Introduction to the Book of Revelation

I. What is this book? Apocalypse, Prophecy, Letter.

Apocalypse

Άποκάλυψις = uncovering, unveiling, revelation

Apocalyptic genre"a genre of revelatory literature with a narrative framework, in which a revelation is mediated by an otherworldly being to a human recipient, disclosing a transcendent reality which is both temporal, insofar as it envisages eschatological salvation, and spatial insofar as it involves another, supernatural world." (John Collins)

Apocalyptic worldview: "a cosmic dualism, the belief that there are two opposing forces at work in the universe, one for evil (usually Satan and his demons) and one for good (usually God and the angels). This cosmic dualism gets embodied in real-life struggles between good and evil on earth, resulting in a more historical dualism of conflict between the children of God or light and the children of Satan or darkness. The reality of this cosmic and historical struggle means that every human must choose sides; one is either on the side of good and God or of evil and Satan. We might label this ethical dualism. Apocalyptic theology includes another kind of dualism, a temporal dualism. It divides history into two ages, this age and the age to come. The present age is characterized by evil, injustice, oppression, and persecution, while the coming age will be a time of goodness, justice, and peace.” (Michael J. Gorman: Reading Revelation Responsibly. Pp.15-16)

Apocalyptic catastrophe: given the vivid imagery for the end of time in the Apocalypse, any catastrophe that results in widespread destruction or the collapse of civilization is called “apocalyptic.”

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Prophecy

Biblical Prophecy: "…prophecy, in the biblical tradition, is not exclusively or even primarily about making pronouncements and predictions concerning the future. Rather, prophecy is speaking words of comfort and/or challenge, on behalf of God, to the people of God in their concrete historical situation. Old Testament prophets were called by God, sometimes in the context of a visionary experience (see Isaiah 6 and Ezekiel 1), to proclaim the message that God gave them, usually in the form of various oracles that were later written down, but also occasionally in visions, and often in poetic or symbolic language. Whatever the form, the message was one of judgment (on them or on their oppressors) or salvation—and usually both." (Gorman, p.24)

"Since Revelation is a word of prophecy in the biblical tradition, we must take care to understand that its primary purpose is to give words of comfort and challenge to God’s people then and now, not to predict the future, and much less to do so with precise detail. Visions of the future, that is, are not an end in themselves but rather a means—both to warn and to comfort." (Gorman, p.25)

“John was writing what he understood to be a work of prophetic scripture, the climax of prophetic revelation, which gathered up the prophetic meaning of the Old Testament scriptures and disclosed the way in which it was being and was to be fulfilled in the last days.” (The Climax of Prophecy by Richard Bauckham, p. xi.)

Letter

A circular pastoral letter addressed to seven churches in Asia Minor.

“John writes to and for these seven churches, and thereby to and for the church universal.” (Gorman, p. 27)

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II. Author and Date.

“I, John…” Revelation 1:1, 4, 9; 22:28.

Probably not John, son of Zebedee

Probably not the author of the Gospel of John or the writer of the Letters of John.

Date

Irenaeus, bishop of Lyon, born in Smyrna, Asia Minor; died 202c.e. in Lyon. He says Revelation written during reign of Domitian (81-96). Most scholars today agree.

Some suggest reign of Trajan (98-117). Correspondence with Pliny the Younger.

Some suggest reign of Nero (54-68).

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III. Approaches to Interpretation.

Two ends of a wide interpretative spectrum: (Gorman, p. 63) The “decoding” pole or the hermeneutic of correspondence.

“Decoding interpreters focus on details, looking for correlations between the text and specific events and people (later events and people in church history and/or in their own time).

The “actualizing” pole or the hermeneutic of analogy. “Actualizing interpreters seek to ‘convey the spirit of the text’ and to ‘perform’ it in new circumstances.”

Five interpretative strategies: (cf. Gorman pp. 64-68) Predictive approach. Focuses on interpreters’ own time, and on the

details in Revelation as predicting events in interpreter’s time.

Preterist approach. Focuses exclusively on the past. “It views Revelation strictly as a document from and for its own time…The interpreter may have no explicit interest in the alleged predictions, or even the ongoing relevance, of the text.”

Poetic or theopoetic approach. "Proponents of this approach contend that Revelation uses mythical and poetic language to express great truths about God, evil, history, and so on. It is sometimes called the idealist, spiritual, non-historical, timeless, or transtemporal approach."

Political or theopolitical approach. "This approach, for our purposes, does not refer to the political implications of predictive, dispensationalist interpretations but to a basic view of Revelation as a document of comfort and (especially) protest… The theopolitical approach may focus on criticizing injustice, promoting transformation and justice, or both.”

Pastoral-prophetic approach. "This approach views Revelation primarily as a document of Christian formation designed to call the church to faithfulness in the face of inevitable conflict with hostile powers."

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IV. Purpose

"Earlier scholarship on the book of Revelation suggested that it was written to people undergoing intense persecution, probably sponsored by the emperor Domitian or his representatives in the province of Asia. In that situation, prophecy would focus almost exclusively on the promise of future salvation. More recent scholarship, however, has questioned the existence of evidence for pervasive, and especially official, persecution at the time Revelation was likely written.” (Gorman, p. 24)

“At the same time, the evidence for some of the churches being less faithful than they should have been has been stressed. The result is that contemporary scholars of Revelation generally believe that Revelation is prophetic in its words of challenge as much as it is in its words of comfort. That is, Revelation as prophecy should probably be understood as anti-assimilationist, or anti-accommodationist, literature. It is also in this sense that Revelation is resistance literature—“a thorough-going prophetic critique of the system of Roman power” and “the most powerful piece of political resistance literature from the period of the early Empire.” This characterization overlaps, of course, with Revelation’s apocalyptic and theopolitical character. This new perspective does not mean, however, that no persecution was occurring. Indeed, as we will see, it is the complex relationship between the presence or absence of accommodation and persecution that drives the letter." (Gorman pp. 24-25)

"Calling Revelation ‘resistance literature’ is appropriate because one of the primary prophetic purposes of Revelation is to remind the church, both then and now, not to give in to the demands or practices of a system that is already judged by God and is about to come to its demise. But Revelation is not just a document that stands against something. Like all biblical prophecy, it promotes true worship of the one true God, expressed not merely in formal liturgy but also in faithful living, the practice of having no gods besides God. Put more positively, then, Revelation is a summons to first-commandment faithfulness, a call to faithful witness and worship in word and deed. In other words, its character as resistance literature is actually secondary to, and derivative of, its more fundamental character as worship literature, as a liturgical text." (Gorman p. 25)

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“If we think exclusively in terms of individual judgment, we will misunderstand the corporate nature of the biblical message. The book of Revelation is invaluable on this point. Forgiveness of individual guilt is not a theme in Revelation; the concluding book of the New Testament depicts the last days in terms of tribes, churches, peoples, cities, and nations rather than individuals. We today, as inheritors of the world-scale wickedness wrought by totalitarian systems, are rediscovering the social and global meaning of this final book of the canon. All the best modern commentators on Revelation—and there are a goodly number of them—emphasize its relevance to the political struggles of our time. The biblical language of trial and judgment has just as much, if not more, to do with structures and systems (the principalities and Powers) as it does with individuals.” (Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion, pp.314-15.)

“In our era it has become essential for Christians to appropriate an apocalyptic scenario that takes full account of Satan’s realm, Christ’s invasion of it, and the calling of God’s people to resist it in his name. A sense of the principalities and powers is necessary for discerning what the Enemy is up to.” (Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion, p.417).

“The line [between good and evil] did not run clearly between ‘them’ and ‘us’ but through each person. No one was simply a victim; everyone was in some measure co-responsible…Many people were on both sides.” (Vaclav Havel, quoted in Rutledge, Crucifixion, p. 142.)

“If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?” (Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Gulag Archipelago, quoted in Rutledge, Crucifixion, p. 142.)

Could we also say that the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every nation and every body politic?

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