Reading the Book of Revelation as Literature
The Volume of Revelation is the most remarkable text you volition ever read. Setting aside any claims that we might desire to make about it as a result of its being role of the approved Scriptures of the Christian faith, it is the most boggling piece of literature ever written by a human existence, and it ought to feature in any university course on world literature. Its engagement with the canonical Old Testament scriptures, its apply of contemporary first century culture and mythology, its elaborate construction and multiple echoes, interweaving, repetition and development of themes, its extraordinarily sophisticated use of numerology in 3 unlike ways, and the sheer power of its rhetoric and impact of its imagery—all these get in a remarkable and endlessly fascinating text. There really is zilch in all of human being literature to compare with it.
The nature of the text is reflected in the touch on that it has had on man history, belief and civilization. At a popular level, it is hard to escape the pervasive influence of imagery, all of which is unique in the New Attestation. There is hardly a mean solar day that goes by without some mention of Armageddon (16.xvi) as a metaphor for a cataclysmic result involving conflict, and the first discussion of the text, 'apocalypse' has not only become the descriptor for a whole genre of literature from the menstruum, simply serves as common expression for any kind of impending disaster. Images of people seated on clouds and playing harps (xiv.2, 14) accept entered the popular consciousness, becoming a visual metaphor for anything thought to be 'heavenly' even in television advertisements. Disasters that include warfare, famine or affliction are identified with the 'iv horsemen of the apocalypse' (vi.i–8)[1]; we all know that to enter heaven we must pass St Peter who is standing at the 'pearly gates' (21.21); and everyone is wary of the 'number of the beast' (xiii.18). We might and so add 'Jezebel' (two.xx), being 'lukewarm' (iii.15), the 'grapes of wrath' (14.19), a 'cherry-red woman' (17.3) and 'streets paved with aureate' (21.21)—the list goes on![2]
Only Revelation has shaped the world at a more serious level too. Through the school of interpretation know every bit Dispensational Premillennialism, which originated with J N Darby in around 1830 and was popularized past the Scofield Bible in 1909, the volume of Revelation has had a direct touch on on primal aspects of US strange policy (George West Bush subscribed to this outlook).[3] Many people influenced by this approach ask the question: 'If God is going to destroy and remake the world, do we really need to intendance for it, or is this a lark from more important things?' (We will see, as we read the text itself, that this is a mistaken interpretation of what Revelation actually says.) Revelation was an important text in shaping the religious imagination, especially in Europe effectually the year g since this was thought to be connected to the millennium in affiliate twenty[iv], and around the year 1260 cheers to the influence of the education of Joachim of Fiore, who equated the one,260 days of 12.half dozen with the 1,260 years that had passed since Jesus was built-in so we could now look the ideal 'kingdom of the Spirit' to break into history. The conflict betwixt the beast and the true people of God shaped Martin Luther's outlook, and he was happy to identify the faux believe of the Roman Catholic church building with the great prostitute of chapter 17.[5] More positively, Revelation has been a text that has provided profound condolement and encouragement to many generations of Christians under pressure or persecution for their faith[vi], and a new generation of readers is discovering its personal, social and political significance.[7]
Revelation has besides been uniquely influential in Christian art and worship. The use of the Hebrew term 'Hallelujah' in Christian worship derives from its use in the hymns in Revelation (the term occurs nowhere else in the New Testament). Nosotros are accustomed to think of God and Jesus equally the 'Alpha and the Omega', of Jesus 'coming quickly' and (perhaps lightly less often) of Jesus 'having the keys to death and Hades'. These ideas come from Revelation, and (somewhat ironically) are ones that John has appropriated from pagan magical cults and refashioned every bit claims about God and Jesus as a manner of denying the reality of those cults. The same is true of the importance of the color white in Christian worship downwards the ages, deriving from the repeated descriptions of God's people worshipping in white (3.4, half dozen.11, vii.9, 19.8). It has been estimated that near fifty% of all Christian fine art over ii millennia has been influenced by Revelation, not to the lowest degree because, apart from Jesus' parables, information technology offers the richest supply of visual descriptions. Maybe the most extravagant example of this is the series of tapestries that can be seen at Chateau d'Angers in the Loire Valley in France; it originally comprised 90 scenes in six sections that were each 78 feet broad and 20 feet long. Simply scenes from Revelation tin can be institute in almost every church or cathedral in the West that contains stained drinking glass.[8]
Revelation has been equally important in its contribution to Christian theology. It has the most developed Trinitarian theology of whatever New Testament volume, identifying Jesus and God by depicting them sharing the same throne, ruling as equal sovereigns, sharing the same titles, and fifty-fifty at central points in the text together sharing atypical verbs and pronouns (11.fifteen, fourteen.1, 21.22, 22.iii–4). The Spirit is also closely identified with Jesus, particularly in the image of the 'seven Spirits of God which are the eyes of the lamb' in 5.6. Revelation was one of the earliest texts given broad attestation every bit office of the early Christian catechism of Scripture, largely because it was believed to be written past the Apostle John, but its authorship was later disputed, then that it did non have the influence on patristic debates about the condition of Jesus and the nature of God that information technology might have—John's gospel instead being the most influential.[9]
Despite the importance of this text, it remains widely neglected. In many churches it is rarely preached on; many ordinary Christians do not know what to practice with it; some deliberately avert it, peradventure because of foreign or unnerving encounters they experienced in the past. Simply Christians in the Westward need to rediscover this text more ever, for at least ii reasons. First, Revelation is the book that in a higher place all others tests our ability to read scripture well. People who might agree on the meaning and significance of other texts in the New Testament or other parts of the Bible suddenly notice themselves at odds when it comes to making sense of this ane. It demands that we pay attending and listen well, that nosotros permit the text to exist 'other' than u.s.a. without us imposing our own assumptions on it, and it calls u.s.a. to be rooted in its canonical context every bit part of scripture. There is no more urgent need for Western Christians than to recover both confidence and competence in our reading of Scripture (all our current disagreements are symptoms of this) and reading Revelation provokes us to accost this.
Secondly, Revelation is the almost developed case of a writer in scripture wrestling with the ideological implications of the gospel, and engaging with an opposing ideological organisation in the calorie-free of what God has washed for us in Jesus, as shaped by the inspiration of the Spirit. The near-universal declines in church building attendance in the West is a sign that, like the Christians in Sardis, nosotros have been defenseless napping: the ideological climate has shifted dramatically in the last generation or two, and nosotros accept been so conceited and content with a 'Christendom' model of society that we haven't known how to respond. Revelation shows us very clearly how to be alarm to the context nosotros are in, how to both engage with and stand up to the pressure level of ideology, and requite u.s.a. the resources to live courageously in an inhospitable climate.
(This is the first part of the draft of my introduction to my Tyndale Commentary on Revelation, which will be published in April adjacent year.)
[1] Francis Ford Coppola's 1979 picture about the Vietnam State of war, Apocalypse At present, had four helicopters crossing a sunset sky every bit its promotional affiche.
[2] For a thorough review of the influence of apocalyptic ideas on contemporary civilization, see the third part of Kelly J. Murphy and Justin Jeffcoat Schedtler, eds., Apocalypses in Context: Apocalyptic Currents Through History (Fortress Printing,U.S., 2016).
[iii] A very different reading of the contemporary political importance of Revelation can be institute in Wes Howard-Brook and Anthony Gwyther, Unveiling Empire: Reading Revelation Then and Now (Maryknoll, Northward.Y: Orbis Books, 1999).
[four] Meet the fascinating written report by James Palmer, The Apocalypse in the Early Heart Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge Academy Press, 2014) which demonstrates the close interweaving betwixt apocalyptic ideas and political activeness in the period.
[5] One of the illustrations in Luther's translation of the Bible depicts the prostitute riding the beast wearing what is very conspicuously a Papal tiara.
[six] An engaging example from a mod context is Allan Boesak, Comfort and Protestation: Reflections on the Apocalypse of John of Patmos (Edinburgh: St Andrew Printing, 1987), written later an angelic visitation to Boesak when he was in imprisoned by the Apartheid regime in Due south Africa.
[seven] Harry O. Maier, Apocalypse Recalled: The Book of Revelation after Christendom (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2002) offers a reading rooted in the text but engaging with the gimmicky relevance to a mail service-Christendom civilisation.
[8] For a comprehensive overview of Revelation in artistic expression, see Natasha O'Hear and Anthony O'Hear, Picturing the Apocalypse: The Book of Revelation in the Arts over Two Millennia (New York, NY: OUP Oxford, 2015).
[9] See the online discussion by Michael Kruger, 'The Book of Revelation: How Difficult Was Its Journey into the Canon?', Catechism Provender, 12 February 2014, and Kruger'southward essay 'The Reception of the Book of Revelation in the Early Church building' pp 159–174 in Thomas J. Kraus and Michael Sommer, eds., Volume of 7 Seals: The Peculiarity of Revelation, Its Manuscripts, Attestation, and Transmission (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016).
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