Anyone else see the resemblance?
Symbolism in Revelation Points to the Watchtower - Leolaia HELP
by jgnat 40 Replies latest watchtower bible
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jgnat
making every word a riddle to be unciphered beyond its plain sense
Very good point, narkissos.
All of these scriptures deal with judgement, not enlightement. In the Revelation book, they go from the word "light" to "lightning" to "enlightenment." Light, which can refer to increased knowledge, is not the same as lightning.
I so agree Justita. Though the Watchtower approach to "truth", with their great bouts of obfuscation, occassionally illuminated with "new light" might apply...
Terry, I remember reading a discussion between Tokein and C. S. Lewis as they were taking one of their long walks. Tolkein explained in ancient languages, there were no metaphor, only simile. That is, God was not LIKE the wind, God WAS wind. At that moment in the discussion, a breeze came up ruffled them. Lewis was not much longer an agnostic. If you think about it, Tolkein's entire work was metaphor (or simile), without apology or explanation. Generations of readers have enjoyed Tolkein's hero's tale without commentary. I feel similarly about Jesus' illustrations.
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reneeisorym
The Will Smith had me giggling at work ...
Anyway:
John wrote Revelation at a time when Christians were being persecuted by Romans, so the book was very anti-Roman, and John possibly wrote it then as a book predicting the downfall of Rome (Babylon the Great) but wrote it in 'symbols' and 'visions' so that any Romans reading it wouldn't understand, but using language a Christian at the time would understand. In that case, I doubt the writer intended it to receive interpretation 2000 years later. I don't know if it's right, but it makes sense to me.
If you ever read some stuff from a theologist who is a preterist, they say that the events in Revelation fortold the distruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. I read a comparison between what Josephus said in Wars compared to the book of Revelation. It made me believe that the events in Revelation have already been fulfilled except maybe the last part about the resurrection and the new heavens/new earth. Its scarey about how many of the details of that war sound exactly like what Revelation says. Another good point is that Revelation refers to those things taking place in a short time from then. And in one place it says not to seal up the scroll because the things would shortly happen. But in Daniel the prophecies are to take place way off in the future and God said to seal up the book until the time.
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juni
All good points made here. Thanks.
dedpoet said:
I have often thought that, juni. especially as the cave on Patmos where he
supposedly had his vision has magic mushrooms growing close by. Maybe
hw "saw" all this stuff after tucking in to a plateful of mushroom stew..shades of Alice in Wonderland, hey?? I think I hear Grace Slick singing "White Rabbit". LOL
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Leolaia
Yeah, the Revelation Climax book is awful in having arbitrary, deterministic eisegesis in place of cautious and careful exegesis, which I think many JWs already realize in having to swallow such whoppers as the interpretation of the seven trumpets as convention declarations from the 1920s. Occasionally, they may hit on a likely interpretation, usually because they recognize that the author has appropriated a symbol from the OT. A good exegesis should start with recognizing the OT intertexts and the meaning therein, but it doesn't end there because one has to understand how the symbol functions in the text, as the author may have appropriated only the signifier, or has given the symbol a new spin or nuance. To give one example, the author is heavily influenced by Daniel in parts, and there (in ch. 7-8) horns symbolize kings but in ch. 17 of Revelation the author uses heads as the primary signifier of kings, and not only that, but the same symbol is also assigned a second simultaneous signification -- the heads also represent hills. The author of Revelation does this quite a bit; in the same chapter, the Beast represents not only a kingdom but also personifies one of its kings (this may gloss over a more complex literary history of redaction in the book). The author also uses different signifiers for the same referrent. The 144,000 and the "great multitude" of martyrs coming out of the tribulation are likely the same group, the first as glimped via an audition and the second as viewed in a vision. Similarly, Jesus is both a lion and a lamb in the same vision in ch. 5. The author may also be inconsistent or use a symbol ambiguously, in which case dogmatism on what the symbol means would be unwarranted. In many cases, there may not be a "there" there... the author uses revelatory language not to symbolize anything at all but because it is a literary convention, because the author wants an assonance with established tradition, because it makes the description sound like a legitimate account of a vision. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. And in Revelation that probably occurs more often than not. In the days of Pastor Russell, the seven churches of ch. 1-3 were interpreted as symbols referring to different phases of church history, when in reality these are not symbols; the references to the churches of Sardis, Ephesus, Smyrna, etc. are literally to the churches of Sardis, Ephesus, Smyrna, etc. The Revelation Climax book in fact seems to reflect a pesher tradition of interpretation in which almost any detail can become a meaningful symbol which could then be interpreted as referring to modern situations and entities (like the United Nations, Jehovah's Witnesses, conventions in the 1920s, etc.) far removed from the original context of the book. The Qumran Commentary on Habakkuk is very similar; the author had no interest in the original context and meaning of Habakkuk but what sort of prophecies can be derived from Habakkuk that relate to Roman occupation of Judea and the desired end of Roman hegemony. The author of Habakkuk did not originally write about the Herodian period, just as John did not write about our twentieth and twenty-first centuries, but the book is approached as a cypher than can be used to unlock hidden meanings about what is happening in our time.
What strikes me about your list of symbols is how often the Society assigns abstract signification to the purported symbols, things like wisdom, love, justice, power, etc. The possibility is not considered that what John is describing is a non-symbolic description of heaven, complete with a glassy sea, lampstands, and angelic creatures. The Enochic literature (which Revelation is heavily influenced by) has many descriptions of heaven and other parts of the cosmos, but the authors did not use such descriptive language as symbols of abstract concepts but as actual descriptions of heaven, Sheol, the gates through which the sun rises and sets, etc. The glassy sea, for instance, is usually understood in light of Genesis 1, the heavenly ocean created by God by separating the waters of the deep. Other visions of heaven in 2 Enoch and 3 Baruch are quite explicit that heaven contains these heavenly waters, from which the rain comes. The Society would never however consider such an interpretation because it has no room for an OT cosmology that differs from our own modern, scientific understanding. The passage in ch. 4, btw, is heavily allusive of Ezekiel (cf. Ezekiel 1:26-28 = v. 2, 1:5-21, 24:10 = v. 6, 10:14 = v. 6-7, 1:18 = v. 8), so John may simply be appropriating Ezekiel's own descriptions without assigning symbolic meaning. Or the descriptions could have nuances of symbolic attributes, as in the case of the Lamb which is what John sees in the vision but which uses sacrificial imagery to make certain theological and soteriological claims about Jesus. Usually, each attribute or descriptor has to be examined in a case by case basis. And in many instances, the meaning will be ambiguous either way. It is more important to focus on the action of the vision, what is happening, in this case the vision is describing the investiture of the Lamb in the heavenly court, adapting the investiture of the Son of Man figure from Daniel 7:13 to refer to Christ's heavenly own installation as Lord and King. That gets more to the meat of the vision than getting bogged down on whether an eagle is really an eagle or a lampstand is really a lampstand. They are just window dressing for the real event here.
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gumby
Jgnathead, here's some interesting tidbits regarding the N.T. most controversial book.
http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/revelation.htm
Gumvelations
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drew sagan
leolaia said:
What strikes me about your list of symbols is how often the Society assigns abstract signification to the purported symbols, things like wisdom, love, justice, power, etc.
Personally I think this has to do with the style of the people who write these books. The style allways makes me think of somebody sitting down and wanting to write something smart, but not knowing at all where to begin. He pulls out his websters dictionary and a few other tools and begins to hash togeather the interpretation of his choice.
It seems there are a number of methods (if you can them that) that Watchtower writers seem to use over and over. I suppose that since it would be much to difficult to actually discuss the real issues at hand they find other things to comment on. Of course they add no meaning to the study and are often wrong, but at least it appears as if the people writing the books have some intelligence (being you don't actually spend time thinking about what is written). -
drew sagan
I forgot to add this in my previous post:
The thing about the style of Watchtower literature is that I simply can imagine myself as exegetical ignorant dub sitting down and writing the same kind of material. Without knowing where to start, I would simply begin to pick at every little thing and then compare it to other portions of the Bible (like the psalms it mentions eagles, yikes!) and simply draw out what it really means.
Reminds me of the days when I would study the Bible verse by verse just using the Watchtower publications. I would find all of the referances to a particuliar verse and try to get the best meaning possible of it. I don't think there is any better way to realize that the WTS has no interest in doing real Bible study after you sit down and try something like that. -
jgnat
Laverne or Shirley?
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jgnat
Reminds me of some Apocalyptic ramblings in "The Idiot" By Dostoevsky. The character in THIS story claimed the pestilent hordes were railways.
http://www.online-literature.com/view.php/idiot/32?term=railways