Okay, guys, let’s not be too hard on the OP. I like his boldness on dating, and hey! It’s cool that it’s not the 500th explanation of the Christmas star. Gotta crank up that astronomy software for other reasons, too.
The other thing to note is that the traditional interpretation of “I was in the spirit on the Lord’s Day” is that John was saying Mass on Sunday. (Yes, that sounds kinda weird. But as you know, we don’t just say peace to the priest; we say, “And with your spirit.” The idea is that the priest is indeed in the Spirit when he celebrates Mass and acts
in persona Christi; he is both priest and prophet then.)
Mass was almost always said facing East. And during early Christian times (since Sunday was a work day and since one fasted from midnight until one received Communion), Mass was in the early early morning, right before dawn. (To the point that some pagan Romans thought that Christians worshipped the Sun.)
So when the OP pictures John looking up at the sky at sunrise, he’s got the Mass time right. Therefore, I do not totally dismiss his idea; it’s a good start.
Probably the biggest (and least well-organized!) book on possible astronomical symbolism in the Book of Revelation is the old “Social-Science Commentary on the Book of Revelation” by Bruce J. Malina and John J. Pilch. Bruce Malina is justly famous for providing historical and cultural context research.
The problem is that the book has a tendency to have some good information, get you interested, and then run straight over to crazytown (it’s academic crazytown, though). So my big problem was not rolling my eyes too hard, and not breaking into rebuttal every two or three pages.
However, the nice thing for the OP is that it’s very cheap on Kindle (I think I bought it for 5 bucks), and it provides a lot of bibliography and source material. So if he were to use this book as a springboard, he might be able to find some really good info.
The thing is that we don’t know much about how Jewish ideas about astronomy/astrology interacted with those of other ancient cultures. Ancient astronomy is a pretty deep academic topic. The problem is that not all science people have the languages, and not all people with the languages have the science and math. So while reading Malina and Pilch, I quickly found out that the ancient astronomy people tended to be debunking older research into ancient astronomy – and those older works were the ones Malina and Pilch were using! Problem!
So like I say, there’s plenty of room for a patient person to putter around and look into it, and do it better.
However, one would not be able to disregard all the Bible references and salvation history references in Revelation, so you’d have to spend a fair amount of time figuring out how these things harmonize. But Revelation is a pretty fun book; and it’s almost a textbook in understanding the rest of the Bible if you follow the references. There are a lot of books explaining that, so the OP wouldn’t have to start from scratch.
Good thesis material!
