BIBL 679 Beyond the Veil: Introduction to the NT Apocalypse Regent College

Edith Humphrey Summer School 1996

Myth, Symbol and Reality in the Apocalypse
David Barr reads the Apocalypse as a three-stage mythic journey into another world, set within an
epistolary framework which anchors the work in real space and time. But he interprets this frame as
itself a fiction, created to form the liturgy of the eucharist. This setting of corporate worship is one
stage removed from the real world of daily life on the streets. The confusion between truth and fiction,
between the real and the unreal, is enhanced by his statement that myth really does transform
reality: it is not just pretend.
1
In similar vein, Tina Pippin, classifying the Apocalypse as fantasy,
states that [t]he vision is real; the world of the unreal becomes real in fantasy literature.
2
Such classifications of a portion of sacred Scripture as myth or fantasy arouse anxiety among
conservative Christians, whose understanding of myth generally matches that of the OED definition:
myth is a purely fictitious narrative usually involving supernatural persons, actions or events, and
embodying some popular idea concerning natural or historical phenomena, properly distinguished from
allegory and from legend (which implies a nucleus of fact).
What is myth? What is real and unreal? Like Northrop Frye reading Spensers The Fairie Queene,
when we attempt to analyze the Book of Revelation, we find ourselves entangled in the discomfiting
words of myth, symbol, ritual and archetype.
3
Not all are willing to recognize these elements in t he
book. For example, J. W. Montgomery writes concerning the millennium, Premillennialism endeavors to
offer as literal an interpretation of Rev. 20 as possible Exegetically, the claim is made that only a
literal interpretation of Rev. 20 fulfills the basic hermeneutic rule that a passage of Scripture must be
taken in its natural sense unless contextual considerations force a non-literal rendering.
4
This
immediately begs the question, What is the natural sense of Scripture? It is observed that those who
insist most loudly on the natural sense of Scripture are those most prone to read the text in the light of
their own culture, not in the light of the culture in which it was written. Frye notes the inaptness of
applying the frequent designation of literal-minded to one who ignores literary conventions, for such

1
Barr, 48.
2
Pippin, 73.
3
Frye, Anatomy, vii.
MYTH, SYMBOL AND REALITY IN THE APOCALYPSE 2
a one is an imaginative illiterate.
5
It is the purpose of this essay to explore the realms of myth, symbol
and reality.
6
Myth: fact or fiction?
Mythos (mu'qo") was as slippery a term in the ancient world as it is today.
7
The earlier Greek
authors such as Homer and Euripides used mythos for anything spoken or, more specifically, for a story,
whether true or false. Originally synonymous with logos (lovgo") it came to be strongly contrasted wi th
that term, logos meaning an historically true story, mythos a fictional story. Herodotus and
Thucydides, for both of whom, as historians, the distinction between fact and fiction was crucial, used
mythos to refer to the latter.
8
In the New Testament mythos is contrasted in the strongest possible terms
with truth and eyewitness testimony (1 Tim 1:4; 4:7; 2 Tim 4:4; Tit 1:14; 2 Pet 1:16).
9
Plato and Aristotle made distinctive use of mythos. Finding that his philosophical dialectic
(logos) could explain only so much of the world, Plato resorted to mythos to explain the remainder.
Myths were therefore not stories about the gods but symbolic descriptions of ultimate reality itself.
10
Aristotle used mythos as a technical term for a certain type of drama. In his Poetics, he has given us
a theory of literature that is still of great value 2300 years later. He considered both literature and
music to be primarily modes of imitation (mimesis), differing in the medium, the objects, and t he

4
J. W. Montgomery, Millennium, ISBE, 3: 360-1.
5
Frye, Anatomy, 76.
6
This three-fold approach mimics the title of the volume edited by Olson, Myth, Symbol, and Reality. Among the
individual essays, Lonergans Reality, Myth, Symbol and Olsons Myth, Symbol, and Metaphorical Truth are
obviously of great relevance. This imitation was initially subconscious, for I arrived at it after many iterations, and
based upon a broad spectrum of reading and thinking. However, having benefitted much from Olson and his
collaborators, I am happy to acknowledge my subconscious indebtedness to their titles.
7
LSJ, 1151, identifies three primary meanings and twelve subcategories of meaning.
8
F. F. Bruce, Myth, NIDNTT 2:643-47; G. Sthlin, mu'qo", TDNT 4:762-95.
9
In 1 Tim 1:3-4, Paul urges Timothy to instruct certain people not to teach false doctrine and not to occupy
themselves with myths and endless genealogies (muvqoi" kai; genealogiv ai" aj perav ntoi", interminable myths and
genealogies REB; NASB, NIV as NRSV) that promote speculations rather than the divine training that is known by faith.
In 1 Tim 4:7, Paul instructs Timothy, Have nothing to do with profane myths and old wives tales (bebhvlou" kai;
grawvdei" muvqou", worldly fables fit only for old women NASB; godless myths and old wives tales NIV; superstitious
myths, mere old wives tales REB).
In 2 Tim 4:3-4 Paul warns Timothy that the time is coming when people will turn away from listening to the truth
and wander away to myths (muvqou", fables REB).
In Tit 1:10-16, Paul urges Titus to rebuke the many rebellious people, idle talkers and deceivers so that they may
become sound in the faith, not paying attention to Jewish myths (Ioudai> koi' " muv qoi") or to commandments of those
who reject the truth, implying that these myths are impure and corrupt.
In 2 Pet 1:16, Peter defends his authority to write a letter reminding his readers of the truth, For we did not
follow cleverly devised myths (sesofismevnoi" muvqoi", cleverly devised tales NASB; cleverly invented stories NIV;
MYTH, SYMBOL AND REALITY IN THE APOCALYPSE 3
manner of imitation.
11
Aristotle distinguishes mimesis praxeos, imitation of action (praxis), from
mimesis logou, imitation of thought (theori a). The former he classified into history, an imitation of
specific action, and mythos, an imitation of typical action.
12
Throughout most of the Christian era, myth has carried the negative connotation exemplified by
the New Testament. The nineteenth century saw a great resurgence in the popularity of mythology,
prompted by the Romantics emphasis on the imagination, by the historical critics demonstration of
traditions behind the Bible, and by the archaeologists discovery of stories similar to those in t he
Bible.
13
Following the brothers Grimm (Jakob, 1785-1863, and Wilhelm, 1786-1859), myths were
understood to be stories about the gods, the very view against which Plato rebelled 22 centuries earlier.
Gunkel set the dominant tone for the study of mythology in the Bible. While demonstrating t hat
contemporary mythology permeated the Biblical worldview, he insisted that the Bible itself
contained no myths because myths require multiple gods.
14
Instead of adopting the myths of t he
surrounding cultures, the Israelites historicized them, transforming the supposed cyclical,
naturalistic, and mythical thinking of Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Canaan into the linear, historical,
and anti-mythical thinking of Israel.
15
Brevard Childs described Israels use of the surrounding mythology as broken mythology. Yet for
all the admitted presence of broken myths in the Bible, they help us understand only the individual
biblical images, not the overall biblical message of creation, fall and redemption. Northrop Frye
remarks that the Bible is explicitly antireferential in structure, and deliberately blocks off any world

talescleverly concocted REB) when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we
had been eyewitnesses of his majesty.
10
Bruce, 643; Sthlin, 773-4.
11
Aristotle, Poetics, I; cf. Frye, Anatomy, 65.
12
Frye, Anatomy, 82-83.
13
Robert A. Oden, Jr., Myth, ABD, IV:946-956.
14
Oden, 947; cf. Sthlin, 780.
15
Oden, 947. Demonstration of Israels transformation of surrounding mythology is a favourite theme of Nahum
Sarna, Understanding Genesis and Exploring Exodus. For example, he writes in his introduction to Understanding
Genesis, xxvii-xxviii, that the old mythological motifs were not slavishly borrowed; there is no question of
uncreative imitation. Sometimes, in fact, these motifs seem to have been deliberately used in order to empty them of their
polytheistic content and to fill them with totally new meaning, refined, dynamic and vibrant. At other times, they have
been torn out of their life context to become mere literary devices, static and conventionalized. In either case, it is in
this sphere that the uniqueness of biblical revelation becomes apparent. The Hebrew cosmology represents a
revolutionary break with the contemporary world, a parting of the spiritual ways that involved the undermining of
the entire prevailing mythological world-view.
MYTH, SYMBOL AND REALITY IN THE APOCALYPSE 4
of presence behind itself. The Old and New Testaments are not mirrors of their surrounding cultures,
but are mirrors of each other as type and anti-type, a double mirror.
16
Scholars have suggested that the Apocalypse contains contemporary myths, broken or otherwise.
Adela Yarbro Collins reads the book as an ancient combat myth, a struggle between two divine beings
for universal kingship, a re-working of the Babylonian Marduk and Tiamat, the Canaanite Baal and
Yam, the Egyptian Horus and Seth, the Greek Apollo and Python.
17
It is undeniable that the combat
myth is to be found in the Apocalypse, but the question of purpose must be asked: Why would John write
a new version of the combat myth? This is all the more urgent a question for Collins, because she finds
the source of the Revelation myth in the Grecian myth of Apollo and Python, not in any of the Semitic
myths.
18
This is an extraordinary conclusion given the prevalence of Old Testament imagery in t he
book. It begs a more specific rendering of the previous question, Of what use is a Grecian combat myth
to the readers of the Apocalypse?
New understandings of the nature and role of myth are providing some satisfactory answers to these
questions. Collins work fits within the old view of myths as stories about the gods, a view held by t he
Greeks of Platos day. In a demonstration of the familiar axiom that there is nothing new under the sun,
recent students of myth have rejected this definition, just as did Plato. They have replaced it with a
rehabilitated myth that looks very similar to Platos symbolic representation of reality, and
Aristotles typical history.
Exemplifying this new approach to myth, John Gager is greatly interested in the effect of myth
upon the readers understanding of reality. Plato created myths because he was unable to explain
reality with normal language. Aristotle connected myth with the typical reality which history,
interested only in actual reality, could not explain. Building on the work of Lvi-Strauss, he notes t he
ability of myth to change reality.
19
Both Collins and Gager understand Johns purpose as consolation,

16
Northrop Frye, The Double Mirror, in Myth and Metaphor, 231.
17
Collins, The Combat Myth, 2. Collins prosecuted her Ph.D. at Harvard, where she came under the acknowledged
influence of Frank Moore Cross, Jr. In his Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic (1973: 90), quoted in Oden, 948, Cross
rejects the argument that Israel historicized myth or mythologized history: in Israel, myth and history always stood in
strong tension, myth serving primarily to give a cosmic dimension and transcendent meaning to the historical, rarely
functioning to dismiss history.
18
Collins defends this in her Appendix, The Combat Myth, 245-261.
19
Gager refers to Lvi-Strauss essay on The Effectiveness of Symbols, chapter 10 in Structural Anthropology,
where he compares and contrasts the shaman and the psychoanalyst. Collins, The Combat Myth, 44, refers to the
MYTH, SYMBOL AND REALITY IN THE APOCALYPSE 5
but Gager observes that merely repeating the same old stories, which is what the book is in Collins
view, would have been inadequate to a community experiencing the internal crisis that persecution
provokes, a conflict between promise and reality.
20
Instead the writer builds a new myth, a
distinctively Christian myth. Again using Lvi-Strauss work on the purpose of myth, Gager concludes
that through myth the believing community comes to experience the future as present,
21
t he
suppression of time through the mythological enactment of that future in the present.
22
The
purpose of the Apocalypse, indeed any apocalyptic work, is not to achieve the millennium, but to
support the community for a short time before the End.
23
A fleeting glimpse of a glorious future gives
one hope to endure a difficult present, an insight recognized by all psychologists but, it seems, by few
biblical scholars.
From the very title of his essay, The Apocalypse as a Symbolic Transformation of the World it is
obvious that David Barr works within this new understanding of myth, building upon the work of,
among others, Lvi-Strauss and Gager. Following Northrop Frye, Barr challenges us to imagine t he
world that the Apocalypse would have created for its first readers when first read.
24
He extends
Gagers tantalizingly brief interpretation of the Apocalypse as myth
25
by insisting that the reading
of the Apocalypse would transform both the hearers and their reality, i.e., their worldview. He thus
reaches a different conclusion than Gager:
Persecution does not shock them back into reality. They live in a new reality in which lambs conquer and
suffering rules.
The victims have become the victors. They no longer suffer helplessly at the hands of Rome; they are now
in charge of their own destiny and by their voluntary suffering they participate in the overthrow of evil and
in the establishment of Gods kingdom. They now see themselves as actors in charge of their own destiny. And
that is perhaps more of a victory than most folks achieved in first century Asia Minor.
26

following chapter, The Structural Study of Myth, but makes no reference to chapter 9. In her Preface she notes that
Gagers work was not available to her in time for consideration in her dissertation work, ibid., xv. She notes her
agreement with his conclusion on the bipolar imagery of the Book of Revelation, but makes no mention of his comments
about the function of myth, a matter in which she seems to have little interest.
20
Gager, 51-52.
21
Gager, 55. He notes that this is the opposite of psychoanalysis through which the patient comes to experience
the past as present. Both work to transform reality through knowledge, but there is a major difference:
psychoanalysis leads to an integration of the conflicting poles, whereas the apocalyptic solution envisages the
complete eradication of one pole. As before, Gagers reference is to Lvi-Strauss essay on The Effectiveness of
Symbols.
22
Gager, 50. He attributes the phrase the suppression of time to Lvi-Strauss, The Raw and the Cooked (New
York: Harper & Row, 1969) 16.
23
Gager, 56.
24
Barr, 40.
25
Barr, 46.
26
Barr, 49-50. Attributing the term to William Alfred, Herbert Mason, 16, refers to a myth as an ambush of
reality, liberating us from our restricted vision of the real, in particular, liberating us from a focus on self so that we
see the larger universe. In his Introduction, Olson, 5, adds that [i]n an age dominated by narcissistic preoccupation
MYTH, SYMBOL AND REALITY IN THE APOCALYPSE 6
Symbol: allegory or archetype?
Symbolism was irrelevant to the old definition of myth as stories about the gods, but it is
indispensable to the renewed understanding of myth as symbolic representation of reality. The whole
Bible is pervaded with symbols, and the Apocalypse is no exception. It has been widely observed t hat
while John makes no direct quotation from the Old Testament, he makes upward of 350 allusions
thereto. To the Old Testament images he has added the Christian symbolism that arose out of t he
teaching of Jesus and the reflection of the early Church upon his life and work, itself largely a
reinterpretation of the Old Testament imagery. Austin Farrer has described Christianity as a rebirth
of images, a process that is most clearly seen in the Apocalypse, where John writes of heaven and
things to come, that is, of a realm which has no shape at all but that which the images give it.
27
Waardenburg cautions that we may be unable to precisely correlate symbol and myth with reality
for they may be the only means by which we can even talk about such reality.
28
This is especially true
of all reality that is primordial, extraterrestrial, or yet future, and of which man therefore has no
direct experience. Those who have received visions into that reality are well aware of their inability
to express what they have seen. So, for example, Ezekiel writes of his vision into heaven in language
several degrees removed from reality:
And above the dome over their heads there was something like a throne, in appearance like sapphire; and
seated above the likeness of a throne was something that seemed like a human form. Upward from what
appeared like the loins I saw something like gleaming amber, something that looked like fire enclosed all
around; and downward from what looked like the loins I saw something that looked like fire, and there was a
splendor all around. Like the bow in a cloud on a rainy day, such was the appearance of the splendor all
around. This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the LORD.
29
John finds himself in a similar predicament:
I was in the spirit on the Lord's day, and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet saying, Write in a
book what you see and send it to the seven churches, to Ephesus, to Smyrna, to Pergamum, to Thyatira, to
Sardis, to Philadelphia, and to Laodicea.
Then I turned to see whose voice it was that spoke to me, and on turning I saw seven golden lampstands,
and in the midst of the lampstands I saw one like the Son of Man, clothed with a long robe and with a golden
sash across his chest. His head and his hair were white as white wool, white as snow; his eyes were like a
flame of fire, his feet were like burnished bronze, refined as in a furnace, and his voice was like the sound of
many waters. In his right hand he held seven stars, and from his mouth came a sharp, two-edged sword, and
his face was like the sun shining with full force.
30

with the myth of the self and the plethora of solipsistic intellectual permutations that are its consequence, this is not an
insignificant point.
27
Farrer, 17.
28
Waardenburg, 41.
29
Ezek 1:26-28a.
30
Rev 1:10-16.
MYTH, SYMBOL AND REALITY IN THE APOCALYPSE 7
After this I looked, and there in heaven a door stood open! And the first voice, which I had heard speaking to
me like a trumpet, said, Come up here, and I will show you what must take place after this. At once I was in
the spirit, and there in heaven stood a throne, with one seated on the throne! And the one seated there looks
like jasper and carnelian, and around the throne is a rainbow that looks like an emerald. Around the throne
are twenty-four thrones, and seated on the thrones are twenty-four elders, dressed in white robes, with
golden crowns on their heads. Coming from the throne are flashes of lightning, and rumblings and peals of
thunder, and in front of the throne burn seven flaming torches, which are the seven spirits of God; and in front
of the throne there is something like a sea of glass, like crystal.
Around the throne, and on each side of the throne are four living creatures, full of eyes in front and
behind: the first living creature like a lion, the second living creature like an ox, the third living creature with
a face like a human face, and the fourth living creature like a flying eagle.
31
Ezekiel and John were unable to explain the reality that they saw, but symbolism allowed them to
present that reality. Their language is ambiguous because the reality they saw is, in any sense
meaningful to us, ambiguous. This ambiguity can make the symbols seem contradictory, but if we try to
reduce them to logical order we have nonsense. The multifarious nature of symbolism is troubling to t he
modern, scientific, post-Enlightenment mind, but the postmodern mind with its willingness to admit
multiplicity of meaning is rediscovering the power of symbolism. Austin Farrer was again ahead of hi s
time in his understanding of symbolism when he wrote nearly fifty years ago:
St. Johns images do not mean anything you like; their sense can be determined. But they still have an
astonishing multiplicity of reference. Otherwise, why write in images rather than in cold factual prose? It has
been said that the purpose of scientific statement is the elimination of ambiguity, and the purpose of symbol the
inclusion of it. We write in symbol when we wish our words to present, rather than analyse or prove, their
subject-matter. (Not every subject-matter; some can be more directly presented without symbol.) Symbol
endeavours, as it were, to be that of which it speaks, and it imitates reality by the multiplicity of its
significance. Exact statement isolates a single aspect of fact: a theologian, for example, endeavours to isolate
the relation in which the atoning death of Christ stands to the idea of forensic justice. But we who believe that
the atoning death took place, must see in it a fact related to everything human or divine, with as many
significances as there are things to which it can be variously related. The mere physical appearance of the
death, to one who stood by then, would by no means express what the Christian thinks it, in itself, to be; it
took many years for the Cross to gather round itself the force of a symbol in its own right. St John writes of a
Lamb standing as slaughtered and significances of indefinite scope and variety awake in the scripture-
reading mind. There is a current and exceedingly stupid doctrine that symbol evokes emotion, and exact prose
states reality. Nothing could be further from the truth: exact prose abstracts from reality, symbol presents it.
And for that very reason, symbols have some of the many-sidedness of wild nature.
32
Symbolic interpretation often raises from literalists the cry of allegory and liberalism, but even
these literalists are forced into allegorical interpretation. It is impossible to avoid doing so, for a l l
commentary is necessarily allegorical interpretation, trying to extract meaning from images.
33
In
interpreting any text, especially an image-laden one such as the Apocalypse, it is essential to recognize
the difference between allegory and archetype. Allegorical interpretation expects a one-to-one
correspondence between image and reality, but with little attention to the whole body of

31
Rev 4:1-7.
32
Farrer, 19-20.
MYTH, SYMBOL AND REALITY IN THE APOCALYPSE 8
correspondence. Allegorical interpretations can be brilliant and ingenious, but their lack of holistic
understanding renders them ultimately futile as explicators of reality.
34
Archetypal interpretation reads the Bible not as a series of loosely-connected symbols but as a
single archetypal structure extending from creation to apocalypse.
35
Indeed, the Bible is probably t he
most systematically constructed sacred book in the world.
36
The original readers of the Apocalypse
were persecuted Christians struggling to find meaning in the midst of their suffering. Allegorical
symbols would have given them interesting things to talk about in the comfort of their living rooms, but
they had no comfortable living rooms. They did not have the luxury to engage in fanciful allegory.
What they had was a book with tremendous unity, which gave them a view of reality consistent wi th
all that had gone before, showing them where they fit into the grand scheme. Because it deals in
archetypes, the Apocalypse gave them a plot, an existential necessity lacking in the lives of many
today.
37
It is noteworthy that allegorical interpretations of Revelation abound in lands wi th
comfortable living rooms.
In His providence, God has given us the New Testament not through the pen of systematic
theologians and literalist commentators, but through that of biblical theologians and imaginative
commentators. The Christian view of reality is therefore highly symbolic. The rich imagery of
Scripture, coupled with its highly selective representation of reality, result in Biblical texts being
fraught with background.
38
Identification of any biblical imagery therefore requires considerable
background knowledge. The Apocalypse is more fraught with background than any other biblical text.
The background that lies behind it is not contemporary geography, politics and military hardware, but
all of the rest of Scripture, to which the Apocalypse provides the fitting conclusion. Reading t he
Apocalypse in the light of Johns background produces archetypal truth; reading it in the light of our

33
Frye, Anatomy, 89.
34
Frye, Anatomy, 342; cf. Jasper, 35: the art of Revelation is more than simply an allegorical code in which each
symbol and item requires exact translation into prosaic equivalent Rather, the whole description, redolent of the Old
Testament, should be taken together as an indivisible entity of great emotive and evocative power. It is not intended to
have the clarity of a portrait, but it is distinctive in its sense of awe and majesty, age and authority, sublimity and
glory.
35
Frye, Anatomy, 315. In The Great Code and Words with Power, his two studies of the Bible and Literature,
Northrop Frye describes some of these archetypal structures.
36
Frye, Anatomy, 315.
37
Alan M. Olson, Introduction, in Olson, 5,
38
The term fraught with background was introduced in chapter 1 of Erich Auerbachs epochal study of
Mimesis: the representation of reality in Western literature.
MYTH, SYMBOL AND REALITY IN THE APOCALYPSE 9
contemporary background produces allegory, as illustrated by Ray Stedmans commentary on Rev 9:17-
19:
What does this description mean? It hardly seems possible that John himself understood what he was
looking at. All he could do was record his impressions of future warriors, armor, and weaponry far beyond
his ability to imagine. In fact, the events described in this ancient book of prophecy are still in our own future,
and thus may be beyond our ability to imagine as well.
Yet it seems clear that what John envisions for us is the machinery of modern (or future) military
destruction translated into the military terminology of his own day. Breastplates of various colors seem to
suggest armored chariotsthat is, tanks, troop carriers, missile launchers, rocket batteries, artillery pieces,
and aircraft of various countries bearing the identifying colors of their nations of origin. Since there are so
many nations gathered, it would be necessary that each nations war material be clearly identified.
The lions mouths which sprouted fire and smoke suggest cannons, mortars, rocket launchers, and even
missiles killing great masses of people with fire, radiation, and poison gases. The fact that one-third of the
human race is destroyed in this conflict strongly suggests that weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear
weapons, will be used.
Another intriguing image is that of the horses tails, described as being like snakes, having heads that
inflict injury. These words would apply to various kinds of modern armamenthelicopter gunships with
rotors mounted in their long tail assemblies, or perhaps missiles which leave a snake-like trail of smoke in
their wake and inflict injury with their warheads. Perhaps it is a description of weapons that are yet to be
developed.
39
Reality: literal or imaginative?
The influence of modernism, positivism, and Enlightenment rationalism produced a confusion of
history with truth, a belief that the historian was a dispassionate and objective recorder of facts. Long
ago Aristotle realized that history is not reality, but an abstraction, an imitation. History is
necessarily selective. No historian would undertake as comprehensive a survey of the life of a single
man in a single day as James Joyces Ulysses, but even Joyces exhaustive account is a selection of all t hat
Leopold Bloom did and thought in Dublin on June 16, 1904.
Since, according to Aristotle, history is an imitation of specific action, it is limited in its ability to
understand and explain reality. It can describe what has happened, and even explain why those events
happened, but it cannot describe what normally happens, or what should happen, or what mi ght
happen in the future. Description of the typical, what Aristotle calls myth, is a further abstraction
from the actual, but because it deals in generalities it actually gets closer to the real nature of things
than description of the actual.
History endeavours to be a dispassionate account of the actual, but this is not the way that man
usually thinks of his own history. Nahum Sarna recognizes this, rejecting literalism because i t
MYTH, SYMBOL AND REALITY IN THE APOCALYPSE 10
involves a fundamental misconception of the mental processes of biblical man and ignorance of hi s
modes of self-expression.
40
Literalism is not the way that Israel thought of her own history. She had
her court chronicles, several of which are mentioned in the Old Testament, but it is not these historical
documents that have survived. Instead, what have survived are the distillations of the chronicles in
the books of Samuel and Kings, and the further distillation of these in the work of the Chronicler. For
example, in the Books of the Kings, the actions of the kings have been rendered into typical statements
such as Asa did what was right in the sight of the Lord, as his father David had done (1 Kgs 15:11),
or [Amon] did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, as his father Manasseh had done (2 Kgs 22:20).
Records of actual events have been transformed into symbolic statements, but the narrator has not
thereby distanced us from reality. Quite the opposite: by extracting meaning from the actions of t he
kings, he has actually drawn us closer to the real nature of their reigns. Where the historian would
have remained neutral, the biblical narrator has taken sides, producing what Aristotle would classify
as myth. Myths as such imply morality or immorality, whereas history calls for objectivity. Myths
take sides; history remains neutral. Myths display passion; history is opposed to anything resembling
passion. Its only contact with passion is the readiness to record it as it does anything else.
41
C. S. Lewis
reminded his students and correspondents alike that it is better to use imaginative language t hat
evokes feeling, rather than descriptive language which merely tells us what the emotion is. Dont say
it was delightful!, make us say delightful when weve read the description.
42
The literal statement
delightful is more removed from reality than the imaginative presentation of delight.
Myth is not to be dismissed as any less real than history. In his essay on The Double Vision of
Language, Northrop Frye describes biblical myth as neither historical nor anti-historical, [but]
counter-historical, and biblical metaphor as neither logical nor illogical, bur counter-logical.
43
They are different from literary myth and literary metaphor, for biblical myths are myths to l i ve
by, and biblical metaphors are metaphors to live in.
44
They therefore have transforming power.
45

39
Stedman 194-5.
40
Sarna, Understanding Genesis, xxiii.
41
Wiesel, 23.
42
Hart, 75-76.
43
Frye, The Double Vision, 16-17.
44
ibid., 17-18.
MYTH, SYMBOL AND REALITY IN THE APOCALYPSE 11
In his essay on Myth and History, Elie Wiesels understanding of reality is shaped by the twin
forces of his Jewish heritage and his writers profession. As a Jew, he knows that the the opposite of
history is not myth. The opposite of history is forgetfulness.
46
As both a Jew and a writer, he knows
that [s]ome events happened that are not true. Others are true but did not happen.
47
Sarna observes that literalism produces hopeless inconsistency in the interpretation of
Scripture.
48
Non-literalists, recognizing the pervasiveness of symbolism throughout Scripture, are
willing to adopt symbolic readings. Literalists admit symbolism only reluctantly, accepting symbolic
readings only when they cannot do otherwise. So Montgomery writes, as already quoted, of the basic
hermeneutic rule that a passage of Scripture must be taken in its natural sense unless contextual
considerations force a non-literal rendering.
49
Accepting symbolic readings only when forced to do so,
literalists develop allegorical readingsa mish-mash of individual, unrelated correspondences, never
archetypal readingsholistic symbolic readings of the whole of biblical imagery.
Turning to the Apocalypse, it is obviously not a historical document because it does not give a
dispassionate record of past events. Nor is it simply a prediction of the future. Indeed, contra t he
literalists, no passage of Scripture is a straight-forward prediction of the future. Although the birth,
life and death of Jesus fulfilled Old Testament prophecy they did so in a manner entirely unforeseen by
both the professional scholars and Jesus close associates. As the disciples reflected upon these events in
the light of Pentecost, they came to understand that Jesus fitted perfectly with the archetypal flow of
Scripture, and that he fulfilled perfectly all the imaginative foretellings of the prophets. This process
of reflection reaches its climax in the Apocalypse, in which, using archetypal language, John describes
both past and future events. Based upon the inability of first century Jews to expect the right type of
Messiah, it would be presumptuous of us to believe that we can identify the precise nature of the events
of which John writes, but when those events do unfold, we shall find that they are as consistent wi th

45
The danger of any literary approach to the Bible is that one is transformed by the power of the story, not by the
power of God who lies behind the story. Fryes many works show that he has had a profound lifelong encounter with
the Bible, but one gains little sense of any transforming encounter with God Himself. It is therefore to be asked whether
he really lives by the biblical myths and lives in the biblical metaphors. See Calvin Dueck, A Critical Analysis of
Northrop Fryes Reading and Structure of the Bible, unpublished MCS dissertation, Regent College, Vancouver BC,
December 1995.
46
Elie Wiesel, Myth and History, 30.
47
Wiesel, 20.
48
Sarna, Understanding Genesis, xxiii.
MYTH, SYMBOL AND REALITY IN THE APOCALYPSE 12
Johns imaginative Apocalypse as the events of Jesus life were with the imaginative writings of t he
Old Testament prophets.
Johns Apocalypse is therefore no less true for being written in the imaginative language of myth
and archetypal imagery. Tina Pippin classifies the Apocalypse as fantasy. On a literary level she is
correct for all apocalyptic literature is fantastic, reaching far beyond the mimetic into t he
marvellous.
50
This lack of mimesis does not imply that fantasy is any less a faithful representation of
reality, for as C. S. Lewis observes, sometimes fairy stories may say best whats to be said.
51
Fantasy
is an especially appropriate vehicle for presenting the future, for there is yet no action for mimesis.
Add to this the apocalyptic expectation of profound transformation in the entire cosmos and fantasy
becomes the only available vehicle for presenting a realm which is far beyond our ability to
understand.
In his essay On Three Ways of Writing for Children, C. S. Lewis contrasts the literary fantasy
with the psychological fantasy of wish-fulfilment, showing that psychological fantasies are created
not by literary fantasies but by realistic stories:
[Fantasy] is accused of giving children a false impression of the world they live in. But I think no literature
that children could read gives them less of a false impression. I think what profess to be realistic stories for
children are far more likely to deceive them. I never expected the real world to be like the fairy tales. I think
that I did expect school to be like the school stories. The fantasies did not deceive me: the school stories did.
All stories in which children have adventures and successes which are possible, in the sense that they do not
break the laws of nature, but almost infinitely improbable, are in more danger than the fairy tales of raising
false expectations.
52
The dangerous fantasy is always superficially realistic. The real victim of wishful reverie does not batten on
the Odyssey, The Tempest, or The Worm Ouroboros: he (or she) prefers stories about millionaires, irresistible
beauties, posh hotels, palm beaches and bedroom scenesthings that really might happen, that ought to
happen, that would have happened if the reader had had a fair chance.
53
Both types of fantasy have a profound effect on our understanding of reality. Each produces a
longing, but they are radically different types of longing. The one is an askesis, a spiritual exercise,
and the other is a disease.
54

49
J. W. Montgomery, Millennium, ISBE, 3: 360-1.
50
Pippin, 71, quotes Lance Olsons definition of postmodern fantasy: Often fantasy begins in the realm of the
mimetic, then disrupts it introducing an element of the marvelous, the effect being to jam marvelous and mimetic
assumptions.
51
C. S. Lewis, Sometimes Fairy Stories May Say Best Whats to Be Said, in On Stories. In this essay he notes the
ability of fantasy to steal past our inhibitions, similar to Alfreds observation that myth has the ability to ambush
reality.
52
C. S. Lewis, On Three Ways of Writing for Children, in On Stories, 37. Cf. Aristotles advice that the poet
should prefer probable impossibilities to improbable possibilities, Poetics, XXIV.
53
ibid., 38.
54
ibid., 39.
MYTH, SYMBOL AND REALITY IN THE APOCALYPSE 13
Lewis helps us see the danger of literalist interpretations of the Apocalypse: their very realism
produces psychological fantasies. Talk of rapture, tribulation and Armageddon can easily foster a
warmongering attitude that is quite at variance with the gospel message. In its extreme forms i t
produces diseased minds and emotions. In even its mild forms it focuses the readers mind on the physical
at the expense of the spiritual and theological. Furthermore, the realism of literalist interpretations is
a very transitory realism, restricted to current political geography and military technology.
Opposed to the literalist reading of the Apocalypse is the imaginative reading, what Frye calls
imaginative literalism,
55
or metaphorical literalism,
56
which gives us double vision. The
Apocalypse is a symbolic representation of reality. Allowing the symbols to remain symbols preserves
their realism for all points in space and time. The archetypal reading of the Apocalypse is indeed an
askesis, a spiritual exercise, for one cannot read the book imaginatively without being profoundly
changed. Indeed, all imaginative literature has the power to transform lives in a way which no
history book can accomplish.
57
Conclusion
No book of the Bible has produced such a variety of readings as the Apocalypse. Gager remarks
that it has probably alienated more readers than it has enchanted.
58
More than for any other book,
there is disagreement over genre. Difficulties in genre recognition arise from two major sources: semantic
problems of definition, and uncertainty about how to handle symbolic language. Neither problem is
new. Plato and Aristotle had different understandings of mythos, neither of which followed t he
popular understanding of their day. Whether to define the Apocalypse as myth is somewhat moot
given the confusion over the term. In the end, it does not matter what label is given to the book; more
important is the definition attached to the label. Depending upon the nature of those definitions,

55
Frye, The Double Vision, 17.
56
ibid., 69.
57
See, for example, the testimony of the members of the Chrysostom Society in their volume The Classics Weve
Read, The Difference Theyve Made (ed. Yancey), originally issued under the title Reality and the Vision.
58
Gager, 50.
MYTH, SYMBOL AND REALITY IN THE APOCALYPSE 14
myth and fantasy may be either very appropriate labels or very inappropriate labels for the genre
of the Apocalypse.
More important than attaching a label to the book is appropriate recognition of the nature of t he
contents. The Apocalypse is written in highly imaginative language. Failing to accept this, t he
literalists create their own fantasy, while those who do read the book imaginatively get closer to
reality.
MYTH, SYMBOL AND REALITY IN THE APOCALYPSE 15
Abbreviations
ABD Anchor Bible Dictionary, ed. David Noel Freedman (New York: Doubleday, 1992).
ISBE International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, 3d ed., ed. G. W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 1979-1988).
NIDNTT New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology, ed. Colin Brown (Grand
Rapids: Zondervan, 1986).
LSJ Liddel-Scott-Jones, Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed. with supplement (Oxford, 1968).
OED Oxford English Dictionary, 2d ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989).
TDNT Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, ed. G. Kittel and G. Friedrich (Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 1964-1976).
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MYTH, SYMBOL AND REALITY IN THE APOCALYPSE 16
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