The Book of Revelation

Book Of Revelation: 'Visions, Prophecy And Politics' : NPR

March 7, 2012 The Book of Revelation, the final book of the New Testament, has some of the most dramatic and frightening language in the Bible. In her new book Revelations: Visions, Prophecy and Politics in the Book of Revelation, Princeton University religious professor Elaine Pagels places the Book of Revelation in its historical context and explores where the book's apocalyptic vision of the end of the world comes from. "The Book of Revelation fascinates me because it's very different than anything else you find in the New Testament," Pagels tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross. "There's no moral sermons or ethical ideas or edifying things. It's all visions. That's why it appeals so much to artists and musicians and poets throughout the century." Pagels says the Book of Revelation's author, who calls himself John, was likely a refugee whose home in Jerusalem had been leveled by the Romans in response to a Jewish rebellion against the Roman Empire. "I don't think we understand this book until we understand that it's wartime literature," she says. "It comes out of that war, and it comes out of people who have been destroyed by war." Other images in Revelation — which include bright red beasts with seven heads, and dragons, monsters and cosmic eruptions — were likely influenced by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, which buried and destroyed the city of Pompeii, she says. "Most people think John was writing at about the year 90 in the first century. That would be 60 years after the death of Jesus, and the eruption of Vesuvius happened in the year 79," she says. "Much of what we find in the Book of Revelation couched in the fantastic imagery are descriptions of events that for John were very close — the war in Jerusalem, the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, the Roman Emperors who were ruling at the time. ... It seems as though [John] reacted to that, saying, 'Jesus is coming and he is going to destroy all of this.' It was John's conviction that the destruction of Jerusalem was the beginning of the end of time that Jesus had predicted."

Fabric of the Cosmos

"The Fabric of the Cosmos," a four-hour series based on the book by renowned physicist and author Brian Greene, takes us to the frontiers of physics to see how scientists are piecing together the most complete picture yet of space, time, and the universe. With each step, audiences will discover that just beneath the surface of our everyday experience lies a world we’d hardly recognize—a startling world far stranger and more 

 

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/physics/fabric-of-cosmos.html

Justin Hall-Tipping: Freeing energy from the grid | Video on TED.com

Justin Hall-Tipping: Freeing energy from the grid | Video on TED.com: "Justin Hall-Tipping: Freeing energy from the grid"

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Quarks and Creation with John Polkinghorne

Science and religion are often pitted against one another; but how do they complement, rather than contradict, one another? We learn how one man applies the deepest insights of modern physics to think about how the world fundamentally works, and how the universe might make space for prayer.

Krista Tippett: Reconnecting with compassion

 

Compassion can be synonymous with empathy. It can be joined with the harder work of forgiveness and reconciliation, but it can also express itself in the simple act of presence. It's linked to practical virtueslike generosity and hospitality and just being there,just showing up. I think that compassion also is often linked to beauty -- and by that I mean a willingness to see beauty in the other, not just what it is about themthat might need helping. I love it that my Muslim conversation partners often speak of beauty as a core moral value. And in that light, for the religious,compassion also brings us into the territory of mystery -- encouraging us to see, not just beauty, but perhaps also to look for the face of God in the moment of suffering, in the face of a stranger, in the face of the vibrant religious other.

Lee Cronin: Making matter come alive

Before life existed on Earth, there was just matter, inorganic dead "stuff." How improbable is it that life arose? And -- could it use a different type of chemistry? Using an elegant definition of life (anything that can evolve), chemist Lee Cronin is exploring this question by attempting to create a fully inorganic cell using a "Lego kit" of inorganic molecules -- no carbon -- that can assemble, replicate and compete

Richard Resnick: Welcome to the genomic revolution

In this accessible talk from TEDxBoston, Richard Resnick shows how cheap and fast genome sequencing is about to turn health care (and insurance, and politics) upside down.


Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the human genome. (Applause) Chromosome one, top left.Bottom right are the sex chromosomes. Women have two copies of that big X chromosome; men have the Xand, of course, that small copy of the Y. Sorry boys, but it's just a tiny little thing that makes you different.So if you zoom in on this genome, then what you see, of course, is this double helix structure -- the code of life spelled out with these four biochemical letters, or we call them bases, right: A, C, G and T. How many are there in the human genome? Three billion. Is that a big number? Well, everybody can throw around big numbers. But in fact, if I were to place one base on each pixel of this 1280 by 800 resolution screen, we would need 3,000 screens to take a look at the genome. So it's really quite big.