I took the picture above while standing on Armageddon, the hill of Megiddo, looking out over the now peaceful Jezreel Valley.  In his Revelation, John has scared lots of people over the years with the image of Armageddon as a battle between good and evil at the end of time.  In Religion 132, I've tried to help you interpret that battle in a different way.  Let's review just a few of the images in Revelation and in the epistles which were written in the last part of the New Testament period, a generation after Paul.  This review relates especially to chapters 18-20 of Stephen L. Harris, The New Testament:  A Student's Introduction, 5th ed. (Boston:  McGraw-Hill, 2006). 

EPISTLES

    The New Testament epistles represent a typical phenomenon in the ancient world:  the development of schools, to carry on the work of religious or intellectual leaders.  You recall the schools of Hillel and Shammai, representing two major approaches to interpreting the Torah.  Similarly Plato honored his teacher, Socrates, by developing the Academy -- a public park where his students gathered.  Aristotle also founded a school in Athens which was so famous that Emory & Henry seeks to follow its tradition in our cultural program; Aristotle called it the Lyceum.

    Paul became a figure venerated in the school which followed his ideas.  He was honored like the rabbis whom I captured in the picture above at the Western Wall in Jerusalem -- the only surviving section of the ancient Temple.  Paul's teachings were collected, edited, interpreted, and applied to problems of a later generation.  We call the writings that expressed Paul's ideas for a new generation the epistles.  They follow the basic letter form which Paul had established, and some of them were even written in Paul's name, to show their close dependence on his teachings.  Scholars assume that these epistles are anonymous products of schools devoted to the theological contributions of Paul, Peter, James, and other leaders in early Christianity. 

    For example, the epistle to the Ephesians gives us a beautiful picture of the church as essential to the very fabric of the universe.  I believe that Ephesians was written by the runaway slave Onesimus, who had been set free in response to Paul's letter to Philemon and had risen to a very high position of leadership in the church -- Bishop of Ephesus.  Onesimus was the first editor of Paul's letters:  he collected and published them, together with this wonderful epistle as a cover letter, introducing key themes in the Pauline corpus. 

    Onesimus based the epistle to the Ephesians on a letter from Paul to Onesimus' home church in Colossae.  We call it the letter to the Colossians.  In Colossians we find a beautiful Christ-hymn like the one we saw in Philippians, but with a different emphasis.  It speaks of Christ as the one through whom all things were created.  He is the source of all life, and in union with him all things have their proper place.  It was by God's own decision that the Son has the full nature of God.  This description must remind you of the Logos in the Christ-hymn which opens the Gospel of John.  The conclusion of the Colossian Christ-hymn points to Christ's ministry of reconciliation:  the Cross makes peace between God and everything else, on earth and in heaven.  That's how we have been brought close to God, through the sacrificial death of his Son.  

    But this Good News has been kept secret over the ages, and only now is it fully revealed.  These themes of revelation of a secret and an instrument of creation point toward an understanding in the epistles which is solidly anchored in Jewish thought.  A whole body of Jewish literature, including Proverbs, Philo, and Sirach, developed the foundational understanding that is applied to Christ in Colossians.  We call such writings wisdom literature, and we speak of the wisdom schools that produced it.  Solomon is regarded as the patron of wisdom literature.  Wisdom became almost personified as Hochma (in Hebrew) or Sophia (in Greek).  Wisdom is represented in Proverbs 8, for instance, as a beautiful, virtuous woman:

    "Listen!  Wisdom is calling out ...
    I am Wisdom; I am better than jewels ...
    The Lord created me first of all,
    the first of his works, long ago.
    I was made in the very beginning, at the first,
    before the world began."

Similarly, the Christ-hymn in Colossians shows that from the very beginning, Christ not only brings superior wisdom; he embodies it.

    The Pastoral Epistles of 1-2 Timothy and Titus also enable the authority of Paul to be effective for a later age.  It is crucial at this point in the church's life for the community to be protected from Gnostic theology and ethics.  Paul's teachings now form a solid base for rejecting Gnostic speculations.  The Pastoral Epistles establish specific church offices to guard Christian doctrine and order against misinterpretations.  The four offices spelled out in these epistles are deacon, elder, bishop, and widow, and we've looked carefully at the qualifications for each of those positions of leadership in the church.  

   The epistle to the Hebrews is a fascinating mixture of Greek philosophy and Jewish allegory, related especially to the Torah.  It must remind you of Philo, the famous Jewish philosopher from Alexandria who also applied the allegorical method to the Torah.  Since the author is not named, speculation has focused on various persons who may have written Hebrews, such as Apollos and Barnabas.  One possibility is the person who instructed Apollos in the Christian faith:  Priscilla.  She worked with Paul and her husband Aquila in making sails and tents.  Since Luke mentions her name before Aquila's as one who instructed Apollos, she must have had the more important role.  A thoughtful, detailed set of arguments for Priscilla as the author is given by Ruth Hoppin, Priscilla's Letter (Fort Bragg, CA:  Lost Coast Press, 1997).  There is no consensus among scholars on the authorship of Hebrews, but Hoppin's work represents thorough, carefully focused research on that issue.

    Hebrews is the epistle with the most fully developed Christology, using Jewish sacrificial imagery.  Jesus Christ is our Great High Priest, who gave his life as a once-for-all sacrifice to bring about atonement for our sins.  Because Christ's death has reconciled us with God, we are freed to live courageously, like many of the great heroes of faith over the ages.

THE REVELATION TO JOHN

    Our New Testament closes with a unique book written around 96 A.D.:  the Revelation to John.  We call such writings as Revelation and Daniel apocalyptic literature, because of their "unveiling" (Greek apocalypse) of the secrets of the end of time.  Yet the main purpose in both books was to strengthen the courage of people who faced persecution, not to predict events far off in the future.  

    John's Revelation was intended for Christians living in the Roman province of Asia, an area that we would today call western Turkey.  John was in prison on the island of Patmos, in the Aegean Sea.  Why was he in jail?  Because he was identified as a Christian in an empire-wide attempt by Emperor Domitian to eliminate the Christian faith, at the end of the first century after Christ's birth.

    How could someone in jail try to cheer us up so that we could face our problems?  Didn't John have to deal with his own problems?  Surprisingly, we find that like Paul, John was able to look beyond the walls that separated himself from others, and to share his concerns for others.  Although superficially John's "visions" resemble some of our worst nightmares, they were not eccentric -- the result of bad prison food.  Rather, they were written in the kind of disguised language that wouldn't make sense to any Roman authorities who intercepted them.  But Christians who knew similar descriptions from books like Ezekiel and Daniel could interpret the dreams and understand their meanings.  John's readers also knew the political history and current events of their own times.  So he could use scriptural symbols to refer to what we might call "breaking news" on CNN -- even though it might take a few weeks or months for such news to reach John and his readers, longer than we would expect today.  John's readers could decode the symbolism more easily than we can, but we can still try to understand the insights in the various visions.  Let's review a few of them.

THE SEVEN CHURCHES

    John's Revelation was included in our Bible not just because it tells about how first-century Christians could face persecution, but because it contains lasting truths -- teachings which are just as valid now as they were 2,000 years ago.  It's up to us to seek out the ways in which those truths speak to us.  One way that I've found meaningful is to look carefully at the letters which John wrote to seven churches in his home area. 

    Remember that seven is a number of completeness in the Bible, pointing to the universality of John's message.  Although you won't be required to identify the seven churches of Revelation on a map, it would make this review more interesting if you have such a map in your Bible.  For example, there is a clear map of the seven churches on page 2309 of The HarperCollins Study Bible. Clues in these letters point to situations in which we can see ourselves. 

    1.  Ephesus, a church that has lost its sense of community -- Revelation 2:1-7

    We've seen how important the church at Ephesus was in the life of Paul and in early Christianity.  In the first of his seven letters,  John expressed his appreciation for the willingness of the Ephesians to take a stand against people who distort the faith.  But the church members were so busy arguing that they had lost the love which had once held them together as a community. 

    Unfortunately, I've served in churches like Ephesus.  In one I really enjoyed working with the youth, but while I was there a number of the members got so upset that they almost split the church because the pastor wanted the chairs in the choir to face a different direction!  In another church there was a huge hullabaloo over a painting of Christ that was donated and put in a prominent place.  Like Paul, John would want us to make sure that we hold onto the love of community members for each other as members of the body of Christ.

   2. Smyrna, a church of victory over persecution and death -- Revelation 2:8-11

    In the 1960's, Christians in China faced the darkest period in their history:  the Cultural Revolution in which the Communist leader Mao Zedong was practically deified.  Bibles were burned and replaced with the Little Red Book of Mao's sayings.  Every single church in China was closed, and Christians were interrogated, imprisoned, and "re-educated."  But Christianity didn't die; it went "underground" in the form of house congregations until it was safe again for Chinese to live openly as Christians. 

    John knew that the situation for Christians in Smyrna was much like that in China, because most Smyrnaeans were very pro-Roman.  The city even deified the goddess Roma and built a temple to her.  Each year, all citizens of Smyrna had to appear before a judge, offer up incense, and say "CAESAR IS LORD!"  But Christians acknowledged only one Lord, and they felt that Roma was no more a goddess than the Statue of Liberty is!  Christians faced trial, imprisonment, and possible death.  In John's letter the laurel wreath, symbol of victory in athletic competitions throughout the Greco-Roman world, was the reward for the faithful of Smyrna.

    3. Pergamum, a church of symbols -- Revelation 2:12-17

    John realized the power of symbols in our lives.  He mentioned symbols of hidden manna and a white stone, in his letter to the Christians in Pergamum.  Hidden manna was a metaphor for eternal life, and the white stone with Christ's own name on it was a symbol of Christ's love for us.

    A friend of mine wears a necklace with a "fairy stone cross," a natural stone from Franklin County that she bought at Bristol Caverns.  Whenever she touches it on its chain, the cross reminds her of the love of Christ.  Her religion is very personal, and no one else knows how much it means to her.  But it helps her get through some tough times, so that she can remain true to her own ideals. The cross symbol which means so much to her reminds me of the church in Pergamum.  The cross was once a symbol of shame, like the electric chair or the hangman's noose.  But it was transformed into a symbol of the love that Jesus Christ showed in his willingness to give his life for others.

    4. Thyatira, a church with an unethical leader -- Revelation 2:18-29

    In his letter to the people of Thyatira, John described a Christian "Jezebel," a term based on a wicked queen in the Old Testament.  This new "Jezebel" was a respected leader in the church, but on the side she was practicing sexual immorality and eating food offered to idols.  We're not likely to be guilty of those particular sins.  But the real test comes when we face ethical dilemmas in our job or our personal life.  So John's forceful advice to the people of Thyatira is also to us:  live up to the highest ethical standards.

    In recent years we've learned to our sadness that some leaders in American business have compromised the ethical standards that they claim to follow, even though they have built up reputations as Christian leaders and good church people.  Employees in their companies have put their trust in the leadership of these top officials who took advantage of them, sometimes wiping out the employees' life savings and pensions.  John's message was that the Son of God is not deceived by outer appearances; he is "the one who searches minds and hearts."  As Jesus taught us in the Sermon on the Mount, if our outer self doesn't match our inner self, we must be hypocrites, wearing those Greek drama masks and only pretending to be Christians! 

    5. Sardis, a church with a few pure Christians -- Revelation 3:1-6

    When you think of the richest people in the world today, your thoughts naturally turn to Bill Gates of Microsoft and Warren Buffett, who recently turned over most of his fortune to Bill Gates' charitable foundation.  Their equivalents in ancient times were King Midas of Phrygia, whose touch turned everything to gold, and King Croesus of Sardis, who was the measure for other wealthy people in the expression "as rich as Croesus."  The people of Sardis trusted in the wealth and power of their city, and they thought their fortifications were in good shape.  So they got lazy, and centuries before John wrote his letter to Sardis, some invaders sneaked up the back way and found a completely unguarded entrance.  The city fell to its enemies.

    John may have been thinking of this history when he wrote to the members of the church in Sardis, whom we could call "Sardines." :)  He said that many of the Christians in Sardis were wearing dirty clothes, symbolic of sin.  Only a few were wearing white clothes, symbolic of purity.  Earlier we saw the courtroom scene in Zechariah where God overruled his prosecuting attorney, Satan, and ordered dirty clothes removed from the accused and clean clothes put on him -- representing God's forgiveness.  John urged the Christians of Sardis to live pure lives; only the truly dedicated can be trusted to guard against unexpected invasions by the forces of evil.

    6. Philadelphia, a church of true love -- Revelation 3:7-13

    John told the Philadelphians that Christ has opened the door of salvation with the Messianic key; no one can slam that door shut and lock it against us.  But if we walk through the door, God doesn't call us to be superhuman.  God simply asks us to show love (philia) for each other as brothers and sisters (adelphoi).  So every church should be a Philadelphia!  

    John's good news is that the person who remains faithful will become a pillar in the Temple.  On the Acropolis in Athens, you can still see today a beautiful temple, the Erechtheum, whose stone porch roof is actually held up by statues of young women, the Caryatids, who are the supporting pillars.  Perhaps John had seen this Porch of the Maidens, and that's why he used the image in his letter to the church at Philadelphia.

    7. Laodicea, a church with Christ knocking on the door -- Revelation 3:14-22

    Here's another door image.  You may have seen the famous painting that is based on this letter:  Christ is standing at the door of a person's heart and knocking.  Even though he could push the door open, he waits for an invitation to come in and have supper.  John urged the Laodiceans to recognize their need for Christ's help, rather than trying to make it on their own.  If they continued trusting only in themselves, they would become a stale church, like coffee or tea that is no longer steaming hot or ice-cold, but lukewarm and yucky.  Christ is knocking on the door, said John, and if Christians open it, he will come in and have supper with them, including a hot cup of Starbucks coffee!

THE SEVEN SEALS

    Here's the number seven again!  As we've seen, the first four visions, which we call the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, represent calamities that we face throughout history, again and again.  John encourages us to hang in there and keep the faith, even in difficult times.  We interpreted the rider on a white horse as a pseudo-Messiah, a fake religious leader who can be found in all times and places.  Such a charismatic individual is able to persuade lots of gullible followers into putting their faith unquestioningly in his or her leadership.  The rider on a red horse, the color of blood, symbolized war.  The rider on a black horse, whom we identified with a real disaster in the time of Domitian, was famine -- hunger on a large scale.  And the rider on a pale green horse symbolized sickness and death, which we all face. We've also discussed how John's presentation of the other three seals and the beautiful interlude of the 144,000 were intended to encourage his readers in difficult times.

THE WOMAN AND THE DRAGON

    We've explored two interpretations of the woman clothed with the sun, with a dragon beside her waiting for her to give birth so that he could devour the baby.  John may have wanted us to see her as Israel, since the Jewish religion was the "mother" of the Christian Church.  The dragon would represent the evil powers that have persecuted Christianity throughout its history; in John's time they would be supported by the imperial authority of Rome itself.  But God would protect the infant church even when it was attacked by such potent forces.

     John may also have been portraying the woman as the Virgin Mary, giving birth to the Messiah.  The dragon would then be Herod the Great, who tried to destroy the baby that he saw as a rival for his throne.  But mother and baby were protected by God, who led them to flee through the wilderness to Egypt, until it was safe to return home.

666

   We've seen how John drew especially on his memories of the visions in Daniel for the imagery of the two beasts.  For example, the beast that came out of the sea in John's vision (Revelation 13) is composed of elements of three different beasts in a vision of Daniel:  a lion, representing the Babylonians; a bear, representing the Medes; and a leopard, representing the Persians.  John put them all together for his beast, knowing that his readers at home in Asia Minor would recognize the allusions.  I suggested that the beast from the sea represents false government, while the beast from the earth represents false religion, but that the two are really merged in the imperial cult of people like Domitian.  So 666 can be seen as a code for the two beasts fused into one.  We discussed some of the options for interpreting the code number 666:

• If we use the Greek alphabet, with A = 1, B = 2, G = 3, etc., then the values of the Greek letters in the word lateinos (= the Roman Empire) add up to 666.

• If we use Hebrew letters, with א = 1,  ב = 2,  ג  = 3, etc., then the values of the Hebrew letters in the words Nero Caesar (= the worst Roman Emperor, the epitome of evil like Domitian) add up to 666.

• The numerical values of the Greek letters in the name Jesus add up to 888.  If a series of 7's is completeness, and a series of 8's is more than completeness, than a series of 6's is incompleteness:  the Roman Empire will not last forever!  Just hang in there -- this too shall pass!

THE NEW TESTAMENT CANON

    In these four review programs, I've tried to share with you something of the diversity and the rich historical backgrounds of the New Testament writings.  We've only been able to touch the surface.  But I hope that these brief reviews will supplement your own study of the New Testament, together with the class sessions and the textbook.  Now would be a good time to ask the question:  how did these twenty-seven writings, which are so different in many ways, come together into a book which has spoken to people for so long and is still so meaningful to people all over the world?

    Christians have a simple answer:  the inspiration of the Holy Spirit!  Your textbook has a good discussion of how we got our canon -- the set of writings which we consider sacred and inspired, in ways that no other writings are regarded in the Christian faith.  Your textbook also has brief summaries and selections from New Testament Apocrypha:  writings which were used by a number of early Christians, but were not included in the scriptures.  Examples are the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Peter, and the Infancy Gospel of James.  We even have a Gospel of Mary [Magdalene], which is the foundation for some of the pseudo-historical fiction in The Da Vinci Code, and a Gospel of Judas that was just published this year.  While these writings have contributed to some of the traditions in Christianity, so they are interesting to study historically, they do not have the authority of scripture.  Our ancestors made the right decisions in excluding them from the Bible.  Thus they can never be central to our faith. 

    Early Christians struggled with the definition of scripture, as we can see from various canon lists in the first few centuries.  Finally, by the year 367 A.D., the New Testament canon was firmly established.  Today, although the Catholic and Orthodox Old Testament canon has a few more books than the Protestant canon, all Christians -- Protestants, Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, and others -- accept the twenty-seven books of the common New Testament canon as the basis for Christian faith and life. 

    The closing words of the Bible, Revelation 21:20-21, have a twofold emphasis on the future -- Maranatha, "Come, Lord Jesus" -- and on the present -- the grace which is for all people.  I hope that this review has helped you to gain some glimpses into the development of Christianity.  The close of the New Testament period did not mark the end of Christian growth, but it provided the foundations for the church as we know it today.  

    Thank you for studying the New Testament with me.  I wish you the best on the final exam!  Comments or suggestions on these reviews are welcome.  If you like, you can send me e-mail: fkellogg@ehc.edu

To look at one of my other syllabi or to review a unit in a different course, go to my Home Page.

To review a different unit in the New Testament course, go directly to one of the following:

    Unit 1, Backgrounds of the New Testament
    Unit 2, The Gospels
    Unit 3, Paul
   

If you prefer, you may return to the Emory & Henry College Home Page.

Last updated:  December 03, 2007