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To: alt.magick
From: David R. Jones 
Subject: Re: Crowley Religion and Christianity
Date: Thu, 22 Jul 2004 13:23:50 -0700

Thelema

On 22 Jul 2004 07:05:30 -0700, s.m.kane@mail.pt wrote:
>Favour a good etymylogical dictionary myself - (in the canon that is)
>
>Don't think there is any evidence to connect the "Beloved Disciple"
>(some say John some say Lazarus - some say a disciple of either) with
>the revelation "John of Patmos" geezer.

In fact you are right.  Technically there is an early docrtinal POV in
Christianity that eventually got absorbed into early proto Orthodox
Christianity, and is called the Johannine school:  John's Gospel, the
3 Johannine epistles and Revelation (technically an epistle but in
form and apocalypse). It seems to have been centered in Asia Minor and
is responsible for the final texts of the works that are attributed to
"John."  They cover the same themes, have the same metaphysical
outlook and use a distinct set of symbols to portray Christ, such as
the Lamb of God who taketh away the sins of the world.  The corpus of
Johannine doctrine was among the last incorporated into the Canon of
the proto Orthodox because of technical issues of harmony.  R. Helms
(Who wrote the Gospels) has convincingly demonstrated that the Gospel
of John is a collation of 3 works, the last probably a Johannine
redactor in Asia Minor.  Likewise it has been known from the times of
the earliest Church Father that the book of Revelation is a composite
text of two major hands, with differing chronologies and differing
styles of Greek.  A particulary ironic point given the infamous last
verse of the book.

>Don't ever leave out the book of Tobit.

Tobit is a fascinating piece of angelology with the classic view of
Raphael and much interesting anecdotal metaphysics on how directly
angels relate to humans, and archangels partake directly of God.
Raphael's classic fisherman imagery comes from Tobit and Raphael was
much discussed by Dee and Kelly in the Spirit Actions.

Agape Jones



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From: David R. Jones 
Newsgroups: alt.magick
Subject: Re: Crowley Religion and Christianity
Date: Fri, 23 Jul 2004 13:18:39 -0700
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On Fri, 23 Jul 2004 18:29:15 GMT, "SwAmI"  wrote:

>
>"David R. Jones"
>  Likewise it has been known from the times of
>> the earliest Church Father that the book of Revelation is a composite
>> text of two major hands, with differing chronologies and differing
>> styles of Greek.
>
>Source/evidence?

Both Eusebius in his History of the Church and Dionysus of Alexandria
question the authorship and authenticity of Revelation, and as a study
of pre Athanasian lists indicate, its canonicity was far from
universally accepted.  The problem from a Greek reader's point of view
is that some of the Greek, in the text, is among the most sterling and
perfect in the New Testament and other parts easily the most
grammatically flawed in the New Testament.  By taking the text and
doing a simple division along these lines we find that Rev. 1: 4-11,
and 4:1 - 22:5 fall into the later category.  Among other traits, this
text shows extensive Aramaic idiom and word order and its historical
references are invariably to the Roman empire under Nero.  The second
category includes Rev. 1:1-3;  1:12 - 3:22 and 22: 6-21 wherein the
Greek is flawless and the historical references invariably to the
Roman empire under Domitian.  This argument (and as a Greek reader I
can attest to its rather obvious character esp. with regard to the
horrible Grammar of the first division) can be found in the Harper
Collins Study Bible's introduction to Revelation.  Some would actually
assert that there is a third author (Rev. 1: 1-3 and 22: 6-12) who is
the final redactor, probably arranging the text we now have and adding
the introduction and conclusion.  This has a lot to be said for it on
linguistic grounds not only because of the placement of these sections
but because their style is very very polished and exalted and shows a
conscious effort on the authors part to imitate classical Greek
literary motifs. Whereas the other sections follow the model of form
found in the Johannine epistles. Besides the above mentioned Harper
Collins Study Bible let me refer you to several decent texts that
explore these issues.

Ford, J. Massygberde.  The Anchor Bible: Revelation. Doubleday, 1975.
	A bit of dated view of the 3 author hypothesis but extremely
useful for exploring the source of the themes in the text.

Collins, A. Y. The Apocalypse.  Glazier, 1979.
	Crisis and Catharsis. John Knox, 1992.
	Early Christian Apocalyptism. Scholars Press, 1986.
	Adela Collins is the leading expert and scholar of Revelation
studies today.

Collins, John J. ed.  Apocalypse:  The Morphology of Genre. Scholars
Press. 1979
	A detailed analysis of many aspects of the text including
Greek form and usage.

Pilch, Tina. What are they Saying about the Book of Revelation?
Paulist Press, 1978.
	A general introduction to the various schools and
controversies regarding the text.

Rowland, C. The Open Heaven: A Study of Apocalyptic in Judaism and
Early Christianity. Crossroad, 1992.
	One of the best surveys on the genre and the self referential
relationships of various texts.

Alter, Robert & Frank Kermode. eds. The Literary Guide to the Bible.
Belknap Press, 1987.
	Basic arguments on literary motifs and their meaning in the
Bible.
	

>