Revelations: Visions, Prophecy, and Politics in the Book of Revelation by Elaine Pagels

Author:Elaine Pagels [Pagels, Elaine]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Biblical Studies, Religion, General
ISBN: 9781101577073
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 2012-03-06T00:00:00+00:00

Thus Apuleius caricatures a convert who refuses to worship the gods and alienates her husband by drinking wine and participating in what Christians called “love feasts.”

Although he refrains from mentioning the most outrageous charges against Christians—that they forced initiates to plunge a knife into a newborn baby and kill it before eating its dismembered body—Apuleius’ description of this ignorant and dissolute woman suggests that Christians, like devotees of the Syrian goddess, violated Roman decency. Since Apuleius, like Justin, regards philosophy less as an intellectual discipline than a spiritual quest, what he finds most obnoxious is that Christians spurn what he calls “our sound religion.” What Apuleius apparently suspected—accurately, as it turned out—was that such wholesale rejection of the gods who supported the empire could undermine the basic values of Roman society.

Yet as the novel concludes, it assumes a different tone, even though the protagonist still speaks in the voice of an ass. For shortly after Lucius tells how he escaped from the mad devotees of the Syrian goddess and of Jesus, his comic tale opens onto a powerful and moving scene. Awakened one night by a full moon, Lucius grieves over his wasted life, washes to purify himself, and prays to Isis, “queen of heaven,” pleading to be restored to human form. At this point, Apuleius’ story tells of spiritual transformation, as signaled by his original title, The Metamorphoses. Now he brilliantly uses the animal metaphor as Lucius tells how, having been an ass, a mere animal, he comes to be transformed into a genuine human being when he receives divine revelation. For Isis graciously answers his prayer, telling him to join the sacred procession that her worshippers celebrate on her great festival day. When he does, Lucius is overjoyed to feel his shaggy coat begin to fall away and his tail vanish as her power restores him to his true human stature. Trembling with gratitude and hope, he goes to her temple to ask her priests how to prepare to receive initiation into her sacred mysteries. In an account that resonates with ardent longing, Apuleius has Lucius tell how he paid the initiation fees, took the required cold plunges into the river, and bought the necessary clothes to prepare for the ritual. When initiation day arrived, he says, he finally “approached the gates of death” and underwent a kind of ritual death, until divine power came upon him, so that he was spiritually “born again” to eternal life, and received “salvation through divine grace.”63

Thus Apuleius’ story answers the question with which his quest, like those of many seekers, had begun: what kinds of revelation are false, and which are genuine? His account suggests that the truest wisdom is offered by the priests of Isis, who plumb the depths of ancient Egyptian lore. Some literary critics, noting that Apuleius maintains an ironic tone throughout the whole narrative, have suggested that Apuleius wrote simply to entertain people by ridiculing all spiritual seekers. It’s true that Apuleius maintains a certain skepticism about

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