Is the 'Book of Revelation' originally a Jewish Text that was later doctored by 'Christians' ?

a reply to: ChesterJohn

You wrote : QUOTE "Can I get a copy I am very interested. Is it at a museum where I could take a look or request a facsimile...." UNQUOTE

The Greek UrText that we are proposing is a 'hypothetical text' not something physical that you can simply photocopy (like the Hypothetical Document Q with the Greek Gospels which show the overlap between Matthew's and Luke's sayings in common absent from Mark's gospel thought to be a manual of sayings like the Gospel of Thomas...) It is procured by grammatically removing all the 'Christian' marginalia insertions to the text (see opening post for examples) and taking a close look at what's left - which is basically an intact Jewish Apocalypse (focusing on Rev. chapters 4-21)

For those interested in studying more about the UrText, just for background purposes, it must be stated at the outset that the Apocalypse of Yohanon the Levite ('Book of Revelation') is very poorly represented textually speaking. Of the major Uncial codices, only Sinaiticus [א], Alexandrinus [A] and Ephraemi [C] contain the book at all - but no two copies of the book are in any way exactly the same. The book is completely missing from Codex Bezae (D), Codex Freer-Washingtoniensis (W) and Codex Vaticanus (B) and its canonicity had been a point of contention until the 5th century CE.

Origen used the term antilegomena to describe certain doubtful 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. Later Martin Luther placed the book in an appendix of deutero-canonical status and interestingly some modern Nestorian Christian churches reject the Book of Revelation as Montanist (i.e. the Millenial heresy)

[Particularly in the East, there had been grave doubts about the book's canonicity in the fourth century and later. But the Book of Revelation was reluctantly affirmed as canonical by the synods of Hippo (c.393) and Carthage (c.397) Philastrius of Brescia (c.385), Rufinus of Aquileia (c.404), Jerome (c.414), and Augustine (c.426). And the reason these groups eventually accepted the book was that it was quoted by many of the early church Fathers e.g. Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, the Muratorian Fragment, Theophilus Bishop of Antioch, Hippolytus & Clement of Alexandria etal. all who quoted the text as holy writ...] in fact, however, the book was not fully accepted by the Eastern Church as canonical until the Third Council of Constantinople in A.D. 680.

There are also some papyri that contain fairly long stretches of the Book of Revelation material e.g. p47, p115 and p18 along with the infamously tiny pOxy LVI 4499 which shows 616 instead of 666 for the number of the Beast in chapter 13.

For a discussion of the partial p47 recension of the Book of Revelation in an early form (c. 180 CE) here is a link with some notes:

books.google.com... V9Q5Hh22Tok222OadvQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjehtGR57nKAhUH2GMKHWsdBpsQ6AEIJzAD#v=onepage&q=scribal%20additions%20to%20the%20Book%20of%20Revelation&f=fal se

The sheer paucity of early source material (i.e. Manuscripts) for the book and its howlingly miserable Greek at times makes any study of it difficult at best.

I know od most of these Papyrus but a hypothetical book is not real. It is only hypothetical and one could take pieces and add the in-between missing pieces with what ever hypothetical text they want to promote. so Hypothetically the book would be in error because there is no way to back it up. that is a very dangerous ground to stand on when it comes to people spiritual lives.

You do know that scribal habits are past one from teacher to student?

And as such the students writing can actually look like the teachers. And often they are given assignments to copy an earlier author to mimic the writing style of that person.

It is like when DaVinci taught students how to paint they were given assignments to copy DaVinci's Own work. so that we have some copies of his works that are actually his students. And it took modern science with microscopes to even show the differences but for years some of these paintings were thought to be DaVinci's own work.

So a lot of so called scribal habits are actually students writing what they had learned or copied form a teacher/Master.

What is so wonderful is this. God promised (and he will use men to fulfil his promise) to preserve his words to every generation (Ps 12:6,7). There is one English language Bible that has the hand mark of God upon it, and all his words are preserved for us today. We need only find it and believes it and study it.

a reply to: Sigismundus

The book of Apocalypse of John was not accepted as canonical until the late 5th century.
The earliest papyri are preserved from late 2nd century and include only chanpter 1 that is only the intro to the real story.
The author John has a very different style from the author of the Gospel of John and the three epistles of John. Many doubt it is one and the same person, rather two distinct Johns. That doubt was echoed by no one else but pope Benedict himself, when he elaborated on the Apocalypse in his Wednesday lectures on the Bible on St Peter's square, weeks after he was elected pope.

All that being said, and it could be further researched by hard proof, not relying on my words,
the doubt that the book of Revelation served another purpose in the early church only increases. Furthermore, Augustine re-interpreted the main timeline, practically cancelling the Millennium kingdom of Jesus Christ. That idea, that is NOT A DOGMA, found very good acceptance in the emerging Church from 6th century on. Practically most if not all scholars during the Middle Ages adopted that view.

I cannot help but wonder how on earth first the elders wouldn't accept the book in Nicaea, then their descendants would canonize it a century later, and two centuries after that their descendants would re-interpret a major event in it to its pretty much OPPOSITE MEANING.

Let alone the contrasts with the Book of Ezekiel. As for example, the war of Gog and Magog that in Ezekiel comes much earlier, while in Revelation comes only after the Millenial kingdom and of course after the Second Coming. Was Ezekiel wrong by missing as big details as another coming of the Messiah before Gog and Magog.

a reply to: 2012newstart

I cannot help but wonder how on earth first the elders wouldn't accept the book in Nicaea,

Probably because the canon of the bible wasn't discussed at Nicaea...

www.abovetopsecret.com...

a reply to: 2012newstart

there are two lines of preserved text of the Bible one from the West via Rome by way of Alexandria Egypt. And one from the East via Antioch Cilisia near Tarsus in today's Turkey.

a reply to: Punisher75

You wrote QUOTE: "It is interesting that so many scholars take issue with Dr James Tabor's work..." UNQUOTE

They might be talking specifically about Tabor's controversial best selling book 'The Jesus Dynasty' which is written more for public consumption and is clearly a piece of less than scholarly research - as most of this type of literature is.

Howbeit the theory that the Book of Revelation has an intact embedded Jewish Apocalyptic text buried inside that can be recovered [more or less confidently] is not James Tabor's idea at all originally - it has been presented many times over the past 100 years by various scholars as early as von Raad when the clumsy Greek of the book was examined very closely by the experts - especially its use of singular verbs when chanting about the one God to which 'the Lamb' etc. has been added as a Christian insertion to an originally 'purer' and shorter Jewish Apocalyptic text of the middle 1st century CE

You can see some of the evidence by looking at the chanting Holy War material in the Book of Revelation - the idea is taken from Isaiah 30:29-32 - which explains why so many chantings are going on in the Heavenly Temple following a plague or a Trumpet or a Vial etc.

And you will sing as on the night you celebrate a holy festival;
your hearts will rejoice as when people playing pipes go up
to the mountain of YHWH to the Rock of Israel.
For YHWH will cause people to hear his majestic voice
and will make them see his arm coming down
with raging anger and consuming fire,
with cloudburst, thunderstorm and hail.
The voice of YHWH will shatter Assyria;
with his rod he will strike them down.
Every stroke the Lord lays on them
with his punishing club will be to the music of timbrels and harps,
as he fights them in battle with the blows of his arm.

Revelation 7:10ff
Salvation unto our God [sg]
Even he who sits upon the throne, [and unto the Lamb].
And all the angels were standing
Even round about the throne,
And lo, they were all round about the elders
And about the four living creatures.

And behold, they fell on their faces,
Even before the Throne
And lo they began to worship God [sg], chanting Amen !
Blessing, and glory, and wisdom,
and thanksgiving, and honor, and power, and might,
be unto our God [sg] for ever and ever. Amen.


Revelatiion 15:3ff
And they sing the song of Moses
Even the Servant of EL [and the song of the Lamb],
saying, Great and marvellous are thy works!
O YHWH Elohim, the Almighty
Righteous and true are thy ways,
Thou King of the ages !

Who shall not fear, O YHWH ?
And who shall not glorify thy Name?
For thou only art holy;
for all the Gentiles shall come before thee;
And they shall worship thee
For thy righteous acts are made manifest.

We can sometimes see as in the examples above the words 'and the Lamb' &tc. deliberately added to the text (e.g. as with many of the Psalms sung in the Heavenly Court addressed to one individual sitting upon the 'throne' using singular verbs)

In other places the text has remained unmolested as in chapter 19 where the worship is centered on the one sitting upon the Throne:

Revelatiion 19:1-7
After these things I heard as it were a great voice
Even that of a great multitude in heaven, chanting Hallelujah !
Salvation, and glory, and power, belong to our God [sg]
For true and righteous are his judgments;
For he hath judged the great Harlot,
Even she who corrupted the earth with her fornication.

And he hath avenged the blood of his servants
Even they which fell by her hand.
And a second time they say, Hallelujah.
And her smoke goeth up for ever and ever.
And the four and twenty elders fell down
And the four living creatures lay prostrate.

And they all worshipped God [sg]
Even He who sitteth on the throne, chanting
even Amen; Hallelujah.
And a voice came forth from the throne, saying,
Give praise to our God [sg], all ye his servants,
And all ye that fear him, the small and the great !

And I heard as it were the voice of a great multitude,
And as the voice of many waters,
And as the voice of mighty thunders, saying, Hallelujah:
For YHWH Elohenu El Shaddai reigneth [sg]
Let us rejoice and be exceeding glad,
and let us give the glory unto him [sg]

a reply to: Sigismundus

I'm willing to bet that if you backwards engineer the Revelation text back to Hebro-Aramaic, the whole thing will rhyme and rythm.

a reply to: Utnapisjtim

You wrote : QUOTE "I'm willing to bet that if you backwards engineer the Revelation text back to Hebro-Aramaic, the whole thing will rhyme and rythm...." UNQUOTE

This could very well be true - the entire book of the UrText of the Book of Revelation (minus the Christian interpolations) seems to have been written in 6-line stanzas in a sort of Qinah Lament metre throughout, and this would certainly be clear once the phrases are translated back into Aramaic. A similar 3-line stanza Qinah metre can be found in the Gospel according to Mark which is also written in paltry Greek heavily influenced by Aramaic idiom.

Either way the 6-line stanzas of Revelation can be split into two 3-line stanzas, or you can join two 6-line stanzas and get 12 lines per stanza. Two of these gives you 24 lines which form a kind of poem, most of which is lost in modern translations from the clumsy Greek of the text....

Something to think about perhaps as a new thread topic in the future....

originally posted by: Sigismundus
Something to think about perhaps as a new thread topic in the future....

Indeed, I'm all in, I've been seeing this for a long time. Only I know I'm gonna be disappointed, since most of the juicy bits is mostly marginalia and interpolations and it'll probably end up as some kind of preterist manifest. But, yah, I'm in.

Thing is, the writer of Revelation knew it would be translated into Greek, so he left clues as to what powers that would do this. 616 written in Hebrew reads Heb. תריו that is a transliteration of Gr. θηρίου which is genitive of Beast. And when you change the yod (10 as in 616) with a Samek (60 as in 666) you get Heb. תרסו which is Gr. Ταρσῷ/Ταρσοῦ which is dative and genitive of Tarsus, the name of Saulus' hometown. Saulus and Jochannan were enemies trying in each his way to establish the true church of Christ.

One idea to start us up, and that is to use the lexicon of the Septuagint and then find the Hebrew equivalent in BHS and BHL. It may be a blind alley, but the LXX is a more or less direct word-for-word translation of the Hebrew, I have a good feeling, and this is where poetry with rythm and verses, it was probably written such in order to protect the original text, well that's my idea anyhow.

Second thing that would be natural to do would be to establish what is the original framework text, what is interpolated, redacted, what is marginalia and all the nitty gritty source work, though there isn't much papyri left.

However. Both my Greek and Hebrew is terrible, but I'm a fairly good analyst and researcher and have some linguistic skills I tend to expand along the road, an of course I've been studying the Bible and related texts for aeons, especially the Apocalypse (I'm actually making a translation of it into my own DIY theoretical language) and I've been thinking of this for a long time as I said, but more like a sort of book project. At least it ought to end with one. How about producing the long lost rock solid ur-apocalypse? We could ask the Disinfo guys if they like the idea, and they could publish it, and perhaps, well, who knows? It's just it's awful lot of work for nothing, that's all. This is like a PhD thingie almost. But damn, it would be great. And I think it could be done rather quickly if we could find a way to cooperate properly. I'm talking about producing a full fledged Hebrew text of the Apocalypse, with a complete critical apparatus to support the LXX/BHS translations.

a reply to: Sigismundus

Check your PM

originally posted by: Sigismundus
a reply to: ChesterJohn

You wrote : QUOTE "Can I get a copy I am very interested. Is it at a museum where I could take a look or request a facsimile...." UNQUOTE

The Greek UrText that we are proposing is a 'hypothetical text' not something physical that you can simply photocopy (like the Hypothetical Document Q with the Greek Gospels which show the overlap between Matthew's and Luke's sayings in common absent from Mark's gospel thought to be a manual of sayings like the Gospel of Thomas...) It is procured by grammatically removing all the 'Christian' marginalia insertions to the text (see opening post for examples) and taking a close look at what's left - which is basically an intact Jewish Apocalypse (focusing on Rev. chapters 4-21)

I think that this sort of "reverse engineering" adds noise to the system rather than reducing it. As far as I can tell, there's no book referred to anywhere as "The Apocalypse of Yohanon the Levite" or anything close. Although our sources are fragmentary, it would seem logical that if it was exciting enough to modify to a new scripture then there would be some sort of record of the title.

I took a look at a metatext of Jewish apocalyptic literature. I can see Revelation as being inspired by one or more of these sources (including the Old Testament books in particular) but I'm not overly convinced about the idea of someone going through an obscure text and rewriting it to be a Christian text.

There's a particularly interesting doctoral dissertation about textual analysis of Revelation (which shows it to be a single author and consistent) - haven't read the whole thing but have bookmarked it for later reading so I can get a broader understanding of this type of textual analysis. If you'd like to read it, the document is at this link

a reply to: beenharmed

You should use more spacewords

a reply to: Byrd

You wrote QUOTE "There's a particularly interesting doctoral dissertation about textual analysis of Revelation (which shows it to be a single author and consistent) - haven't read the whole thing but have bookmarked it for later reading so I can get a broader understanding of this type of textual analysis. If you'd like to read it, the document is at this link..." UNQUOTE

Thanks for the link - I've skimmed over the dissertation and found a number of inconcinnities, e.g. as the author's bnow outdated conviction that the 'Book of Revelation' was written by the same person(s) as the epistles of 1,2,3 John and the 4th canonical Greek Gospel - a view which is untenable today - the Greek between the Apocalypse and the Johanine epistles is not by the same person - the rudimentary Greek (full of Greek grammatical 'howlers') including vocabulary, syntax, sentence structure, phrase length, Weltanschauung, theological presuppositions etc. in the Apocalypse are all quite distinct from the polished Greek of 1,2,3 John.

I'll follow up later this month to see if there is anything useful to be gleaned in the dissertation - one never can tell...

a reply to: Sigismundus

the used rhyme and rhytm, poems, cause the meaning was as a litterature to teach not to tell a story, like school today without religion, even though it teaches the same message.. Humans have a tendency to learn things that rhymes, its part of the mating sequence.. Song, rhyme and dance and you will remember, like a modern pop song..

a reply to: ChesterJohn

You wrote QUOTE "I believe I have in my hand an English copy of the Bible, Preserved by God unto this generation as promised in Ps12:6,7, that has the actual book of Revelation just as God inspired it to John with no corruption..."

What text are you referring to exactly?

The Book of Revelation is ONLY found in pieces in the major Codices of (א) Sinaiticus, A-Alexandrinus and C-Ephraemi Palimsest)

It is ABSENT from all the other Greek Uncial (capitalised) Codices : e.g. B-Vaticanus, W-Freer-Washingtoniensis and D-Bezae-Biglot although there are large chunks of it in p47 and p115.

FYI The Greek of the Book of Revelation is the worst in the New Testament outside of the Gospel of 'Mark' (whoever he was) full of grammatical Greek 'howlers' that make grammarians shudder. Clearly we are not dealing with anything like a pristine copy of the original anything when it comes to this book which shows traces of editorial handling in several places
e,g, 16:14-16 which shows that verse 15 is an insertion (14 and 16 should be read together)

"For they are the spirits of devils, working miracles, which go forth unto the kings of the earth and of the whole world, to gather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty. [Behold, I come as a thief. Blessed is he that watcheth, and keepeth his garments, lest he walk naked, and they see his shame.] And he gathered them together into a place called in the Hebrew tongue Armageddon."

And there are several dozen of such instances of scribal interference into the text...

In view of this fact alone, how could you possibly claim you contain a pristine copy of this book?