Jonathan Kirsch - A History of the End of the World

The Greek word that is customarily translated as “fornication” ( porneusai ) carries the sense of “playing the harlot,” 80but it is unlikely that Jezebel and her followers engaged in literal acts of prostitution or even sexual promiscuity. Rather, fornication is probably best understood as a code word used by biblical authors to describe what scholars call “syncretism”—that is, the mixing and matching of various religious beliefs and practices that was so common in classical paganism. John, in fact, may have used the word “fornication” to refer to nothing more scandalous than the making of marriages between couples who would be forbidden to marry under Jewish law but not Roman law.

But the words and phrases selected by John are intended to suggest that Jezebel herself and her Christian followers were, quite literally, willful and defiant sexual outlaws who insisted on engaging in their carnal adventures even after they had been warned of the consequences. Indeed, the text of Revelation suggests (even if it does not describe) scenes of ritual harlotry, orgiastic sex, and the careless spawning of bastard children, all of which have prompted some scholarly readers to regard Revelation as a work of “apocalyptic pornography.” 81

“And I gave her time to repent of her sexual immorality, and she did not repent,” says the Son of God in condemning Jezebel. “Behold, I cast her into a sickbed, and those who commit adultery with her I will throw into great tribulation, unless they repent of her doings, and I will strike her children dead.” 82

The same double-edged meanings may be buried in John’s condemnation of “the doctrine of the Nicolaitans, which thing I hate” and other Christians who embrace what he darkly refers to as “the deep things of Satan.” 83Although the Nicolaitans are wholly unknown outside the pages of Revelation, the early church fathers suggested that they were a band of heretics led by Nicolas, a wholly obscure figure who is mentioned briefly in Acts. 84Some scholars are willing to entertain the notion that John is referring to “a Christian libertine group” whose teachings included not only sorcery and other satanic practices but also “sexual license” as a tool of spiritual enlightenment. 85The Nicolaitans supposedly taught that “the really wise and mature Christian must know life at its worst as well as at its best,” according to Scottish biblical scholar and broadcaster William Barclay, and so “it was right and necessary to commit the grossest and the most depraved sins in order to experience what they were like.” 86

But it is also possible (and even more likely) that the Nicolaitans, like Jezebel and Balaam, were easygoing and open-minded Christians who were willing to make the compromises that allowed them to participate fully in the “social, commercial, and political life” of the pagan communities in which they lived. The hateful and inflammatory labels that John slaps on his theological enemies may be no more than “code names” that he uses to identify Christian pastors and preachers who “allowed eating food sacrificed to the idols and accepted compromise with the emperor cult.” 87If so, their worst offense—and perhaps their only offense—was placing themselves on the wrong side of what John regarded as the no-man’s-land of a culture war.

John reveals nothing about the more intimate aspects of his life, and we simply do not know whether he has a wife and children or, for that matter, any family at all. But he allows us to see that he is plainly put off by human sexuality, and when he mentions sex at all, he cannot seem to conceive of a sexual encounter between a man and a woman as something other than fornication. Indeed, John makes it clear in the book of Revelation that he regards all sexual conduct—even sex within marriage—as a kind of defilement.

For example, John predicts that 144,000 souls will be taken up to some celestial counterpart of Mount Zion, where they will be granted the privilege of following the Lamb “wherever he goes.” 88They are “redeemed from mankind as first fruits for God and the Lamb,” 89a phrase that harks back to the ritual of animal sacrifice at the Temple in Jerusalem and suggests that they are martyrs who made the ultimate sacrifice to God. To distinguish the “first fruits” from the rest of humanity, they will be “sealed upon their foreheads” with the name of God and the name of the Lamb. 90And John carefully notes that they are also distinguishable for a less obvious reason: all of them are lifelong celibates.

“These are the ones who were not defiled with women,” writes John, “for they are virgins.” 91

A certain discomfort with sexuality of all kinds, even within marriage, can be found throughout the apocalyptic tradition. The Book of Watchers, for example, blames the existence of evil in the world on the fact that angels descended from heaven and “corrupted themselves” by engaging in sexual intercourse with women “in all their uncleanness.” 92Josephus reports that at least one order of Essenes shunned marriage and childbearing, and archaeologists suggest that the apocalyptic community at Qumran was largely, if not entirely, celibate. And the idea of sex as a defilement is deeply rooted in certain passages of the Hebrew Bible, where sexual conduct between any man and woman renders both of them ritually impure: “If a man lies with a woman and has an emission of semen,” goes a passage in Leviticus, “both of them shall bathe themselves in water, and be unclean until the evening.” 93

The same fussy attitude toward sex can be found in both Jewish and pagan tradition. A priest or a soldier need not be celibate, but he must refrain from sexual intercourse in advance of certain activities, including both the performing of rituals and the fighting of battles. The requirement of sexual abstinence before battle is one that the Maccabees embraced in their own war against assimilation and occupation, but a pious pagan soldier might do the same. John, too, appears to believe that Christian soldiers must prepare themselves for the final battle between God and Satan by avoiding all defiling conduct, including sex. But John’s stance toward sex, as toward everything else, is absolute and uincompromising.

Here is a clear example of John’s distinctive approach to the moral instruction of the Hebrew Bible. He seizes upon a biblical commandment, and then he proceeds to radicalize it. Sex is a “removable defilement” under biblical law—one who has been defiled by engaging in sex need only immerse oneself in a ritual bath to purify oneself—but John seems to argue that any sexual encounter between men and women ought to be avoided. 94Since he is convinced that the end-times are approaching but he does not know exactly when they will arrive, John seems to recommend that men and women alike ought to stop sleeping with each other once and for all so they will be ritually pure when the end comes, whether that happens tomorrow or at some unknowable moment in the future.

So John sees sex as something dirty and defiling under all circumstances. The only truly exalted human beings in Revelation are virgins and martyrs, and all his enemies are whores and whoremongers. And he is both distrustful and disdainful of women in general: the only mortal woman whom John mentions by name, the rival prophet whom he calls Jezebel, is condemned as a seducer and a fornicator. All of the passages of Revelation that touch on encounters between men and women betray a deeply conflicted attitude toward sexuality, according to Adela Yarbro Collins, “involving perhaps hatred and fear of both women and one’s own body.” 95

Other readers of Revelation suspect that John may protest too much when it comes to the condemnation of sex. D. H. Lawrence, far better known for erotic novels like Lady Chatterley’s Lover than for his biblical exegesis, points out that the greatest fornicator in all of Revelation, the Whore of Babylon, is a titillating figure, and perhaps intentionally so. “How they envy Babylon her splendour, envy, envy!” rails Lawrence in his own commentary on the book of Revelation. “The harlot sits magnificently with her golden cup of wine of sensual pleasure in her hand. How the apocalyptists would have loved to drink out of her cup! And since they couldn’t how they loved smashing it!” 96