Victor Porton’s personal theological reading of Revelation 11; the views below are the author’s interpretation.
Watch the video sermon
Full sermon text
Original sermon: Sperm of the Greatest Mathematician
In this video, I want to explain my interpretation of Revelation chapter 11 and its prophecy about the two witnesses of the Apocalypse.
I think these two witnesses may be a man and a woman who are eventually husband and wife.
The Measuring Tube
Revelation 11 begins with a reed given specifically for measurement.
The speaker is given a reed-like instrument and commanded to measure the temple, the altar, and the worshippers.
The word usually translated as reed is kalamos.
A reed is hollow like a tube. But here it is not just a hollow tube: it is a hollow tube used as a measure.
That combination is the center of my interpretation.
The tube suggests sperm and reproductive technology. The fact that it is explicitly a measuring tube gives the symbol its distinctive form.
Artificial Insemination
I interpret this image as possibly pointing to sperm and artificial insemination.
My intention is to make my sperm available to Israeli women who freely want to receive it.
This does not mean that I would marry all women who receive it.
I interpret the marital prophecy as concerning one particular woman.
The Mother-Virgin
In another interpretation of mine, based on a passage in the Tanakh concerning the great priest, I derive the concept of a mother-virgin: a woman who becomes a biological mother without having sexual intercourse.
Artificial insemination makes this biologically possible.
In my interpretation, one woman may become a mother through my sperm while remaining a virgin, and later become my wife.
I also identify this woman with the female member of the two witnesses.
Two witnesses → man and woman → future husband and wife.
So the larger reproductive interpretation concerns many Israeli women who may voluntarily receive my sperm, while the mother-virgin and marriage prophecy concerns only one woman.
The Two Witnesses
Revelation presents the two witnesses as an unusually close pair. They receive the same mission, prophesy during the same period, face the same enemies, die together, and are vindicated together.
The text does not explicitly say that they are married, but I interpret their shared destiny as compatible with them being husband and wife.
If that is correct, then the reproductive symbolism at the beginning of the chapter may also relate to their personal relationship.
Why Israel?
The setting of Revelation 11 is the Temple and the holy city.
I therefore connect the reproductive symbolism with Israel.
In practical terms, I understand this as meaning that my sperm should be available to Israeli women who want it.
The larger pattern would then concern Israel and descendants, while one particular woman would have the additional prophetic role of mother-virgin, female witness, and future wife.
Why “The Greatest Mathematician”?
The title of this video is intentionally provocative.
I consider myself the greatest mathematician in history because I discovered what I call ordered semicategory actions.
In my own assessment, these structures are more general and more foundational than groups.
I therefore compare myself with Évariste Galois.
Galois discovered group theory, and I regard him as the second greatest mathematician in history.
My comparison is simple:
Galois → groups.
Porton → ordered semicategory actions.
Because I regard ordered semicategory actions as a more general foundational structure, I place my own discovery above Galois’s in mathematical generality.
This is my own assessment of mathematical importance, not an established judgment of the mathematical community.
God’s Mockery of Human Recognition
There is another layer to my interpretation.
Despite what I regard as the greatest mathematical discovery in history, human institutions did not give me even a scientific degree.
In my theological reading, Revelation turns this humiliation upside down.
I interpret the symbolism almost as divine mockery of humanity’s system of recognition.
Human institutions refused even to recognize me with an academic degree, while the prophetic symbolism I perceive does not center on a diploma, a university title, or an academic chair.
It centers on something far more physical and impossible to institutionalize away: my sperm, my reproductive body, and my penis.
In my interpretation, the irony is deliberate.
Mankind would not give the mathematician a degree; God answers, in my reading, with the mathematician’s sperm.
And even more provocatively, I understand the symbolism as saying that humanity tried to judge my worth through academic institutions, while God answers through the most bodily symbol possible: my penis becoming connected with descendants.
I see this as a kind of theological ridicule of human status systems.
A university can refuse a degree.
It cannot retroactively erase a mathematical discovery.
And, in my interpretation, it cannot prevent the same person from becoming the source of descendants through sperm.
Measurement and Mathematics
The mathematical symbolism itself is weaker than the reproductive symbolism, but it is still present.
The reed is a measure, and measurement naturally suggests mathematics.
So the same image joins two things that I connect with myself:
measure → mathematics;
tube → sperm.
This is why I find the symbol so striking.
It is not merely a tube, and it is not merely a measuring rod. It is both at once.
The Whole Interpretation
My interpretation can be summarized in two connected sequences.
measuring reed → hollow measuring tube → sperm → artificial insemination → Israeli women who voluntarily receive it → descendants.
And within that broader pattern:
one woman → mother-virgin → female witness → future wife of the male witness.
The mathematical and social layer runs alongside them:
measure → mathematics → ordered semicategory actions → comparison with Galois → human failure to recognize the discovery.
And in my theological interpretation, that failure is answered with a deliberately bodily irony:
no scientific degree from mankind → sperm, penis, and descendants as part of the prophetic symbolism.
Conclusion
I therefore interpret Revelation 11 as containing both a broad reproductive symbolism and a narrower marital prophecy.
The broad symbolism concerns sperm, Israel, and descendants.
The narrower prophecy concerns one woman who, in my interpretation, becomes a mother while remaining a virgin, is one of the two witnesses, and eventually becomes the wife of the other witness.
The title “Sperm of the Greatest Mathematician” connects this reproductive reading with my assessment of my own mathematical work.
I regard myself as the greatest mathematician in history because of ordered semicategory actions, and Galois as second because of groups.
Against that background, I interpret the contrast with my lack of an academic degree as part of the irony: humanity did not even give me formal scientific status, while the symbolism I perceive in Revelation concerns my mathematics, my sperm, my reproductive body, and descendants.
At the center remains the same strange object: a hollow tube that is also a measure.
This is my personal theological interpretation and my personal assessment of mathematical importance. Revelation 11 does not explicitly say that the two witnesses are husband and wife, that the measuring reed represents artificial insemination, or that God intends the mockery I describe. Likewise, my ranking of mathematicians is my own judgment, not a consensus of historians or mathematicians.
Leave a Reply