Let's talk about the book of Revelation, because I'm sick of it. It has been used as a fear-mongering tool for televangelists and shady preachers for generations and people think that it's some grand prophecy of the end times. The reality is interesting though much more banal. Revelation is an apocalypse, but that word doesn't mean what you probably think it means. Apocalypse is Greek in origin (ἀποκάλυψις), and just means "revealing". Specifically the revealing of some truth by a higher power to humans. It has nothing to do with prophecy or eschatology, per se . While Revelation does talk about the end of the world, and does so with language and imagery that sounds like a drug-trip, it's less literal and more of a coded rebuke against Rome. Here's why: An apocalypse typically comes from a people in some sort of peril. Revelation is commonly dated to 81 AD/CE, which is the period immediately following the first Jewish-Roman War, where the Romans capt...

Let’s talk about Satan, because why not? The entity that became the Satan of the New Testament and Christianity as a whole has its basis in the Old Testament. Note: basis. But it didn’t exist there in anything resembling the form that it took in later centuries. In the Old Testament, Satan is not a name like it tends to be used today. It’s just a word meaning “adversary”. In Hebrew, this is שָׂטָן and does not refer to this entity specifically. It is used multiple times thoughout the Old Testament to refer to multiple things. At one point, an angel of the lord was explicity referred to as שָׂטָן (Numbers 22:22). It seems like a general word for anything in the way. So, it is not necessarily clear what the entity is, though it is implied that it has some relation to the בְּנֵי הָאֱלֹהִים, the sons of God (Job 1:6). The text does not specify exactly what it is, but makes it sound like a sort of cosmic pest in a celestial court, something under complete control of the Elohim. Everything i...

The Malleus Maleficarum ( Hexenhammer in German) is a witchhunting manual from the 1400s. It is a disturbingly evil book that has lead to the death of thousands during the witchhunts (though some sources do debate its impact). It was written by Dominican clergymen Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger, though Kramer appears to have written the bulk of it. Allegedly, Sprenger’s name was attached to give it more credibility, because Kramer was a known pest in his area.  It was the first book to deal with witchcraft, though an earlier work, the Formicarius , touched on the topic. The story goes that the entire existence of the book was is the result of Kramer being angry at not being allowed to ask probing, inappropriately sexual questions to a woman during a heresy trial. So he went back to Cologne and wrote an entire book to explain his views.  It is almost three separate books in one, and each section isn’t really related to any of the others. They were intended for d...