News Release

University of Toronto professor believes religious text Jewish, not Christian

Book Announcement

University of Toronto

An important book of the Bible, believed for centuries to be the work of a Christian author, may have been written by a Jew, says Professor John Marshall, author of Parables of War: Reading John's Jewish Apocalypse.

The book will provide "a new interpretation of the Book of Revelation by understanding it as a document that came out of a Jewish environment, a Jewish religious sensibility and the particular circumstances of the Jewish diaspora," Marshall says. In his initial reading, he found sections of Revelation confusing and inscrutable when read as a Christian document. Yet these sections made sense when examined as a Jewish text.

Marshall contends that Revelation has been misinterpreted over the centuries for a number of reasons. "Scholars have been reading this particular document from within a religious framework for a long time and there is a false idea that whenever any document mentions Christ it must therefore have been authored by a Christian. The control of texts is a continuing area of contention between Jews and Christians and the issue of how to share a text considered sacred is one that escapes a simple resolution."

Parables of War will be published by Wilfrid Laurier University Press in 2000.

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CONTACT:
Michah Rynor
U of T Public Affairs
(416) 978-2104
michah.rynor@utoronto.ca


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