In this thread I have been discussing the importance of putting the book of Revelation in its own historical context instead of transplanting its (bizarre) symbols and message into the 21st century, as if the author was trying to communicate not with the churches that he actually names as the recipients of his book (in Asia Minor at the end of the first century) but with us (in America in the twenty-first).  Instead of modern interpretations (666 is Saddam Hussein!  The Whore of Babylon is the Roman Catholic Church!), surely it is better to interpret the book in light of what the author and his audience would have themselves understood. That can be illustrated many times over from the book; for this post I would like to do so by returning to one of the key images that I have posted about several times before.  Apologies if this is old news for you from a relatively recent post, but to make my point about the book of Revelation as a whole, this is the most relevant and [...]

I have been arguing that if we want to understand the book of Revelation, we need to situate it in its own historical context in the Roman Empire of the first century rather than assume it is talking about our own world in the twenty-first.  Very few people read it that way, of course (or are interested in reading it that way).   It's far more intriguing to think the author was predicting what would happen in our own future.  It's ALL COMING TRUE!  God has REVEALED IT TO US!  We can NOW SEE THE SIGNS OF THE END! But, alas, like every other book of the Bible, Revelation was written to address an ancient audience in a different context, and its bizarre symbols need to be read with their own context front and center in mind.   Here is how I sometimes try to illustrate the problem. (Parts of this are taken from my book The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings; Oxford University Press; 7th ed.) ****************************** One of the most [...]

Now that I have said something about what's in the book of Revelation and about how we need to study it in light of its literary *genre* ("apocalypse") I can begin to discuss something about its historical context.  As you know, one of the overarching themes of this entire blog is that if you take something out of its context, you change its meaning.  If you want to know what the author of Revelation might have actually meant and how he would have been understood by his real-life audience -- the Christians in the seven churches of Asia Minor he was addressing - you have to put the book and its author in their own historical context (not in our 21st century context). Here are some of the most important points about that, as I make them in my textbook on the New Testament (The New Testament: A Historical and Literary Introduction;  Oxford University Press, 7th ed.), edited slightly here.   ********************************************** The Revelation of John in Historical Context I have already pointed out that [...]

I am at the beginning of my thread on the book of Revelation, and am giving the background necessary to make sense of how I now make sense of the book, which is different from how I've made sense of it most of my life!  But one thing I wholeheartedly agree with myself on from earlier days: you HAVE to understand the book in its own historical context or you will completely misconstrue its meaning -- as almost everyone does, since they think it is a book written for the 21st century instead of the 1st.  That's a big mistake if you have any interest in what an author of the 1st century was saying to his audience of the 1st century.  You have to understand the literary conventions and historical realities of their time.  Seems obvious, but, well, I guess it's not to most readers.... In my previous post I began to stress the importance of knowing what an “apocalypse” is before trying to interpret any one particular apocalypse.  Today I pursue that a [...]