30 Sep Revelation: chapter 22

1. The first is to acquaint yourself with that part of the Bible which forms an important complement to Genesis.  Genesis, of course, is the Bible’s first book.  This one is its last:  Revelation.  But as we concentrated primarily on just one brief chapter of Genesis, so we’ll concentrate on just one chapter of Revelation:  chapter 22.  That’s the very last chapter. 

So we’re looking at the very last chapter of the very last book of the Bible and thus, of course, the end — and to some extent even the point — of the whole thing.  By this method, we’re seeing one way the Western imagination has framed a picture of the entirety of the cosmos and our place in it.  You might think of this as a collective self-portrait.  Whether the central subject of this portrait is Humanity, God or both is a perpetual question, and one that will guides our investigations here.

It won’t hurt your investigationss any to read the entirety of Revelations 22.  The easiest way to get to it will be to open the King James Bible under course contents — just as you did to read Genesis — but this time, once you’re in the text-proper, to scroll through the initial series of blue-highlighted chapters — one for each of the books of the Bible — until you get to the last one:  The Revelation of Saint John the Devine.  Click on that, and then scroll through until the numbers indicating chapter and verse turn from 1, 2, 3 etc. to 22.  The initial text there will read:  "And he showed me a pure river of water of life … ."

And the good news is we’ll be concentrating primarily on the first five verses of Revelation, beginning here and ending " … and they shall reign for ever and ever."

Now, let me give something of a frame for the Book of Revelation itself.  The basic situation is this:  the Angel of the Lord has come to Saint John and shown him humanity’s final condition, its fate at the end of time.  The City of God descends to earth as the New Jerusalem and John is taken inside and at last led to the central point and revelation of 22:1-5.

But in this central point, this climax at the other end of time from the point with which we started, do you see anything that you saw in Genesis III?  What’s different about it now?  Think about that, and then move on to the second thing.

2.  The second thing I want you to do is to go back to Course Contents and open "The Last Question — Asimov."  Read the story.  Read it?  OK.  Now:  for the third thing … 

3.  … tell me, in a three-to-four page, double-spaced, 12-font paper, how Asimov’s story is a version of the Bible framed by Genesis and Revelation and what it says about the Serpent’s suggestion that we will be as gods.  This will be the main theme of your paper.

Now there’s one more thing that will be helpful to take into account.  Asimov’s reference to the Bible as a framing device follows our own strategies so far, not least in referencing the beginning as well as the end of time.  In this case, the VERY beginning.  The very first lines of Genesis and the Bible as a whole.  These are fairly famous lines.  Asimov is counting on you to know them. 

But just to make sure, let’s rehearse them now.  They’re the first lines of text proper, of course, that you would encounter on opening the King James:

"1:1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

 1:2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

 1:3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light