Faith and reason"Apocalypse" and "Revelation" are two sides of the same coin, and after recent events in Japan their root meanings are especially relevant, says Ian Harris.
"Apocalypse", announced some newspapers after Japan's triple terror of devastating earthquake, catastrophic tsunami and radiation-leaking nuclear plant four weeks ago today.
"Apocalyptic" was the adjective reporters reached for to describe the scale of the calamity.
The graphic scenes of destruction conjured an image of the end of the world. The words seemed all too apt.
For that, you can blame doomsday preachers who for centuries have read into natural disasters signs that the end of the world was nigh - and who for centuries have got it wrong. Their focus on apocalypse as devastation now determines the word's meaning in popular usage. Which is a pity, because it began quite otherwise.
As a literary genre, apocalypse bore a radiant message of hope to the downtrodden and the persecuted: the last book in the Bible, Book of Revelation, is a prime example. Revelation began as an underground resistance pamphlet encouraging Christians to remain faithful in the face of Roman oppression. These days, unfortunately, it has become the happy hunting ground of cranks.
Another name for Revelation is "Apocalypse", from the Greek apo, meaning "away", and kalypsis, "veiling". So apokalypsis means taking away the veil.
The genre is rooted in the searing experience of conquest and subjection that befell the Jews during the two centuries before Christ. About 30 apocalypses survive, and their central theme is the struggle between light and darkness. They promise the faithful will be vindicated in life beyond death, and God will intervene to punish the wicked and establish his rule on Earth.
In the process, they draw on weird symbolism, mythological beasts, warnings of pestilence and catastrophe. Such imagery would be clear enough to those with the background to understand it, while leaving their persecutors mystified. The writers would have laughed hysterically if someone had suggested they were predicting events 2000 years into the future.
The clue to making sense of Revelation and similar books is they were tracts for their times, written to inspire the faithful to stand firm. The end-time is near, they were told. Their sufferings would soon be over.
So what had been happening in the latter part of the first century AD to prompt John, a Jewish Christian banished to an island off western Turkey, to pen this apocalypse for the infant Christian church?
In AD64, the emperor Nero had ordered the persecution of Christians, blaming them for starting a great fire in Rome. Four years later, he stabbed himself to death. But his memory haunted the far-flung empire. Many people believed he would return and seize back the throne.
Then, in the year 70, the Romans had laid waste Jerusalem and destroyed its temple. Worship of the emperor was already encouraged as a means of holding the empire together, and acknowledging Caesar as Lord became a test of political loyalty. When Domitian became emperor in 81, he ratcheted up the demand that everyone conform or face the consequences.
For Christians, whose earliest creed was "Jesus is Lord", acceptance would be tantamount to renouncing their faith. Many refused, and suffered for it. The Roman Empire came to represent the forces of evil warring against God. In Revelation, written about AD95, Rome became Babylon, the beast, the great harlot.
The book makes a coded reference to the emperor which has been gleefully misapplied to finger the Pope, reformer Martin Luther, Hitler and many others.
The beast had "the number of a man", 666. Its mark was essential to buying and selling. It had been "wounded ... and yet lived".
That is readily unveiled. Before Europe adopted Arabic numerals, numbers were represented by letters of the alphabet. In Hebrew, the letters for Nero Caesar add up to 666. Coins, used in buying and selling, bore the emperor's image. Nero had been stabbed but was expected to come back ("wounded by the sword and yet lived"). In the persecutions of Domitian he seemed to have returned with a vengeance.
Yet in the midst of all this, John says, in effect: "Darkness all around us, light has always found us, light will come ... Where the dark is deepest, greater light will keep us safe from harm ... Look towards the light and carry on." The words are from a song by New Zealander Jenny McLeod, but the sentiment is pure Revelation.
John's world was light years away from the calamity that struck Japan. But his message of hope is relevant to both.
• Ian Harris is a journalist and commentator.
