Coronavirus marks the beginning of the biblical apocalypse

The argument

To those who have been paying attention, coronavirus should be no surprise. Coronavirus is the manifestation of a biblical prophecy, representing one of the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Revelation 6:8 of the bible reads: “And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his named that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him and power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.” Coronavirus is clearly what this was foretelling, a deadly epidemic destined to wipe out a quarter of the world.

Premises

Counter-arguments

The reading rests on a literalist interpretation of Revelation that is not shared across Christian traditions. A large body of scholarship, and many churches, read the book as first-century apocalyptic literature addressed to congregations under Roman pressure, its imagery referring to that setting; others read it symbolically as a depiction of recurring spiritual conflict rather than as a schedule of future events. On either of those readings the identification proposed here does not arise. The identification is also retrospective, which is what limits it. The passage names sword, hunger, death and wild beasts, and epidemics have repeatedly been read as its fulfilment — the Black Death in the fourteenth century, the influenza pandemic of 1918, and the emergence of HIV/AIDS were each announced as this prophecy's realisation in their day. A framework that accommodates every major outbreak after the fact generates no prediction that could be checked in advance, and the recurrence of the claim is the strongest evidence about its method. On its own numbers the reading fails as well. The verse specifies power over a fourth of the earth; recorded coronavirus mortality was several orders of magnitude below that, which the argument does not address. The entry also answers a different question from the one asked. The question concerns how coronavirus will change the way people live, and an end-times reading offers a claim about cosmic significance rather than about social or material change.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The passage is read by much scholarship and many traditions as first-century apocalyptic literature addressed to its own setting, or symbolically, rather than as a schedule of future events. [Rejecting P2] The same verse was identified with the Black Death, the 1918 influenza pandemic and HIV/AIDS in their turn, so the reading is retrofitted after each outbreak; and recorded coronavirus mortality was far below the fourth of the earth specified.