Baha'u'llah's book Kitab'i'Iqan (The Book of Certitude) is his apocalyptic masterwork.
The topical subject of the Iqan is the reader himself, that person who changes and transforms as he/she works to understand the various themes and sub-themes of this book. The reader is always the subject of apocalyptic texts, as it is the reader him/her self who is being "revealed" by the text (it is this [self] revelation-airy condition by virtue of which a text can be described as being apocalyptic). This unveiling reveals the Self to be both the originator and the end product of the process of life (the alpha and the omega).
The Iqan is written as a treatise on past religious scriptures, an exegetical work according to Dr. Christopher Buck, and the text works to unveil the hidden foundations of those various historical religious entities which have been founded upon such texts. Such foundations are invariably hidden, just as the physical foundation of a large building is generally hidden, and can only be uncovered through an effort of great mental imagination and vision.
[Imagine how much violence is needed to create "peace."]
Baha'u'llah accomplishes this feat by deconstructing the religious scriptures of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, all of which have been written in a highly symbolic and codified form of writing which can be described as an apocalyptic grammar. Baha'u'llah's text introduces the reader to a fully functional form of such a grammar with a nearly complete syllabary and lexicon included.
This functional apocalyptic grammar allows us to view the hidden under-structure of the world's major religions, or rather it allows it (the foundation) to become unveiled-within-understanding within the reader's consciousness as a part of mankind's continuing apocalyptic odyssey towards our ultimate self-understanding which is essentially the same as our self-becoming.
Thus Baha'u'llah makes his claim to be the revelator of our day, revealing all those things that had previously been hidden in human affairs, human destiny and in human be-comingness and helping us to engage our current moment in history.
Bahai Apocalyptic Intentions.
Any Baha'i attempt at creating a hermeneutic technique or techniques (hermeneutic: theory or theories of interpretation) of textual interpretation must be apocalyptic in nature. This is required because the common ground of all religions is apocalypse, the unveiling of or revealing of God in the world.
Baha'is cannot discuss their own religious texts without referencing other religious traditions, nor should we want to try to create any hermeneutic that would be free of the influence of those other major religions.
One suspects that such an attempt would be impossible in any event, if only because the major purpose of Baha'i theologically-oriented texts is to interrogate and elicit an understanding from the religious scriptures of those other religions of their primary teachings within the context of their essentially apocalyptic natures (the oceanic current or stream of unveiling or revelation-al nature of existence and being/becoming). As a consequence, Baha'i must come to understand itself within the context of the whole living-tradition of religious movements in the world, and thus come to accept all those religions within their apocalyptic context (as adjuncts to unveiling and revelation, etc.) as one.
While we stand at the (current) end of those traditions, Baha'is view recent scriptural sources as being only the alpha-omega touchstone for all such scriptures, a contemporary beginning and simultaneous end of these scriptures, and for that reason to be uniquely useful for interrogative purposes, yet at the same time our scriptures can be only a small part of the whole corpus of religiously oriented texts.
As the Baha'i writings make their way into the world of religious thought they should have just as much influence on the way other religious traditions interpret their texts as those traditions will have on our interpretation of our own texts. In this sense, then, basic Baha'i hermeneutics involves the depiction of Baha'i texts and theories within that larger religious framework, and that framework should primarily be based upon an apocalyptic form of understanding.
Consequently all Baha'i understanding of its own religious scriptures is also necessarily indirectly derived from the backgrounds of those other religions, and thus will need to rely on a reconciliation process (cross-interrogation) in determining the success or failure of our current hermeneutical understanding of both our own scriptures and our scriptures relationship to the scriptures of other religions.
BAHA'I APOCALYPTIC INTERROGATIVE TECHNIQUES.
Baha'i apocalyptic interrogation techniques concern the various ways that texts interrogate other texts, readers interrogate texts, and texts interrogate readers.
Much of Baha'i apocalyptic literature consists of interrogation of the scriptures of Islam and Christianity, and to a lesser extent that of Judaism and other religious thematic texts such as mystical/Sufi traditional material. This is a case of texts interrogating other texts. This interrogation is conducted through a readers interaction with these texts and attempting to understand one set of texts interactions with the other sets of texts, i.e. Baha'i with Islamic.
Readers also must interrogate texts. The reader of the Baha'i text needs to interrogate the manner in which the Baha'i text interrogates the texts of other religions (what is this the Spanish inquisition?) in order to gain any understanding at all of the meaning in the text. A failure of interrogation by the reader will leave all texts opaque and closed to human understanding and usefulness, mere objects subject to the manipulation of elites in search of personal or group power.
What Baha'u'llah discovers in his writings is that without interrogation all religious texts are opaque and essentially meaningless. To make such texts transparent requires interrogation, text to text, reader to text, text to reader. Only with the process of interrogation can the texts be understood and seen to have meaning to modern human social conditions. Without interrogation all that religious texts can do is give rise to fantasy and superstition, cultic worship of idols.
When individual readers compare their interrogation results with the results of other individual readers we have texts interrogating readers. These interrogations are essential to creating even a small amount of transparency in the texts. And only with transparency can religious texts become relevant to modern lives and be said to live with us in our daily lives.
