t Ah, the Greek Churches didn’t want Revelations when they compiled the books of the Bible. Only the Latins wanted it. Since Rome agreed to NOT include a number of books in the official canon, the Eastern churches agreed to include Revelations, against their better judgement.
To this day, 1700+ years later, you rarely hear Revelations mentioned among the Orthodox churches. It’s ‘there’, but not taken too seriously.
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The Bible is a group of smaller books compiled in order to make a definitive binding, as there were a lot of texts floating around — “fake news” of the day. The Brietbarts and CNNs of the 2nd century were inserting their own biases, changing the messages around.
So that’s why they came together.
It was always a text to be taken within other bodies of texts, within a group of worshipping people called the Church.
But, there have been a few splinters here and there, usually over obscure theological issues (nature of God stuff, so maybe not so obscure).
The idea of taking the Bible *outside* of the context of a living Church of people, picking up a copy randomly and starting to read it however you like, wasn’t even a thinkable thought ’til 1300+ years after it was compiled. By that time, Constantinople had fallen to Mehmet II and no longer “2nd Rome”, the knowledge of the Greeks transferred to the West, which they ate up (just before Constantiple fell), thus starting the modern history of Europe and then finally, the USA.
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That’s good. But who guided your interpretations?
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Post-modernism is fashionable so maybe you don’t need any.
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PS – somebody was arguing scripture stuff with me, doing a lot of Revelation quoting. I got to give my three paragraph “brief history of scripture” as it relates to the Eastern churches and Rome but I thought up a new twist:
I asked, “who guided your interpretation? Unless you’re a post-modernist, which I hear is quite fashionable these days”.
Silence in response. I believe I have the gotcha for anti-church Bible-is-enough folks. [because their political leanings tend to be anti-University, linking up ‘roll your own interpretation’ with post-modernism was a strong ‘gotcha’]. Maybe it’ll get him to look into some more history.
Anyway, wanted to share with you. We may have different political leanings, but we’re both keen on the importance of having a historical footing on things.
[I also called the reason for compiling the Canon of scripture the Church’s response to the Brietbarts and CNNs of the day – 2nd century Fake News. Hopefully I helped him think a little]
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