Bible with Revelations

[Kitsune]

If the bible had been published without Revelations, how do you think it would effect Christianity?

[The Guid]

Very little in my opinion. There might be slightly fewer people expecting the world to end sometime soon but ultimately most of the key texts for "morals" and "ethics" are to be found elsewhere and indeed it is probably worth noting how little the actual texts of the Bible have ever changed anyone's morals. Just occasionally reinforced or justified people.

[Kitsune]

If nothing else, wouldn't the removal of the "Waiting for the world to end" groups have an effect?

I have met alot of people who seem to wish for that end as well!

[The Guid]

If nothing else, wouldn't the removal of the "Waiting for the world to end" groups have an effect?

I have met alot of people who seem to wish for that end as well!

I think the change would be superficial. Those people would still be able to stick to their racist or homophobic or whatever ways and instead of using the End of the World as their big scary thing they might think that God's divine punishment will come to down upon them or that punishment will come to others upon their death and they will watch down upon them from heaven.

[dworkin]

Just remember there's plently of End of the World stuff in Daniel in the OT.

[EmperorSolo51]

If the bible had been published without Revelations, how do you think it would effect Christianity?

I think that without Revalation nothing much would've changed. At the Council of Carthage and later Church Council's there was debate over wether or not to include the Epistle to the Hebrews and the Book of Revalation of St. John of Patmos. In all of the Church Councils, the Early Church Fathers found that that the Epistle attributed to St. Paul to the Hebrews and the Revelation of St. John were deemed to inspired divinely. Most Catholics and High Church Protestants consider the the Book of Revalation to be Part Allegory of The Emperors Nero and Diocletian, Part mystic and parta Vision of the future of the Return of Jesus.

It's interesting to note that Martin Luther did remove the Greek Seputangint from the OT, and the Epistle of St. Paul to the Hebrews and the Book of Revlation from the NT in the Bibles that he printed. He felt that since they were either excersized by Jews in the case of the Seputangint or were added in in the case of tjose two NT Book, then they were not deemed in his view to be inspired works. Most of the early Lutheran Bibles removed all three essential groups of Biblical Works. However, after Martin Luther died, Most Lutheran Synods reincorperated the Books of Hebrews and Revalation into thier NT Canon with the Greek Seputangint left out of thier OT Canon. Only in the King James Version of the bible would these books be kept but they were put in the back as apocryphal works and dropped alltogether by 1900. Only the Bibles of the Catholic Church and Eastern Orthdox keep these books as part of thier canon and considered divinely inspired.

[Imperial Overlord]

The ideas of the Book of Revelation used to justify holy war and religious persecution, so it would be interesting to see what would have happened without it being incorporated into the Bible, but considering how bloody the Old Testament is, nothing major may have changed as those inclined to such violence would have found plenty of justification anyway.

[EmperorSolo51]

The ideas of the Book of Revelation used to justify holy war and religious persecution, so it would be interesting to see what would have happened without it being incorporated into the Bible, but considering how bloody the Old Testament is, nothing major may have changed as those inclined to such violence would have found plenty of justification anyway.

Like I said, Martin Luther and the Early Protestant Reformers fought with Catholics and against each other without the use of the Book of Revlation in thier theologies. I should try to look up the Lutheran and Calvinist "Crusades" against Errors of the Anabaptists.

[Superman]

It's actually "Revelation;" not the plural.

[Darth Raptor]

There's a lot of Protestant fundies stateside who use the vague, nonsense predictions in Revelation as "obvious" signs that the end is upon us.

I distinctly remember a paper circulated by my parents' church shortly before the war. Passages in Revelation were used to blow some divine predestination into G.W.'s sails.

But when has their not been "wars and rumors of wars"?

[Metatwaddle]

Well, we wouldn't have the Left Behind series. Definitely a plus.

I also think the Calvinist sect would have looked pretty different from the way it ended up being. I'm not an expert on Calvinism or even Revelation, but I do know that one of their main tenets is predestination, and I think that's taken from some verse along the lines of "whoever's name isn't in the Book of God will be tossed into a pit of fire." I think Revelation is the closest the Bible ever comes to describing what Hell will be like.

Other than that, I'm not sure what would be different.

[Rye]

Jesus said the kingdom of God etc was coming soon in all the gospels, so i doubt a bible sans revelation would stop them.

[EmperorSolo51]

Jesus said the kingdom of God etc was coming soon in all the gospels, so i doubt a bible sans revelation would stop them.

Not Coming soon But already established by the time of Jesus's Death. Catholics. Orthodox, and Anglicans believe that Jesus's Kingdom of Heaven was already established and the gates to that Kingdom were officially opened with His death and Resurection. What we are waiting for as Apostolic Christians is the return of Christ to make his Kingdom of Heaven on Earth as it is in Heaven.

[Eris]

Well here's a potential if highly speculative difference that could have happened without a Book of Revelation. Academic developmpent might have been seriously retarded during the middle ages, even more than it was. Some historical context I feel is in order.

Revelation was taken very seriously early on. The Catholic Church was at the height of its power and was quite persuasive in its arguments that the Bible was literal and infallible, meaning everyone was sitting around waiting for the world to end. Really, if you thought the Y2K apocolypse activity was slightly nutty, the Y1K were a thousand times worse. Practically the entire population believed the world was ending in a firey storm of the second coming of Christ in all its icky splendor.

And then it didn't. The world kept trucking along as it always had leaving the Christians sitting on their thumbs saying, "Well, maybe it was really two thousand years." This Biblical letdown was the impetus that started off the Rationalist movement that would come to fruitation in another seven hundred odd years. Blind faith had failed, so people started looking to reason. It's no coincidence that St Thomas Aquinas showed up (relatively) shortly after the year 1000 to start the process of reintroducing Greek empericism into the world. He himself, along with Bacon and others, started again wondering if studying the Divine alone couldn't explain everything and if there should be more observation on Creation as well.

Without Revelation would there still have been this influx of reason into the Christian world, setting the stage for the Rennaissance and Enlightenment? Well, got me. Like I said, this is highly speculative. We might have even had people looking to reason even earlier, shortening the Dark Ages, or have it delayed for much longer, allowing a non-European civilisation to finally start making progress into the modern era. It would make for an interesting alternate history at least.

[Rye]

Jesus said the kingdom of God etc was coming soon in all the gospels, so i doubt a bible sans revelation would stop them.

Not Coming soon But already established by the time of Jesus's Death. Catholics. Orthodox, and Anglicans believe that Jesus's Kingdom of Heaven was already established and the gates to that Kingdom were officially opened with His death and Resurection. What we are waiting for as Apostolic Christians is the return of Christ to make his Kingdom of Heaven on Earth as it is in Heaven.

That's later dogma, though, it's pretty clear that Jesus thought the end of the world was coming in the lifetimes of the people then, all this invented shit to rationalise it not coming, after the fact, does not mean that apocalyptic christians wouldn't have spouted up just like the author of revelation, even if that text wasn't included in the canon. Hell, the author of revelation was one such person that noticed the world hadn't ended, but he was clearly expecting it to.