Elaine Pagels explores the astonishing history of the most controversial reserve from the Bible.

In the waning days of the Roman Empire, militant Jews in Jerusalem had waged an

all-out war against Rome’s occupation of Judea, and their defeat resulted in the desecration

of the Great Temple in Jerusalem. In the aftermath of this war, John of Patmos, a Jewish

prophet and follower of Jesus, wrote the Publication of Revelation, prophesying God’s common sense

over the pagan empire that devastated and dominated his people. Immediately after, Christians fearing

arrest and execution championed John’s prophecies seeing that offering hope for deliverance from

evil. Others seized within the Reserve of Revelation being a tool against heretics and infidels

of most kinds.

Even after John’s prophecies appeared disproven-instead to be destroyed, Rome

became a Christian empire-those who loved John’s visions refused to discard them and

rather reinterpreted them-as Christians did for two thousand years. Brilliantly

weaving scholarship using a deep understanding of the human needs to which religion speaks,

Pagels has written what may be the masterwork in her unique profession.