelation of John makes for a marvelous tale of intrigue and politics in the early church.
John may have thought that he was actually experiencing the end of the world when the Romans destroyed the temple at Jerusalem in 70 A.D. and then burned the city down. The center of Jewish culture and religion was gone, and Jews began to scatter about the Mediterranean either voluntarily or as slaves. John was a practicing Jew who believed that Jesus was the long sought Messiah, and he was convinced that he was watching the pollution of the Jewish culture and religion from two different sources. Jews were increasingly being forced to pay homage to the foreign gods of the dominant Roman empire, an act which destroyed the integrity of Israel's status as a chosen people. But John also saw the spreading of the Christian message among the gentiles, as begun by Paul, as equally repellent.
In trying to answer the eternal question of why good people suffer while the wicked flourish, John projected a fairly tale future in which the Roman Empire—the infamous Whore of Babylon—would be destroyed and the righteous eventually triumph. (It only took another 1400 years or so for the Romans to finally pass from the scene.) And no, the number 666 does not refer to Barak Obama, Saddam Hussein, or John F. Kennedy (as W. A. Criswell told us in 1960). It's pretty clear that the Emperor Nero, who used Jews and Christians as human torches shortly after the burning of Rome, is the intended designee. John also makes clear in his messages to the seven churches that those who have listened to the false prophets Jezebel and Balaam—those in the churches who had fornicated with gentiles and eaten unclean meat which had been sacrificed to the foreign gods—were going to get it in the end as well. Since Paul was one of those who ate unclean meat and who relaxed the requirements for circumcision, his followers, the "spiritual Israel" were among the doomed. "Those whom John says Jesus 'hates' look very much like the Gentile followers of Jesus converted through Paul's teachings."
So not only did John's revelation not come through Jesus' teachings, it attacked the very group of believers that became the mainstay of the Christian church. Of course, Pauls's message also depended on his own "revelation" of what Jesus taught, so you have another line of teaching that lies outside the direct apostolic lineage as. But then, so much of what is "apostolic" comes from the 40 days of Pentecost after Jesus died, so there are at least three different "vision quests" at work in determining the "authentic" message of the Jesus movement. But that's just based on the material that actually made it into the New Testament. It doesn't include most of the Nag Hammadi material nor the "New Prophecy" movement of Montanus or Valentinus that was inspired by John's revelation. So who gets to decide what is right and what is bogus?
Into the breach step at least two of the most unpleasant but also most influential of the early church fathers, Irenaeus of Lyons and Athanasius of Alexander. Somehow they found a way to cobble together the seemingly contradictory messages of Paul and John to a few of the gospel stories and manage to tell everyone else what is acceptable and what must be tossed. At the same time, they managed to close down any further revelation or direct contact with the divine spirit except through what became the Catholic church.
It really comes down to politics. Skip back to Ignatius, who styled himself as the Bishop of Antioch (ca 67-108 AD) and is given credit by Pagels for being the first person to call himself and his followers "Christians." He begins to enforce the power structure of the "apostolic" church with the emphasis on bishops, deacons, and priests. At the same time, he elevates Paul's letters into a central pillar of the church: "Ignatius declares the primary sources are not the Hebrew scriptures but what he finds in Paul's letters: 'for me, the primary sources are [Christ's] cross, his resurrection, and the faith that comes through him.'"
Irenaeus of Lyons picks up on Ignatius' message in the late second century—he may have been one of the first of the church fathers to insist on the authority of the Bishop of Rome--and begins to formulate what we now accept as the New Testament canon, although a number of the other bishops and priests were also pushing for inclusion or exclusion of certain texts as being "scriptural." In attacking the Gnostic messages of Valentinus, Marcion, and the "new prophets," Irenaeus condemned many of the documents that were in circulation among the different churches, such as the Gospel of Thomas, the Secret Revelation of John, the Revelation of Ezra, the secret Revelation of James. Whereas many of the other bishops condemned the Revelation of John in response to the "new prophecy" movement, Irenaeus insisted that the spirit of God was speaking through the book. First off, he believed that both the Revelation and the Gospel of John were written by John of Zebedee, one of Jesus' original followers. But Irenaeus also saw that the vision of the horrific end times gave him a handle on making sense of the increased prosecution of Christians in the middle of the second century. Then he went a step further and interpreted the Revelation of John as an attack on heretics, that is, anyone who disagreed with him. In fact, as far as we know, Irenaeus is the first writer to use the word "heresy" in connection with Christian doctrine. What counts for salvation from the horrific ending is right belief: those disagree with Irenaeus will be destroyed along with the Romans who are prosecuting the Christians. This includes those messianic Jews to whom John of Patmos directed his message.
Irenaeus also coupled the Old Testament concept of the anti-messiah to John's Revelation, calling the beast of the Revelation the AntiChrist, an idea not found in John's Revelation. "By linking 'the beast' with 'AntiChrist'—namely that 'the beast' who embodies alien ruling powers is also inextricably linked with false belief and false belief in turn with moral depravity, Irenaeus makes a crucial interpretation of John's prophecies. Irenaeus wants to show that God's judgment demands not only right action but right belief…'the beast' works not only through outsiders who prosecute Christians but also through Christian insiders, the 'false brethren' whom he calls heretics."
The real villain in this piece, for me, even more than Irenaeus, is Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria (328-373 AD). Athanasius came to prominence during the Arian crisis that led to the formulation of the Nicene Creed. Since Christianity had just been declared the favored religion of the emperor Constantine, those Christians who did not espouse the particular relationship of the Father and the Son, designated by the term homoousia—that Jesus was of the same substance, coeternal with the Father—were decreed heretics by Constantine. They could have their property confiscated and be expelled from the empire. Athanasius won the battle against Arius, but he had a long war ahead of him.
After essentially stealing the election to become the bishop of Alexandria, Athansius sought to consolidate all of the power of the Egyptian church under his control. John's Revelation became one of his favorite tools to bust the heretics' chops. It took him 45 years to accomplish his mission, but when he was done, the New Testament canon was set, the rebellious desert monks had been brought to bear, and the central doctrine of the church was the Nicene Creed. "Athanasius interpreted John's Book of Revelation as condemning all 'heretics' and then made this book the capstone of the New Testament canon where it has remained ever since. At the same time, he ordered Christians to stop reading any other 'books of revelation' which he branded heretical and sought to destroy—with almost complete success." By 367, Athanasius had determined what Christians could read and what must be censored, and most of the censored books were destroyed. He also condemned "original human thinking" as evil so that nothing could be added or changed from his list of books.
And so, we can ultimately thank Athanasius every time we hear some two-bit preacher on the radio who characterizes Barak Obama as the AntiChrist or listen to Harold Camping tell his followers to sell their possessions and gather in the desert for the "Rapture" or even remember a James Watt who declined to protect the environment because "I don't know how much longer we'll be around." His personal politics have become the widespread beliefs of so many.
Author: Pagels, Elaine
Date Published: 2012
Length: 256 pp
electronic print
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