
Knuth: Fantasia Apocalyptica (2017) - jdnier
https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/fant.html
======
aasasd
I keep meaning to get through the Bible just to gather the classical citation
material and finally read the Book of Revelation. (But the brutally reader-
unfriendly style in the early parts stops me so far. What's the deal with the
identical gifts of the twelve kings repeated _twelve times_?)

Hunter Thompson considered the author of Revelation to be one of the greatest
writers. The text is apparently full of references to contemporary non-
biblical happenings, and _that_ became one of the defining mythical works of
the western culture!

~~~
umanwizard
There’s no very good reason to read the books of the Bible in order. The order
(and even the selection of which books are canonical) is an artificial
construct devised long after the individual books were written.

~~~
Amezarak
The books are arranged in roughly chronological order and constantly allude to
and quote prior passages. I don’t think this approach makes a lot of sense.

Most of the Old Testament consists of Jewish history, beginning with creation.
There are a few that could probably stand on their own: Job, Jonah, the Song
of Solomon, Proverbs, and maybe Psalms. (You would miss a lot in Psalms doing
this.)

The New Testament is full of allusions to the old and cannot be understood
correctly without reading it first. It probably doesn’t matter the order you
read the first four books, or even if you read all four - Matthew, Mark, and
Luke are very similar in tome and they describe the same events, but you
wouldn’t want to skip John.

Acts is simply what happens after the four gospels, and the remainder of the
Bible consists of epistles from the apostles which refer to events in Acts and
in the gospels, and it wraps up with Revelations.

I don’t really see how you could read it in any substantially different order
and get as much out of it.

~~~
umanwizard
The order of the New Testament is pretty different from the chronological
order, and obscures information about the authorship pretty badly.

A few examples: John, the fourth book of the New Testament, was one of the
last written.

Luke and Acts are probably part of the same document, written by the same
author, but are separated in the traditional ordering.

And so on...

Edit (Correction): as the person replying to me correctly points out, Luke and
Acts were not part of the same document, though they were probably written by
the same person.

~~~
Amezarak
John was one of the last written, but it covers the same period of time as the
other gospels. That’s what I meant by chronological. The text itself, not
authorship. I don’t think an ordering in authorship time is any more sensible,
particularly given the probable presence of forgeries and the undateableness
of most of them.

Luke and Acts were probably not part of the same document, but were written
separately. The beginning of Acts supports this when the author speaks of his
previous book and re-addresses his audience. I suppose you could argue it’s
all an interpolation, but the books were separate before the canon was
established.

Either way, I wouldn’t consider it arbitrary to have all the gospel narratives
together and then have subsequent events afterward. Perhaps you could argue
that Luke and John should be swapped, so as to proceed from Luke to Acts, but
then Luke is much more like Matthew and Mark theologically and stylistically.
You could set John first, but it’s the most difficult of the four. It’s hard
to see how your example is a good one of arbitrary ordering. Four books
covering the same material are all in one place; the three synoptic gospels
are in the same place - how else would you do it?

~~~
triangleman
Actually the four Gospels fit nicely into the order of the four beasts of
Revelation: the lion (Matthew), the calf (Mark), the man (Luke), and the eagle
(John).

------
dang
Discussed at the time:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13138349](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13138349)

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ncmncm
Knuth is constantly full of surprises, but this one surprises me more than the
rest.

~~~
mastazi
He's been an organist for many years and he has a rather large pipe organ
installed in his house, he even travelled to Europe to visit some organ makers
before setting on an American organ maker. If you search "Knuth organ" on
Youtube, you can find various interviews where he talks about it. You can see
the specs of the organ here: [https://www-cs-
faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/organ.html](https://www-cs-
faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/organ.html)

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h2odragon
> And of course a musical work on the Apocalypse should also contain calypso.

Absolutely.

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neilv
I can't hear of the book of Revelations without being reminded of Alvin
Ailey's famous modern dance piece of the same name.

If you haven't been to a touring AAADT performance (IME, each one includes
Revelations, among changing other pieces), it's worth it at least once, even
if you don't go to performing arts shows, and you're in the nosebleed seats.
The videos don't give even 1/10th the live experience, IMHO. (If you're a
student, your school might offer discounted tickets.)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revelations_(Alvin_Ailey)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revelations_\(Alvin_Ailey\))

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNqaixKbrjs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNqaixKbrjs)

~~~
aasasd
Only after reading your comment I remembered that there's also an album by
Vangelis' band Aphrodite's Child, bluntly named ‘666’. It's good at the
apocalyptic atmosphere, though I dunno how faithful it is to the text.

[https://youtube.com/watch?v=xcAnMTHuNNk](https://youtube.com/watch?v=xcAnMTHuNNk)

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legopelle
I had the privilege to hear the piece at the premiere in Piteå, Sweden.
Honestly I didn't know what to expect, but I've never heard music rendered
from text so faithfully before.

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senozhatsky
Slightly off topic. Can't help it, but the motif for pain (introduced @ 9:37)
sounds to me like, I don't know, Windows (?) error/warning sound. Is it just
me?

