The Bible's Hidden Cosmology

Originally published 20 years ago as 'Christ and the Cosmos', this book has been updated partly to address the pressing implications of the fundamentalism underlying the current US administration, as analysed in Michael Northcott's book reviewed in the last issue. These fundamentalists believe that the world will end soon and that the faithful will be caught up in the Rapture, which will then be followed by the millennial peace. In the meantime there is no room for ecological conservation or any let-up in the war against terror (the good vs. the axis of evil). By contrast, Gordon makes the case (also to be found in Dan Brown) that we are talking about the end of an age - Piscean - rather than the end of the world. This introduces the symbolic analysis that forms the heart of the book. Here he brings his very considerable inter-disciplinary knowledge to bear on the cosmology underlying the Book of Revelation. Later chapters consider the symbols of the fish and the water-bearer, situating our time at a cusp between two epochs - all this makes for a compelling read.