There's also some debate over authorship and as I recall some protestant sects question its inclusion as something other than "interesting apocrypha". Personally I've read it as a political-religious castigation of historical Rome (the Roman imperial apparatus exiled John of Patmos for his teachings and that's going to be the main piece of context that it's written within). The "Great City that Reignth over the Kings of Earth" is obviously an allegory for Rome's particular breed of imperialism and iirc Hardt & Negri comment on this in some capacity in that "Empire" book I've linked and written about here a few times

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5787587&forum_id=2\u0026mark_id=5309546#49358572)

"Give me control over a nation’s currency, and I care not who makes its laws."

-Mayer Amschel Rothschild

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5787587&forum_id=2\u0026mark_id=5309546#49358609)

The Jews have the better idea on this tbh but also lean the other way too hard where they write up all of this stuff that's effectively just rabbinical circlejerk commentaries over it and miss the fundamental tenets, which are what were more or less what were given from heaven. If you could time travel and ask Luke or John at the scribe's desk "Is this verbatim the word of God, divinely inspired, your feeble hand of rotting flesh and bone the conduit for something Definitively Perfect" they'd probably drop to their knees and say with obsequious and righteous humility "No, of course not, but it's the best I can do". With context and a little understanding that's more than sufficient as a thing to channel what God wanted then and what God wants now, but through a hundred rewrites and translations of the source texts you'd be mad to think that it's truly perfect and all entirely from **legible** revelation. Revelation itself is on a spectrum but I'm not doing any Science on day 1 of the sabbath

One thing at Protestant school that Catholic school completely lacked was the idea that by reading Scripture you're effectively engaging in a two-way dialogue with God and the inspired authors and you aren't supposed to take it as a biblical literalism edict but instead a challenge to your own knowledge and beliefs as well as your ability to interpret what's in front of you 1. in historical context 2. in today's context and 3. outside both, in your personal capacity to estimate what is truly "of the unchanging and eternal divine" about this or that

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5787587&forum_id=2\u0026mark_id=5309546#49358630)