The same individual can be both a fictional character and a real person. Suppose, for instance, a director makes a scifi movie on an alternate history theme. Maybe Hitler wins WWII. Maybe the Civil War results in a truce. You just change some key variables. What if Hitler didn't invade Russia? What if Churchill broke his neck falling down a staircase? What if FDR lost his reelection bid when new of his mistress leaked out?
What if Sherman fought for the South? What if Grant was shot to death in a bar room brawl? What if Stonewall Jackson wasn't killed early on? What if Lee used guerrilla tactics rather than frontal assault? What if Lincoln lost his reelection bid because the Union army was faring badly?
In these alternate history scenarios, all the major players will be the same. They'd be based on real people. Yet they're fictional characters in the alternate history scenario. They only exist in the imagination of the director or screen writer.
Something to keep in mind when we read Revelation. It's not a historical narrative like the Gospels or Acts. Rather, this is a surreal world, like a revelatory dream. Although some of the figures are based on real people, or correspond to real people, they function as fictional characters within the plot of Revelation. There's dramatic license in an allegorical vision that you don't have in straight historical reportage.
The problem with this theory is that Revelation opens with "events which will soon take place".
ReplyDeleteThere is nothing fictional about Revelation. But imagine someone 2,000 years ago seeing images of modern warfare, nuclear explosions, chemical warfare, drones and fighter planes etc. And then trying to express that in 1st century greek.
I don't have a particular view on what Steve wrote, because my brain is a bit fogged today and I've not yet worked out which characters he is particularly thinking of (Steve?).
DeleteBut... I can't help raising an eyebrow at how your two paragraphs seem to go in different directions. The second takes the view that in Revelation we have a very literal, historical description of modern warfare. John saw warfare from around our times, and described it as someone from his era would. But in the first, "soon take place" has a large degree of elasticity in it. It can stretch out to two millennia. Why is it that the imagery can't stretch, but the time references can? I think it's plain from the the fact that he's using stock OT prophetic imagery that that's the wrong way round. The imagery is using stock characters, well understood to Bible readers, and thereby not to be understood as a photographic description using his available vocabulary.
Andrew,
Deletei) I can't tell from your comment if you're a preterist or futurist.
ii) I think Revelation has lots of fictional elements. To name a few:
• the three story universe
• a seamonster
• a dragon in the sky
• a woman in the sky, clothed in the sun, with a crown of stars
• flying horses
• A subterranean netherworld where demons are confined
• Heaven as a city in the sky
• chaining the dragon
• a winged woman
Futurist.
DeleteI think there is a difference between fiction and symbolism. The dragon coming out of the sea uttering great blasphemies is thought to be either islam or the antichrist.
But, in the backdrop of the stock Old Testament prophetic imagery that should surely be our interpretative grid, monsters arising out of the sea are totalitarian pagan states (together with, but not solely viewed as, their enforced state religions/ideologies).
DeleteA fictional movie does not represent anything real, it's pure fiction. The allegorical/fictional characters in the book of Revelation represent something real. That's the difference.
ReplyDeleteThe Revelation is not pure drama, John saw not only a surreal world but also real things as they are in the real world.
The question is what is real (literal) or allegorical. This is the work of exegesis.
Take Joseph's prophetic dream:
Delete“Behold, I have dreamed another dream. Behold, the sun, the moon, and eleven stars were bowing down to me” (Gen 37:9).
That represents something real, but not as they are in the real world. Rather, it symbolizes something in the real world, but the symbol is quite different from what literally happened.
Yes, but not always the elements of a dream or vision are symbolic. That is not a general principle.
DeleteFor example,
"When they had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. “Get up,” he said, “take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.”
So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt, where he stayed until the death of Herod. And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet: “Out of Egypt I called my son.” Matthew 2:13-15
The angel is a real angel;
the child is the literal child;
the mother is the literal mother;
The Egypt is the literal Egypt;
and the Herod is the literal Herod.
The fact that some elements of a dream or vision are not symbolic has no bearing on the fact that some elements of a dream or vision ARE symbolic.
DeleteFrankly, I can see lots of symbolism in Revelation. I'm not sure I see ANYTHING that is "real (literal)", as Conhecereis put it. (Although, to be clear, I agree with your final paragraph that this *is* where the work of exegesis is.)
That some of the visions relayed in Revelation *can* be meant literally is certainly a possibility, but I have no warrant to start with the assumption that anything in them is literal, especially given the passages that specifically interpret what the figurative terms mean.
"Yes, but not always the elements of a dream or vision are symbolic. That is not a general principle."
Deletei) My point is that there's no antecedent presumption that a revelatory dream or vision is literal rather than allegorical. How we classify it depends on the content. I think we can classify Revelation as an allegory or historical fiction.
ii) As I initially pointed out, there are genres in which it's a false dichotomy to say X is either a real person or a fictional character. Sometimes it's both. Take the parable of the wicked tenants (Mt 21:33–46; Mk 12:1–12; Lk 20:9–19). That's a thinly-veiled allegory in which the landowner represents the God the Father, the servants represent OT prophets and John the Baptist, the tenants represent Christ's Jewish opponents, and the landowner's son represents Christ.
It's all based on real people. Yet within the *story*, the son is fictional character–as are the other figures. The story is fictional, even though stands for something real.
iii) In addition, an allegory has some stuff that doesn't represent anything. Some stuff is there because a story requires a certain amount of furniture to be something a reader can visualize. It requires a setting. Sometimes minor characters who have no real-world counterparts.
While some of the characters and incidents have real-world analogues outside story, other elements are filler for narrative coherence and continuity.