Revelations

Book of Revelation

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Revelation is an apocalyptic prophecy with an epistolary introduction addressed to seven churches in the Roman province of Asia. Revelation uses the word in various forms twenty-one times, more than any other New Testament book. The predominant view is that Revelation alludes to the Old Testament although it is difficult among scholars to agree on the exact number of allusions or the allusions themselves.

Over half of the references stem from Daniel , Ezekiel , Psalms , and Isaiah , with Daniel providing the largest number in proportion to length and Ezekiel standing out as the most influential. Because these references appear as allusions rather than as quotes, it is difficult to know whether the author used the Hebrew or the Greek version of the Hebrew scriptures, but he was clearly often influenced by the Greek.

He very frequently combines multiple references, and again the allusional style makes it impossible to be certain to what extent he did so consciously. Massyngberde Ford, the Book of Revelation contains ancient pre-Christian texts of Jewish origin dating back to the time of John the Baptist and the communities of Qumran as well as antique Jewish texts.

In several verses one can identify the ancient texts and that attributed to John, the latter having just added in the original text the words "Jesus Christ" Rev 1: Conventional understanding until recent times was that the Book of Revelation was written to comfort beleaguered Christians as they underwent persecution at the hands of a megalomaniacal Roman emperor, but much of this has now been jettisoned: Domitian is no longer viewed as a despot imposing an imperial cult, and it is no longer believed that there was any systematic empire-wide persecution of Christians in his time.

The current view is that Revelation was composed in the context of a conflict within the Christian community of Asia Minor over whether to engage with, or withdraw from, the far larger non-Christian community: Revelation chastises those Christians who wanted to reach an accommodation with the Roman cult of empire. Revelation was the last book accepted into the Christian biblical canon , and to the present day some churches that derive from the Church of the East reject it.

Revelation

Dionysius AD , bishop of Alexandria, disciple of Origen wrote that the Book of Revelation could have been written by Cerinthus although he himself did not adopt the view that Cerinthus was the writer. Eusebius , in his Church History c. The Apocalypse of John, also called Revelation, is counted as both accepted Kirsopp. The disputation can perhaps be attributed to Origen. The Council of Laodicea omits it as a canonical book. The Decretum Gelasianum , which is a work written by an anonymous scholar between and , contains a list of books of scripture presented as having been reckoned as canonical by the Council of Rome AD.

This list mentions it as a part of the New Testament canon. Doubts resurfaced during the Protestant Reformation. Martin Luther called it "neither apostolic nor prophetic" in the preface to his translation of the New Testament he revised his position with a much more favorable assessment in , and it was the only New Testament book on which John Calvin did not write a commentary. There are approximately Greek manuscripts of Revelation. Divisions in the book seem to be marked by the repetition of key phrases, by the arrangement of subject matter into blocks, and around its Christological passages, [48] and much use is made of significant numbers, especially the number seven, which represented perfection according to ancient numerology.

Revelation has a wide variety of interpretations, ranging from the simple message that we should have faith that God will prevail "symbolic interpretation" , to complex end time scenarios "futurist interpretation" , [51] [52] to the views of critics who deny any spiritual value to Revelation at all.

The "two witnesses" spoken of are Muhammad and Ali. The ten horns represent the ten names of the leaders of the Umayyad dynasty: Eastern Orthodoxy treats the text as simultaneously describing contemporaneous events events occurring at the same time and as prophecy of events to come, for which the contemporaneous events were a form of foreshadow.

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It rejects attempts to determine, before the fact, if the events of Revelation are occurring by mapping them onto present-day events, taking to heart the Scriptural warning against those who proclaim "He is here! Instead, the book is seen as a warning to be spiritually and morally ready for the end times, whenever they may come "as a thief in the night" , but they will come at the time of God's choosing, not something that can be precipitated nor trivially deduced by mortals.

Book of Revelation is the only book of the New Testament that is not read during services by the Byzantine Rite Churches although in the Western Rite Orthodox Parishes , which are under the same bishops as the Byzantine Rite, it is read. Christian Gnostics, however, are unlikely to be attracted to the teaching of Revelation because the doctrine of salvation through the sacrificed Lamb, which is central to Revelation, is repugnant to Gnostics.

Christian Gnostics "believed in the Forgiveness of Sins, but in no vicarious sacrifice for sin James Morgan Pryse was an esoteric gnostic who saw Revelation as a western version of the Hindu theory of the Chakra. He began his work, "The purpose of this book is to show that the Apocalypse is a manual of spiritual development and not, as conventionally interpreted, a cryptic history or prophecy. But Christopher Rowland argues: The presence of the threads which stubbornly refuse to be incorporated into the neat tapestry of our world-view does not usually totally undermine that view.

The Book of Mormon affirms that John the Apostle is the author of Revelation and that he was foreordained by God to write it. Latter-day revelation through the Prophet Joseph Smith contained in the Doctrine and Covenants , section 77, postulates answers to specific questions regarding the symbolism contained in the Book of Revelation.

This interpretation, which has found expression among both Catholic and Protestant theologians, considers the liturgical worship, particularly the Easter rites, of early Christianity as background and context for understanding the Book of Revelation's structure and significance.

The Mass as Heaven on Earth , in which he states that Revelation in form is structured after creation, fall, judgment and redemption. Those who hold this view say that the Temple's destruction AD 70 had a profound effect on the Jewish people, not only in Jerusalem but among the Greek-speaking Jews of the Mediterranean. They believe the Book of Revelation provides insight into the early Eucharist, saying that it is the new Temple worship in the New Heaven and Earth. The idea of the Eucharist as a foretaste of the heavenly banquet is also explored by British Methodist Geoffrey Wainwright in his book Eucharist and Eschatology Oxford University Press, According to Pope Benedict XVI some of the images of Revelation should be understood in the context of the dramatic suffering and persecution of the churches of Asia in the 1st century.

Accordingly, the Book of Revelation should not be read as an enigmatic warning, but as an encouraging vision of Christ's definitive victory over evil. The radical discipleship interpretation asserts that the Book of Revelation is best understood as a handbook for radical discipleship; i. In this interpretation the primary agenda of the book is to expose as impostors the worldly powers that seek to oppose the ways of God and God's Kingdom. Adventists maintain a historicist interpretation of the Bible's predictions of the apocalypse.

Seventh-day Adventists believe the Book of Revelation is especially relevant to believers in the days preceding the second coming of Jesus Christ. Many literary writers and theorists have contributed to a wide range of theories about the origins and purpose of the Book of Revelation. Some of these writers have no connection with established Christian faiths but, nevertheless, found in Revelation a source of inspiration. Revelation has been approached from Hindu philosophy and Jewish Midrash. Others have pointed to aspects of composition which have been ignored such as the similarities of prophetic inspiration to modern poetic inspiration, or the parallels with Greek drama.

In recent years, theories have arisen which concentrate upon how readers and texts interact to create meaning and which are less interested in what the original author intended. His lasting contribution has been to show how much more meaningful prophets, such as the scribe of Revelation, are when treated as poets first and foremost. He thought this was a point often lost sight of because most English bibles render everything in prose. Had he done so, he would have had to use their Hebrew poetry whereas he wanted to write his own.

Torrey insisted Revelation had originally been written in Aramaic. This was why the surviving Greek translation was written in such a strange idiom. It was a literal translation that had to comply with the warning at Revelation According to Torrey, the story is that "The Fourth Gospel was brought to Ephesus by a Christian fugitive from Palestine soon after the middle of the first century. It was written in Aramaic. Subsequently, this John was banished by Nero and died on Patmos after writing Revelation. Torrey argued that until AD 80, when Christians were expelled from the synagogues, [82] the Christian message was always first heard in the synagogue and, for cultural reasons, the evangelist would have spoken in Aramaic, else "he would have had no hearing.

Christina Rossetti was a Victorian poet who believed the sensual excitement of the natural world found its meaningful purpose in death and in God. In her view, what Revelation has to teach is patience.

The relevance of John's visions [89] belongs to Christians of all times as a continuous present meditation. Such matters are eternal and outside of normal human reckoning.

About Revelation

Winter that returns not to spring Recently, aesthetic and literary modes of interpretation have developed, which focus on Revelation as a work of art and imagination, viewing the imagery as symbolic depictions of timeless truths and the victory of good over evil. Vision of a Just World from the viewpoint of rhetoric.

John's book is a vision of a just world, not a vengeful threat of world-destruction. Her view that Revelation's message is not gender-based has caused dissent.

She says we are to look behind the symbols rather than make a fetish out of them. In contrast, Tina Pippin states that John writes " horror literature " and "the misogyny which underlies the narrative is extreme. Lawrence took an opposing, pessimistic view of Revelation in the final book he wrote, Apocalypse. Instead, he wanted to champion a public-spirited individualism which he identified with the historical Jesus supplemented by an ill-defined cosmic consciousness against its two natural enemies.

One of these he called "the sovereignty of the intellect" [96] which he saw in a technology-based totalitarian society. The other enemy he styled "vulgarity" [97] and that was what he found in Revelation. And nowhere does this happen so splendiferously than in Revelation. His specific aesthetic objections to Revelation were that its imagery was unnatural and that phrases like "the wrath of the Lamb" were "ridiculous. In the first, there was a scheme of cosmic renewal in "great Chaldean sky-spaces", which he quite liked.

After that, Lawrence thought, the book became preoccupied with the birth of the baby messiah and "flamboyant hate and simple lust Modern biblical scholarship attempts to understand Revelation in its 1st-century historical context within the genre of Jewish and Christian apocalyptic literature. Under this interpretation, assertions that "the time is near" are to be taken literally by those communities. Consequently, the work is viewed as a warning to not conform to contemporary Greco-Roman society which John "unveils" as beastly, demonic, and subject to divine judgment.

Although the acceptance of Revelation into the canon has from the beginning been controversial, it has been essentially similar to the career of other texts. Scholar Barbara Whitlock pointed out a similarity between the consistent destruction of thirds depicted in the Book of Revelation a third of mankind by plagues of fire, smoke, and brimstone, a third of the trees and green grass, a third of the sea creatures and a third of the ships at sea, etc. A Zoroastrian influence is completely plausible".

Much of Revelation employs ancient sources, primarily but not exclusively the Old Testament. For example, Howard-Brook and Gwyther [] regard the Book of Enoch 1 Enoch as an equally significant but contextually different source. There is an angel ascending in both accounts 1 En Academics showed little interest in this topic until recently. For example, an anonymous Scottish commentary of [] prefaces Revelation 4 with the Little Apocalypse of Mark 13, places Malachi 4: The message is that everything in Revelation will happen in its previously appointed time.

Steve Moyise [] uses the index of the United Bible Societies' Greek New Testament to show that "Revelation contains more Old Testament allusions than any other New Testament book, but it does not record a single quotation. Revelation concentrates on Isaiah, Psalms, and Ezekiel, while neglecting, comparatively speaking, the books of the Pentateuch that are the dominant sources for other New Testament writers.

Methodological objections have been made to this course as each allusion may not have an equal significance. To counter this, G. Beale sought to develop a system that distinguished 'clear', 'probable', and 'possible' allusions. A clear allusion is one with almost the same wording as its source, the same general meaning, and which could not reasonably have been drawn from elsewhere. A probable allusion contains an idea which is uniquely traceable to its source. Possible allusions are described as mere echoes of their putative sources.

Yet, with Revelation, the problems might be judged more fundamental.

Revelation

The author seems to be using his sources in a completely different way to the originals. For example, he borrows the 'new temple' imagery of Ezekiel 40—48 but uses it to describe a New Jerusalem which, quite pointedly, no longer needs a temple because it is God's dwelling. Ian Boxall [] writes that Revelation "is no montage of biblical quotations that is not John's way but a wealth of allusions and evocations rewoven into something new and creative.

He sets out a comparative table listing the chapters of Revelation in sequence and linking most of them to the structurally corresponding chapter in Ezekiel. S ver 16 Revelation 1: S ver 12 Revelation 1: The Holy Bible, hardcover Retail: Enrich your faith and grow in spiritual maturity with the incredible Bible study and devotional books listed below. Try it for 30 days FREE. Cancel at any time.

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