The pertinence of the Book of Revelations in contemporary culture is undeniable – it is all at once a landmark religious text, a supernatural tale of the end of days, and a blueprint for the way Western society has viewed the apocalypse. Stories outlining the end of days have existed for an indeterminable amount of time, but in many ways, Revelations is the grandfather of all apocalypse myths as the phenomenon pertains to contemporary attitudes. Perhaps most notably, as the last book of the New Testament, Revelations ushers in a far less forgiving God to Christianity – a God who slaughters indiscriminately and presides over his creations with a finite and unsympathetic hand.
Revelations is an iconic text that has influenced the apocalypse myth in countless ways. Imagery in Revelations – like the Four Horsemen, the Beast, and the loaded “666” iconography – has taken its own separate life outside of the original text and developed connotations that could be considered equally as powerful in contemporary pop culture. It is a controversial portion of the Bible, perhaps due to its inherent disruptive, disturbing tone and content. In many ways, it foreshadows the nightmarish, alien mysticism in the horror-fiction genre of authors like H.P. Lovecraft, and to a lesser degree, Stephen King. It is an epic tale, and one that strays far from subtlety in favor of unrestrained, powerful imagery that resonates regardless of the reader’s creed. Ultimately, Revelations is a sweeping tale of misery, violence, and redemption that stems from the power of fear and the ageless threat of an impending, inescapable doom for those who lack faith.
Hi Mac (I gather you go by that instead of Matt),
Your comments are astute here and your title captures your key point effectively, but I want to have you—and the rest of the class—attend to the assigned readings in a more concerted manner for these posts. These first comments are the means for me to suggest ways to do that. The weekly posts are to be analytical in nature, whereas any of your rest of the week, non-required posts can take a more free and easy form. That means for the required ones that I want you to address specific arguments that the assigned authors make and comment on that. You do comment on the Book of Revelation (leave off the s for the correct title) in this way in pointing out the way that certain key figures in Revelation have come to be media entities far beyond the New Testament in terms of contemporary cultural production.
Kirsch’s text gives a model of analysis that is worth emulating. For class on Tuesday, take a look at the way he makes a given argument—about the earlier versions of a warrior god, for example, or how the split into a dualistic god vs. satan takes place, and plan to make more concrete comments during class on the emerging form of the apocalypse story. His key point is that it wasn’t always the same—there were significant shifts in the early centuries that have altered it. That is still happening, as you suggest, so we want as a class to understand better the whys and hows of those shifts.