THE CHRISTIAN SCRIPTURES:
The acceptance of the book of Revelation
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Acceptance of Revelation:
During the 1st century CE, Judaism was composed of about 24 separate
religious groups. Some of these were the Sadducees, Pharisees, Essenes, various
groups within the Christian movement, followers of John the Baptist, etc. One which
had a strong political agenda was the Zealot party. The Zealots taught that a
military-political Messiah would soon appear, as prophesized in the Hebrew
Scriptures (Old Testament). He would conquer the world, and rule for a thousand
years from Jerusalem.
This concept of millennialism was promoted during the second century CE, by Montanus, a recent convert to Christianity. He prophesized that the New
Jerusalem would shortly descend out of the clouds and land in a town called
Phrygia. He set a date for the event, thus becoming one of the first Christians
to predict when the end of the world would occur. His
teachings were rejected by the rest of the Church. At the Synod of Iconium
in 230 CE all baptisms performed by the Montanus sect were declared invalid. The
Council of Constantinople in 380 CE went further, and declared
millennialism to be a heresy.
Because millennialists had traditionally used Revelation as the main source of
their teachings, "the Church was slow to accept Revelation as
scripture." 1 Origen, an early Christian theologian,
used the term antilegomena to describe those books -- including Hebrews,
James 2 Peter, 2 John, 3 John and Revelation -- whose inclusion in the official
canon of the Bible was actively disputed. In the fourth century CE, when the
canon of the Bible was assembled from among the approximately 50
gospels and hundreds of epistles then in use by the Christian movement,
Revelation was only reluctantly included. "To this day, Orthodox churches do
not use Revelation for scripture readings during worship." 1
Martin Luther downgraded the significance of Revelation. It portrays God as
inflicting horrendous punishments on humanity -- a concept that is today sometimes
called "Ambush Theology." Luther concluded that he could not readily
harmonize the God described in Revelation with the God to whom Jesus prayed to as Abba. When
Luther translated the Bible into the German language, he downgraded Revelation
by relegating it to
an appendix.
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References:
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Ken Collins, "Millennialism," at:
http://www.kencollins.com/
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