Revelations: Visions, Prophecy, and Politics in the Book of Revelation (11 page)

Ezra’s account of loss becomes, then, a vision that finally encompasses the devastation—and hope for healing—of a whole nation. The following night, he receives a terrifying vision of Rome, “the fourth kingdom which appeared in a vision to your brother Daniel.” Drawing upon Daniel’s prophecy, just as John had, Ezra sees Rome as a monstrous beast rising from the sea and as an enormous eagle with three heads, showing that this empire is “headed” by three rulers, apparently alluding to the three emperors who destroyed Jerusalem—Vespasian, Titus, and Domitian, the latter still reigning as he writes. Thus Ezra, like John, expresses anger over Israel’s destruction and longs for God to set things right as he looks forward to the day when God’s messiah casts Israel’s oppressors into a fiery pit, raises the righteous back to life, and reigns in the new Jerusalem.

John of Patmos had ended his revelations there—in judgment,
fire, and glory—but Ezra turns from these, hoping for still more exalted inspiration. Imagining that the pagan nations had burned and destroyed Israel’s Torah and Scriptures, the prophet asks the Holy Spirit to inspire him so that he might restore revelation to the human race. Following instructions he receives in a vision, he goes back to the field, this time bringing piles of writing tablets and five expert scribes:

Seeing the spirit as divine intoxication, Ezra says that inspired words now poured forth from him, so that “during forty days, ninety-four books were written.” The first twenty-four, he says, turned out to be the traditional twenty-four books of the Hebrew Scriptures, which the Lord told him to publish for everyone to read. But Ezra says that he was told to keep secret the
seventy
books that followed and show them to no one but “the wise,” for “in them are the springs of understanding, the fountains of wisdom, and the river of knowledge.”
²⁷
Through this vision, Ezra boldly suggests that the whole Hebrew Bible, including the writings of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Daniel that shaped John’s Book of Revelation, and much of his own, amount to only a
small part
of
all inspired sacred writings. Furthermore, he implies that such secret writings, although written long after the biblical ones, contain even more insightful revelations, among which he tacitly—and cleverly—includes the one he is now writing, the Revelation of Ezra itself.

Around 90
C.E.
, when Ezra was writing about two kinds of sacred books—open books and secret ones—many followers of Jesus, like John of Patmos, understood “the Scriptures” to mean, quite simply, the Hebrew Bible. Yet as more of Jesus’ followers began to write books, their sacred collections, like Ezra’s, came to include
both
kinds of writing—some open to everyone, like the New Testament gospels, and other books written and treated as secret writings (in Greek,
apocrypha
). Like Jews today who are familiar with the mystical teachings of kabbalah, Muslims who embrace Sufism, or Hindus or Buddhists who know Tantra, many Christians during those early centuries had heard not only of Jesus’
public
teaching from books like the gospels of Matthew and Luke but also of a wide range of
secret
gospels and revelations, like the Revelation of Peter, with which we began, and the Secret Revelation of John, which, like the Revelation of Ezra, was widely read in early Christian groups.
²⁸
This Secret Revelation, attributed to Jesus’ disciple John, whom many identified with John of Patmos, apparently was written to supplement what John of Patmos wrote.

The Secret Revelation of John opens in crisis as the disciple John, grieving Jesus’ death, is walking toward the temple to worship when he meets a Pharisee who mocks him for having been deceived by a false messiah, these taunts echoing John’s own fear and doubt. Devastated, John turns away from the temple and
heads toward the desert, where, he says, “I grieved greatly in my heart.” Suddenly, like John of Patmos before him, he says he saw brilliant light as the heavens opened, and the earth shook beneath his feet: “I was afraid, and then in the light I saw a child standing by me.” Terrified, John says he saw there a luminous presence that kept changing form, and then heard Jesus’ voice speaking from the light: “John, John, why do you doubt, and why are you afraid? … I am the one who is with you always. I am the Father; I am the Mother; I am the Son.”
²⁹

The Jesus who appears in the Secret Revelation does not look as he does in John of Patmos’ visions. Instead of a divine warrior leading heavenly armies to “strike down the nations,” he appears here as the apostle Paul says he saw him—in blazing light and a heavenly voice, and then in changing forms, first as a child, then as an old man, then—and here scholars disagree—either as a servant or as a woman.
³⁰
And while John of Patmos says that Jesus showed him “the things that are about to take place,” the Jesus who appears in the Secret Revelation reveals not only future events but “what is visible and invisible”—what is already, and always, present.

Much of the Secret Revelation of John apparently draws upon esoteric—or, as some would say, mystical—Jewish tradition. As John continues to question “the Lord,” he hears that God transcends anything we can understand: “it is infinite light.” When John keeps asking “What can we know?” the divine voice explains that although God’s transcendent being, characterized as masculine (“primordial Father”), is beyond human comprehension, what we
can
know of God is a genuine, but lesser, form of divine being, often characterized in feminine form, here called by various
names—Protennoia (a Greek term that could be translated as “primordial consciousness”), Mother, even Mother-Father or Holy Spirit.
³¹

Why, then, do so many people live ignorant of God, hopeless and despairing? John says that Christ answered with a creation story: when the divine Mother brought forth heavenly beings to rule over the heavens—sun, moon, and stars—these luminous powers conspired to dominate the human race. Since they hoped to obliterate awareness of the transcendent God and attract worship to themselves instead, they cast fear and desire “like nets” over human beings, so that nearly every culture mistakenly worships the sun, moon, and stars. Yet because God originally created humankind “in his image,” the celestial powers failed to eradicate every trace of “the luminous
epinoia,
” that is, the capacity for spiritual insight, hidden deep within each one of us.

Hearing this, John takes heart: “I said, ‘Christ, will everyone’s soul live in the pure light?” Jesus replies, “You have gained great insight.… Those on whom the Spirit of life will descend … will be saved … and purified … from all evil.”
³²
John keeps questioning: who will be saved? Does God’s spirit come to everyone, or only to certain people? Jesus answers that salvation is available to
everyone,
since God’s spirit is essential for life: “The power enters into every human being, for without [the spirit] they could not even stand upright.”
³³
The Secret Revelation concludes as Jesus says to John, “I have told you all these things so that you might write them down, and give them secretly to your kindred spirits, for this is the mystery of those who become spiritually stable.”
³⁴
Thus the Secret Revelation suggests that what is revealed to John is potentially available to all people, since all have received the
same spirit—or, at least, to all who are receptive to what the spirit teaches.

The Secret Revelation (Apocryphon) of James, discovered in a volume found with others that contain copies of the Secret Revelation of John, says that James, Jesus’ brother, copied this book in response to a request

James adds that “I sent to you, ten months ago, another secret book which the Savior had revealed to me.” The author of the Secret Revelation, speaking as James, tells how the disciples, after Jesus’ death, began to write down what they had heard him teach, some writing “open” books and others “secret” books, like this one:

While the disciples were busy writing, James says, and “I was writing what was in my book,” suddenly, to their astonishment, “the Savior appeared, having departed from us as we gazed after him.” Here the author deliberately recalls—and challenges—what many Christians believe, having read the New Testament Book of Acts. For the Book of Acts says that after Jesus died, he appeared to his disciples in resurrected form and continued to speak with
them
for forty days,
but that then he ascended bodily into heaven: “As they were watching … a cloud took him out of their sight. While he was going … they were gazing upward toward heaven.”
³⁶
Traditionally, Christians have taken this to mean that
after
that time, those seeking access to Jesus could find it only indirectly, through “apostolic tradition,” as they called the oral and written accounts that the apostles were said to have handed down for the benefit of those born too late to ever speak directly with Jesus.

This Secret Revelation pictures “the twelve disciples” writing down what Jesus had told them, to hand down his teaching for later generations, as if they, too, believed that since Jesus had left them, direct access to him had ended. The author of the Secret Revelation of James challenges this assumption by setting the opening scene
a year and a half
after Jesus’ death, saying that when the disciples suddenly saw Jesus standing among them, they reacted with shock. Instead of welcoming him with joy, at first they ask incredulous questions, as if he could not—or should not—be there: “And
five hundred and fifty days after he had risen from the dead,
we said to him, ‘
Have you departed, and removed yourself from us?
” To their surprise, Jesus says that he has neither left them behind nor ended their contact. “Jesus said, ‘No; but I shall go to the place from whence I came. If you wish to come with me, come!”
³⁷
When they hesitate, Jesus urges them to take the initiative in speaking with him, then takes James and Peter aside, apparently because he finds them more receptive than the others, and offers to “fill” them.

Thus the Secret Revelation of James invites—and encourages—its hearers to seek ongoing revelation, then shows Jesus teaching them
how
to do so. For first Jesus tells Peter and James that it was
not only during his earthly lifetime that he came to them;
even now
he comes to those open to receive him:

Whoever is open to his presence, then, may learn how to engage in “dialogue with the risen Jesus.” As a first step, Jesus urges them to seek to understand what he has already taught. Speaking with some impatience, he challenges James and Peter to recall the parables of “the seed,” the “lamps of the virgins,” the “wages of the workmen,” and “the lost coin”—parables familiar from the gospels of Matthew and Luke. Jesus promises that when they actually understand what these parables mean, they will see that the kingdom of God is not just an event coming at the end-time but a reality into which one may enter here and now. But Jesus says that whoever wants to understand this must come to know God
experientially,
through an inner, intuitive kind of knowing
:
“unless you receive this through
gnosis,
you will not be able to find [the kingdom].” Next Jesus offers paradoxical teaching, urging Peter and James not only to
follow
him but even to
“become better than I; make yourselves like the son of the Holy Spirit!”
³⁹
As the Secret Revelation of James concludes, Jesus teaches them how to pray so that they may send heart, mind, and, finally, spirit into heaven. So, James says,

Here the Secret Revelation of James apparently alludes to practices not spelled out in detail, traditions of spiritual ascent that, as we shall see, various religious groups taught to their members.
⁴¹

When scholars first read the Secret Revelation of John, the Secret Revelation of James, and other books found at Nag Hammadi, we noticed that many—even most—include “dialogues” with Jesus or with another divine revealer.
⁴²
Several of us were editing the Dialogue of the Savior—which consists of dialogue between the risen Jesus and three close disciples, Matthew, Mary Magdalene, and Judas—when our colleague and mentor, Professor Helmut Koester, asked a key question: “How would someone have
written
this kind of dialogue?” As our work progressed, we suggested that Christians then, like many today, struggling to understand Jesus’ teachings, imagined themselves as Jesus’ earliest disciples. Some sought
through prayer and meditation to engage in “dialogue with the savior” as they questioned what certain sayings and parables meant. The Dialogue of the Savior suggests that they also engaged in discussion with one another, perhaps recalling Jesus’ saying that “where two or three are gathered together in my name, I am there among them.”
⁴³
When new insights came to them, they would receive these as divine revelations and write them down, understanding what they had received through prayer, reflection, and discussion as part of their ongoing “dialogue with the risen Jesus.”