Jason S

Book of Revelation and the Shoah (Holocaust)

Jason S. Jones

I. LIFE CONTEXT OF THE INTERPRETATION

The Book of Revelation offers the reader a text filled with an unforgettable account of apocalypse, angels, monsters, and death, and a hope for peace. Similar to how Eric Auerbach interpreted the Aqedah during World War II, I will approach the text of Revelation with literary criticism to understand the language as metaphorical. For the purpose of this paper, revelation functions as an uncovering, by which to see clearly and approach genocides. With the light of the Holocaust illuminating the words, I shall propose an interpretation that understands the Book of Revelation as narrating what has occurred and could continue whenever and wherever religious, cultural, or political genocide occurs. The apocalypse in the text was, and is, the Holocaust.

There exists an ethical necessity for remembering genocides. As believers and religionists, we have an obligation to recognize and wrestle with the religious components and ideologies that have and could potentially contribute to genocide. Acknowledging problematic and potentially dangerous ideologies becomes an ethical and religious obligation. Acknowledging and wrestling with these ill ideologies becomes part of the remembering process. Such a process allows us to move towards preventing further genocides and further dangerous ideologies used to justify genocides.

I, a middle-class, Caucasian American male, am one generation removed from the Holocaust, also but have witnessed a world where genocides occur in Darfur, Rwanda, and elsewhere.[i] I write in order to remember those victims, advocating inclusive interpretations of scripture that recognize problematic readings and voices. I strive to offer an interpretation that allow Christians to say “Christ be praised” without also saying “and also damned be the Jews.” This is why I engage a Christian text of apocalypse in light of the death of six million Jews, which could be considered an apocalypse of Judaism.

How does one read the Book of Revelation as a testament to on-going threats and events? If one attempts to stand in the proverbial shoes of the victims, then one might see how genocide, the Holocaust, could be understood as an apocalypse. The twentieth-century Jewish phenomenologist, Emmanuel Levinas, a survivor of the Holocaust, calls for every individual to respond to the “call for aid” of the “suffering other.”[ii] He asserts that each of us has an ethical responsibility to come face to face with the “suffering other” and offer aid. For the purpose of this paper, I will understand individuals under a Levinasian world construct.

Levinas asserted that the self exists in constant interaction with the world around. In turn, the world around consists of others just as the self exists as part of another self’s world. In other words, others compose one’s world. The self and the world always affect and influence each other. If the other suffers, is the suffering other, then the self has an ethical responsibility to answer the “call for aid” cried by the other. One can extend this construct to include a communality of responsibility. For this paper, one should understand that this works towards a communal responsibility among everyone to answer “calls for aid.” When one ethically encounters the other, one fleetingly encounters God. Therefore, to be religious cannot be separate from being ethical and aiding the suffering other. Levinas argues, “Transcendence is born of the intersubjective relation.”[iii] To view the Book of Revelation as sacred, the transcendence of the text as the living word of God occurs when the reader recognizes the intersubjective relation of one’s self and the other. The text lives within the relation between one’s self and the other, where the ethical encounter becomes the brief experience of entering the presence of God (transcendence).

When examining the Holocaust, we are called to recognize the face of the six million dead and the survivors. The Jewish victims of the Holocaust experienced a systematic removal from and destruction of their worlds, homes, families, religion and their own identity and personhood by the Nazis. Something indescribable occurred but remained indescribable — an apocalypse of individuals, genocide. This paper approaches the indescribable through the metaphorical accounts in the Book of Revelation.

When contemplating those victims, survivor Elie Wiesel writes, “All words seemed inadequate, worn, foolish, lifeless, whereas I wanted them to be searing….this is the concentration camp language. It negated all other language and took its place.”[iv] For Wiesel, the world after the Holocaust, after experiencing the concentration camp, is based on this stark reality: “After Auschwitz everything brings us back to Auschwitz.”[v]

There will never be a singular problem involving issues of genocide or apocalypse. For example, part of the threat of genocide (and apocalypse) is that the perpetrators can no longer be seen as a wholly different other. In Germany, the perpetrators were dentists, bankers, factory workers, husbands, brothers, sisters, gardeners, and neighbors. For example, Ordinary Men by Christopher Browning offers details of Nazi police battalion 101. Before the Holocaust, these men would have been described as average people. However, during the war, seemingly normal men carried out atrocious orders of relocating and killing Jews. This police battalion was responsible for shooting approximately 38,000 Jews. Seemingly normal people became perpetrators, victims, bystanders, and rescuers. One can then understand the “people of God” are not solely the victims of genocide but also the perpetrators, bystanders, and rescuers. The Holocaust gives testament that anyone has the capacity of being one of those four entities of perpetrator, bystander, rescuer, and victim.

Yet when raising the question of genocide, apocalypse, or the Holocaust, one must ask “whose problem is it?” The problem lies with everyone — perpetrators, bystanders, victims, and rescuers. For the Jewish people, the problems are of existence, threat of annihilation, remembering, and questioning their God. For rescuers, it was the challenge of solitude for helping, of facing Nazism and annihilation in order to answer the “call for aid” from the other. For bystanders, the problems consist of accountability, responsibility, and inactivity. How can someone witness these atrocities, yet do nothing? For perpetrators, their problem is the action, the ideology — because biased and prejudiced ideologies and agents like the perpetrators perpetuate apocalypse.

For those of us who are a generation removed, we face similar problems. Whether it is the occurrence of present and future genocides, or the effects of the Holocaust, we have a duty to remember the dead and reunite a broken, post-genocidal, post-Holocaust world. This remembrance enables those who are a generation removed from the Holocaust to continue engaging the suffering other through the text. Yet how does one approach the problems of the Holocaust? How does one understand a “vision” of apocalypse as did John?

We should never simplify the Holocaust or any genocide to a singular problem or source because there will never be a singular problem; there will never be a singular root problem. Is it the bystanders who lacked the will to resist the Nazis and thus bore witness to death? Is it those who felt they lacked the ability to combat Nazis like the men in police battalion 101? Or those who simply lacked the knowledge because the Nazis kept the concentration camps secret for as long as possible? Perhaps those who denied the existence of such camps? What about the anti-Judaic ideology in the Christian tradition? In approximately 315 CE shortly after declaring Christianity the national religion of Rome, Emperor Constantine passed the Code of Constantine which limited the rights of non-Christians — an early example of how anti-Jewish ideologies have been canonized. All of these root problems contributed to the magnitude of the Holocaust.

This approach understands the Book of Revelation as a text that offers a reader in the post-Holocaust world a metaphorical understanding of what an apocalypse (genocide, the Holocaust) means. This reading calls the perpetrators to acknowledge and recognize themselves and their actions. Here, the victims may find solace and perceive their experiences in the metaphorical language of Revelation.

Furthermore, this approach allows those of us who are a generation removed to break the text with the five groups: perpetrators, bystanders, victims, rescuers, along side those a generation removed. We shall understand the text of Revelation as a ground for all of us to wrestle with the harmonious and, yet at times dissonant, voices of multiple interpretations in order to approach a better understanding of the Holocaust and genocide. Finally, we shall recognize the anger, solace, and hope for reconstruction in remembering the dead for the dead, “To wrench those victims from oblivion. To help the dead vanquish death.”[vi]

II. CONTEXTUAL COMMENTARY

Overview

Historically, scholars have argued that the author composed the Book of Revelation towards the end of the first century CE. During this time, the author and the text’s target audience arguably suffered “local and sporadic harassment [that] led to persecution or even martyrdom.”[vii] It is possible that John, the author, witnessed these events as foreshadowing future persecution. This “revelation” offered a letter of hope to those under persecution and a letter of warning to those who did not think they had a Christian responsibility to the suffering other and their society. The historical background provides an adequate setting for a genocide-centered interpretation of the text. Yet one could ask: to what extent can this book be understood by Christians who have become the majority and no longer the small, persecuted group that John, the author, addressed? When examining the Holocaust, since the predominantly Christian perpetrators outnumbered the Jews, how much of this book could be understood by Christians?

I would argue that the Book of Revelation provides a text for Christian perpetrators, and even for the Christian majority, that warns of history repeating itself. In other words, this text explains how Christians were once a marginalized, persecuted group. Now that Christians compose the majority, the text demands that Christians not commit such acts of persecution. Similarly, the New Jerusalem might be understood as ushering peace for everyone — not just Christians and Jews. Revelation provides a chance for those Christian perpetrators and persecutors to acknowledge their actions as un-Christian.

Apocalyptic literature usually contains a number of features. Its primary feature symbolic language, allows the author to describe metaphorically a present and near future situation. In turn, this symbolic language offers numerous potential interpretations. Another feature of apocalyptic literature is the dualistic juxtaposition of good versus evil. This aspect further multiplies interpretations because the reader chooses to understand good as one group and evil as another. An end-of-times theme usually appears in apocalyptic literature. Here the text offers a symbolic event marking a definitive end to an era and the birth of a new existence, one ultimately transformed by the event. The new existence stems from the now concluded era, unable to reverse itself.

Revelation itself can be divided into three sections:

I. Christ Evocation to John to Write Seven Letters to Reveal His Vision. 1:1-3:22

II.a. The Vision of Apocalypse. 4:1-18:24

II.b. The End of Evil & the Rise of New Jerusalem. 19:1-22:5

III. The Vision and Letter Conclude.22:6-21[viii]

For the purpose of this essay, we shall focus predominantly on the “Vision of Apocalypse” for metaphorical readings. For perpetrators, the text could represent a hall of mirrors demanding accountability and acknowledgement. The victims can find the text as memory and memorial. For bystanders, the text could represent a hall of mirrors for demanding accountability. The rescuers experience in this text a testament of empathy. Lastly, for those a generation removed, the text functions as an act of remembrance. As a whole, this text creates a metaphorical ground for all five groups to gather.

Interpreting the Book of Revelation, Apocalypse, and the Holocaust

Since the apocalyptic tradition involves a revealing, we shall interpret the Book of Revelation as revealing and uncovering genocide as an event and an apocalypse. Of the five categories of persons involved in an apocalypse, this paper will focus on three: perpetrators, victims, and those a generation removed from the Holocaust.

The perspective of the interpreter should always be considered when performing a reading. For example, one could compare two interpretations and find the roles reversed depending on the perspective of the interpreter. Examining the text in the shoes of the victims would probably be radically different as compared to reading the text in the shoes of a perpetrator. The tendencies to dichotomize good versus evil tendency opens the possibility of a plethora of readings depending on the perspective. Again, the victims might consider an aspect as good whereas a perpetrator could consider that same aspect as evil and vice versa. One must recognize the problematic issues of the text. Like genocide, reading Revelation becomes elusive for one to concretely grasp.

The end-of-times theme in this text offers a rich depth to performing a genocide-based reading of Revelation. This theme metaphorically represents the unfolding of genocide as experienced by an individual. The experience of genocide, whether as perpetrators, bystanders, rescuers, victims, leaves an individual permanently changed.[ix] Including those a generation, these five categories of people would understand the apocalypse in Revelation differently because of to their respective perspectives.

Here we shall break the text with the three categories of perpetrators, victims, and those a generation removed to begin approaching the indescribable. In this approach, scripture has many roles. The purpose of these multiple roles functions simultaneously, in harmony and dissonance. The interaction between the harmony and dissonance is crucial for a genocide-based reading because, as many scholars have argued, the magnitude of the Holocaust remains vastly indescribable. When focusing on a genocide-based interpretation of scripture, one must wrestle with the text as did Jacob with the angel in Genesis 32:22-32.

Perpetrators and Scripture as a Hall of Mirrors

Concerning perpetrators, the scripture of Revelation can function as a house of mirrors offering metaphorical representations of what perpetrators are, ideologically and conceptually, and how they view their victims. For this interpretation, the reader should understand the perpetrator as destroying the other and the other's world, thus destroying the possibility of encountering God, who according to Levinas can be encountered when one ethically answers the “call for aid,” cried by the suffering “other.” Since the perpetrator denies the “call for aid” and even silences it, the perpetrator destroys that encounter with God. The concept of destroying the encounter with God should not be understood as ontological destruction. This concept should be understood as a soteriological-ethical claim about the perpetrator because his or her relation with God (the soteriological) rests solely their relation with “the other” (the ethical). In the final chapters of Revelation, God becomes active once again by overcoming the apocalypse, genocide.

Levinas states, “The most dangerous of seducers is the one who carries you away with pious words to violence and contempt for the other man.”[x] Acknowledging the anti-Semitic ideologies of Nazism, we can use the text to combat these seducers and the root problem of pious ideologies that result in violence to the other. One can find many perspectives to perceive the perpetrator.

The first perspective occurs when one steps into the perpetrator's shoes. For instance, if one brings the Christian tradition of anti-Jewish ideologies to the text of Revelation, one could find the text dangerous, potentially allowing an anti-Semite to interpret the people who worship the beasts of Revelation 13 and the false prophets in 19:15-21 as Jews.

Yet the Book of Revelation also offers the reader a text to combat ideological visions that have led to genocide. A second perspective can be used to counter the first. Here, one views the perpetrators by stepping into the victims’ shoes and finds the perpetrators as human characters with the so called “mark of the beast” on their foreheads in 13:11-28.

Multiple Interpretations and Perspectives

Antipodal interpretations allow the reader to understand the dangerous capacity of the texts and the dissonance when hearing voices. Ideologies lurk behind every reading of scripture. Consciously or unconsciously one’s ideologies form how one reads and interprets the text. For example, from the shoes of the victims, the perpetrators ideology could be viewed as the beasts in Revelation 13 and the perpetrators as those thrown into the lake of fire to offer a post-Holocaust, post-genocide interpretation that is revenge for the victims. Perhaps the two beasts of Revelation 13 could represent weapons used in genocide, like Zyklon-B or even ideologies.

If we attempt to place ourselves in the shoes of the victims during a time of genocide, we see the victims’ world destroyed by the perpetrators. This approach should be recognized as incapable of being reversed. We become permanently transformed when we attempt this perspective.[xi] This process remains irreversible because genocide is irreversible: no one can go back to a world prior to the Holocaust. Forever, we live in a post-Holocaust world. Here the perpetrators must acknowledge the atrocities committed by their hands and ideologies. Yet at this critical moment the reader must acknowledge the text as theologically problematic because the perpetrator could be seen as metaphorically like the angels in Revelation 9:15-21, the four angels sent to kill one third of humankind. After all, Nazi ideology viewed the destruction of the European Jews as a racial cleansing, removing what was they viewed as “corrupt.”

Understanding can help a reader better grasp the issues of power between what it means to be a victim and what it means to be a perpetrator. This understanding can also offer perpetrators an opportunity to look in the various mirrors (passages) the text offers to approach their actions and ideologies. The purpose of this paper is to propose an interpretation where a reader might engage genocide through the different persons reading. Hopefully, this reading might allow a reading to move towards understanding genocide with the knowledge that full comprehension might not be possible.

Apocalypse, God, and Satan

How does one deal with God's general passivity in genocide and in the Book of Revelation? Again, keeping in mind the Levinasian world construct, God's passivity can be understood in that the perpetrators’ destruction of the other's world, also destroying the opportunity of experience of God. Revelation 21:1-8 presents a mysterious figure (perhaps God?) speaking from a throne; could these verses be understood as reflecting a return for those suffering others to be ethically encountered. As genocide ceases in Revelation 20:7-10 when Satan is vanquished, the “call for aid” can be finally and definitely answered. Alternatively, how does one view the devil? In conjunction with the perpetrators, Satan should be understood as representing the constant threat of genocide. Therefore, in Revelation 21:10 as the New Jerusalem descends, the end of an apocalypse occurs when a genocide ceases. By overcoming genocide, God becomes active again in the final chapters. In other words, the New Jerusalem is the physical peace of cessation of a genocide, but whose memory lingers still.

Victims and Scripture as Memory & Memorial

For the victims of an apocalypse, the Book of Revelation exists as a painful metaphorical account of what has transpired. Here the role of scripture functions as memory and memorial. Victims can identify with those killed in the textual narrative, a possibility that might provide solace. But when God (or God's agent) brings death, how do the victims reconcile this event? The victims identify with those humans in the text. The victims of genocide experience the magnitude of the apocalypse in Revelation. Victims of genocide see their families, homes, and lives destroyed. The victims of the text are those same victims of the Holocaust and other genocides.

In 6:1-8, the first four seals opened cause conquest, war, famine, and death by plague. The victims of genocide have experienced most, if not all, of these. The Jews in the Holocaust experienced the conquest of being forced out of their homes, war and other violence, famine and death by plague in the concentration camps.

Revelation 9 contains another striking passage for a Holocaust survivor. Here the fifth angel blows his trumpet and a bottomless pit with smoke billowing out opens up. Perhaps this pit represents the opening to an underworld or hell, but for a Holocaust survivor this pit billowing smoke carries memories of the Nazi crematoria. Alternatively, how would a perpetrator view this smoke billowing pit? How would that compare to the magnitude of the crematoria?

How can the victims of genocide approach these sufferings from God? Or are those punished by these four seals perpetrators being punished? Again, this depends upon whose shoes in which one stands. However one chooses to interpret the sufferings of the four seals, suffering of untold magnitude occurs. This provides one with the common grounds for the many interpretations to gather, the ground for wrestling and breaking the text. Here scripture functions as a memorial on the common grounds, acknowledging the atrocities that occur in genocide.

Those a Generation Removed

and Scripture as Ground for Wrestling & Remembrance

Those a generation removed constitute the final group in this interpretation of multiple voices and shoes. Scripture functions as the ground to approach remembrance. This interpretation offers those a generation removed tools to engage in remembrance for the Holocaust and other genocides (apocalypses). The act of reading becomes an act of remembrance, as evidenced even by this paper. This reading calls for ethical and interpretive responsibility to combat genocide while remembering the dead and to recognize in one's own past, present, and potential interpretations and faith traditions’ ideologies that lead to genocide. Those a generation removed find the perpetrators’ hall of mirrors and the victims’ memorial on these grounds of scripture.

This remembrance gains significance particularly towards the end of the Book of Revelation, which will be discussed later. The text speaks of overcoming a "second death" in Revelation 20:6. For those a generation removed, the "second death" speaks of forgetting those victims of genocide. Forgetting the victims would be allowing the threat of genocide to remain.

III. Global Bible Commentary Comparison

Christopher Rowland identifies his main problem discussed in his Global Bible Commentary essay as “an unjust world that longs for a reign of justice” (p. 560). He and I enter the text with the ‘innocent victims of injustice’ in mind (p.564). He engages the Book of Revelation because “it demands of its readers particular interpretative skills and a readiness to engage it at an imaginative level” (p. 560). Rowland wrestles with the text, but not for remembrance. He finds a voice for the margins in the text that “challenges the rich and powerful while encouraging the weak and vulnerable” (p. 559).

Rowland reads a liberation theology from the text. He seems to engage the scripture as both corrective lenses and a lamp to his feet. He argues that the text is “a bedrock of the struggle for justice, peace and the hope that God’s ways will be demonstrated in the world of flesh and blood” (p. 559). He has “found himself taken out into the wilderness to see afresh the world as it is and privileged to see the pervasive and subtle ways in which the culture of Babylon is at work undermining the human flourishing of the majority of the world’s population” (p. 559).

Furthermore, he underscores that “detached’ academia remains insufficient when engaging the text because the texts calls for one’s ‘imagination’ to be “allied to practical discipleship” (p. 569). He has found through working with Brazilians that social and political contexts extremely affect religion, and the interpretation of the Book of Revelation is testimony to this problem. Here the root of the problem is a lack of ideological vision, one that is insufficient in academia for engaging those marginalized in the third world.

Both of us find the Book of Revelation to be transformative. Yet he deems the transformative process to be hopefully positive because it “challenges its persevering reads to understand reality in ways that will lead to amendment of their lives” (p. 560). I would argue that the transformative process would be hopefully constructive with growing pains. The constructive goal of my reading attempts to offer a ground where one recognizes the (potentially) problematic aspects of sacred texts and (potentially) dangerous aspects of ideologies. One should recognize problematic readings to avoid potential genocides.

The most significant difference between Rowland’s reading and my own can be found at the conclusion of his essay. He states, “Revelation bids us put at the center a politically committed engaged discipleship of Jesus as a necessary component of understanding the divine will.” I would disagree with this statement when it becomes applied to community. After all, the Nazis had a Protestant Reich Church which placed what they understood to be the divine will at the center of their politic. I would argue that Revelation allows us as readers to acknowledge the many perspectives, shoes to stand in, voices to hear, and unanswered questions concerning genocide and apocalypse. One should wrestle with the text for remembrance to help avoid potential ideologies that might condone genocide.

IV. CONCLUSION

As humans, we have ethical commitments to remember the victims of genocide. The ritual of reading the text of Revelation offers one example of how one engages in remembrance. Here, the ritual of remembrance becomes a sacred act. Perhaps one can understand Revelation as the “living word of God” by not limiting it to its historical origins. When genocide occurs and the suffering other’s “call for aid” remains unanswered, Revelation stands as a testimony to that stark reality. The “living word” of Revelation cannot be separated from the “call for aid” from the suffering other. Just as John, the author, answered the “call for aid” of those Christians persecuted in his day, we read the text to answer the “call for aid” in remembrance of those Jews killed in the Holocaust. Therefore, the “call for aid” cannot be limited to a specific religious tradition but represents a very literal and conceptual human call. Levinas asserts that our ethical, initial obligation to the other becomes justice, which remains essential for human order.[xii] In turn, our reading of the text exists as a fulfilling part of the Levinasian obligation. Reading may provide a ground for one to wrestle with justice.

Just as the perpetrators destroyed the opportunity to encounter God with their actions and ideologies, the reader should be aware of how he or she reads. If one reads without recognizing where his or her interpretation or tradition could be exclusive, then one in turn denies the face of the suffering other, which denies God in the text. For example, one must acknowledge problems within the Book of Revelation. John’s initial audience was Christians under persecution. Yet today, if one understands genocide as apocalypse then the audience metaphorically become the victims and in turn everyone. This switch in audience allows for inclusive readings as opposed to understanding Revelation as strictly for Christians.

When reading the Bible in an exclusive way (e.g. Anti-Semitic, sexist, racists ways), one might be generating potential ideologies and interpretations to cause others to suffer. By reading without all of the groups, one seemingly violates the Golden Rule.[xiii] Since one encounters God when ethically encountering the other, one denies this encounter when ignoring the other. To read inclusively is to recognize the self of the other as a self and therefore encountering and recognizing God and the other within the text.

“The People of God” must be understood as all of us in order to advocate inclusive readings and realities. Those of us a generation removed encounter these “People of God” when we read the text, seeing the victims’ memorial and the perpetrator’s hall of mirrors. This ground grants us a weapon to fight ideologies that advocate or lead to genocide.

This interpretation offers the solution of multiple readings of the Book of Revelation. Now when one addresses genocide and the root problem of ideology after reading this interpretation, one must acknowledge the potentially dangerous or problematic aspects of a text and how it affects an ideology that could lead to genocide.

Furthermore, this proposed interpretation provides multiple voices to combat and contrast the dangerous aspects and offers a different side, where the potential victims’ voice cries out. This cry does not cease because we hear it in the text of Revelation. This interpretation offers the reader a foundational sacred text to approach current and future apocalypses. It allows for the accountability of perpetrators and bystanders to be addressed. Through the text, rescuers can be acknowledged and praised for their actions and ideologies.

Bibliography

Blanchot, Maurice. The Writing of the Disaster. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1986.

Browning, Christopher. Ordinary Men: Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland. New York: Harper Perennial, 1998.

Greenberg, Irving, Alvin H. Rosenfeld. Confronting the Holocaust: The Impact of Elie Wiesel. Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press, 1978.

Harrelson, Walter J., and others, eds. The New Interpreter’s Study Bible. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2003.

Maybaum, Ignaz. The Face of God after Auschwitz. Amsterdam: Polak & Van Gennep LTD Publishers, 1965.

Levinas, Emmanuel. Alterity & Transcendence. New York: Columbia University Press, 1995.

Levinas, Emmanuel. Entre Nous: on thinking-of-the-other. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998.

Patte, Daniel. Ethics of Biblical Interpretation: a Reevaluation. Louisville, Ky: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1995.

Patte, Daniel, eds. Global Bible Commentary. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2004.

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Sauvage, Pierre. Weapons of the Spirit. 90 min. First Run/Icarus Films 1988. Film