"T.L.:D.R." DAVE SIM (YAWN) ON JOHN 19!" Part 3

Hi, Everybody!

Anyway, From Dave Sim:

17 Feb 18

Hi Matt!  

Since you were asking about Biblical commentaries, I thought I'd send this to you.  It's part of my RIP KIRBY COMMENTARIES which hit a religious off-ramp requiring a lengthy digression (about a year or so now) into the "Song of Deborah" (Book of Judges) with the November 8, 1950 strip.  Which then dovetailed with John's Gospel, which then dovetailed with my commentaries on Gertrude Stein's THE WORLD IS ROUND and BLOOD ON THE DINING ROOM FLOOR, finally circling back to John 19. So this is, really, the 17-page punch-line.

I can't imagine anyone would be interested, but you did ask about Bible Commentaries. 

You could maybe run it a page a week on sequential Sundays.  "T.L.:D.R."
DAVE SIM (YAWN) ON JOHN 19!"

Grab a Bible and follow along!

 Part 1, Part 2, and now Part 3:

13 Feb 18 pg.3

Unlike John himself, the Revelation couldn't be ignored because it was obviously both eschatological and Apocalyptic in its character. It was, arguably, the most eschatological and Apocalyptic monotheistic revelation that would ever exist, way, way beyond John's -- or anyone's (but particularly John's, again, I'm getting to this) -- personal capacity for invention. That is, it was literally unimaginable, comparable and directly analogous to and resonant with the Book of Ezekiel, the momentous capstone of the Major Prophets in Orthodox Judaism (particularly noteworthy for the attribution of much of its text  to Lord GOD as opposed to the YHWHistic LORD God) while having its own unique character and definitive prophetic force.  All of which, it seems self-evident, would have been readily apparent to the -- presumably dumfounded -- Patmos Church authorities charged with sheltering and sequestering John when he presented them with it. 

The fact of the Revelation couldn't be explained away, certainly not by the authorities of a marginalized outlier "boonies" church on Patmos.  All they could do was have their scribes make copies of Revelation and deliver it -- as the document itself instructed them to do! -- to the seven primary, larger, more potent and more influential Asian churches. 

Which, I infer, made John's Revelation even more theologically inescapable because -- although John, I assume, had no direct knowledge or awareness of or, in fact interest, in what the "seven ecclesias" were doing -- the denunciations were succinct and exactly appropriate to the YHWHist corruptions that were setting in in the critical first decades of Christianity.   For the churches, it would have been like getting a letter direct from God.  For the very good reason that, I infer, that's pretty much what it had been.

That is, it hadn't been coincidental, I don't think, that John had lived to the (for the time) impossibly old age that he had. That, I infer, had been God's plan all along: that John and his undying fealty to the Johannine Jesus would endure several decades into the first Christian century...

This requires, I think, a lengthy digression to elaborate:

[The YHWHist structure of the first Christian century, I infer, had been analogous to and patterned on the "super-suns" created in the early millennia after the Big Bang. The Great Unity, God, incarnates -- through the process of the Big Bang -- multiple Proxy Immensities who then enact themselves as differently-nuanced models of Reality, hurled outward by the Big Bang's centripetal and centrifugal force.  These seminal YHWHs -- each misconstruing his/her/its self as God -- then expand and proliferate, procreate and gestate outwards.  They physically incarnate as stars, galaxies, solar systems, planets, asteroids, etc. each, like our planet, thinking themselves to be God. This is, I infer, God's Grand Comedia.  All of them hatching out lifeforms "formed of the dust of the ground" and then, (partly, I infer) in tandem with them and (mostly, I infer) in opposition to them, strutting and fretting he/she/it's hour upon the cosmological slapstick stage, repeatedly delivering cosmological custard pies to his/her/its own faces over the course of billions of years because that's what happens when you aren't God but you pretend to be God.]

13 Feb 18 pg.4

[Fidelity, faith and endurance in God, loyalty to God, I infer, being The Way Out and The Way Back to God]

[As the Big Bang's relationship to the "super-suns" so -- I infer, in YHWHist frames of reference -- had been the relationship of the Synoptic Jesus to his disciples, particularly Peter. "Upon this rock I will found my church."]

[Set against this multi-faceted triune metaphysical he/she/it tidal wave, I infer -- according to God's purpose and according to God's plan  -- was the potency of faith and endurance in God's Johannine Jesus Christian incarnation. Said incarnation now in the lone custody of and housed solely within the person of a single individual: John.]

[A critical necessity, I infer, from God's perspective, reinforcing the primary lesson of physically-incarnated life that abiding faith in God will overcome and prevail over even the most insurmountable-seeming adversary and adversity.]  

[John was physically and irrefutably, hurled outward to Patmos by (and on) the theological tidal wave of the Petrine Church of the Synoptic Jesus. From the YHWHist perspective, theological collateral damage and (happy coincidence!) the imminent elimination of what had once been he/she/its primary rival and which appeared now to be a microscopic, microcosmic guttering theological candle-flame soon-to-be extinguished.]

[The exponentially rapid expansion of Christianity across the civilized world had been, I infer, directly analogous to the centripetal and centrifugal outward expansion of the universe from the Big Bang.]

[A foundational component of which and its motivating force is, I infer, "If any of you are actually God, enact your own Big Bang."  The plain fact that there has been no Big Bang since the Big Bang serving as a q.e.d that there is only One God.]

[Metaphysically unprecedented in our physically-incarnated world, Christianity's expansion would eventually dwarf and then engulf its nearest competitor, the Roman Empire. But it was Petrine, YHWHist, Synoptic. It was derived from monotheism but it was not, per se, monotheistic.  And, I infer, that was one of its larger purposes: a YHWHistic enactment co-engineered by God in such a way as to create a YHWHistic theological tidal wave that was seemingly unstoppable. Certainly one that appeared to be unstoppable from the perspective of any higher-natured entity contemplating Christianity's first few decades of progress late in the first century. The only comparable enactment/analogy would have been the Big Bang (with which, I infer, all higher-natured beings are familiar although interpreting it differently depending from which of the "super-suns" they had issued). And that, I think, had been one of God's major theological points behind Synoptic Christianity: it had been, according to all appearances, structurally, unstoppable.]

End of lengthy digression.

Also, the end of 13 Feb 18, join us next week, for 14 Feb 18 pg. 1 (and maybe pg. 2 too).

Next Time: I LITERALLY just told you. Literally.