I’m devoting a thread to the book of Revelation and its interpretation. This began by my raising the issue of what 666 stands for, which led me to say a few things about the symbolism of the book, which occasioned several comments from readers wanting to know what my broader take is on how to interpret it.
Yesterday 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 bit more, by talking about this genre which has numerous representatives in ancient Jewish and Christian writings. Here is how I begin to describe the genre more fully in my textbook on the New Testament:
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Despite their wide-ranging differences, our surviving apocalypses typically share specific literary features. The most common of these are the following:
- Pseudonymity. Almost all of our ancient apocalypses were written pseudonymously, in the name of a famous religious person from the past (the book of Revelation, interestingly enough, is a rare exception). Among our surviving Jewish apocalypses are some claiming to be written by Moses, Abraham, Enoch, and even Adam; we have Christian apocalypses reputedly from the pens of the prophet Isaiah and the apostles Peter, Paul, and Thomas.
Is there a particular reason for authors of apocalypses to hide their identity behind a pseudonym? We have already seen that….
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