First, let me make it clear there WILL definitely be an end of the world! But this is apart from an end of humankind which could come as early as the next fifty years, from either being wiped out in a Torino Scale 10 asteroid strike, or from the runaway greenhouse effect (in which life will be unsustainable because of the super hot temperatures, averaging 144 F even on a "cool" day!) No, the actual, absolute end of the world - as in PLANET- will come in approximately 4.5 billion years after the last of the Sun's hydrogen stores have been converted to helium. At this point, to compensate for the much lower nuclear efficiency, the Sun will expand into a Red Giant and actually engulf the Earth, incinerating it.
Second, let me also make it clear that neither the aforementioned planetary end, nor any earlier one for humanity, will be part of any "judgment" or other nonsense. This is all an amusing offshoot of the Harold Camping fiasco two days ago, which actually saw some fundies asserting a Judgmental END still is coming, it's just that Camping didn't get it right! They then proceed to cite chapter and verse of their bibles to try to prove all the predictions are factual, and especially cite from the famous verses of Matthew 25:31-46, which as Oxford Biblical Scholar Geza Vermes has noted (The Authentic Gospel of Jesus, pp. 149-150) is a PARABLE only and not to be taken literally. Thus it is referred to as "the parable of the last judgment". As Vermes describes it (p. 150):
"The composite apocalytpic picture here is akin to the judgment scene presided over by the Son of man in the Similitudes of Enoch, a book probably dating to the last decades of the first century A.D., and thus roughly contemporaneous with and possibly affecting the redaction of the gospel of Matthew."
Here, by 'redaction', we mean an annotation of the content of one work within the body of the other (Matthew) and Vermes then shows a number of instances from the Similitudes of Enoch that were transferred to Matthew and set up in a kind of parlance of judgment. In other words, the words of one book were essentially transferred to another to form the parable. Vermes adds that in Matthew's rendering the parable structure incorporates the metaphor of the shepherd dividing the sheep from the goats. More importantly, according to Vermes (p. 151):
"In its final form the parable is set in the context of the event of the Parousia and as such belongs to the ideology of the early church, with the son of Man ...empowered to be a final judge."
But again, as I noted in a previous blog, the Parousia was all about a generic, benign return of Christ. The insertion (by later copyists) of all manner of distracting rhetoric concerning terrible -terrifying future events (e.g. in Matt. 24:5-8) concerning "wars and rumors or wars"..."famines, pestilences and earthquakes" as "birth pangs" and forerunners of a judgmental termination is really a parlor trick well known to early rhetoreticians (as well as modern politicians)! That is, take events that will 100% occur in any interval of time T, and then embellish them into future forecasts to make a point!
Thus, earthquakes and volcanoes erupting and wreaking havoc is a given in any given year. Also in any given year (such as currently) there are at least 1-2 major volcanoes that have been building up pressure for decades or centuries and hence ready to erupt! Similarly, The earth averages two to three Richter scale 6.5-7.0 quakes each month, albeit most in relatively poorly occupied regions. The planet also averages 1-2 major volcanic eruptions a year, and that has also been on schedule. There is nothing amiss, or extraordinary going on, in other words, and certainly nothing on which to base any 'end of the world scenario'. As for "wars and rumors of wars", give me an effing break already! Humans have been waging wars (and hence hatched rumors of such) since the year dot! The more serious end time prediction would therefore have been all wars and rumors of wars had ceased! Trouble is, no one considers these aspects in parsing the copyist text!
In connection with all this baloney, 'Revelation" is always referenced. The problem is that Revelation can't be taken seriously other than by a druggie in a drug-induced bender. Much of this derives from the work's bastardization by having originally been authored by Gnostics then re-formulated and redacted into a supposed orthodox Christian text. In other words, a mutant hybrid of two polar opposite traditions! The problem is the concatenation of mixed metaphors, juxtaposed symbols, and stripped similes doesn't work! It ends up being mostly the blatherings of a madman and reads like such! Former science writer Isaac Asimov, also a Judaic Biblical expert in his own right, in his superb Asimov's Guide to the Bible, also correctly notes that the idioms and ancillary language used in Revelation trace the author to be an inhabitant of Patmos. Other specific references are directed to people living in the western third of the peninsula of Asia Minor.
Asimov also correctly notes that just as the tales in Genesis were borrowed and adapted (some might less generously say, stolen) from ancient Babylonian creation fables, so also is most of Revelation taken or adapted from earlier eschatological material in the Jewish Old Testament, especially Daniel. So on top of Gnostic borrowings, there are OT overtones mixed in, which all contribute to leading so many astray.
Worse, Asimov notes the copyist errors - for example in listing the 12 tribes (Judah, Reuben, Gad, Asher etc.)in the wrong order and misspelling several (e.g. Man written for Dan). This section is also important because it's where fundies dredge up their horse pockey that "only 144,000 Jews will be saved at the end" (12,000 from each of the 12 tribes). But as Asimov notes, the number "144,000" was never meant to be taken literally, it simply represented an emphatic way of saying "All the righteous!"
Something along the lines of someone saying today, "It's raining cats and dogs", but no one familiar with the colloquial speech would take it literally!
Lastly, Asimov correctly observes (as my first Theology prof at Loyola did, in Theology 200) that the horrific events referred to could have transpired at any future age and would have been believed to fit by the people alive then. For example, as Asimov notes:
"Never did the four horsemen ride with such effect as in the days of World War I. Not only was there the bloodiest and most stupidly savage slaughter ever seen, on both western and eastern fronts, but there was a revolution in Russia that affects us even today, a famine in both Germany and Russia immediately after the war, and a world wide influenza pandemic in 1918 that killed many more than the war did".
What to make of Revelation then? As the same Theology Prof observed: "Take it as a rather florid and fulsome poem, perhaps written right after a dream...or more likely a nightmare after consuming too much liquor of the day"
Meanwhile, the inherent problem is that statistics and facts don't matter to religious zealots and whackos. In order to keep all their sheep in the fold, paying attention to their screeds, they must use scare tactics and that means holding the scythe of "end times" perdition over the heads of the gullible and weak-minded. They refer to citations in their good books (based on late copyist insertions, or misread parables about "signs" such as famines), but are too dishonest to indicate these have always been with us, and often emerged in combinations of the worst! So why didn't "the end" follow some of those terrible "signs" much earlier? Think back merely 40- odd years: the world came this close (--) to real Armageddon during the Cuban Missile crisis, and millions were dying in Africa (Biafra) from an ongoing famine, even as earthquakes and massive volcanic activity erupted. So, why wasn't the "end" upon us then? Rather than hitting the brakes and saying, okay....here's the end ...with these signs NOW. ...the end of the world miscreants allow the unfolding events to expire as they move on to the next events of a future time, including the Mt. Pinatubo eruption in 1992, the first Gulf War, and other famines....but still refuse to hit the brakes and assert, "okay, this is it my friendlies!" With this type of game (which any casino in Vegas would take) they can't lose a freakin' bet!
In one of the most memorable exchanges ever, ca. 1991, Magician James Randi squared off against a Christian Bible bigot who kept yammering about being in the "last days" (based on the Gulf War) and "we can tell they are here - what with wars, all the horrid crimes, and monumental disasters". To hear the Christian yap, you would believe have believed Armageddon was five years away.
Randi, not one to punt, kept pressing the fool to say exactly when. He reminded the bible puncher that "last days" invocations have been going on and off for the past 100 years or more. And still, none of the forecasters warning us have gotten any closer, despite volcnaoes blowing their lids, massive earthquakes and new diseases and famines appearing all the while. Of course, the guy escaped by saying that "It is not ours to know the day, nor the hour. Only the Lord's!"
And as Randi replied: "Convenient!"
The problem with all such attempts (by Randi's opponent) to use modern events in the service of ancient "prophecies" is that they're like tea leaves or Rorshach blots: anyone can read anything into any statement or claim. At the time of Randi's face off, the worst thing that had been going on was the Gulf War. Everyone, including the pretend preacher, insisted it was the war to lead into Armageddon - since Israel was so near to Iraq. Today, only the nations have been changed, so now it's Iran that may lead us into it. And so it goes, and goes...over and over and over....with no end in sight.
Then there are the prophecies about the "Antichrist". But who or what is it, or he? Numerous excellent religious scholars, including past Jesuit professors I had at Loyola, have made it clear that the Antichrist is not a person at all. It rather represents a metaphor for that nascent, atavistic spirit of aggression and hate within humanity. In other words, the Antichrist is within us all, as a regressive nature or force emanating from our ape-linked genes that still have much further to evolve.
Now, to answer the $64 question: Will Jesus be returning?
No, because Jesus was a MAN, M-A-N, not a divinity. He died, and was buried and while his disciples used some trickery to make people think he had risen again, it was all a ruse. (See Prof. Hugh Schonfeld's: 'The Passover Plot'). This was also why the followers grew so hacked off and impatient after one hundred or more years awaiting the Parousia that they replaced the benevolent returning Christ with a vengeful judge and then altered the scriptures to reflect that - by inserting words into Yeshua's mouth that he would be this very vengeful judge!
Whether or not one accepts Schonfeld's thesis of an actual Passover conspiracy, the myth of a God-Man returning for a "Second coming" is not new, but existed for thousands of years in earlier pagan sources, including for their god-men Horus, and Mithra (The ancient Persian version, not the Roman one). It therefore is quite reasonable to conjecture that later Christian authors, in their yen for "savior"-ship, copied-plagiarized the same legends and superposed them onto Yeshua.
Indeed, as Oxford scholar Geza Vermes notes (op. cit., p. 402, Epilog) Jesus “never chose to call himself ‘Messiah’ or ‘son of God’ even when others questioned him about his alleged Messiahship he usually declined to give a straight answer”. Vermes adds that as for the epithet ‘Son of God’- disallowing the combined expression “Messiah, the Son of God” in Matt. 26:63 (where the two are obviously used as synonyms) it is NEVER spoken by Jesus himself. Vermes adds: “One has to be foolish to believe the mockery of the chief priests and scribes, taunting Jesus to get down from the cross because he claimed to be the ‘Son of God’ (Matt.27:43) . Indeed, “only demons or people possessed by demons addressed Jesus with this title” (Matt. 4:3, Luke 4:3, Matt. 3:11, Luke 4:41 etc).
Will any of this alter the perspective of the End of worlders? Hardly! When one is committed to a hobby horse and is 110% invested in it, it becomes difficult if not impossible to change. They will continue to read into their good books exactly what they want and nothing else. All other explanations dismissed as "Satanic" or "lies" or whatnot. Denial and rationalization triumph in the end over reason. But that is the genesis of faith anyway, isn't it?
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