Theologians “Discover”, “Interpret” New Apocalyptic Texts

Biblical Scholars Can’t Believe This Shit, Again

A faculty/student research team at Pretentious Thinky School of Christian Bizness   (PTSCB) recently “discovered” a heretofore untapped source of New Testament apocalyptic writing when they realized that significant parallels existed between the lyrics of the early works of Prince and the Book of Revelation.  Their work began in earnest when the faculty member leading the team spontaneously quoted the introductory voiceover to “Let’s Go Crazy,” leading to a deluge of lyric-citing from a number of students who really should have better things to do.

“Once you see it, it’s really obvious.  I don’t know why people have missed this for the past 20 years,” said ethics student Anne Grady, who participated in the project while taking a break from her “real work” of writing a document purporting to be an “existentialist interrogation of defense contracting manuals.” 

Grady continued before she could be interrupted, “‘Let’s Go Crazy’ is set within the context of liturgy in the first place, where the community is ’gathered together, to get through this thing called life,’ to tell and enact the stories that form it and thus enable it to, well, ‘get through.’  It seems obvious that what follows has some kind of Scriptural resonance.  And then when my colleague and classmate Belinda Jones cited the key text, ‘There’s something else/The afterworld . . . A world of never ending happiness/U can always see the sun, day or night,’ we immediately saw the correspondence to Revelation 22:5.” 

(Rev.  22:5:  And there will be no night; they need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever.)

She continued breathlessly, “Of course, who is ‘she,’ the archetypal woman in the raspberry beret, the one who ‘if it was warm, wouldn’t wear much more’? Is she none other than the ‘woman . . . clothed in purple and scarlet’ of Revelation 17:4, who is ‘drunk with the blood of the saints’? The author may ‘think [he] love[s] her,’ but really she’s just a big metaphor for Rome.  And obviously there I mean the Empire, and not the Catholic Church, let’s be clear.  ‘Raspberry Beret’ is a narrative of resistance to the oppressive rule of the beast, Mr. McGee, and his five-and-dime American consumer-capitalist dystopia selling cheap crap.  You can read it back into Rome and simultaneously forward into Walmart and America.  It’s CRUCIAL, PEOPLE!” 

Members of PTSCB’s Biblical Studies department were frustrated but not surprised by this non-professional foray into Scriptural interpretation by “people who keep their Bibles on a top shelf, because it’s not like they use them or anything.”  One senior scholar, who wished not to be named, said, “well, it just goes to show two things.  First, the vernacular language Bible was a tragic mistake.  And second, that theology and ethics crowd is . . . hmmm . . . I just don’t UNDERSTAND them, at all.  I mean, was that supposed to be humor?”