BOOKS OF THE DAY
The Apocalypse Obscured
The Book of Revelation is History. By H. S. Bellamy. (Faber and Faber. 8s. 6d.)
THE last book of the canon of scripture, the Apocalypse or Revelation of St. John the Divine, is more than great literature ; it is a document of the highest interest alike for the student of Christianity, of Judaism, of Hellenistic religion, of psychology, and of psychopathology, of mythology, and of anthropology. It is also of great significance as the only canonical work of Christian prophecy. Critical treatment has rendered its meaning and origins less obscure than they were a generation or two ago. Unfortunately, it remains the unhappy hunting ground of the crank, the visionary, and the unhinged. Works on it are only too familiar to the literary alienist. Thus one who writes under such a title as The Book of Revelation is History is batting on a bad wicket. We must consider what bat Mr. Bellamy wields and how he wields it.
By general consent the Apocalypse is the finest and most extended expression of those confused and impassioned fears and hopes that were soon to be amalgamated into Christian teaching. The book was launched about 90 A.D. into an immense conflict of thought and life. In the Apocalypse there meet together, as in a whirlpool, vast and roaring, but not chaotic, many elements from many peoples; there are the myths of Persia, the faiths and images of Egypt, the traditions and ethics of Israel, the philosophies of Greece, the lores and legends of Babylonia, the new teachings of the infant Church ; and who shall say what else? There is considerable agreement that the book is either basically the work of a Jew, who wrote in Aramaic with Christian elements interpolated, or that it is drawn very largely from Jewish documents to which Christian elements have been added without great disturbance of the original pattern. That Jewish apocalyptic literature had the peculiar power of fusing mythologies of very different origin is evident not only from many apocryphal Jewish writings, but also from many passages in the prophetic books of the Old Testament.
These current critical views Mr. Bellamy accepts, and he develops them in a rational and persuasive manner. He goes further and claims, with great emphasis, that the book is a translation by a well-educated man whose mother-tongue was the current Hebrew (Aramaic) of his day, and that the source must have been a " book which enshrined a series of cosmological myths of ancient date, in a Semitic language, certainly not Hebrew, more probably Syrian, but most likely hailing from further east." In this matter of an original language which is Semitic (and, therefore, not Persian), but is neither Hebrew nor Syrian, Mr. Bellamy introduces an hypothesis which seems to be superfluous, and to complicate the problem unnecessarily. As to whether he be right or wrong is a matter of evidence to be elicited by further analysis. He now, however, plunges beyond the range of evidence into a series of fantasies hardly less bizarre than those of his great original. From the, at least tenable, stance that the glacial epochs were associated with vast tides, lunar phenomena, and cosmic cataclysms, he makes the truly astonishing mental leap that the Apocalypse presents us with mytho- logical memory of these cataclysms.
Over this extraordinary view certain half-crazed Continental mages have thrown a camouflaging net of scientific exactitude, decorated with a few mathematical formulae. Their crazy scheme involves a series of wholly unjustifiable assumptions concerning the antiquity of myths. Thus, for example, the last or fourth glacial epoch reached its maximum at some date of the order of a fifty to a hundred thousand years ago. It was coincident with what anthro- pologists describe as the "Mousterian" culture, and the type of man known as Homo Neanderthalensis. The species howl-sapiens appeared, perhaps, no earlier than that. There is no shadow of , evidence that any myth or tradition is of a comparable age. More- over, were there such ancient myths we should expect to find them in the many literatures that are much earlier than the late and highly so phisticated Apocalypse. But modern investigation seems to suggest that myths are, in fact, much more modern than were formerly thought. Indeed, many myths, of which the extensive pagan and Christian cycle associated with the name of Aesculapius provides an admirable example, can be traced to an actual historic person of no great antiquity. The god or godlike Aesculapius was, in fact, no other than a highly respectable medical practitioner who was busy with his pills and potions about moo B.C. More- over, many ancient peoples, as, for example, the Basques and
Gypsies, do not possess any myths at all that are even moderately old. Further, the great result of folklore investigations is that mythologies are displaced and replaced with surprising speed. Where, for example, except in fevered Nazi brains, shall we find in modern folklore the not very ancient mythology of the Nordic gods? Thus the view of mage Hoerbiger and mage Fauth, as presented by Mr. Bellamy, that vast tides, impressive lunar phenomena and terrestrial cataclysms of a hundred thousand—or even of thirteen thousand— years ago, are reflected in the Apocalypse and in the story of Atlantis appears to this reviewer as mere woolgathering. A pity! For Mr. Bellamy really has many excellent points to make, and his work is neither ignorant nor insane, nor fanatical. His trouble is that his human time-scale is altogether wrong. CHARLES SINGER.
Previous page
