From: Paul C Duggan <pduggan@world.std.com>
Subject: (urth) Re: Digest urth.v028.n186
Date: Wed, 19 Apr 2000 14:33:53 

On Wed, 19 Apr 2000 alga wrote:

> The scholarship is not that "contemporary" regarding Revelation. It was
>suspect from the gitgo, with several more sober bishops strongly
>objecting to it when the 4th century canon was put together. It crawled
>in because of popular superstition that John the gospeleer wrote it, 
>though  more educated folk with a good "ear" even at that early time
>found this highly unlikely, and said so. There were lots of similarly
>apocalyptic texts around, this one being an anti-Rome rant with
>historical references to Babylon, Israel's prior primo peeve.

Its also been suggested that the main enemy, and actual identity
of Babylon (besides Rome) is non-Christian Judaism ("those who say they
are Jews and are not", and all) I would think "modern scholarship" would
find that fits right in with the Johnaine "anti-semitism" (as if that term
had any contextual utility, which I think it probably doesn't [but that
doesn't stop US News and World Report from mentioning it])

> Modern
>textual analysis makes the two completely incompatible. 

I wonder how on earth anyone goes about proving something like that.
John's gospel is structurally based abound sevens (seven "I am's", seven
miraculous signs, a "seven day creation" in the first chapter) and
everyone is well aware of the seven-fold structure of Revelation. Seems
that would make them quite compatible.

Paul


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