The Genesis creation myth has often been criticized as a utopian paradise myth. It has been cast as a haven for fundamentalism, for fearful imaginations that flee from taking responsibility for understanding the complexity of current political realities of evil and violence. It has been held responsible for originating a system of belief that holds God responsible for human violence, and for vilifying women as that part of creation that brought evil into the world. Karen King's latest book The Secret Revelation of John introduces readers to the world of Gnostic literature, and a very different creation myth.
The full text of the Revelation is included in two variant translations, and is introduced as a revelation of Christ to John, the brother of James, the son of Zebedee. All evidence supports its existence as an early Christian text that emerged before distinctions were being made between orthodoxy and heresy. One of the great gifts of this text is that it offers us insight into the radically different expressions of Christianity in its earliest stages. King argues that it reveals how they sought to understand what the teachings of Christ implied for life in political contexts of oppression and persecution.
This text represents more than a simple creation myth expounding the tenets of the Gnostic movement, and may have been a guide for early Christians to understanding their founder's call to social justice as well as a key to understanding the gift of salvation. The Secret Revelation of John (discovered in 1898) was lost for nearly two millennia, and has only recently become accessible to scholars. It is recognized as having been influential during the first four or five centuries of Christianity. Mention is made in the writings of Irenaeus, who condemned this first attempt of Christians to bring the Genesis story forward as a cosmological framework within which they could comprehend the significance of their own evolving understanding of Jesus' teachings. To today's Christian, the characters and themes of the narrative seem exotic, bizarre, and confusing. But King insists that current understanding of the theme of resistance in political activity invites a new reading of this ancient text.
This book is timely for another reason: Who could deny the current fascination with early Christian literature? Books like The Da Vinci Code and The Gospel of Judas have captured the imaginations of contemporary readers. For many, the existence of early Christian literature that speaks about Jesus, but which falls outside the normative canon of scripture, has introduced questions about early Christianity that must be addressed. Many of these unorthodox interpretations of the Christian message were associated with the Gnostic tradition, and have been condemned as a whole belief system that opposes orthodox Christianity. Gnosticism's founding myth has been interpreted as a radical dualism between the sacred world of the spirit and the evil material world.
King's book embarks on a subtle examination of the Gnostic elements of this piece of ancient literature, while seeking to look beyond an historic bias against ancient Gnostic writings. She asks what such literature reveals about the understanding of the human condition in the earliest centuries of Christianity, and proposes that these texts possibly served not as a way to avoid or escape the human condition, but as "a radical critique of power relations in the world below." She seeks to look behind the text to the experience of its authors, and to appreciate The Revelation as one expression of the extreme diversity of early Christian experience, thought, and action.
My own excitement during my reading of King's book reached its peak in the chapter entitled "Utopian Desire, Social Critique, and Resistance." I am convinced that there could be a fruitful dialogue between King's insights and those of René Girard, Walter Wink, and others who are writing about the very real nature of the "principalities and powers" of which the New Testament speaks. The Secret Revelation of John, interpreted for today's Christian, may help us relate to early Christians who framed their questions about salvation in terms of the very real existence of evil in human political systems. We can hold this text up to contemporary writings that uncover the harmful images of deity that support notions of a violent, wrathful, jealous, vengeful, and capricious God. Who can deny that our images of God have polarized into two contrasting notions of divinity, and that a certain kind of knowledge seems necessary to distinguish between the god of the machine of war and violence, and the God of graceful intervention, peace, and salvation?
Acknowledging the many difficulties encountered in reading this ancient text, King's insights are a fruitful contribution for those of us who are involved in the project of revealing the falsity of any images of God that support the prevailing myth of redemptive violence so clearly associated with Christianity. Her efforts to save The Secret Revelation of John from being cast on the heap of Gnostic texts relegated to the torches of the Inquisition, and to glean from them anything that may help us to better understand why they were secretly hidden away for later retrieval, have produced an excellent work. I will be keeping this book as a resource on my shelf as I continue to study the contribution of early Christian literature to the human project of resisting violence and seeking universal peace and salvation in today's world.
Kathy Perry is a Master of Divinity student at Regis College in Toronto. She is married with two children. This is first piece for The Social Edge.
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