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The Ancient World Behind the Text: Ideas
The customs, offices and ideas a first reader knew without being told, what each meant then, and the nearest thing you already know.
Apocalypses, visions and numbers that mean something
Jewish books of visions, usually written in the name of a hero from long ago, in which a heavenly guide shows a seer what heaven sees in the present trouble and how God will end it. They spoke in pictures and in numbers that carried meaning, and Revelation is the one that calls itself an apocalypse.
Nobody thinks the fat cat in a political cartoon is a real animal, but everyone gets the point. An apocalypse was a kind of Jewish book in which a seer is shown hidden things, often by an angel who explains them: what heaven sees in the present trouble, and how God will put things right. Most were written under the name of a hero from long ago, such as Enoch, Moses or Ezra. They spoke in pictures, and in numbers that carried meaning, seven above all. Revelation borrows the form but names its own author and writes to real churches. How far its pictures and numbers stand for literal events is read in more than one way.
Revelation calls itself a revelation, apokalypsis, an unveiling. It also calls itself a prophecy, and it is framed as a letter. Jewish apocalypses were usually written in the name of a figure from the distant past: Enoch, Abraham, Moses, Baruch or Ezra. That borrowed ancient authority and presented recent events as prophecy fulfilled (Wright and Bird). John writes in his own name, which the cultural backgrounds notes tie to the early Christian belief that prophecy was still alive. Revelations often came through angels and guides. Wright and Bird cite a standard definition. An apocalypse is a revelation passed by an otherworldly being to a human, disclosing a reality both future and heavenly, meant to shape how readers see the present. Most of Revelation's images have roots in Isaiah, Ezekiel, Daniel and Zechariah. The dominant ones, though, are those popular in 1 Enoch, 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch. Keener calls much of John's symbolic language "evocative imagery", meant to stir a response more than to draw a literal picture. John sometimes explains a symbol himself (1:20). Numbers worked the same way: symbolic numbers "were standard fare in Jewish views of the future" (Keener). Beale reports general agreement among commentators that three, four, seven and twelve and their multiples carry meanings drawn from the Old Testament, seven above all for completeness. Ten thousand was the largest single number in Greek, so myriads of myriads meant beyond counting. Daniel's 1,260 days, forty-two months and three and a half years are one span on a 360-day year. Works that could be read as foretelling Rome's fall were politically dangerous, and the circles that wrote them were quickly repressed.
An analogy: a newspaper under occupation that reports the news as fables. Its readers know who the wolf is and take heart, the censor may not, and nobody reads the fable as a lesson about animals.
Because apocalypses spoke in pictures and in numbers that carried meaning, John can explain in Revelation 1:20 that his seven lampstands are churches, and a reader has to ask of each later picture and number what it stands for. The ESV Study Bible sets Jesus' words about the darkened sun and falling stars in Mark 13:24-25 and Paul's man of lawlessness in 2 Thessalonians 2:3 in the same apocalyptic wing of prophecy.
Not a disguise for the present alone. An occupied newspaper's fables are all about today's news. Ancient apocalypses often did speak of the future, sometimes in detail, and first readers would have heard at least Revelation's closing visions as still to come. Many seers probably had real visionary experiences, so the form was not always only a literary device.
What kind of literature this is. The ESV Study Bible describes Jewish apocalyptic as pessimistic, splitting humanity into two fixed camps, and sets Revelation apart from it. Wright and Bird trace the charge of dualism to a fear among some nineteenth-century scholars and say such books share the scriptural belief that heaven and earth overlap. Whether Revelation is one. Carson, Moo and Morris are reluctant to call it an apocalypse, since John writes in his own name and grounds hope in the slain Lamb. They call it "a prophecy cast in an apocalyptic mold and written down in a letter form". The Zondervan dictionary files it with apocalyptic literature. How to read the numbers. Beale takes them as symbolic for the same reason the pictures are, while noting that literal interpreters argue for a consistently literal reading. Keener says the 144,000 must be read either consistently literally or consistently symbolically, and the CSB Study Bible calls the most literal reading of that number "highly plausible". The cultural backgrounds notes and Keener set out the main ways of reading the book: idealist, historicist, preterist, futurist and blends of them.
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- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-passages\/revelation-22-6-21\/","n":"Revelation 22:6-21, I am coming soon","s":"The angel confirms that the words are trustworthy, and Jesus says he is coming soon. John is told not to seal up the prophecy, since the time is near; those who wash their robes may enter the city while dogs, sorcerers and liars stay outside. The book closes with the Spirit and the bride saying come, a warning against adding to or taking from it, and the prayer, come, Lord Jesus.","r":"Revelation 22:6-21"}
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- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, introduction to Revelation (Genre, Interpretations, Symbolism), and on Revelation 5:11, 7:1-8, 7:5-8, 7:13-14 and 11:3
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, Introduction to Revelation (Genre, Interpreting Revelation), and notes on Revelation 1:1 and 5:11
- ESV Study Bible, Introduction to Revelation (Author and Title, Genre)
- CSB Study Bible, note on Revelation 7:4-8
- N. T. Wright and Michael F. Bird, The New Testament in Its World, ch. 34, Origins of the book of Revelation (opening section; Genre)
- G. K. Beale, The Book of Revelation: A Commentary on the Greek Text, Introduction, Interpretation of Symbolism, section The Symbolic Significance of Numbers
