S14 E7: The One About Decolonising The New Testament Part 2 - Revelations

This week I continue my conversation with Dr U-Wen Low from the University of Birmingham about how to read the stories in the new Testament without a colonial lens. We focus in this episode on the book of revelations.

The episode is going to take a hermeneutical look at the book of Revelations and what it could really be saying and how it might have been misunderstood. But don't worry, this episode also isn't heavy and complicated.  U-Wen has a brilliant way of making things simple and accessible.

It's a brilliant episode that I think will make you look at familiar stories in a new way which is something we love as RE teachers!

Please share with all Christians and Church leaders too!

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:05

Welcome to the R.E. Podcast, the first dedicated R.E. podcast for students and teachers. My name is Louisa Jane Smith, and this is the RE Podcast. The podcast for those of you who think R.E. is boring, which it is, and I'll prove it to you. Now, I'm welcoming back to the podcast Ewan Lowe, the assistant professor of public religion at the University of Birmingham. Because last time we tackled the New Testament, specifically the teachings of Jesus and the little book of Philemon. And what we didn't get time to do was look at the book of Revelation. So I've invited him back on to talk about the book of Revelation and particularly sort of a hermeneutical look at this text in relation to colonization. So welcome back to the podcast, Ewan.

SPEAKER_00 0:50

Thank you. Thanks, Louisa.

SPEAKER_01 0:51

So we've obviously looked at Jesus, we've looked at Philemon, we've looked at sort of the way that the Bible could be used to be either pro or against sort of slavery colonization. We've had a look at a bit of a sort of economic critique. When we're looking at the book of Revelation, what do we have to be mindful of when we are reading it? What would be the best sort of hermeneutical approach to this book?

SPEAKER_00 1:14

So traditionally you have sort of fairly well delineated, I think, hermeneutical approaches to Revelation. Let me take a step back from them and then sort of build a bit of context and then work my way back in. The first thing to remember, I suppose, is a lot of people say revelation z. There seems to be this kind of popular understanding that it's called the book of Revelation Z for some reason. There is no S at the end of it. It's a single unified vision. So it is a single revelation, right? A single unfolding of a series of different events, all comprised within or packed into one single continuous idea or vision. That's actually really important, right? Because the moment you start saying revelation z and thinking about it as a set of discrete things that are put together, that means that you can kind of pick them apart a little bit and treat them separately. That's not really how the book works, right? It's intended to be one vision, one long narrative, which means that you have to treat it all together. That actually gives us a little bit of complexity because there are some bits that don't play well with others necessarily. So you've got the the letters to the seven churches right at the beginning, for example, how do you fit that within this overarching narrative? Then you start getting some really weird stuff, and then time gets a little bit dilated or timey whimy, or you know, however you want to think about it. Um so it it's a really strange thing to handle. And what a lot of people have done historically is try to cut them up into different bits, right? Cut the whole book up, which is one approach, but I think it's less than helpful because it means that you well, I mean, it gives you uh permission almost to pick and choose, right, to some extent when you do that. But perhaps more importantly, it trains you then to think of them as separate things, not one continuous narrative. And it's the same with the Gospels. You have to really understand the whole story as a whole. So that perhaps gives you a little bit of a hint, right, about the way I think about a hermeneutical approach to revelation. First of all, any approach must take it seriously as a single, unified narrative, you know, beginning to end, and ideally has got strategies or at least ideas to take into account the fact that it does weird things, and it seems to shift around a little bit. I have suggested in some of my work that a really helpful way to think about it might be in the form of a Greek or Roman play, right? So if you have seen one of those before, you've got things like choruses, a narrator, people who sing the narrative to you or explain what's going on, who have a bit of back and forth with the audience. And in my mind, and to a few other scholars, not many, that helps explain a little bit some of these oddities. So I like to think of it in a very artistic, performed way. Others don't necessarily do that. So some people will think of it in a very literalistic way, so these are exactly the things that are going to happen. Some think of it as being quite allegorical, some think of revelation as marking out seven different epochs or different ages of the world, some think of it as purely symbolic of Jesus' own journey, life, death, resurrection, however you want to think about it. So the thing about the text is that if you take it as art, in the way that I kind of do, art with a message, shall we say, then all of these readings are valid under different circumstances, to different people. So I'm not gonna sort of argue too much with folk when they say, well, I think it's about this, because yeah, fair enough, right? If you think it's about this, who am I to sort of dispute your approach? I do think that, however, we need to be quite careful in how we draw out meaning and ideas from the text, because historically we've used it to do a lot of harm and inflict a lot of damage upon not just people, but you know, entire cultures, things like that, right? And we still see that playing itself out today. The last thing I'll say quickly when we come to think about the book of Revelation is that most people don't think about the fact that Revelation is very visual, but because of that, we've got art in its background that sort of influences the way we think about it, right? And this is one of my sort of hobby horses almost, as it were, that we've got a couple of thousand years worth of interpretation, yes, like any other text, but we've also got a few hundred years' worth of art that has shaped our perception of this text a particular way. And of course, more recently, we've got other bits of art. We've got movies, right? There's that famous left behind series of books, uh, there's a film starring Nicolas Cage, all of these things which inevitably shape the way that we think about the text. So when we come to the text, often we find what we're expecting. And what we're often expecting is stuff that we've already been told. This is about the end of the world, there's a bit of sort of literalism to it, humans will vanish and planes will fall out of the sky, all of that sort of thing. Well, if you look for it, you're gonna find it. Whereas if we are able to sort of step a little bit away from that and try and clear our minds from those influences, what we find is quite different.

SPEAKER_01 6:26

That's really fascinating. And I come from a sort of church background that got a bit obsessed with the granular meanings of different things. And I'm talking about this sort of mark of the beast thing, that they thought it was barcode and that we were all gonna have barcodes in our head, and we would scan our heads and things like that, and that that was the mark of the beast, and it was a bit sort of anti-progress and anti-technology. You know, and I don't necessarily think then from what you've just said, that's helpful because you've got to see it as one narrative rather than trying to pick out these tiny little elements and try to fit it into your experience of the world. So let's kind of apply what you've said then to some key passages and sort of then relate that to colonialism. And let's start with the throne room. What does revelation say about the throne room and what does this appear to teach us about colonization?

SPEAKER_00 7:16

Right. So, well, the fact that it's a throne room tells you a lot already, right? Fairly obviously. Let me take another quick sort of step back again and think about this in terms of how to best explain it to folk. Revelation to me, and I'm going to use a very pop culture reference, so hopefully people can sort of follow me with this. It's a little bit like watching an Avengers film, right? A Marvel Avengers film, which is effectively a culmination of a number of other films stitched together, plus callbacks to other films, plus its own sort of sense of self, right? So there's an established continuity, there are sort of characters within it, there are particular themes and ideas which recur and you see them over and over again. And Revelation's a little bit like that, right? Revelation takes a lot of ideas from Jewish history, Jewish apocalyptic literature, but also Christian ideas, a whole bunch of Hebrew Bible texts, and basically mashes them together so that those who are deeply familiar with these texts go, ooh, I recognize this, and I recognize this. And so, in the same way, when you're watching a Marvel film and someone says to Captain America, on your left, on your right, whatever it is, you know what that means, if you've watched all the other films, but if you don't, you can still kind of get it. But for those who know, it has special meaning, right? So there's lots of that in Revelation, and a big part of the uh industry of scholarship within the text is unpicking all of these different references. A lot of people are very focused on thinking it through from a Hebrew Bible perspective, which is very valid, obviously, because it's so deeply Jewish, this book. What I have done in my own kind of career is step a little bit away from that because so many people do it and do it very well. I've asked questions like, well, what happens if we look at it from a Greco-Roman perspective or within a culture that is a little bit more embedded within the Greco-Roman perspective? And I'm not the only one who's done that, obviously, numerous others have. And what we find is that you have here this picture of a throne room, right, in Revelation 4, and then it repeats itself over and over again. It can look a little bit like this sort of Roman idea of the emperor with his council, such as it were. There are different ways of thinking about it. One of the ways I have read it is to think about within a Greek theater, you know, you have a special seating around the whole theater for the priests, and then there's a special spot for the emperor. So if you've seen sort of the gladiator film by Ridley Scott, you kind of get what I mean. But yes, it's this idea that there is a king and that this king has got subject kings, and then further on in the text, more subject kings. Well, that's a very Roman idea, right? Where you've got one big king, and within them there's sort of delegated authority to other kings. Within Jewish thought, you don't have that as much. You have got usually just one king within sort of this Israelite tradition, who is the king over the nation, and there isn't that same level of delegation, or certainly they wouldn't call them kings, right? Maybe elders know as well. But one of the things that post-colonial scholars alike have pointed out is, well, it's a bit problematic, really, isn't it, to think about it this way? Because what this does is the moment you posit this as a vision about the end of the world, which many do, or the end times, shall we say, and you say to someone, Well, don't worry, you know, hope is coming. Here's the new kingdom. Or to use a slightly contested, but I think perhaps a bit more accurate translation, here's the new empire. Right? And you think, well, that's not very comfortable language, right? And here being in the UK, I think if I said to you, ah yes, God's new empire, we would understand that perhaps better than those who don't live in the UK or haven't had those experiences of what it means to live in empire. So that's a problem. Revelation tries to sort of move around that by kind of removing God from earth and putting God in heaven and making it really clear that there are separation of powers. Nevertheless, I think what some people have quite rightly pointed out is that what this looks like, this vision of heavenly rule, it just looks like a human kingdom. And that's a problem because if we move towards this idealized heavenly kingdom where God rules, well, we still have this problem of authority and delegated authority, and it's very easy then for a human to step into that and go, Well, I'm God's designated ruler, you know, it's all good, I'm still in charge. And we end up replicating effectively what we already had, just with a slightly different name. And so one of the critiques that you might put forward is, well, why doesn't Revelation give us a better, an alternative view of what peace on earth and peace in the heavens might look like? I don't know. Right? Maybe John doesn't have that in view. Maybe he's angry. Who knows, right? We can only speculate. But we have what we have, and what we have is something that is a little bit challenging, basically.

SPEAKER_01 12:26

So let me just summarize. What we're saying is that the book of Revelation seems to suggest that the kind of power structure in heaven replicates something similar to what we have on earth, therefore, the way that we structure authority and power on earth is kind of godly. Yeah. And therefore, that justifies it.

SPEAKER_00 12:45

Yeah, you could look at it either way, right?

SPEAKER_01 12:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:47

You know, you could say, here heaven is created in humans' images.

SPEAKER_01 12:51

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 12:52

Or vice versa. That yeah, you know, what we have mirrors the throne room in heaven, therefore it's all good. And you have your one dictator and his or her advisors and elders and things like that.

SPEAKER_01 13:02

Or you could just say that the book of Revelation was written by a human who was limited by their human experience and therefore can't think of anything outside of the power structures that they've experienced.

SPEAKER_00 13:13

Aaron Powell Well, precisely, right. And I think that's the easiest and best solution to that question.

SPEAKER_01 13:18

Yeah. That's really fascinating. And so therefore, it could be used to justify colonization or some kind of empire thinking. Let's move on then to the two beasts and the dragon. What could they represent? What could they mean?

SPEAKER_00 13:35

Yeah, so in Revelation 12, we have the dragon, and then we have after that a couple of weird monsters that appear. Before we talk about what they mean, I think it's really interesting to point out a couple of things. First of all, and most people don't realize this, the word antichrist does not appear in Revelation, right?

SPEAKER_01 13:53

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 13:55

Yeah, yeah. It's really strange. Everyone's like, oh yeah, the Antichrist. Well, if you can find that word in the book of Revelation, I will give you, you know, a thousand pounds, right? It's not there. The word appears in other texts and it refers to those who are against the Christians, literally those who are anti-Christ.

SPEAKER_01 14:16

So does it appear in the Bible or does it appear in texts outside of biblical writings?

SPEAKER_00 14:21

No, it appears in the Bible, but not in the book of Revelation. Right. And it should give everyone pause because one of the big things that particular interpreters like to do, often when they've got an agenda to fulfill, is they come in and they'll say things like, Well, the book of Revelation, usually they say, prophesies that an antichrist is going to rise and is going to do all these things. You go, well, it doesn't, actually.

SPEAKER_02 14:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:45

And in the Epistles of Peter, they are antichrists. So they are multiple. So it's anyone who is against Christ. Revelation follows this up. And this is why I think it's really important to talk about this. Some call it the Trinity of Evil. It's not really a trinity, because there are multiple different expressions of evil in the book, but there are three or four, I would argue four, expressions of evil in the text, right? It's really important to put it that way, because then we're not trying to find one person and pin all our blames on them. The text doesn't let us demonize people to the point of pointing at one individual, because it's never one individual, right? One individual can cause a lot of damage, of course, as we've seen throughout history, but they are enabled by structures and other people who get them there and keep them there. And Revelation's narrative makes that really clear. You've got this dragon who appears and opposes God, and the implication is that this is probably Satan. But Satan doesn't act alone. Satan is aided and abetted by different expressions of evil, right? They are the kings of the earth who worship and enable the dragon. You've got then in Revelation 13 onwards these two beasts, the land beast and the sea beast. These are echoes from the book of Daniel, as well as a whole bunch of other things, but they represent the different kingdoms, right? The different empires that are around the Christian people of the time and the Jewish people, of course. And there's sort of all these different allusions to different things. So for example, the sea beast has got a head that appeared to be dead but had been revived. And so scholars make all kinds of different suggestions about that. Some will argue that maybe it's imitating Jesus. Others talk about the fact that there was a claim that Emperor Nero had been revived and reborn and would come back from the East to reclaim the Romans and destroy the Empire. But if we get hung up on who it is and what it is, then I think that's where we run into some issues, right? Because it's all well and good to say, oh, well, you know, we can pinpoint it to this particular age and this particular time or whatever, but we lose the point. And the point is, that I would suggest in this instance that number one, you've got a beast with blasphemous names on its head. It has these symbols of power, right? A leopard, a bear, and a lion, a dragon, that's also a symbol of power. And it can imitate Christ, right? It looks like it died and then it was resurrected. So it takes on the guise of, you might say, orthodoxy or right to religion, in order to lead people astray. And then God doesn't do anything about it, right? The text says it was allowed to do certain things for X amount of time. And so what that warns us against, perhaps, is that there are expressions of religion that look to be good, that look like normal Christianity, shall we say, but instead are not that, right? They look and smell a little bit like orthodox Christianity, but actually they're leading people astray. So we need to be quite careful about that. Then you've got another beast which facilitates the first beast and forces idolatry. There's that mark of the beast that we were talking about and all of these different things. I'll do a very quick segue there, actually. Sorry, I know I'm kind of branching off in different areas here, but I'll quickly talk about the mark. You mentioned earlier, Louisa, that one of the things is that people get very obsessed with the mark in particular. And I think that's right, right? You know, people obviously do, because it's such a visual, such an obvious thing, right? And you know, if you've lived for long enough, you've seen a number of different ideas about what it could be: credit cards, barcodes, mobile phones, there's that Neuralink or whatever it's called now, the chip that they're building into people's heads. Yeah, all manner of different technology. I think, however, what's more important is what the mark does and doesn't do, right? What the mark does and doesn't do is allow people to participate in the economy.

unknown 18:45

Right?

SPEAKER_00 18:46

So it says they cannot buy or sell unless they have the mark of the beast. Well, who's not participating in the economy, right? Well, what's wrong with the economy? And this ties into something we'll talk about a little bit later, which is the list of things in the economy. But we know that the early Christians were very, very nervous about the way that things were being done in the Roman Empire. You know, in the previous episodes that I had with you, we talked about Jesus' engagement with Zacchaeus and that refusal, the parable he tells after that, and then driving the money changes out of the temple, his refusal to participate in this economy that facilitates and indeed empowers oppression of people. Right? So actually, not participating in the economy, revelation in most of the early Christians seem to suggest, is not a bad thing. It's actually quite an ethical thing to do. There's also, of course, an echo of one of the Hebrew Bible texts, a Jewish practice which you might still see with Orthodox Jews today, which is, you know, write the word of the law, bind it to your heads and to your right hands, recite it every day, the Shema, right? Shema Israel, the Lord your God is one. So it's an imitation of that as well. So there's a sort of this multi-layered idea here, but ultimately it's saying, well, if you're participating in the economy, you've already compromised yourself, potentially. And you are inadvertently or with full knowledge worshipping evil, or at least participating in evil. Right? And then, you know, people get very obsessed with the number 666. Fair enough, I suppose. Most scholars now think it's a cipher for Nero. People were obsessed with Nero at the time because there's the famous idea that he martyred a whole bunch of Christians and blamed the fire of Rome on them. You know, now a lot of folk, including a couple of my colleagues here, have disputed that a little bit, how extensive that is, but if it's a popular enough idea, it catches the imagination. So people go, oh, Nero, right? Fine, whatever, it doesn't mean anything. We can say, you know, today I could name almost any world leader, and people would have the same type of thoughts. The exact identification of the person is not the point. The point is that some decoding is needed, you know, that they're ciphered, that they're hidden, and also that they facilitate this economy of oppression that people participate in. So that's the first, second, and third, the dragon, the sea beast, and the land beast.

SPEAKER_01 21:20

Can I just sorry, I just want to hold.

SPEAKER_00 21:22

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:22

You're saying things that are so good and so interesting and so textured, but I just want to kind of keep my head. That actually, that sort of mark of the beast being in the head and the hand is kind of a reference to kind of the Jewish thing, that actually they would keep the Shima in the Teflin near their heart and their mind, so that the hand is connected to the main artery for the heart to actually say the things that are important to you, you have to keep in your mind and keep in your heart. And actually, if there are certain economies that are oppressive, but you are part of that, it's in your heart and your mind. It's what drives you, it's what you think about, it's what motivates you in your day. And for the Jewish people, that was the Shema, but actually maybe for some human beings it is a particular economic structure.

SPEAKER_00 22:08

Yeah, or a particular person, right? And that's the beauty of the text, is that it's deliberately, I would say, a little bit vague about it.

SPEAKER_01 22:14

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 22:15

And the vagueness is a double-edged sword. It means that you can interpret it in every context. Yes. But that means you can interpret it in every context, right?

SPEAKER_01 22:23

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 22:23

But yes, no, you're absolutely right. Some people get and the Bible keeps warning about this continually, right? Don't get obsessed with money.

SPEAKER_01 22:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:30

And making money, right? But I I would say that equally, you know, it says the market's the name of the beast or the number of its name. Don't get obsessed with people. Yeah. Right? With particular leaders who we think might bring economic salvation, whatever it is. The text warns very specifically, in my view, against that, because putting all of your hopes in anything that isn't God, the text says, is folly.

SPEAKER_01 22:55

Yeah. And then the other thing I was going to say is that this idea that there's going to be sort of a deceptor. So it's somebody that gives the impression of being this kind of great religious leader, you know, selling Christian ideas, but actually underneath they're sort of evil. And I think, you know, what's happened in the past if people have just interpreted that to any version of Christianity that doesn't match their own. Right. So actually, this is different from mine. Therefore, you are the deceptor. You are the one that's going to lead people away from Christ. And there's no real interpretation other than you disagree with me, therefore you must be wrong, therefore you're what the book of Revelation is. And that's also kind of unhelpful, I would imagine.

SPEAKER_00 23:33

Yeah, and that's exactly right. And yet, you know, I I talk about this often with my students. One of the challenging things about doing this kind of work and within Christianity is that there needs to be a level of orthodoxy, right? Of having particular practices and particular ideas. Otherwise, if you don't gatekeep to a certain extent, then it very quickly becomes an anything goes, you know, Gnosticism and all of that kind of comes in.

SPEAKER_02 24:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:01

And so it's a very difficult tension for leaders in faith traditions to hold to, where you know, you want to hold to the precepts of things like acceptance and love and grace and all of that. But also, if you allow too much of certain things, one way or another, then the message gets diluted or lost or whatever. So different people draw the line in different places. But yes, it often does become, as you say, very easy to just point at the people who aren't you and go, well, they're wrong.

SPEAKER_01 24:30

Yeah.

unknown 24:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:32

Anyway, sorry, I interrupted to Korea.

SPEAKER_00 24:34

No, no, no, that was a good interruption there. So we've talked about three things so far, and some scholars say the trinity of evil. I think that's a little bit simplistic, helpful to think about it that way, perhaps, because you know, then you've got an unholy trinity set up in opposition to a holy trinity, but there is a fourth, right? And the fourth is Babylon the Great. And we see that in Revelation 17 in particular. So then there's this woman. This is really problematic, by the way, because it does a lot of harm to women the way that she's talked about, the way that she's expressed. I don't want to excuse it, but I think what's helpful here to think through is then to play with a little bit of historical context. And again, there are times when I think you're hand-waving some issues away by doing that. In this case, the text itself gives us an explanation, which is quite rare, right, in Revelation, for something to be explained. But it says in Revelation 17, the angel says to John, I'm going to explain this to you. I will tell you about the mystery, right? And so you have this woman who's riding on a beast, she's dressed in purple and scarlet, richly dressed, she holds a cup filled with abominable things, it says, and the name written on her forehead, Babylon the Great, mother of prostitutes and the abominations of the earth. Then the angel says, Well, the woman's riding on a beast with seven heads. The seven heads are seven hills on which the woman sits. There are also seven kings. Five had fallen, one is currently, and one has not yet come. The ten horns are ten kings who have not yet received a kingdom, so on and so forth. Well, okay. If you're even slightly a Roman historian and I say to you, here's a woman who sits on seven hills, immediately you know what that is. That is the goddess Roma. Rome is built on seven hills very famously, and the spirit of the city, such as it were, or the deification of the city, is a woman named Roma, who represents the city. So Revelation often speaks in disguise, but at this point it kind of rips the disguise off and goes, Haha! We're making fun of Roma, right? In modern terms, it would be like if I said to you, there's a woman who holds a torch, who wears a crown with pointy bits coming out of it, who stands in a harbor wearing a long dress, holding a book. You think, oh, that's a Statue of Liberty, obviously, right? Well, yeah, and that represents the city of New York. So that's basically what Revelation is doing here, right? So is it problematic to women? Yes, it's still very problematic, calling her a prostitute, doing all these things, but it is pointing at the city of Rome, which then, as we've talked about and we will keep talking about in a second, is the center of this empire that warps and distorts everything around it, uh, such that the whole world's economy has been bent to its will, right? So there's the famous idea that in Rome you can find elephants from Africa, ghouls from Gaul, and guy from Britain, all of these things, two thousand years ago. That's unthinkable. And there's these luxury goods and these crazy things that work themselves out. Well, how does that happen? Well, through slavery, basically. And again, living in the UK, I think we've got a slightly better view on that because that is not too different at all from London, right? And if Revelation was written, you know, sort of in the 17 or 1800s, it would almost certainly be talking about London as the center of the world where all sin and iniquity comes forth, but also all the precious things of the world are sort of accumulated. It's just that at the time this is written, it's Rome. Rome's the empire, Rome's the one doing these things. So the good thing about Revelation then is that because it talks in code and disguise and images, it's always applicable and relevant because these ideas are always going to work for us, right? So London perhaps might still be considered that, but there are equally many other cities around the world where you we can think about these things. What it reminds us is actually we've probably accumulated too much unjustly, really.

SPEAKER_01 28:39

Which we have.

SPEAKER_00 28:40

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:41

And so actually, the woman almost represents Rome, which kind of represents the kind of structure of how the world works and actually the methods by which it's working and what you're having to do for some people to have and some people to have not. And actually that becomes applicable to any period of time. And again, it's linking back to this idea that this is not trying to focus on one person or one country or one historical time, that actually we've always got to take a critical look at the structures that are making the world go round.

SPEAKER_00 29:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:12

Yeah. If you were to ask me what a revelation really is at the end of the day, I would say revelation is anti-capitalist is a bit too simplistic. Yeah. Because obviously capitalism doesn't exist back then, but it's anti-capitalist empire, if I can use that with scare quotes, right? It's against structures that facilitate accumulation of wealth concentrated in the hands of an elite few, whilst also facilitating the oppression and slavery of many.

SPEAKER_01 29:42

Yeah. So it's anti-oppression and anti-inequality, which capitalism lends itself to. So in itself, capitalism isn't wrong, but it provides fertile ground for oppression and inequality. Yeah, that's really interesting. So let's talk about this list. There's a list. What is it? How could people interpret it?

SPEAKER_00 30:04

I mean, I don't know that it needs much interpretation, if I'm honest with you, but so this is directly following on from the angel explaining about the woman, right? Oh yes, Babylon, you know, which again we see here this transmorping, right? In the ancient Hebrew thought, it was Babylon, was the city of evil. Now it's Rome. Revelation disguises it by not saying Rome because, you know, then otherwise John and the Christians get killed because they're too obvious. But then, you know, over time we might say London, New York, Singapore, whatever, right? Then, after having talked about the fact that you can't buy and sell without the mark of the beast, about this city where everything accumulates, Revelation shows us the destruction, right? This symbolic destruction of Babylon being thrown down. And then in Revelation 18 it says, the kings of the earth weep over her, but then the merchants of the earth weep over her. And it says there's a list, right? And it says, No one buys their cargo anymore, cargoes of gold, silver, precious stones, pearls, fine linen, purple, silk, and scarlet cloth, citron wood, ivory, expensive wood, bronze, iron, marble, cinnamon and spice, incense, myrrh, frankincense, wine, olive oil, fine flour, wheat, cattle, sheep, horse carriages, human beings sold as slaves. Doesn't need too much explanation, but these are obviously expensive luxury goods, right, for the most part. As we move further down the list, then it becomes more sort of the everyday needs. But if you think about the sort of bulk which this implies, this is talking about world trade, right? Global trade, but global trade in luxury goods, but then human beings sold as slaves. So Revelation sort of saves that till the very end as this punchline to really highlight, yeah, we're really unhappy about the fact that all of these things which are precious and important are being traded as commodities and accumulated in one place. But also, by the way, the most important thing is the fact that humans are being bought and sold. And that's a real problem. And that's the reason why it's implied the city is going to be thrown down because of all of these unjust oppressive practices which directly impact on human beings.

SPEAKER_01 32:23

Is it significant that within that list are some of the gifts that Jesus received from the wise men, or is that just coincidental?

SPEAKER_00 32:32

Potentially it's a good question. It's not necessarily coincidental, but it's representative of the fact that these are luxury goods, basically. Okay. These are expensive things for kings, right?

SPEAKER_02 32:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:44

And so that there is a connection there, which is that Jesus is recognized as the king on earth because he gets given this expensive stuff, basically.

SPEAKER_01 32:51

And I'm wondering whether there's a sort of sense of, you know, don't take this too literally. It's not that we can't buy or sell anything or own anything or have some luxurious things. That's not really the issue. It's about the systems that are behind the buying and selling of this stuff that's the issue.

SPEAKER_00 33:07

Yeah, and I think there are different ways of reading that because I would say to you that, you know, John, at this point, the text suggests that he's this sort of fellow who's been exiled to this island where there's literally nothing to do. So, you know, he's just this vagabond wandering around the island. He's probably quite anti-buying and selling at this point.

SPEAKER_01 33:27

Because he can't do it. That's right.

SPEAKER_00 33:30

So, you know, he's in this sort of state of poverty that's enforced upon him. So maybe he is actually feeling quite disillusioned with this system and saying maybe people shouldn't have nice things at all. Nowadays, I don't know how feasible that is for us to kind of work with. It's a difficult message. And the thing about the Christian faith, as expressed through the writings of you know, the different Christian writers and Jesus, is that it is very difficult to do what you're called to do, which is to actively continually give up your wealth.

SPEAKER_01 34:02

Yeah. But also what it links back to is the conversation we had in the last episode together, where we were saying that when you're looking at a text hermeneutically, you have to look at who wrote it and the position that they were in and how that might influence some of the things like their positionality, as well as what it would have meant for the people reading it at the time and different layers of interpretation there. You started this episode by saying that actually we can't understand these elements in a granular way. We have to kind of see the sort of overall one concept or idea that it's trying to put forward, the one narrative. What could that overall purpose be for those that were writing this book?

SPEAKER_00 34:43

Yeah, good question. And again, there's a few ways of thinking about it, but I think the obvious conclusion that anyone who reads the text as a singular, and by the way, I don't necessarily recommend reading it. I recommend hearing it as the original audience would have, because of course, not everyone can read and write until much later in human history. So most people historically would have heard the text read aloud to them in one continuous hole. So it's much easier to hold in your head that way. But the message is basically God's coming back, sort yourselves out. And the way you do that is let's not participate in oppression. God will come and he'll make things right, he will redress the balance. And I've actually written about this, uh, I've got sort of published work on this. I think that humans in Revelation, human worshippers of Jesus, are given three very clear things to do, right? The first one is wait. The word wait appears quite a few times in the text. The second is worship, worship God, and then the third is witness, uh, you know, talk about what's coming, witness to the just kingdom that is coming and advocate for righteousness, such as it were. But Revelation doesn't say go out and overthrow your oppressors, right? Revelation doesn't say agitate for this or that or whatever. I mean, it does in terms of witnessing, yes, and worshiping, and many would argue that good worship practice means not participating in particular practices and so on, which I don't necessarily disagree with. But Revelation's really clear. Here's a bounded, limited set of things that you should be doing. Because, at the time it's written, we think Christians are potentially under threat. You know, certainly if you're John and you're saying stuff like, oh, let's throw Rome down and, you know, God will come and smite it and whatever, well, you know, the authorities might not look too kindly upon that. So John is quite clear that, you know, don't worry, God's the one who will sort this out, not you. Do certain things, yes, but at the end of the day, God's coming. It's also helpful to remember that a lot of the early Christians are completely powerless within the structures of the world. Many of them are slaves, so we think. Certainly there are some wealthy ones, of course, but most will be in the bottom sort of 99%, or bottom 70%, bottom 30%, whatever of the human population. And they don't have power. There's no democracy in this time. Their structures are completely different to ours. There's really not much they can do apart from violent rebellion. And Revelation goes, oh no, no, no, let's not do that, actually. It doesn't work for us. Witness weight worship is the outcome. And what Revelation does as well is it gives hope, right? And that's perhaps the most precious commodity that exists within the text, is there is a hope that one day all of these things will be sorted out, that God is going to make things right. And there's also a lot of power in being able to name that, not just name that God is coming and setting things right, but God, there are enemies, and yes, they are enemies, and yes, they do do bad things, but when you name something, you know, that gives you that sort of power, doesn't it? So there is a lot of that going on. Talking about the granular thing and where it fits within the overarching narrative, I mentioned as well early that you know I like to think of it as a play, as a performance, right? And if you think about someone parading in a theatrical sense, right, someone reading this list off and parading these things in front of you, you understand what that means. Right? You're not focused on, oh, look that particular white horse or you know, look at this carriage or whatever. No, no, no. Taken together, they represent wealth and privilege and oppression. So, yeah, like I think there's a a lot of benefit in hearing the text and using that sort of theatre of the mind to think about what's being shown to you as a listener.

SPEAKER_01 38:37

As you're talking, um naturally, my brain is trying to compare sort of the church at the time of revelation compared to the church now. And I think that's probably something to highlight that the church is in a very different place now as it was then, in that, you know, it's now the biggest religion in the world. It infiltrates a lot of the kind of power systems that exist in the world. You know, if even just look at the UK, it underpins our monarchy, it underpins our law. And while there are Christians around the world who are persecuted, the church as a whole is not a minority oppressed group. So what I'm interested in is does this book and does the message of this book have relevance today, or is it only going to be understood within the context of the church at the time of the writing of the Book of Revelation?

SPEAKER_00 39:29

Yeah, and that's a really, really good question, right? And a challenging one because what it basically should say to us is that, well, we are the empire at this point, right? Quite frankly.

SPEAKER_02 39:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 39:41

And it's really uncomfortable, which is why I suspect many don't read the text that way and indeed try to quickly point to other things and other issues, and all try and decipher things and say, oh, well, you know, it's about this and this and this and this evil person. Because all of a sudden, you know, from sort of 300 onwards. I know it's a bit lazy to just say that, but you know, for the purposes of what we're talking about, that's fine. But once Christianity becomes the dominant religion of the empire, Christianity loses its marginal status, right? And it's never lost it, quite frankly. So, you know, you could argue that for hundreds of years we haven't understood what it means, the book of Revelation in particular. Now, I would say, however, that within that, the text is still really applicable to those Christians who do find themselves being minoritized, who are in situations of oppression, who are facing significant challenges. This book is still really, really relevant to them. It gives them hope. And you don't want to take that away from them. But I think for those of us who sit very comfortably within the Western world, such as it were, it should be a bit of a mirror. And I would say that it challenges a lot, right? The Mark of the Beast thing, we should wake up every morning and think about that, you know. Like, not in the sense of, oh God, you know, what's the thing that will lead me into the worship of evil, but think, am I worshipping evil already?

SPEAKER_01 41:09

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 41:10

Inadvertently, because of the way I live, and what can I do within the realms of possibility in my context to make that right? That's really what the text I would say for those of us, many of us who are listening, probably, that's what it says to us. It challenges us. It asks very deep probing questions of the way that we express ourselves as people who are, well, you don't even have to be a follower of Jesus, right? To let that mirror be put in front of you. It's deeply challenging.

SPEAKER_01 41:40

And I think what's interesting is that maybe historically it's actually been almost flipped on its head, and the minority group and the oppressed group has become the evil, and the dominant oppressors have become the targeted and the marginalized. You know, and I'm looking for everything in terms of slavery, immigration, trans, gay, black, that we have, as an empire, we've swapped this round somehow. And now it feels that the dominant narrative is against the oppressed rather than for it. And that actually the oppressed groups is given the narrative of the oppressors, they're here to disrupt things or to change things or to challenge Christianity or to put it under threat, which is really fascinating. And I think probably a real challenge to Christians today to kind of see that that shift has happened.

SPEAKER_00 42:40

Stephen Moore, who is a very well-known post-colonial scholar of the Bible, but he writes on Revelation specifically, he says that the problem with using the throne room imagery is that the moment you get into power of any sort, all you do is you flip things. You just recreate the oppression in your image. And so one of the challenges of doing decolonial thinking and decolonial scholarship is what are the alternatives? How do we construct a world in which we don't replace like for like and just go, right, let's get rid of this particular king and put in a new king who has got different characteristics from the previous one. So it'll be fine, you know, we feel represented or whatever. But yes, what has also happened historically, as you're saying, is that there's this tendency towards crying foul, basically, and using this type of language to make make ourselves seem small in order that our opponents can be rallied against more powerfully or whatever, right? It draws people together. And as you say, it's a problem because we allow a lot of these, quite frankly, minor issues that the text is not concerned about, right? The text isn't necessarily thinking about, oh, well, you know, these other not really minorities or anything like that, because, you know, it doesn't. And think about it that way, but the text is focused on the big issues. And I think sometimes we need to remind ourselves there are bigger issues at stake, quite frankly. Yeah. Rather than you know, trying to w worry about, oh, you know, this particular group seems to have more power than they should or whatever.

SPEAKER_01 44:17

Yeah. And it's so interesting the language you use there, that we flipped God making us in his image to us sometimes making God into our image, making God into what we want God to be, to suit our own morality, narrative, whatever it might be. Right. The question that I've got next is has the way that we've interpreted sort of the New Testament impacted how the church has kind of grown over time?

SPEAKER_00 44:42

Yeah, and there's always an uneasy tension, isn't there? Where one of the things that again Stephen wanted to come back to him, he talks about is this deep irony that when Revelation is written, John is this fella sitting on an island, and yet a couple of hundred years later, you have a Christian emperor with bishops. And it looks like, on the one hand, yeah, sure, it's the throne room scene, but on the other hand, that's still human empire. So that's a problem. It's an uneasy tension because what humans tend to do is replicate or follow the structures that came before because they're already there. And it's easier to do that than to sort of raise them and start again necessarily. And so there is a lot of pragmatism that infiltrates the way we do religion. And often what that means is that we're happy to hand wave aside particular religious tenets or ideas in the practice of not having to do a whole bunch of work, basically. Right. And that's why I have a deep admiration for people of the Jewish faith in particular who refuse to do any kind of work on the Sabbath, right? No matter how inconvenient it is. You can't press a button on a lift, or you can't turn your oven on, or whatever. Sure, I think that can be taken to extremes, of course. But they're not worried about the inconvenience necessarily. I mean, there are ways around it, and you know, we can debate later about how valid that is. But there is this idea that no, no, no, God told us to do this, therefore we are doing this.

SPEAKER_02 46:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 46:21

Right? No matter how inconvenient and challenging it might be. Whereas I think for us as humans, biblical teachings, we should follow them, yes, absolutely. But at the same time, we go, oh, well, you know, we're familiar with certain ideas and certain ways of doing things, let's just do that. So when the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church split, they still look pretty similar for quite a while.

SPEAKER_01 46:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 46:44

When Martin Luther bangs his 95 Theses and he splits from the Catholic Church, surprisingly, quite a lot of the practices still look very Catholic.

SPEAKER_02 46:52

Yes. Right?

SPEAKER_00 46:53

So all these minor divergences happen over time, yes, and they are clearly things that people are unhappy about and they change, but by and large, the structures don't look all that different, do they?

SPEAKER_01 47:03

Yeah. And so therefore, it comes back to what you were saying earlier that the point of this book isn't for us to try and overthrow the structures and leaders, it's actually to live a good life. It's actually to focus on what you're doing each and every day. And that's why not working on the Sabbath is kind of the protest, you know, because it's what you can control. And that actually Christians have got to trust God to work out the big picture.

SPEAKER_00 47:25

Yeah, literally. It's this idea of trust God. Yeah. And I think, you know, within that, there is still scope for us to do things like protest and to do things like, you know, refuse and, you know, use our collective power. I think that's really important. But I think we need to be very wary and very careful of the way that we express that.

SPEAKER_01 47:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 47:46

Lest we become the oppressors ourselves.

SPEAKER_01 47:48

Goodness me. Right. Are there I just I love this chat so much. And it quite often happens when I'm interviewing that I'm so lost in what the person's saying that I forget that I'm actually recording a podcast and I've got to like ask questions. It's just as we close, really, is there sort of any final messages that you'd like to leave the listeners with?

SPEAKER_00 48:07

Nothing that I haven't already said, but it it might be helpful to just reiterate that, you know, as I've mentioned, I think Revelation is interested in witnessing, worshipping, and waiting. But that doesn't mean you don't do anything. As you just pointed out, right, you know, there is a degree of righteous rebellion, shall we say, that are built into religious practices. And I'm not just talking about Christianity, right? Many religious traditions have it, right? Jummah prayers for a Muslim on a Friday, right? You stop what you're doing, you go out and you spend a couple of hours worshiping God as a community. That's really powerful, actually, right? Because what it means is that we don't get sucked into this everyday grind of making money and trying to further our own wealth, often at the expense of others. And, you know, if there's another thing I would say, it would be that revelation has a very clear message that we need to be really, really thoughtful about the way that our actions can impact upon others and find ways. And that's not a revelation message, that's a Christian message, quite frankly. But keep finding ways to be very mindful of our impact, not just on each other, but also on the planet, obviously, and to keep extricating ourselves whenever possible from practices and systems that oppress others. It's not that easy, right? In 2025, but we need to keep being mindful and keep pulling ourselves back to that.

SPEAKER_01 49:34

And that's the important thing, is actually everyone can't do everything, but if each person does one small thing, then that can kind of disrupt things. You know, and whether that is refusing to use certain online delivery systems or, you know, not using social media or buying your clothes from a charity shop, not eating meat, if you can do one thing that disrupts kind of what underpins a system that maybe is oppressing others, then actually that's really helpful. You and if you could wake up tomorrow and one thing was different about the world, what would you want it to be?

SPEAKER_00 50:05

Oh, goodness of that's uh that's an impossible question, isn't it? Yeah. It's tempting to be like, well, I wish for unity between all people or something, but I think it would be just what we've talked about that I think I would just love for people just to be more mindful of their own impact. I think if everyone was able to do that, we would have a much better world, basically.

SPEAKER_01 50:25

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So if everybody listening just thinks, what's that one thing that they could do that's different to what they're doing now that could have a positive difference, then actually that's really, really powerful. You and this has been amazing, and I can't wait to release this episode. I think it's so interesting. I think not just for RE teachers, but I think for humans generally, you know, particularly if you are a Christian and you have a connection to the Book of Revelation. I think this is such an enlightening way of looking at this text that maybe isn't necessarily always done in every single church. So thank you so much for being so fantastic and can't wait for this to come out.

SPEAKER_00 50:58

Thank you so much for having me. It's always a pleasure.

SPEAKER_01 51:01

My name is Louisa Jane Smith, and this has been the RE Podcast, the podcast for those of you who think Hori is boring, but it is not. It is a disruptor of the systems. But thank you so much for listening to us bore the life out of you.