Is the Christ of Revelation Out for Blood?

Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman

Chris Huntley

Christianity, History, Religion & Spirituality

4.8 • 745 Ratings

🗓️ 21 February 2023

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It is surprising that many scholars say that Revelation is not a violent book and was never meant to be. In their judgment, the controlling image of the narrative is Christ as the innocent "lamb who was slain," a non-violent Son of God who experienced violence inflicted by others.

The book then teaches that non-violence is the way to eternal glory, and those who practice violence on earth will, in the end, experience what they themselves promote. Is that a plausible reading of the book?

In this episode I argue that in fact it is precisely wrong, and that Revelation explicitly portrays a violent Christ who wreaks blood vengeance. Is that the Christ of the Gospels?

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman.
0:06.7	The only show, where a six-time New York Times bestselling author and world-renowned Bible scholar,
0:12.8	uncovers the many fascinating, little-known facts about the New Testament, the historical Jesus, and the rise of Christianity.
0:20.2	I'm your host, Megan Lewis. Let's begin.
0:24.7	Hello everyone. Welcome back to misquoting Jesus.
0:27.6	Today we are continuing our look at the book of Revelation and asking the question,
0:32.7	is the Christ of Revelation out for blood?
0:34.9	As we've seen already, Revelation is a particularly violent book of the
0:38.3	New Testament, with depictions of war, destruction, and death that can seem somewhat at odds with
0:43.5	the peace-loving Christ that some Christians are more comfortable and familiar with. Is the contents of
0:48.2	revelation in line with the teachings of Jesus seen elsewhere in the New Testament, or is this
0:52.7	something else entirely?
0:57.6	But before we get into that, Bart, hello, how are you doing this week?
1:03.6	Yeah, I'm doing fine. I'm actually in our mountain house. You might be able to see behind me.
1:10.0	We have this house up in the mountains. So we're taking a long weekend up here. It's nice to get away.
1:27.6	For some reason, I don't know why, but if you're away from home, even if you put as much time in doing the things you're doing, you get much more done. I don't know why that is. I mean, it seems like time is time. Fewer distractions. Yeah, fewer distractions. Yeah. How's your life going right now? Yeah, good. Relatively smooth, actually.
1:33.5	I was mentioning before we started recording, all of my children are healthy, which is these days quite the feat.
1:36.7	I don't know how we managed it, but it means I too am getting a lot of things done.
1:37.6	Wow, okay.
1:38.0	Good.
1:39.6	We'll consider that a miracle.
1:43.6	Given the recent history, so well, well done.
	...

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