Meet the Author
For the last thirty years Elaine Pagels has taught at Princeton University, where she currently serves as the Harrington Spear Paine Professor of Religion. She has “published widely on Gnosticism and early Christianity, and continues to pursue research interests in late antiquity.” Pagels’ previous books include the New York Times bestseller Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas (2004) and the National Book Award winner The Gnostic Gospels (1979).
Book Basics
Revelations: Visions, Prophecy, and Politics in the Book of Revelation is not another book on the crowded shelf of recently written works on Revelation; it is an invitation to discover the biblical book in its broader historical and literary context while also better understanding both how it found its way into the canon and how it has retained its significant and divisive role in the roughly 1700 years since. Rather than present a new approach to the study of this strange and controversial book, Pagels presents the best of recent scholarship in a book destined to be appreciated by lay (the language and style are accessible) and scholarly (the end notes account for roughly 20% of the book’s pages) readers alike.
So What?
Many followers of Jesus today are unaware that the book of Revelation could have easily been excluded from the New Testament if not for the work of the Egyptian bishop Athanasius. He was the first to place the book on a list of what he construed as the New Testament canon, a group that later became the universally accepted standard. Athanasius believed that Jesus’ disciple John wrote the book, and “reinterpreted John’s visions of cosmic war to apply to the battle he himself fought . . . the battle to establish what he regarded as ‘orthodox Christianity’ against heresy” (p.165).
- How do you interpret the book of Revelation (or do you tend to ignore it rather than attempt to make meaning of its contents)?
- What sources and perspectives have informed your current view of Revelation (books, teachers/preachers, preferred manner of understanding and interpreting the biblical text, etc.)?
- Do you think Christianity as a whole would have been better off had it not included the book within its canon? Why or why not?
Elaine Pagels. Revelations: Visions, Prophecy, and Politics in the Book of Revelation (Viking, 2012). ISBN: 9780670023349.