Knuth: Fantasia Apocalyptica (2017)
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Hunter Thompson considered the author of Revelation to be one of the greatest writers. The text is apparently full of references to contemporary non-biblical happenings, and that became one of the defining mythical works of the western culture!
Could you mention which twelve kings you're referring to? Where does this twelvefold repetition occur?
> The text is apparently full of references to contemporary non-biblical happenings
The letters to the seven churches at the start of the book do seem to be very pastoral and dealing with events that those churches were facing at the time, but the more "visionary" passages were at least intended "to show to [God's] servants the things that must soon take place." (Revelation chapter 1, verse 1).
Well, I'm obviously not much of a Bible scholar. It might also be that the text differs between the Orthodox bible and English ones.
IIRC Moses put up a camp near Sinai, or maybe it was at one of the many other camps. Kings of the twelve Israelite clans, or whatever they're called in English, brought their gifts to Moses: cattle, gold and silver dinnerware and such. My edition of the Bible gave an elaborate listing of the gifts of the first king, running for a full page at least. And then repeated it eleven more times, with each king having brought the exact same inventory. I've read through all the lists just to see if there's a surprise somewhere—nope!
> The letters to the seven churches at the start of the book
That's not all. The entire thing is considered to be an allusion to contemporary events, deliberately written in a more-or-less opaque style to ensure that the author's life doesn't end abruptly after dissemination. It would indeed show the things that would hopefully soon take place to those able to decipher the number of the beast—but afaik you didn't have to be a Judaist or a Christian to understand the message.
Apparently the genre of apocalyptic revelations was popular at the time, and this book was masqueraded as one of those.
Thank you for clarifying. It seems the passage you're referring to is Numbers chapter 7:
https://biblehub.com/esv/numbers/7.htm
You're right that this does look a little odd as a narrative structure, but perhaps it's better to imagine this text as having an underlying 2 dimensional structure, like a spreadsheet or table. The tribes would go in the first column, and the subsequent row headings would be the categories of gifts, so that the body of the table would contain the individual numbers of items.
Alternatively, one Biblical commentator (Matthew Henry) writes this of the repetition:
"(1.) It was for the encouragement of these princes, and of their respective tribes, that each of their offerings being recorded at large no slight might seem to be put upon them; for rich and poor meet together before God. (2.) It was for the encouragement of all generous acts of piety and charity, by letting us know that what is so given is lent to the Lord, and he carefully records it, with every one’s name prefixed to his gift, because what is so given he will pay again, and even a cup of cold water shall have its reward."
> The entire thing is considered to be an allusion to contemporary events
I see what you mean. I think it is quite common for Biblical prophecy to have a short-term fulfilment and a long-term fulfilment, and sometimes they blur together. So even though the fantastical imagery would have provided an encoded message about the current situation to readers at the time, I think there are other layers to the vision which deal with grander themes and longer time scales.
Bringing things full circle, it is perhaps interesting to note that the twelvefold repetition you mention is also present in the book of Revelation itself, in chapter 7 (coincidentally), where the number of sealed servants of God are listed, namely 12,000 from each tribe. The similarity between the giving of gifts from each tribe for the Tabernacle service, and God's elect being sealed, is presumably deliberate, although it is interesting that the order of the tribes is different between the two passages.
Most of the Old Testament consists of Jewish history, beginning with creation. There are a few that could probably stand on their own: Job, Jonah, the Song of Solomon, Proverbs, and maybe Psalms. (You would miss a lot in Psalms doing this.)
The New Testament is full of allusions to the old and cannot be understood correctly without reading it first. It probably doesn’t matter the order you read the first four books, or even if you read all four - Matthew, Mark, and Luke are very similar in tome and they describe the same events, but you wouldn’t want to skip John.
Acts is simply what happens after the four gospels, and the remainder of the Bible consists of epistles from the apostles which refer to events in Acts and in the gospels, and it wraps up with Revelations.
I don’t really see how you could read it in any substantially different order and get as much out of it.
A few examples: John, the fourth book of the New Testament, was one of the last written.
Luke and Acts are probably part of the same document, written by the same author, but are separated in the traditional ordering.
And so on...
Edit (Correction): as the person replying to me correctly points out, Luke and Acts were not part of the same document, though they were probably written by the same person.
Luke and Acts were probably not part of the same document, but were written separately. The beginning of Acts supports this when the author speaks of his previous book and re-addresses his audience. I suppose you could argue it’s all an interpolation, but the books were separate before the canon was established.
Either way, I wouldn’t consider it arbitrary to have all the gospel narratives together and then have subsequent events afterward. Perhaps you could argue that Luke and John should be swapped, so as to proceed from Luke to Acts, but then Luke is much more like Matthew and Mark theologically and stylistically. You could set John first, but it’s the most difficult of the four. It’s hard to see how your example is a good one of arbitrary ordering. Four books covering the same material are all in one place; the three synoptic gospels are in the same place - how else would you do it?
Moreover, the idea of reading New Testament without having read the Old one sounds rather ridiculous if you aim for anything more than assorted crumblings of the holy words. People at the time of Jesus were living under the law of the old books—it defined their thinking. How can you have an understanding any similar to the intended one if you circumvent this inherent order and go for walls before the foundation? It's like watching Spaceballs without having a glimpse of Star Wars.
So read the most relevant OT books and get on with it! Genesis, Exodus, Duteronomoy, Ruth, a little of the major prophets, Job, Proverbs 8, Psalm 22,23,91 I think? I'm probably missing a lot but seriously it's not needed if you want to understand NT context. I mean the rabbinical culture that Jesus was dealing with in the Gospels was based on a side-conversation the Jews were having about the Torah, not even about the Torah itself. So you'd have to read the Mishnah as well if you really wanted the full context.
I think it's safe to say that analyzing any historical work requires a bit of back referencing. I believe I watched Spaceballs before watching Star Wars, and I think I enjoyed Star Wars more because of it. Can't say for sure, it was a long time ago.
I'm not from the US, but I have an idea about the amendment's contents. Afaik it makes little sense without the presumption of innocence. So to a person living under the feudal law, the self-incrimination clause would be mostly useless. Similarly, if the mankind adopts hard collectivism in the future (in light of overpopulation), the 5th might become meaningless to them.
Even today, there are countries where constitutional freedoms are just a political circus, or communities living under mob rule, and if you recite the 5th to a person there, they'd laugh at you. In the US, southern towns until ~1960s are often portrayed this way.
The same way, I'm pretty sure the culture ≥2000 years ago was quite different to ours, and personally I'm not interested in cherry-picking the text just to get through it as fast as possible―especially since e.g. Dante or Joyce might have considered different chapters obligatory.
Refactoring wasn't invented yet.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKwzy7idSrE&list=PLT0albfWY9...
The number twelve is prevalent in the religions of Mesopotamia. As examples: the horoscope, the twelve houses of Israel, the twelve apostles. Probably all of them are different retellings of the same ancient tale.
The 2nd time I read it a few years later, it was after I actually believed in God and with the help of His Spirit was able to read the whole New Testament and understand it to much greater degree as compared to all of my previous attempts before I believed. And I understood much more of the Revelations than the first time.
That was 25 years ago. Later on, rereading it, it’s amazing to find new meanings and understanding almost every time I read it.
But, out of all of the books of the Bible, this book has the most of mysteries that haven’t been solved or haven’t happened yet... and no amount of commentaries that I read give a satisfying explanation sometimes... and yet the main message is clear ...
Absolutely.
If you haven't been to a touring AAADT performance (IME, each one includes Revelations, among changing other pieces), it's worth it at least once, even if you don't go to performing arts shows, and you're in the nosebleed seats. The videos don't give even 1/10th the live experience, IMHO. (If you're a student, your school might offer discounted tickets.)