It is with much shame that I confess that I am down with the S.
I didn’t know I was. Three years into writing a blog about faith and Christianity, you would think I knew better. I mean I wrote a book with Zondervan, the people who publish the Bible, and I still didn’t know.
For the life of me, I thought it was “The Book of Revelations.”
A few weeks ago, when I used the word “Revelations” in a post, someone called me out on it in the comments. They said “referring to the last book of the bible as ‘Revelations’ is nails on a chalkboard to me.”
I scoffed in my head. Oh you misinformed grammarian you! Of course there’s an S! What do you think: there’s only one Revelation in the whole book? That it’s a single Revelation? Poppycock! Or dare I say fiddlesticks, your logic is so cattywampus.
Then I googled it. Then I actually looked it up in the Bible and what?? Are you serious? When did we get rid of the S? Is that a new thing? Did we all vote on that? Better check the K to the J to the V for the real deal. Or what’s my man Douay Rheims have to say about the whole thing. EuPete help me out on this one, what does The Message have?
No S.
Good to know.
So how did I respond to the person who called me out? I didn’t at first. I just deleted the S all sneaky like and then went about my day. But when I checked the site later, someone had defended me and said “I think Jon was making a joke.” (I wish I was that smart.) And then someone else said “Not sure where it is referred to as Revelations in the story” since I had deleted the reference. Then I sent out a tweet that had said “Revelations” and someone responded, “Revelation is singular. Pretty basic and fraught w/theological implications, so I hope that was a typo.”
So, to recap, some folks thought I was smart enough to do it as a joke and others thought that I had never done it in the first place. And then when I kept the S in my tweet to see if people would get up in arms, some in fact did. All in all, a pretty good day.
I’m coming clean. I always “s-ify” Revelation. But now, much like those lovable kids at the end of the GI Joe cartoon public service announcements, I know better. And knowing is half the battle.
Questions:
Have you ever added an S to Revelation? Is there another Bible grammar pet peeve that drives you crazy?
