It is so rad to go through all of this, in the sense that I love seeing other theology-minded folks disseminating this info. Seriously read this if you got the time.
To add especially onto @zaebeeceeβs added points, my biblical studies centered a lot on the forms the Christian Bible took over the years, what material was removed, what was added in, and why.
Revelation is even more fucked up than just having been added centuries late, and having been military propaganda.
See, everyone loves to call it βprophecyβ, something thatβs going to happen. That was by design. In actuality, Revelation is a bunch of metaphors for things that already happened, then embellished after the fact.
Itβs important to remember that the various Christian churches (Catholic & Church of England really) were THE political power of much of the world. The Pope was not just essentially, but was LITERALLY a political position that people were LITERALLY murdering each other in order to be. What was put in the Bible, and the changes to translations made over the years were always done to further the current political rhetoric.
Revelation served multiple purposes that it got recontextualized to fit. First was simply the anti-Chinese/anti-most-of-Asia messaging Zae mentioned as the origin story, as a βprophecyβ of what will happen if you allow other cultures to exist near you for any reason. That purpose behind the βprophecyβ remained the same, but was reinterpreted to refer to whomever was the group to be βothered.β As the world grew more integrated, the interpretation grew more nuanced, more specific, yet also able to be changed each time one End Time doesnβt happen. Itβs the same as the Y2K, 2012, and other end of the world prediction. Keeps people strung along with the promise that the last one was just a test. The real one is always on the way. Moving the goalposts is the tactic here, exactly the way politicians and more βclassicβ cult leaders do it, because they are the same.
As a last point, the entire point of End Times rhetoric is part of the move Christianity (read: people in power) made during the Dark Ages in order to establish control. Promising a cataclysm (by way of CATECHISM? /badpun) and eternal damnation if you didnβt follow the rules was how they maintained control. It was the most literal basic fear tactic. When Christianity actually was a shit-upon group of people, EONS AGO this part of the practice was not there. Then opportunistic folks took advantage of the reset humanity went through thanks to the plague, and made it some special magical Thing of Significance that the Christian monks were the ones preserving written material, leading into the chokehold the Church had on literacy, literally keeping the lower classes from being able to read so they can control the narrative.
Revelation is literally the bedtime story meant to scare you into behaving. And the expected behavior is to hate anything that isnβt part of your insular group. Because if you stray outside the narrative, you might learn that the narrative is full of shit, and is only there to control you. Same with the fear of progressing technology, medical advancements, etc. The status quo is the only way they can hold their control, because progression is how we think for ourselves, itβs how comfort and health and knowledge comes to people regardless of their position in life.
This was meandering but I just have a lot of thoughts on this. If anyone thinks a historical breakdown of all the metaphors in Revelation would be neat lemme know. That would be fun to make.
