Problematic Prophecy

Dan McClellan The trains that are derailing, that reminds me of Revelation, where you have the horses and they have the tails like scorpions and all this. Can we just not? Can we please stop doing that?

Dan Beecher Just relax, everybody.

Dan McClellan Yeah. You're going to be okay. Hey, everybody. I'm Dan McClellan.

Dan Beecher And I'm Dan Beecher.

Dan McClellan And you're listening to the Data Over Dogma podcast, where we increase public access to the academic study of the Bible and religion, and we combat the spread of misinformation about the same. How are things today, Dan?

Dan Beecher Things are good. We are both now officially back from our travels.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher For now. At least for the immediate future- Yes ... we're stateside and living life. We got a fun show coming up. I'm pretty excited about it.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Well, okay. Let me just say, a miracle has happened.

Dan McClellan Hmm.

Dan Beecher And that miracle is, we mentioned a thing on a previous episode, and then we remembered to talk about it on this episode.

Dan McClellan You mean we followed through on something?

Dan Beecher On anything. It's a miracle.

Dan McClellan How unusual.

Dan Beecher Yeah. We literally were able to do it with the help of our listeners, who they literally heard me say, "Hey, I hope somebody will help me remember to do this." And they came out of the woodwork and helped me remember to do this. So, we're talking about preterism, which I think is awesome. And I also did not know what that was. So, I'm very glad that we get a chance to talk through it.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher That's going to be our first What Is That?

Dan McClellan Yeah. That's going to be our first segment.

Dan Beecher And then in the latter half of the show, we're going eschatological, but not- Mm-hmm ... or rather, we're talking about an eschatology.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher The Book of Revelation, or as Marjorie Taylor Greene says, the Book of Revelations. And we're going to talk about that, and whether or not, we're going to talk about who thinks and doesn't think it should be in the canon.

Dan McClellan Yeah. A lot of people don't know its canonicity, its authenticity, its inspiration was challenged by an awful lot of early Christians.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan So, we'll talk about that a bit.

Dan Beecher I personally would vote it off the island, but we'll get to that. We'll figure it out.

Dan McClellan In a lot of interviews, I get asked what book I would omit from the Bible, and I make a point of answering Revelation before they even get the question fully out. And I think we probably saw that on our book signing tour.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan I think that happened a couple of times, so.

Dan Beecher Yeah. Anyway, yes. And the island we will vote it off of, apparently, is Patmos.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher But we'll get to that in the latter half of the show. But for now, let's dive in with What Is That? And the what is that that we are discussing is, as I said, preterism.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher Okay, so let's just start with, what is that?

Dan McClellan What does the word mean? It's an unusual word, but if you're familiar with linguistics, you might have heard the term preterite.

Dan Beecher Hmm.

Dan McClellan A preterite is a past tense thing, and preterism comes from the Latin praeter, which means past. And so, the idea is that this is talking about things that happened in the past.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan And that's not very detailed. That's not giving you an awful lot of information, but the- We're building to something here.

Dan Beecher We're making it.

Dan McClellan Yeah. We got to go brick by brick.

Dan Beecher Yeah, exactly.

Dan McClellan The basic idea of preterism is that the prophecies about the end times in the New Testament, and even in the Hebrew Bible, have already been fulfilled, either in part or in full. So, generally, you divide preterism into partial preterism or full preterism.

Dan Beecher Wow.

Dan McClellan Yeah. You're usually one or the other, or neither, if you don't accept preterism at all. I get accused of being a preterist frequently, and we'll talk about why that doesn't really work, but- Okay.

Dan Beecher Well, I was going to say, I would almost accuse you of being a preterist based on- ... a few things that you've said. But let's not get the cart before the horse here.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Let's dive in and figure out what we're talking about.

Dan McClellan Because when we hear people on social media today talk about the fulfillment of end times prophecies, there are a handful of places they'll turn to, and two popular ones are Daniel and Revelation. Daniel talks about the abomination of desolation and all this kind of stuff, and you got the 70 weeks, and every time somebody's about to make some kind of peace treaty associated with Israel- ... suddenly it's about this peace that is going to last for a week, AKA seven years, and then all this stuff.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan This is in Daniel 9. And then we also have Revelation. We've got a lot of stuff about what's going to happen before the end times. And also in the Gospels.

Dan Beecher Hmm.

Dan McClellan We have in Mark, we have in Matthew, and particularly Matthew, that's, I think, probably the most famous example of these prophecies about the coming of the Son of Man, where the sun will be black and then the moon will turn to blood, and all this kind of stuff, and- This is the Olivet Discourse. The Olivet Discourse, right. And we've talked in the past about how the Olivet Discourse makes it sound like the Second Coming is going to happen immediately after the events that are being described.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And the events that are being described sound an awful lot like what happened around the year 70 CE, when Rome had been laying siege to Judea for a while, and destroyed Jerusalem, destroyed the temple in Jerusalem, ran off the Jewish rebels. So- It sounds like that already happened.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And so according to preterism, if you're a partial preterist, you would say, "Okay, so that part of the Olivet Discourse has already been fulfilled. The rest of it, where the Son of Man comes in clouds of great glory and all that kind of stuff, hasn't been fulfilled yet. We're still waiting on that."

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan God is slow-playing their hand regarding the fulfillment of the next part. If you're a full preterist, then you say, "No, it was all, the second coming, the resurrection, it was all fulfilled by 70 CE, and we're just in some kind of post-- I don't want to say coital, but some kind of post-apocalyptic waiting period, I guess."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan There are a bunch of different ways that it's rationalized, but it all stems from the fact that the Book of Revelation, the Gospels, even Daniel, a lot of the most likely ways to interpret that is the events that happened in 70 CE. And so a lot of this requires that Revelation be written prior to 70 CE if these are all prophecies about what's going to happen in the immediate future.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan This is assuming that this is not someone writing after the fact as though they're writing before the fact to give credence to their revelatory power or whatever.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And the folks who argue that, funny enough, will argue that the beast is supposed to be Nero.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan They will say 666 is gematria. It's a reference to Nero, and it already all happened.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And it's already all been fulfilled. By 70 CE, it was done and dusted. And scholars, the overwhelming-- I don't know about the overwhelming, but the majority of scholars date Revelation to well after that. But yeah, like you said, it raises an important interpretive question. What's more likely, that somebody was writing shortly after 70 CE, and they were writing as if they were coming prior to that time period, and were trying to include all these things that they knew were going to happen, leading up to what they hoped would happen in their own immediate future?

Dan Beecher It does make prophesying a lot easier if the stuff's already happened.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And we have the same issue with Daniel, because we have, as you get from the sixth century BCE, which is when Daniel was supposed to have been written, as you get closer to the 160s BCE, the history gets, one, more accurate, two, more detailed, up until you have Antiochus IV Epiphanes laying siege and threatening to do all this stuff, abomination that makes desolation, or however you want to translate that. And then right then is when God is supposed to show up, and God is supposed to route the invading army. God is supposed to save their people.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And so it's more and more accurate right up to the point where God intervenes, and then everything after that is totally inaccurate. And the most likely interpretation of that trajectory is, okay, this was all written right at the point where God intervenes- Right ... by somebody who was living that experience and probably writing this in the hope that they would manifest somehow these events, or they would give people hope that these things were going to happen. And the same is almost certainly true of the Olivet Discourse as recorded in Mark. Scholars are like, "It might've been a couple of months before the destruction of the temple, or it might've been a couple of months after the destruction of the temple." They're very granular about this is either immediately before or very shortly after. And so it would be the same thing- Yeah ... because in the Olivet Discourse, all this stuff is going to happen, and then what does that bring about? Suddenly, Son of Man, and he's there to set things straight, only that doesn't happen.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And so from a critical point of view, that makes the most sense of these texts and what's going on, that this is somebody writing in view of these events who is kind of hoping that what happens next will be the intervention of God. But the further away you get from that composition of the text, the less and less that really fits the treatment of these things as inspired.

Dan Beecher And so- Right ...

Dan McClellan you have to negotiate. You have to figure out a way. Okay, so it didn't happen right after all the events that they said were going to happen. We're still waiting on this to happen. It's been 2,000 years.

Dan Beecher It's been a minute.

Dan McClellan Yeah. So we're going to create this notion of preterism. Well, it wasn't created very recently. It's actually quite old. This goes back to the first few centuries- Sure ...

Dan Beecher CE.

Dan McClellan You have early Christians who are like, "This kind of seems like it just happened." So you have the seeds of preterism already being planted pretty early on, but it's not until the late medieval period or Reformation period that you begin to get formal articulations of this doctrine of preterism. And I think one of the interesting things about the early articulation of preterism is that a lot of it was criticized for its chiliasm. Have you heard that word before?

Dan Beecher I don't know that I have. Does it have to do with Helios?

Dan McClellan No.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan It's C-H-I-I-A-S-M.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan And this is based on the Greek word for thousand.

Dan Beecher Oh, okay.

Dan McClellan So it's millennialism basically.

Dan Beecher Oh, okay.

Dan McClellan All right. And because a lot of what preterism was about was this notion that there would be 1,000 years of peace when Jesus reigned. And so you have some folks who suggested that this was going on following 70 CE, or that this was about to happen. And a lot of early Christians did not like chiliasm because one, it was associated with some people who were dismissed as heretics, but it undermined the hope in the imminent return of Jesus.

Dan Beecher Sure.

Dan McClellan So you had a lot of conflicts with the idea of preterism, and it was something that I think, if I recall correctly, an awful lot of Protestants didn't like it. This was something that was more common among Catholic and other theologians and writers and things like that.

Dan Beecher Hmm.

Dan McClellan But it somewhat began to be accepted by Protestants. And these days, there are an awful lot of Protestants who are partial preterists. Full preterism is still a minority view, and particularly among Protestants, but you see more and more evangelicals who are partial preterists. And this is where the accusation that I'm a preterist comes in, because when I talk about the Olivet Discourse, when I talk about Revelation, I'm like, "No, this is all talking about things that were just then happening- Right ... with the siege of Jerusalem on the part of Rome." And people are like, "Ah, you're a preterist." It's like, "No, no. I don't think that any of this is real prophecy."

Dan Beecher Okay. There's the distinction. I get it.

Dan McClellan Yeah. So preterism is-- And this is where I see this a lot. There are a lot of folks who cannot fathom the existence of a critical study of the Bible.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan Everybody-- Not everybody. An awful lot of people think that I am studying the Bible for religious reasons.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And it's not just the people who say I'm a theologian. I don't know how many times people will say, "I love your channel, but I'm an atheist."

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan It's like, you don't have to qualify this.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan It's not like you're not allowed to be here if you're an atheist. I don't expect anything relating to theological belief to consume my content. But a lot of people think that if you study the Bible, it's for religious reasons.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And I don't know if that's what leads people to think, "Oh, you're arguing that the Olivet Discourse was all about the 70 CE. You must be a preterist." No, I don't think anything else is on the way. I don't think that, and I don't think these were prophecies that were actually fulfilled.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan The data don't support that at all. The data indicate that these were things that writers looking back on these events put into the narratives that they were crafting as if they came from an earlier time period, which is what happens in Daniel, which is what happens in-- Well, Revelation is kind of contemporary with its composition. But yeah, I'm not a preterist, or at least I wouldn't identify as a preterist. If someone wants to define it as anybody who thinks the Olivet Discourse was about the events of the siege of Jerusalem, fine. But if it has anything to do with the notion that anything is actually prophecy that is, was, or has yet to be fulfilled, then no, I am not a preterist.

Dan Beecher So not to put too fine a point on it, but just so that I understand.

Dan McClellan Okay.

Dan Beecher I guess what you're saying is that preterism is a theological contention that these were real prophecies, and the difference is just that they believe that these prophecies were already fulfilled.

Dan McClellan Yes. The idea is that these things are actual inspired prophecies, and that ancient Israel's continuation is manifested in the Christian church. And the pivot took place in 70 CE when everything went down with Rome and Jerusalem. And so yeah, it interprets things as prophetic, but as aimed at a specific set of events that took place in the past. So I would distinguish it pretty sharply from a critical academic approach, which- Right ... understands it all as a product of human industry and propaganda and things like that, and renegotiation with the scriptures of earlier Judaism and things like that.

Dan Beecher Yeah. So yeah, preterists are not people who believe that, as you do, that it's possible that these were written before the events that they're pretending to prophesy about. They're saying that these were written whenever they purported to be written. They were about future events. Those future events then came to pass.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan And particularly folks who want to put Revelation prior to 70 CE, because if it's written in 90 but about the events of 70 CE, well, that kind of undermines the notion that it is prophetic, that undermines the notion that this is actual prophecy, which is why you won't see many preterists say that Revelation comes from the 90s CE- Right ... but is about Nero and the events of 70 CE, but in a prophetic sense, in a true- Right ... inspired sense. So in that sense, I reject that categorization. But yeah, 18th century is when preterism becomes more widespread. You get some books that are written that advocate for a preterist view. And the other views, by the way, are futurism which is that all of this is still off in the future. This still has yet to come to pass. You got historicism, which, if I remember correctly, is the historicization of all of this, which is probably closer to what I'm doing, where I'm saying, "No, this is not prophecy. When we look at the history, these texts are describing things that were happening then or had just happened, and they're hoping for things to happen in the future." But there are categories for the different approaches to this. And then, millennialism fits into all that. And then when we've talked about millennialism, we've got amillennialism, we've got pre-trib, we've got post-trib. We've got all the different types of millennialism as well.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan It all fits into that whole framework of how we understand this to be true.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And this is one of the main reasons I object to the label preterist, is because in my view, it presupposes the truth of everything that's going on here, the inspiration, the inerrancy, the prophetic origins of all of this. And so I would describe my approach as more critical.

Dan Beecher Yeah. You touched on it briefly, but one of the things that I'm curious about is sort of the theological consequence of preterism. Meaning, if theologically we assume that essentially John's apocalypse happened- Mm-hmm ... and the predictions of Daniel and Jesus at Olivet have all come to pass- Mm-hmm ... what does that mean for now? Because when I was a believer, I understood that these were all-- I guess I was raised to be a futurist- Mm-hmm ... about these ideas.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm. So I understand what it means if you're a futurist.

Dan Beecher I understand that it means that there's a whole bunch of stuff that's coming down the pike at some point, and we all need to prep for it, and we all need to be ready for it, and when it happens, oh, this is all the stuff that's going to happen. But I guess I've never put myself in the shoes of someone who doesn't come from that perspective. So I don't know what it means. I see all of these right-wing preachers talking about, "It's coming any day. Oh, look at this. Look at what's happening in Israel. This proves that it's right around the corner," blah, blah, blah.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher I guess that perpetual anticipation, that perpetual we've got to be on guard, which goes back all the way to when these books were written.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher I mean, I remember I've read historical accounts about the great London fire in 1666, and everybody's just like, "There it is. It's happening."

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher "We got it."

Dan McClellan And- Yeah ...

Dan Beecher so this is not a new phenomenon.

Dan McClellan No.

Dan Beecher But without that, it does seem like it's a very different approach to theology and to how one lives one's life.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And I think most folks these days, most Christians these days, have spent all their time swimming in the waters of an expectation of a second coming, if not the rapture, at least resurrection, all this kind of stuff. And that's rather undermined, at least by full preterism.

Dan Beecher I think- Sure ...

Dan McClellan partial preterism basically says, "Eh, that happened. We're still looking forward to Jesus' second coming. We're still looking forward to the rapture. We're still looking forward to a resurrection from the dead." But with full preterism, you've got to kind of reshuffle the deck, and you've got to figure out a way to understand how the last 1,900 years have carried on following all of those things.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan As if Jesus has already come and the resurrection of the dead has already taken place. Which is why a lot of folks would argue that full preterism requires that the resurrection be something more symbolic, something more metaphorical, that it not be the literal resurrection from the dead. And there are groups that understand it that way.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan That this is not about everybody coming back from the dead, but it is something else, whether related to the spirit or something like that. It's a very different way of understanding Christian history, and Christian eschatology. And yeah, you can find in the Book of Matthew, it says when Jesus died, a bunch of people came back from the dead and appeared to their loved ones and things like that. And so people say, "Ah, there's the resurrection. It happened right there, and so now we've had a resurrection. We need no more resurrection." And I guess- Yeah.

Dan Beecher It ruins phrases like the end of days- Mm-hmm ... or any of that sort of thing. But it kind of frees you from the anxiety that a coming apocalypse somewhere looming on the horizon has given. I can't tell you how many people I've talked to who had or still have intense apocalyptic anxiety.

Dan McClellan Oh, yeah. Big time.

Dan Beecher And then I guess you're just left with sort of a different anxiety, which is just like, "What do we do now?

Dan McClellan I don't know."

Dan Beecher "I guess we just live our lives well or something."

Dan McClellan Yeah. Oh, I was listening to a video. I was in my kitchen, and I was on TikTok listening to a video, and my wife walked by And the person was like, "All those people who say that we're not in the end times, they had to deal with the same thing back when First Peter was written." And my wife was like, "And it didn't happen then." It's been 2,000 years.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan They were right.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Back then, when they criticized the notion that they were in the end times. And yeah, there are a lot of folks who would still consider themselves Bible believers and Christians looking forward to something, but not what the majority of Christians these days are looking forward to. I don't think they anticipate that Iran, and Turkey, and Russia are going to form a coalition and then attack Israel from the north and from the south, and then that's going to bring on Armageddon. And the people who see this as some kind of paint by number, where you're trying to divine what's happening in the future, it makes for a puzzle to be solved.

Dan Beecher Sure.

Dan McClellan And I get that that is meaningful. I get that that has value to folks. But it's so ridiculous, the notion that this is a Ouija board, and we're trying to divine the future, and we're keeping a lookout for all the signs. Because every generation over the last 2,000 years has had the ability to point to stuff and say, "It's the sign of the times."

Dan Beecher Mm-hmm.

Dan McClellan But not every generation, I think, understood the Bible to be pointing them in that direction. I think there are a lot of generations that didn't worry about that. And I'm sure in the fourth century when Christianity takes over the Roman Empire, I'm sure there were an awful lot of people who were like, "Cool. I guess we're set. We don't need to worry about all of this bad stuff that's going to happen." When we talked with Bart Ehrman about his book, "Armageddon"- Yeah ... he talked in that book about how there were a lot of readings of Revelation that were very popular throughout history that didn't understand it as about some future apocalyptic chaos, that read it in very different ways. And it is kind of bizarre to think about Christians in other time periods and other places being like, "No, none of that's going to happen. We're all right."

Dan Beecher We're cool.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher It's fine.

Dan McClellan So I think I probably have some holy envy for- ... the generations of Christians who did not have to deal with these ridiculous people out there going, "The trains that are derailing, that reminds me of Revelation where you have the horses, and they have the tails like scorpions and all this." And can we just not? Can we please, please stop doing that?

Dan Beecher Just relax, everybody.

Dan McClellan Yeah. You're going to be okay.

Dan Beecher Well, since we were just talking about Christians in history and the Book of Revelation, why don't we jump into our next segment, Taking Issue? The issue that we are going to take is with the idea that Revelation itself is good?

Dan McClellan No.

Dan Beecher No, that's not the issue. Is actually- Canonic or authentic ... was always meant to be in the canon- Yes ... of Christian books.

Dan McClellan Of the New Testament, yes. We're going to talk about the Christians who challenged that.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan A lot of people don't know this, but it's not like the earliest Christians were like, "Ah, we're Christians now, and here is our collection of books that everybody agrees on."

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan No, not only did it take a long time for these books to be written, and most critical scholars would say there are multiple books of the New Testament, perhaps even at least one of the gospels, that weren't even written until probably the beginning of the second century CE. So it's probably over a century after Jesus's death that the final books are being wound up, being completed.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan So it's taken a long time to do that. And then you couldn't just get on Amazon and order a book and be like, "I have to wait until 5:00 in the morning to get this book?" These things had to be copied by hand, which meant they didn't just immediately go and get out there.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan They had a biography. These things had to be passed along, and somebody would have multiple copies made by hand, and then they would pass the original copy on. And so different congregations had different sets of books, and the canon came together slowly. And it was not that people sat around a desk and went, "I vote for this one in the canon and this one out." What happened is mainly people went around and found out what books were being read in the services, what books were being considered authoritative and inspired, and which were not. And so a lot of the early discussions of canon would say, "Well, these are the books that the majority of churches treat as authoritative, as inspired, as doctrinally binding."

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan "These are the books that they read, but they don't really consider doctrinally binding. These are the spurious books. These are the ones that we know were not written by the people they claim to have been written by," and all that. So you had different levels of proximity to this notion of canon. And ultimately, it was basically a boundary firmed up around the books that the majority of people were using, and then they came up with rationalizations for why it's those books that are in, and everything else is out.

Dan Beecher Now, objection. I don't think any human- Okay.

Dan McClellan Overruled.

Dan Beecher Oh, okay.

Dan McClellan No, you're correct.

Dan Beecher That is a very human way of doing things, right?

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher You figure out what you like, and then you prove why it's good.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Why it's real, or why everyone else should care about it or whatever.

Dan McClellan 100% that is how it works. And this is how it works. Even today, when a politician gets up there and says something The person intuitively decides whether they like it or not, and then goes about rationalizing why- Right ... their feelings are correct. And it's the same for the development of the canon. It just kind of worked its way into, "Okay, these are the things that everybody likes. Now let's come up with criteria for why they were right all along."

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And you had things like apostolic authorship or some kind of connection to an apostolic source. You had the authority of the text within early Christian churches and all these things. And so all the criteria are basically like, "Well, that's because that's what everybody thinks."

Dan Beecher Right. Look at how many people are reading it.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher All those guys can't be wrong.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And the Book of Revelation, for quite some time, was not really that popular. It was something that was dismissed as a rather grotesque misrepresentation of Christian sensitivities and ideologies. There's a guy named Dionysius of Alexandria. He was a bishop and a scholar, and he died in the middle of the third century, around 260s CE.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan And his argument was really the consensus view for a long time within early Christianity, that whatever the nature of the Book of Revelation, it was not written by the author of the Gospel of John. It was written by somebody else. And this kind of complicates the relationship of the Book of Revelation to any kind of apostolic authority.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan But Dionysius, he's kind of describing opinions about the Book of Revelation, middle of the third century. "Some before us have set aside and rejected the book altogether, criticizing it chapter by chapter and pronouncing it without sense or argument, and maintaining the title as fraudulent." And this was a big deal. Is this actually a revelation or not? "For they say that it is not the work of John, nor is it a revelation, because it is covered thickly and densely by a veil of obscurity." The God is not the author of confusion kind of approach.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan If all of this is- And it is a confusing book.

Dan Beecher Yeah. It is a very mystifying bit of writing.

Dan McClellan Yeah. Apokalypsis, revelation, it means an uncovering, a revealing.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And it's like, if all this stuff is being smuggled in, in all this complex and frequently grotesque imagery, there's nothing revealing about this. So it can't be that.

Dan Beecher It should be called the obfuscation of John.

Dan McClellan Yeah, the obfuscation of John. And he goes on, "And they affirm that none of the apostles and none of the saints, nor anyone in the church, is its author." And Dionysius is not endorsing that position. He's not rejecting the Book of Revelation. He says he thinks it is authoritative, but doesn't think that it was written by the author of the Gospel of John. And when you compare the Greek of John and Revelation, it's night and day.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan Like, the author of the Gospel of John knew what he was doing. It's Koine Greek. He's not a classical Greek lyricist. It's Koine Greek, but it is far more sophisticated and educated than the Greek of the Book of Revelation, which tends to be rather choppy and rather rough in style. And there are things that a lot of Greek Romanians would call just non-standard or even grammatically incorrect Greek in there. So, that was the main concern. Readers would be like, "This is not the same style kind of Greek as we have in the Gospel of John."

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan You had folks who said, "Eh, it's fine." Eusebius of Caesarea, in his text Ecclesiastical History, and if you want, Ecclesiastical History, I don't know if you've ever read any part of that, but Eusebius, he was a friend of Constantine's.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan He put together this Ecclesiastical History, and that's one of the primary sources for a lot of the history of the early church. But it's a great thing to read if you haven't read it. He called it a disputed book, saying that there was a lot of uncertainty about any kind of apostolic origin. And he referenced Dionysius' discussion about the concerns with it. And I think Eusebius probably also said it probably wasn't written by the author of the Gospel of John.

Dan Beecher Sorry. My memory fails me on this. Does the Book of Revelation claim to be written by John the Apostle?

Dan McClellan No.

Dan Beecher It says John.

Dan McClellan It just says John.

Dan Beecher It says, "I am John."

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher But it doesn't say John the Apostle.

Dan McClellan Yeah. "Call me John."

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And then moves on.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And the first person to actually say, "This could be the same author as the author of the Gospel of John," is Justin Martyr, around 150 CE. And he was a defender of the authenticity of the Book of Revelation. But prior to that, nobody had identified that John as the same John as the Gospel of John. And then Justin Martyr is like, "Put them together, and they're the same John." And a bunch of other people are like, "You're joking, right?" But that would ultimately carry the day. And then we have this guy named Gaius of Rome, who's a presbyter from the early third century CE, so even before Dionysius of Alexandria. And he actually said that it is a heretical book, and he attributed it to a Gnostic heretic named Cerinthus.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan And so he went out of his way to- To say, "No, this is a bad book. This is heretical. This should not be included in the canon." And mainly because of its chiliasm, its millennialism, he was fiercely opposed to this. And then Marcion of Sinope was the heretic. Christians today really hate Marcion, but he was also one who rejected the authenticity and the inspired nature of the Book of Revelation and excluded it from his canon, along with a ton of other stuff.

Dan Beecher If you can remember, what were some of the objections? Were they textual objections, or were they theological objections? What are we talking about here?

Dan McClellan Well, there were a few different objections. We talked a little bit about the authorship thing, that this just does not read like the author of the Gospel of John. We talked about the fact that there is nothing that seems to be revealing about this. It is all shrouded in a lot of mysterious, apocalyptic imagery.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan There are folks who thought it sounded too Jewish. It was Jewish apocalyptic imagery that was not becoming of good Christian literature.

Dan Beecher Hmm.

Dan McClellan There were folks who said that was not really what we're doing anymore. There were folks who said that the ideologies in the book were very exclusionary, exclusivistic, but also very materialistic. We're going to get everything that the bad guys have.

Dan Beecher Oh, yeah.

Dan McClellan And we've talked about this a couple times in the past, where the author of the Sermon on the Mount would've wildly disagreed with the Book of Revelation's vision of a future where we're just swimming in wine and- Right ... everybody has all the riches in the world, and we're all glutting ourselves on all of just the bounty of- The cool loot that we get.

Dan Beecher Yes.

Dan McClellan And so for a lot of people, this vision of the future just clashed with the asceticism of early Christianity. And a Jesus who was like, "Deny everything, make yourself a eunuch. We're going to live in basically abject poverty."

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And then along comes John the Revelator, like, "Wine for everybody."

Dan Beecher And- I can see how each of those approaches would have their supporters.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Those approaches both have their supporters now.

Dan McClellan Yeah. You can imagine some early Christians sitting in the Colosseum going, "But I kind of like what they have over here."

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And they're like, "No, that..."

Dan Beecher Have you guys tried having a bunch of money and wine? Because I like it.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher I enjoy that.

Dan McClellan You pretend to enjoy celibacy, but everybody knows you're just lying. So, I think that was a big part of it as well.

Dan Beecher Sure.

Dan McClellan And yeah, just the fact that it doesn't seem to follow in the trend of Christian writings from the time period. And even people today who read it, Revelation is an outlier.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Linguistically, literarily.

Dan Beecher You don't have to be well-versed in almost any of the studies, the academic studies- Mm-hmm ... to read that and see it as very different- Yeah ... from what comes before.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And then there are a few things that contributed to the Book of Revelation's inclusion in the canon. One, because it was debated, it had widespread circulation, and so you did have fans of the Book of Revelation. Papias, who we've talked about before, who is one of our witnesses to a couple of the gospels. He identifies a gospel by Mark and by Matthew, which may or may not be related to what we have now as the Gospel of Mark and Matthew. Obviously, Justin Martyr, who was the first one to say, "They're the same John."

Dan Beecher Mm-hmm.

Dan McClellan He was a fan of it. These were very influential folks. And so the objectors were not as influential in a lot of ways, but it was still a debated text, and I would say probably was on its way out of the canon until Athanasius of Alexandria.

Dan Beecher Dun, dun, dun.

Dan McClellan Yeah. To whom I shake my fist.

Dan Beecher Athanasius.

Dan McClellan And this guy just led what must've been the most bizarre and stressful life. He was exiled, I think, seven or eight times- ... in his life. They were like, "We just can't get rid of you." And mainly because he was the fiercest anti-Arian that was around. I'm sure you had other Christians who were like, "Athanasius needs to pull it back a little bit."

Dan Beecher Talk about anti-Arian, because I don't think people are going to know what that is.

Dan McClellan Okay. So Athanasius was around in 325 CE when we had the Council of Nicaea, which was there to try to resolve the Arian controversy, which is where this Presbyter Arius was saying that Jesus was a subordinate being, which was not that controversial in the early church, but he also was saying there was a time when Jesus was not, when he did not exist. He was a creation of God- Hmm ... the Father, and that is what set, I think, the most people off. But at Nicaea, they came up with the Nicene Creed. They came up with the idea that Jesus was consubstantial with the Father and with the Holy Ghost, and we have the beginnings of formal articulated Trinitarianism. And- But that didn't seal the deal. That didn't fix the problem. There would be another century of back and forth between Arianism and anti-Arianism, and you even had an Arian emperor. One of the Roman emperors was an Arian, and Constantine was even somewhat sympathetic to the plight of the Arians. But Athanasius was one of the torchbearers for the anti-Arian bent, and one of the things that he did was appeal to the Book of Revelation as a way not to distinguish Christians from non-Christians, and not as a way to circle the wagons around the followers of Jesus, but as a way to root out inadequately faithful Christians who are in the church. So he took the Book of Revelation, and he pointed it back at the other Christians and said, "You're not good enough. You're an enemy. You're a wolf in sheep's clothing." And this would've been aimed at not only Arians, but anybody who challenged the power structures that served his interests and that he was trying to advance. And I think we've talked about this before. For instance, you had the monasteries at the time. They were not under the wing of the institutional church. They were the rebels out in the desert living like hippies, going, "Peace and love, and Gnostic literature, man." And Athanasius wanted to put a stop to that and wanted to bring the monasteries under the control of the institutional church and had his ways of going about doing that. But one of the things that he did was include the Book of Revelation in his canon. And his canon list from, I think it was 367, this was his 39th festal letter. And if you don't know what that means, this was the letter celebrating, I think, Easter- Okay ... that went out in the year 367. And in that letter, he lays out the canon, which becomes more or less the first formal articulation of the canon as it exists now.

Dan Beecher Oh, wow.

Dan McClellan Yeah. Prior to that, there were debates, and you had some people going, "Yeah, these are in, these are out." But it hadn't firmed up until Athanasius' letter, and he was the first one who said, "Revelation is in." That's the last book he includes, and then he goes on in the next paragraph, "These are the fountains of salvation that he who thirsts may be satisfied with the living words they contain, in these alone the teaching of godliness is proclaimed. Let no one add to these, let nothing be taken away from them." Now, readers of the Bible will recognize this, "May no one add to this or take away from this." You see this in Deuteronomy. You see this in the Book of Revelation.

Dan Beecher Of Revelation, yeah. I was going to say, yeah.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And so Athanasius is basically quoting his favored text as a means of doing what Revelation was trying to do. Authorize and tie off and authoritatively seal up his message. And his message is, Book of Revelation is canon. You don't really have an authoritative canon list that matches closely what we have today prior to this letter. Some people will point to the Muratorian fragment. Have we done a show on the Muratorian fragment? Does that sound familiar?

Dan Beecher Not that I'm aware of.

Dan McClellan Okay.

Dan Beecher We got to do- I might have to check, but I don't remember anything about that.

Dan McClellan Yeah. We'll have to do a show on that because most people today will say the Muratorian fragment is from the second century. It's a very early canon list. However, the canon that it lists is more like late fourth century.

Dan Beecher Oh.

Dan McClellan And it refers to some groups that weren't around when it was supposed to have been written in the second century. So while historically the consensus view is that it comes from the second century, within the last decade or so, I think you've had a lot of scholars pushing hard in the other direction saying, "No, Muratorian fragment is probably from the late fourth century CE," so after Athanasius' letter, and it is only trying to sound very early.

Dan Beecher Yeah. But that's another one that includes the Book of Revelation.

Dan McClellan If the Muratorian fragment is late fourth century, you don't really have a canon as we know it today until Athanasius' letter from 367 CE.

Dan Beecher Wow.

Dan McClellan So the canon firms up toward the second half of the fourth century CE, and Revelation isn't really formally a part of it until then either.

Dan Beecher Yeah. I was noticing when I was poking around on this, that the Council of, you're going to have to tell me, Laodicea?

Dan McClellan Laodicea, mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher Omitted Revelation. That was 363. That was pretty late in the game.

Dan McClellan Yes. And they were like, "Nah."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan This was something that was established pretty late and primarily because of rhetorical utility to Athanasius for his attempt to try to engage in boundary maintenance. Who's a good Christian? Who's a bad Christian? And also for the churches. So I think you have toward the end, the Council of Hippo, 393 CE, the Council of Carthage, 397 CE. Those are reaffirmations basically of more or less the canon that Athanasius asserted. And I want to say there are one or two places where Athanasius might diverge Yeah. So he says, Isaiah, one book, Jeremiah with Baruch, so that would be what is now considered an apocryphal book. Lamentations and the Epistle, which is probably a reference to the Epistle of Jeremiah, another apocryphal book, if I recall correctly. And when he talks about Daniel, whether or not he's referencing the additions to Daniel, which are now included in the Apocrypha, I'm not positive about that.