Known to be a symbolic book full of imagery, the apocalyptic Book of Revelation, which can be found in the Christian Bible, has been seen to deliberately use verbal elements reflected in ancient curse tablets from Rome. Live Science reports that such verbal elements may have been utilized to emphasize the Book's message.
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Ancient Curse Tablets' Verbal Elements Observed in Bible's Apocalyptic Book of Revelation
The Book of Revelation is full of apocalyptic and prophetic visions. However, if the interesting conclusions of a Bible researcher are correct, the content of the Book may have been more than apocalyptic predictions.
Ancient Origins reports that, according to researcher Dr. Michael Hölscher from the Faculty of Catholic Theology at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU), this Bible book is full of language that is directly taken from ancient curse tablets from the Roman era. These curses were documented scripts that were written to bring bad fortune or harm to someone who had exploited, cheated on, wronged, or threatened another person.
These ongoing efforts suggest that Revelation tried to distinguish Christianity from the pagan practices of the Roman empire by phrasing the content in a familiar way. This would have, in turn, reinforced the message it wanted to convey.
Dr. Hölscher says that his research offers a compilation of evidence where text from the ancient curse tablets sheds light on textual content in the Book in a way that is better than other pre-texts. He is currently proceeding with a project that examines the similarities between these ancient Roman curse tablets and the Bible's apocalyptic Book of Revelation.
An example to support such a conclusion is that in the Book of Revelation, God mentioned the binding and release of Satan. The same terms could also be found in the ancient curse tablets. They were known to be defixiones, which is the Latin word for "bindings."
Another illustration is when the Book describes certain enemies using inclusive formulas, which is what curse tablets also do. In the 13th chapter, for instance, the Book prophesies that there will be a "mark of the beast" imposed on the rich, poor, free, slave, small, great, and so on.
However, several experts and scholars disagree with this link and dub it as a weak one.
Other Experts Disagree With This Cryptic Link
The Bible's Book of Revelation is known to hold prophecies regarding the world's end and the second coming of Jesus Christ. These events are apocalyptically illustrated with images that early Christians may have been familiar with.
Curse tablets, on the other hand, were prominent across Roman society, despite being perceived as black magic and banned by the law. They contained curses that brought harm to an enemy. These were typically inscribed on a thin lead sheet that was deposited in an area where their gods could have seen it.
In a Live Science report, archaeologist Ken Dark says that the suggested link between these two is quite tenuous. He also states that even Dr. Hölscher agreed there were no direct quotations taken from the ancient curse tablets found within the Biblical Book. These parallelism illustrations are still up for debate.
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