As I read through the first portion of Kirsch’s A History of the End of the World, I found myself incredibly frustrated with the controversy over authorship and authenticity. The message of religious texts is generally valued more by those who practice the corresponding religion, but it seems like people are so focused on pulling out what they want to hear, or what they need to hear as the case may be, that they fail to consider where the text they put so much faith in is coming from. I have a background in Catholicism, and in general, the Book of Revelation was avoided, but it does have a place in the Bible, which means that as unsettling as it may be, it cannot just be omitted from the religion. I suppose the biggest question that this controversy raises for me is; if religious texts are considered sacred, but religions and religious practitioners pick and choose what is “most” holy, how is the value and credibility of a religious text maintained?
Kirsch explains in his text that Revelation is theorized to potentially have multiple authors from different periods of time, coming from different backgrounds. For the sake of his own argument, Kirsch goes with one popular theory about the identity of the author, John. I understand that for the sake of any argument one must select a school of thought to work from, but it is still frustrating because there is immediate conflict in terms of understanding the source of Revelation, not to mention the proceeding conflict about understanding the author’s credibility.
I think that my own religious skepticism has created more difficulty in my reading of Kirsch, but some significant claims are made in Revelation, and major movements continue to form because of John’s words; it’s important to think about why so many people willingly accept, fear and live by hand picked selections of a text, rather than the text in it’s entirety.
In my opinion, the authority of the Church has a lot to do with people’s sometimes blind trust in the message of scripture. I am certainly not a religious scholar, but I know that in a religious service, people avidly listen to the words of their religious leader, because there is an understood trust between leader and attendee. In general, I would argue that people who attend religious services enter their place of worship with a certain need. Whether it’s the need for a sign from God, or something smaller like a need for the sense of support and community that comes from attending a religious meeting. The presence of that need makes it difficult, I think, for people to question what they are hearing and what they are agreeing with. In general, the leader’s reading of scripture is not nearly as revered as the leader’s interpretation of the verses he or she recites. The cynic in me can’t help but think about how a person in power uses their position to influence those following them.
The author or authors of Revelation obviously had their own motivation in spreading the prophecy they were sent so vehemently. Their decision to commit to spreading the word suggests some motivation beyond faith, especially when one considers what might have been at risk when the prophets spoke their prophecy. For example, Kirsch explains that their was some degree of competition among prophets claiming that his or her message was the one to listen to, the authentic word of God. He explains that John was adamant about discrediting the prophetess Jezebel. Unless God himself really did despise the acts of this individual woman to the point that he mentioned her in his declaration to John, it seems that John may have tweaked prophecy to serve his own desire to beat the competition. Instances like this, immediately make the scripture less credible for me, because I recognize that it was altered to serve the needs of an individual. It’s not a pure message from some higher power; it is the self-serving “prophecy” of a man who needed to wipe out the competition in order to gain the biggest following.
This seemingly obvious moment of failed credibility is apparently not enough to dissuade the masses that follow John’s words to this day. Kirsch mentions that modern follower’s of John’s message and strong believers in the impending apocalypse are often mentally unstable individuals who have strong persuasive skills. To me, it seems like madness to think that there are people who will follow selections of a message without even knowing where the message is coming from or without making their own interpretations and decisions about the words that they are told.
In John’s time, Christians were persecuted for their religion, so a text that promised to avenge their suffering, obviously spoke to a cultural need, which makes the massive following more understandable. Today’s world has its fair share of problems, but the intrinsic message of Revelation has been skewed and no one seems to really consider it. This constant shifting of meaning and context is frustrating and leaves me asking my initial question. Credibility and source, in the case of religious text (Revelation in particular), don’t seem to be nearly as important as the interpretation and recitation (performance) of the words.
