Revelations: Visions, Prophecy, and Politics in the Book of Revelation Read Online Free PDF

husband who begot me.
63
     
    While the form of this poem resembles hymns to the Egyptian goddess Isis, several passages hint that the speaker also may be seen as Eve, “begotten,” so to speak, from Adam. Since the divine voice speaks through human beings as well as divine ones, apparently this presence cannot be limited to a particular person, nor called by a single name. Instead the poem called Thunder, Perfect Mind, which contemporary American authors from Toni Morrison to Leslie Marmon Silko have woven into their writing, speaks as if the divine presence were everywhere—worshipped in Egypt as the goddesses Isis and Hathor but often ignored among “the barbarians,” that is, among Jews and Christians who recognize no feminine deity. “Loved everywhere” for bringing forth life, she is also “hated everywhere” for bringing death, just as the Genesis story blames Eve, whose Hebrew name means “life,” for bringing death:
    I am the one whose image is great in Egypt
and the one who has no image among the barbarians,
    I am the one who has been hated everywhere,
and who has been loved everywhere.
    I am the one whom they call Life,
and you have called Death …
    I am godless,
and I am one whose God is great. 64
     
    The poem praises a power manifested in both “the whore and the holy one,” a presence found not only in palaces but also where one least expects it: “cast out upon the dung heap … among those who are disgraced … among those violently slain.” The voice claims to speak through
    the spirits of every man who lives with me,
    and of women who dwell within me…
    I am she who cries out…
    I prepare the bread, and the mind within.
    I am the knowledge of my name.
65
     
    Whoever recognizes that voice, the poem concludes, will recognize his or her own name in relationship to that divine energy.
    While John of Patmos acknowledges no feminine power within the divine, many of the “revelations” found at Nag Hammadi, from the Secret Revelation of John to Allogenes and Thunder, Perfect Mind, give voice to feminine manifestations of God. According to the revelation called the Trimorphic Protennoia (Greek for “The Triple-Formed Primordial Consciousness”), the voice who says she existed before creation and “moves in every creature” speaks of how all beings intuitively long to commune with her, God’s immanent presence:
    I move in every creature … in everyone, and I delve into them all. … I am a voice speaking softly. … I dwell in the silence. … I am perception, and knowing [
gnosis
]. …
I am the real voice. I cry out in everyone, and they recognize me, since a seed indwells them. … I am the awareness of the Father
… a hidden thought … a mystery. 66
     
    The Trimorphic Protennoia recalls the opening of the Gospel of John, which tells how “in the beginning,” God became manifest in
masculine form, as divine word
, and declares that God had previously become manifest in feminine form, as divine
voice
. Thoughthis interior voice is so often drowned out by other noise, the Trimorphic Protennoia says that it speaks “in every creature,” to all people everywhere. Whoever wrote this revelation was probably familiar with Jewish traditions that, as noted above, envision God’s immanent aspect as feminine, manifested as “spirit” (
ruah
), “wisdom” (
hokmah
), or “presence” (
shekinah)
.
    What are we to make of this outpouring of books of revelation—Jewish, Christian, pagan—during those early centuries? And why was John of Patmos’ very different book the
only
“book of revelation” included in the New Testament? Some scholars who study the Nag Hammadi texts have said that such writings deserved to be excluded, because they appeal to a spiritual elite. There may be truth in this, for unlike John of Patmos’ hugely popular revelations, which he probably intended to have read, or preached, in public worship, 67 these secret writings tend to prescribe arduous prayer,