Dark History of the Bible

by Michael Kerrigan

  Close to where the scene it depicts must have taken place, a door of St Peter’s Basilica in Rome shows the death of St Peter, the first pope, himself. Peter is said to have been crucified upside down, at his own request.

  ‘The only apostle whose martyrdom does find ‘official’ confirmation in the New Testament is James’.

  The rest of St Paul’s story is much sweetness and light, despite occasional harassment by the Jewish and Roman authorities. Tradition has it that he was ultimately to die a martyr. In deference to his Roman citizenship, he was beheaded, being spared the grislier and more demeaning end of crucifixion that Christ himself had faced. There’s no scriptural basis for this story, though. Neither is there any for the tradition of St Peter’s death on a cross – upside-down, it’s said, at his own request. Far from finding the idea of crucifixion undignified, the first pope apparently saw himself as unworthy of dying the same death as his Lord and Saviour, so personally asked that the manner of his execution should be changed. The only apostle whose martyrdom does find ‘official’ confirmation in the New Testament is James, the Brother of John, whom Herod the Great’s grandson (Herod Agrippa) executed ‘with the sword’ (Acts 12, 2).

  ‘Behold, he cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see him …’ St John, on the island of Patmos, receives that ‘Revelation’ which Christians have found so memorable – if also so disturbing – down so many generations.

  VIII

  THE BIBLE

  REVELATION

  ‘The time is at hand…’ warns the Book of Revelation. God will ultimately save his human creation, but before that the battle between good and evil will engulf the world.

  ——♦——

  ‘The sun became black … the moon became as blood’.

  REVELATION 6, 12.

  ‘I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty’ (Revelation 1, 7). Having taken us through the alphabet from the first letter to the last; across a highly-coloured history of humankind from first Creation and Fall to final Redemption, the Bible glances to the future with a disturbing drama of the end times. The ‘Revelation of Jesus Christ’, we’re told, was given by God himself to St John the Divine ‘to shew unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass’ (Revelation 1, 1). ‘Blessed is he that readeth’, the text goes on – although the experience doesn’t necessarily feel too much of a blessing, given all the tumults and the terrifying traumas it describes.

  For it’s in these pages that we find the original ‘apocalyptic vision’. The Greek word ‘apocalypse’ means ‘revelation’ – which doesn’t, of course, necessarily have to be so alarming. Here, however, that revelation takes place against a background of prodigious signs and omens that appear in the heavens, on earth and in the oceans. It’s from this that the word ‘apocalypse’ has acquired its popular associations – its suggestion of general upheaval, of volcanoes, earthquakes, thunder and lightning and fiery rain.

  For All to See

  ‘Behold,’ says the Book of Revelation (1, 7): ‘he cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him: and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him.’ There is much that is mystic in this concluding book of the Bible, but here, at least – as represented in the phrase ‘every eye shall see him’ – the revelation could hardly be more literal, more prosaic. Christ our Saviour, it says, will be physically revealed – displayed on high where everyone can see him. There’s more to it than this, of course, but even so, in perhaps its most important sense the book’s meaning is clear enough. Christ’s message will prevail, it promises; his majesty – and the scale of the sacrifice he has made for us – will be made completely evident to all.

  ‘And I gave her space to repent of her fornication; and she repented not’.

  REVELATION 2, 21

  Pretty much immediately, though, the narrative takes a sharp turn towards the much more obscure. ‘What thou seest,’ says a voice ‘as of a trumpet’ (1, 10): write in a book, and send it unto the seven churches which are in Asia … And I turned to see the voice that spoke to me.

  ‘Out of his mouth went a sharp two-edged sword,’ Revelation 1, 16. The Evangelist’s vision of the ‘Son of Man’ amid the ‘seven candlesticks’, his ‘feet like unto fine brass’, is one of the most extraordinary images of an extraordinary text.

  It’s a strange world in which our narrator John can turn to ‘see’ a ‘voice’; but a far stranger one in which he can see a sight like the following (1, 12):

  And being turned, I saw seven golden candlesticks; And in the midst of the seven candlesticks one like unto the Son of man, clothed with a garment down to the foot, and girt about the paps with a golden girdle. His head and his ears were white like wool, as white as snow; and his eyes were as a flame of fire; And his feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace; and his voice as the sound of many waters. And he had in his right hand seven stars: and out of his mouth went a sharp twoedged sword …

  He was, he said, ‘the first and the last’ (1, 17); ‘he that liveth, and was dead’, but now, ‘alive for evermore’.

  Jezebel Reborn

  He was, in other words, the risen Christ, come to take charge of his Church, hence his messages for Christian communities in Asia Minor (modern Turkey). He gave credit where credit was due, finding much to commend in all these congregations. But he criticized laxness where he saw it, saving the worst of his anger for the church in Thyatira (now Akhisar). There, it seems, a local woman had been preaching to the people, pretending to prophetic powers. Christ compared her with the pagan queen we first encountered in 2 Kings 9 (see p. 146, Chapter 5:

  Notwithstanding I have a few things against thee, because thou sufferest that woman Jezebel, which calleth herself a prophetess, to teach and to seduce my servants to commit fornication, and to eat things sacrificed unto idols. And I gave her space to repent of her fornication; and she repented not. Behold, I will cast her into a bed, and them that commit adultery with her into great tribulation, except they repent of their deeds… (2, 22)

  The Apocalypse according to Albrecht Dürer. So inspired was the German artist by the Book of Revelation that he brought out his own edition in 1478. This design shows the Chosen Ones and the Saints (those carrying palms).

  Seven Seals

  The door of heaven opened, John saw a voice ‘as it were of a trumpet talking with me’ (4, 1) said ‘Come up hither, and I will shew thee things which must be hereafter.’ Saw an assembly of ‘four and twenty elders, sitting, clothed in white raiment; and they had on their heads crowns of gold’ (4, 4). At the centre of this gathering, around a throne, stood ‘four beasts full of eyes before and behind’ (4, 6): they resembled a lion, a calf, a man and a flying eagle respectively, although each had six wings in addition to its multitude of eyes.

  The first six seals of the book (5, 1) are breached by the Lamb of God and a succession of startling images are unleashed – most strikingly, the ‘Four Horsemen of the Apocalyse’.

  All the elders fell prostrate on the floor before the figure upon the throne, in whose hand could be seen ‘a book written within and on the backside, sealed with seven seals’ (5, 1). But when an angel demanded to know who of those present was worthy to open the book, John ‘wept much,’ he says, ‘because no man was found worthy to open the book, neither to look thereon’ (5, 4).

  There too, however, was a lamb standing ‘as it had been slain’ (5, 6) – the Lamb of God, the sacrificed Christ, in other words. It had ‘seven horns and seven eyes’ (for Asia Minor’s seven churches?). As the elders worshipped before the Lamb, they were thronged about by angels, ‘and the number of them was ten thousand ties ten thousand, and thousands of thousands’ (5, 11).

  Four Horsemen

  The Lamb it was who now set about opening each of the seven seals in turn. Amid a sound like that of thunder, a white horse was revealed. Upon it sat an archer, to whom a crown was given.
‘He went forth conquering, and to conquer’ (6, 2). The opening of the second seal uncovered the sight of a red horse, whose rider wielded a sword given him to enable him ‘to take peace from the earth’ (6, 4). When the third seal was opened, a black horse could be seen: its rider held up a balance or a scale. The fourth seal was now broken: a ‘pale’ horse emerged. Mounted upon it was the figure of Death (6, 8):

  ‘I saw the seven angels which stood before God; and to them were given seven trumpets … There were voices, and thunderings, and lightnings, and an earthquake. And the seven angels which had the seven trumpets prepared themselves to sound’ (8, 6).

  THE BEAST

  BETWEEN ITS LOCUSTS and its lambs, its calves, its frogs and its eagles, the Book of Revelation is striking in its fauna. Among its most memorable species, however, are those referred to only as ‘the beast’. The first appears ‘ascendeth out of the bottomless pit’ in 11, 7. The second (unless it’s the same one), makes its appearance at 13, 1:

  And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy.

  It was, the description continues (13, 2):

  like unto a leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion.

  His allegiance with Satan was all too clear, however: ‘the dragon gave him his power, and his seat, and great authority.’

  ‘Another beast’ is seen ‘coming up out of the earth’ at 13, 11. This one, however:

  doeth great wonders, so that he maketh fire come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men.

  It had ‘two horns like a lamb’, we’re told – and we’re reminded of the meek and gentle appearance of the Lamb of God. But since it ‘spake as a dragon’, giving Satan’s message, there’s no mistaking the reality: this monster was the devil in sheep’s clothing. Since his role, we’re told, is to cause earth’s inhabitants to ‘worship the first beast’ (13, 12), this second creature is seen by scholars as emblematic of false prophecy and paganism: it is commonly identified as the ‘Antichrist’.

  The seven-headed beast of Revelation is depicted with by Lucas Cranach the Elder (c. 1475). Piety apart, the fascination of these phantasmagorical figures for the artists of Reformation Europe isn’t difficult to understand.

  and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.

  The opening of the fifth seal revealed ‘under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the world of God, and for the testimony that they held:

  And they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth.

  The breaching of the sixth seal was the signal for ‘a great earthquake’ (6, 12):

  And the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood; And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind …

  And after these things I saw four angels standing on the four corners of the earth, holding the four winds of the earth, that the wind should not blow on the earth, nor on the sea, nor on any tree (7, 1).

  Thousands of souls were seen, representing all the different tribes of Israel. They were ‘clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands’. Asked how their robes came to be of such a dazzling white, an elder explained (7, 14):

  These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.

  And when he had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour. And I saw the seven angels which stood before God; and to them were given seven trumpets.

  ‘The fifth angel sounded … And he opened the bottomless pit … And there came out of the smoke locusts upon the earth: and unto them was given power, as the scorpions of the earth have power’ (9, 1).

  GETTING NERO’S NUMBER

  ‘HERE IS WISDOM’, says Revelation (13, 18). ‘Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast.’ It is, verse 18 goes on to say, ‘Six hundred threescore and six’ – that is, 666: a number that haunts fans of horror books and movies to this day.

  Was the original ‘beast’ the Roman Emperor Nero, a cruel persecutor of Christians and (it was widely rumoured) the author of the Great Fire of Rome in 64AD? Many thought so, and further believed that the two were connected. Nero, in this interpretation, having started the terrible conflagration secretly in order to clear some ground he had designs on for an extension to his palace, had been caught off-guard by the backlash. He had therefore sought a scapegoat in Rome’s Christian community.

  In the special gematria number-code the Christians used for secret communications, the figures for Nero came to 666.

  ‘Michael and his angels fought … and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth’ (12, 7). The victorious archangel stands over the vanquished Devil in a stained-glass window inspired by Guido Reni’s painting (1636).

  THE WHORE OF BABYLON

  WHOEVER THE ‘WOMAN of the Apocalypse’ was, she could hardly have been more different than the ‘whore that sitteth upon many waters’, to whom we’re introduced in Chapter 17 of Revelation. She is one, an angel says, ‘with whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication’ (17, 2); indeed, her sluttish sins have been a ‘wine’, intoxicating the people of the earth with sin. ‘I saw’, says John (17, 3):

  a woman sit upon a scarlet coloured beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns. And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet colour, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication.

  Lest there should be any doubt over who she was or the scale of her sinfulness, a name was written ‘upon her forehead’ (17, 5):

  MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH.

  Babylon by this time belonged in the annals of ancient history; its empire was semi-mythical in its status now. Most early scholars assumed that this imperial whore was really Rome, then mounting cruel persecutions against the followers of Christ. Hence the condition of this woman, ‘drunken with the blood of the Saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus’ (17, 6): ‘that great city, which reigneth over the kings of the earth (17, 18).

  As, one after another, these angels sounded their trumpets, ‘there were voices, and thunderings, and lightnings, and an earthquake’ (8, 5); there was more ‘hail and fire mingled with blood’. ‘A great mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea;’ we’re told (8, 8): ‘and the third part of the sea became blood.’

  Locusts from the Smoke

  The fifth angel sounded, and, says John (9, 1):

  I saw a star fall from heaven unto the earth; and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit. And he opened the bottomless pit; and there arose a smoke out of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace; and the sun and the air were darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit.

  And, he continues (9, 3):

  There came out of the smoke locusts upon the earth; and unto them was given power, as the scorpions of the earth have power … And the shape of the locusts were like unto horses prepared unto battle; and on their heads were as it were crowns like gold, and their faces were as the faces of men.

  Horrific hybrids, these locusts had, we’re told (9, 8):

  hair as the hair of women, and their teeth were as the teeth of lions … And the sound of their wings was as the sound of chariots of many horses running to battle. And they had tails like unto scorpions.

  A War of Good and Evil

  More lightning, more earthquakes and more hailstorms followed before (12, 1) ‘there appeared a great wonder in heaven’:

  A woman clo
thed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars.

  A GREAT DAY? REALLY?

  ONE OF THE most notorious events of the Revelation narrative is Armageddon, the climactic battle of the end-times. We do find mention of ‘a place called in the Hebrew tongue Armageddon’ (that may or may not be that same ‘Megiddo’ outside which Josiah’s forces failed to smite the Egyptians in 2 Chronicles 35). The spirits of devils, ‘working miracles’ (16, 14):

  go forth unto the kings of the earth and of the whole world, to gather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty.

  That, however, is essentially it. No epic confrontations, no troop-tsunamis or heroic last-stands. Nor any explicit suggestion of a second coming of Christ as the Messiah. No details of any kind, indeed. For an event that has come to loom so large in the imagination (and not just that of believers) in modern times, there’s remarkably little about this battle in the Bible.

  ‘And he gathered them together in a place called in the Hebrew tongue Armageddon … And there were voices, and thunders, and lightnings; and there was a great earthquake …’ (16, 16), but of the ‘battle’ which unfolded here there’s very little detail.