re: #93 Dr Lizardo

You know, when I look at the Book of Revelation, the only conclusion I can arrive it as that it was either:

1) An allegory that probably made perfect sense to the audience for whom it was written

2) John of Patmos (the putative author) accidentally ate some bad sardines or something and fell victim to fevered hallucinations

3) John of Patmos accidentally suffered from ergot poisoning, or accidentally ingested some other natural hallucinogen and was tripping balls and, not knowing why that was, interpreted his hallucinations as some sort of divine message

4) The theory advanced by D. H. Lawrence, namely, that the book is a rewrite of earlier source material dealing with a pagan mystery religion or the theory of Barbara Whitlock, that the book is a rewrite of an earlier Zoroastrian text.

Or all four at once.

It’s been a while since I took my Bible as literature course, but I do remember there was a lot of cross-pollination in those days among Greek, Roman, Persian, Egyptian and other Mediterranean cultures, with a smattering of ideas from the Indian subcontinent. It’s not like each of those cultures built walls around themselves.