A kind of writing its first readers knew and you may not, and the rules of apocalyptic
Reading Revelation
Revelation has been read as a coded history of the church, a timetable of the last days, a description of the year 70, and a poem about every age at once. Its first readers, seven congregations in the province of Asia, read it as a letter, in a kind of writing they had grown up with. Start where they started.
Lesson 10 of 12 · Reading Revelation
Revelation is a letter to seven named churches, carrying visions written in a kind of literature its readers knew and most modern readers do not: apocalyptic, which speaks in pictures, and draws nearly every picture from the Old Testament. So the book is read by finding the older text behind each image, by reading a picture as a picture rather than a code, by keeping the seven churches in view, and by noticing that it tells its story more than once. How its visions map onto history is honestly contested, and has been since the early church. What is not contested is that every reading has to begin with Daniel, Ezekiel and Isaiah, because that is where John began.
A letter first
Before it is anything else, the book is mail. It has an address, and the address is the same kind as Paul’s.
saying, “What you see, write in a book and send to the seven assemblies: to Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and to Laodicea.” — Revelation 1:11 · WEB
Read the comment on On the Isle Called Patmos
Write what you see in a book, and send it to the seven assemblies. Seven real congregations in seven real cities, each of which then gets a short letter of its own in chapters two and three, about its own faults and its own persecutors. Everything after chapter three was sent to them, and the whole book ends with the same kind of blessing a letter ends with. Whatever else the visions are, they were first a message to people in Ephesus and Smyrna about the empire they lived under, and a reader who forgets the seven churches has forgotten the address.
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Pictures from an older book
Revelation quotes the Old Testament less than any New Testament book and alludes to it more than all of them: by most counts, several hundred times in four hundred verses. Its images are not invented. They are borrowed, and the reader who knows where from has most of the key.
Then I stood on the sand of the sea. I saw a beast coming up out of the sea, having ten horns and seven heads. On his horns were ten crowns, and on his heads, blasphemous names. — Revelation 13:1 · WEB
Read the comment on The Beast from the Sea
A beast rising out of the sea, with heads and horns and crowns. That is not a new picture. It is Daniel’s.
“Four great animals came up from the sea, different from one another.” Daniel 7:3 · WEB
Four beasts come up from the sea; John’s has the parts of all four.
““I saw in the night visions, and behold, there came with the clouds of the sky one like a son of man, and he came even to the Ancient of Days, and they brought him near before him.” Daniel 7:13 · WEB
One like a son of man comes with the clouds; John sees him in chapter one.
““For, behold, I create new heavens and a new earth; and the former things will not be remembered, nor come into mind.” Isaiah 65:17 · WEB
New heavens and a new earth, which is where John’s last vision comes from.
The Lamb, the two witnesses, the woman clothed with the sun, the four horsemen, the sealed scroll, the city with twelve gates, the tree of life: each has a passage in the prophets behind it, and the passage says what the picture means before John uses it. Reading Revelation without Daniel is like reading a reply without the letter it answers.
ἀποκάλυψις apokálypsis G602
from ἀποκαλύπτω; disclosure:--appearing, coming, lighten, manifestation, be revealed, revelation.
The first word of the book, and the name of its kind of writing. It means an uncovering, a drawing back of a veil, and the Jews of the two centuries either side of Jesus wrote a whole literature under that word: visions given to a seer, delivered in symbols, with angels to explain them, about how God would bring the present age to an end. Daniel is the Bible’s own example, and John’s readers had read others. To them the beasts and the numbers were a familiar language. To most readers now they are a cipher, and the difference is the whole difficulty of the book.
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A picture is a picture
Apocalyptic speaks in images, and the images are to be seen, not decoded. The book shows you how at its most important moment. John is told to look at a lion, and turns and sees a lamb.
I saw in the middle of the throne and of the four living creatures, and in the middle of the elders, a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God, sent out into all the earth. — Revelation 5:6 · WEB
Read the comment on The Lion Who Is a Lamb
A Lamb standing, as though it had been slain. He heard lion; he saw lamb; the two are the same person, and the second picture interprets the first. That is how the book means. It does not ask what a lamb is code for. It asks you to see the conqueror and find that he is the victim. Where the book does decode itself, it decodes in more than one direction at once, which is a warning against the single key.
Here is the mind that has wisdom. The seven heads are seven mountains on which the woman sits. — Revelation 17:9 · WEB
Read the comment on The Beast That Was, and Is Not
The seven heads are seven mountains, and they are seven kings. Two meanings, one image, given by the angel in one breath. A reader who insists that every picture stands for exactly one thing has been told otherwise by the text.
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The same story told again
Revelation does not run in a straight line. The seven seals end with the end of the world in chapter six; then seven trumpets end with it again in chapter eleven; then the book stops, and starts over.
A great sign was seen in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. — Revelation 12:1 · WEB
Read the comment on A Woman Clothed with the Sun
A great sign appeared in heaven: a woman, a dragon, a child, and the story of the church from the beginning, told after the end has already been shown twice. The book circles. Whether its cycles cover the same ground from different sides, or follow one another in time, is one of the oldest arguments about it, and it is where the four ways of reading the book divide.
Those four should be named, because a reader will meet all of them. Some read the visions as describing the first century, the fall of Jerusalem and the persecutions of Rome. Some read them as the whole course of history from John’s day to the end, a reading the Reformers held and that the Adventist church holds still. Some read them as almost entirely future, a last few years before the return of Christ. And some read them as pictures of every age at once, the church and the beast in permanent contest. Each has serious readers and a long history, and this lesson does not decide between them. What every one of them has to do, if it is honest, is begin with the seven churches and the Old Testament behind the pictures, and a reading that does neither has left the book for a book of its own.
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How to read Revelation
Read the seven letters first, slowly, and keep those churches in mind through everything after. For every picture, find the Old Testament passage it comes from and read that before deciding what the picture means. Let a picture be a picture; when the book explains one, notice that it explains it more than one way. Watch for the places where the story starts again. And read it to the end, because the end is a city with its gates open and a river running through it, and every terror in the book was written by someone who had seen that first.
Take one image from Revelation, the beast, the woman, the scroll, the Lamb, the city, and find its Old Testament source. Write down what the older passage says the image means, and whether that changes how you read John’s use of it.
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