Just as a “dear diary” moment, I started today on the Great Courses lecture The Apocalypse: Controversies and Meaning in Western History given by Craig R. Koester. And I did so not out of some spiritual awakening but to explore the cultural implications of the apocalypse motif that has grown popular lately and Jungian archetype (to put it in Lewis’ terms (that has haunted us since the beginning of civilization. We’re always full of gloom and doom while sometimes being hopeful about the endgame. I would point, for instance, to its obvious influence on Marx who saw capitalism (his own version of apocalypse (as a steppingstone towards socialism, much as we still see among the more socialist among us. We’re always waiting for it all to come down.
And Marx is a really telling example for a couple of reasons. For one, the original Greek word, apokάlypsis, actually translates into revelation. Hence the interchangeability between apocalypse and revelations in theological nomenclature. And to emphasize the point, note the term enfolded in the etymology involved: reveal. And Marx clearly thought of his project in these terms: to reveal the seeds of Capitalism’s failure whatever successes it might have. On top of that, one of things that Koester seems to emphasize is that the concern of the prophets at the time (mainly John in this case (was not so much the future as the present. In fact, I’m guessing that much of the lecture will be about his contemporary concerns much as was the case with Marx. And we see a similar dynamic with Nostradamus who argued that predicting the future was not so much about actually seeing the future as taking a real hard look at the present. Therefore, John was not so much a prophet as he was an anticipation of the future sci-fy writer.
And the point is (as Koester explicitly points out (to explore the Book of Revelations as a work of literature responding to the times it was written in and apply the motifs and archetypes involved to their various manifestations throughout our cultural history. We see it, for instance, in Dante’s Divine Comedy that runs from the descent into Inferno to Purgatory into Paradismo. And we see the same thing at work in a movie like David Lynch’s Blue Velvet that is capped off by an entrance into a severed ear and an exit from it.