Search, Ponder, and Pray: A Guide to the Gospels<\/a>)<\/p>\nWhen it comes to our own culture, we know what work a given kind of writing or speaking\u00a0is supposed to do. That little flyer that comes in your mail contains\u00a0coupons, not moral guidance. When you hear “so a priest and a rabbi walk into a bar,” you know it’s going to be a joke. You know the names in the front of an old family Bible are not a list of enemies. No one has to teach you this stuff and you don’t usually even think consciously about it. But when it comes to materials from other cultures, we make assumptions about the kind of material that we are reading. Often, those assumptions are spectacularly incorrect.<\/p>\n
One ancient genre is known as apocalyptic. It was fairly common around Jesus’ time. It seems to sprout up during eras\u00a0of political persecution, functioning almost as a code which allows its users to share significant truths under the radar of the prevailing authorities. It shows God’s power on a cosmic scale and thus re-assures the audience: despite what you see around you, God really is in control. It provides a set of visual images of God’s power which counter the lived experience of oppressive political power. It teaches symbolically. It is not history written in advance and if you read it that way, you miss the point. The longest example of an apocalypse in the Bible is the Book of Revelation. Its first verse says that the revelation was signified, meaning that it is presented through symbols. If you read it as if it were a news article from the future, you are misreading it.<\/p>\n
Which brings us to the “little apocalypse,” also known as the Olivet Discourse (see Mark 13, Matthew 24, and Luke 21; note that some dispute calling this an apocalypse: perhaps it is a farewell address). A literal reading is an impoverished reading, as I think the D & C verses suggest. The point of the passage is not literal celestial discombobulation, but rather something else. A hint to what that something else might be comes from the Hebrew Bible (=Old Testament), which uses the image of celestial bodies to symbolize foreign governments. I think the picture here is that the power and glory of the Lord is so great that other pretenders to the throne will shrink away. This is a beautiful and important message which would have, I think, brought comfort to anyone throughout history who lived under the boot of an oppressive political regime.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33305","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-politics"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33305","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33305"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33305\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33345,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33305\/revisions\/33345"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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<\/a>So here\u2019s the plan: each week that the gospels are covered in Sunday School, I will post\u00a0one question from my book along with a brief discussion of the issues that it raises.<\/em><\/p>\n