tumblr repost 2: religion in supernatural's apocalypse, pt. 1.

(via fuckyeahsupernaturalsecrets)

Okay. I could write a dissertation on this secret and everything that's wrong with it, but the TL;DR summary version goes like this: the Antichrist and the Rapture are not in the Book of Revelation. To be fair, neither are the designations of the Four Horsemen and their colors that Kripke and co. came up with; I forget the exact sources, but everything that led up to the way Gaiman and Pratchett wrote the Horsepersons in Good Omens (which, all things considered, was probably a big influence on the Supernatural Apocalypse) came from post-Biblical interpretation of Revelation.

And the Rapture? That came from way post-Biblical (like, early/mid-eighteenth century post-Biblical) interpretation of the Gospels (Matthew 24:36—41 and John 14:2—3) and the letters of St. Paul (1 Corinthians 15:49–55, Philippians 3:20-21, 1 Thessalonians 4:15–17, and 2 Thessalonians 2:1-7). The primary source for belief in a "rapture" comes from 1 Thessalonians, which reads, in the King James Version:

For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.

See, it's called the Rapture, because the word used for "seized up" in the Vulgate Bible was a form of the Latin verb rapio, rapere, rapui, raptum — see, raptum there? It's the participial form of this verb, and it means "snatched up." Raptum, Rapture — isn't etymology fun?

Anyway: as with the Rapture, the Bible says absolutely nothing about a singular antichrist, using those terms. 2 Thessalonians references a "Man of Sin" (or Lawlessness, depending on your translation), but he's only equated with the idea of "The Antichrist," again, in post-Biblical interpretation. The only times in the entire Bible where the term "antichrist" crops up are in 1st and 2nd John, and on each of those five occasions, it refers not to some guy who's going to come during the Apocalypse of Revelation, but rather several people, contemporaries of St John, who refused to acknowledge certain "truths"/believe what he did about Jesus.

So, yeah. Everything you thought you knew about how the Apocalypse is supposed to go? …Most of that is total crap, as far as the actual Bible is concerned. Some guys, writing long after Saints John and Paul*, made it up based on how they decided to read certain passages. And since Kripke, Sera, Ben, et al only read the Book of Revelation, that's why the Rapture and the Antichrist, as such, aren't in the show or aren't taking the role you want them to take.**

Basically, from a religious studies student who loves Supernatural — before you criticize how Kripke et al handled the Apocalypse, please, please, PLEASE: read a goddamn Bible.

*: The debate over the authorship of the Johannine and Pauline texts is very long and very complicated; suffice to say, historians don't believe that John and Paul wrote all of them.

**: I actually liked the way that Show handled Jesse — one of many possible Antichrists, born of a demon-possessed mother, potentially but not essentially part of the Apocalypse, believes in childhood superstitions instead of religion. They hit all the high points without breaking the show (which would've been all too easily, since they cribbed notes from Good Omens again and gave him reality-warping powers).