History Online - Revelation

Current scholar opinion:

The Book of Revelation was written sometime around 96 CE in Asia Minor. The author was probably a Christian from Ephesus known as "John the Elder." According to the Book, this John was on the island of Patmos, not far from the coast of Asia Minor, "because of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus" (Rev. 1.10). This has traditionally been taken to mean that he had been exiled there as a martyr for his Christian faith. Some scholars, however, have suggested that it might have been a regular stop on a preaching circuit. Next, the author says, "I was in the spirit on the Lord's day, and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet" (Rev. 1.11), and this voice tells him to write what he is about to see. This begins the "revelatory" vision that is at the center of the book.

Ephesus was both the capital of the Roman province of Asia and one of the earliest centers of Christianity. The book next contains seven short letters of exhortation to the Christian churches in the seven leading cities of Asia Minor -- Ephesus (2.1-7, Smyrna (2.9-11), Pergamon (2.12-17) , Thyatira (2.18-29). Sardis (3.1-6), Philadelphia (3.7-13). and Laodicea (3.14-22). This reagion would become a key area for the expansion of Christianity into the Roman empire. But it was precisley this intersection that created the problem for the author, as it called for Christians to treat the Roman administration as agent of the devil. But recognizing this comes from understanding how to read this kind of apocalyptic literature.

Because of intricate and unusual symbolic language, the Book of Revelation is hard for modern people to read. They are not used to this kind of literature. Not so for people in the ancient world who would have been more accustomed to the complex nature of apocalyptic literature. The very fact that an apocalypse was a common type of literature meant that if followed certain conventions of style, and people knew more what to expect from it. Because there were many other examples of apocalyptic writing, these conventions would have seemed less strange and cryptic. Also, apocalyptic literature was almost always a kind of literature for "insiders," that is to say, it was written for people who already knew something of the situation and of the symbols that were used to portray it. So, for the original audience of the Revelation of John, all these strange scenes would have been immediately intelligible. What the modern reader or biblical scholar has to do is to try to read the text with "ancient eyes," by being informed about the way the literature worked and the situatioin out of which it came.

So let's look briefly at the layout of Revelation. The book breaks naturally into five major visions plus a prologue and an epilogue on how these came to be written down. This yields our basic outline of the work, as follows:

- The Prologue (1.1-3)
- John's "Cover Letter" (1.4-20) and The First Vision
- The Letters to the Seven Churches of Asia (2.1-3.22)
- The Second Vision: In the Throne Room of Heaven (4.1-11.19)
- The Seven Seals and the Seven Trumpets
- [Third Vision] Three Great Signs In Heaven: The Cosmic War (12.1-16.21)
- The Beasts, the war, seven plagues, seven bowls of wrath,
    and Battle of Armageddon
- The Fourth Vision: The Judgement on Babylon [=Rome] (17.1-21.8)
- Part I: The Allegory of the Great Whore - (17.1-18)
- Part II: Babylon [Rome] is Fallen! (18.1-8)
- Part III: Heaven is once again opened: the 1,000 years (19.11-21.8)
- Part IV: A New Heaven and New Earth (21.1-8)
- The Fifth Vision: The New Jerusalem (21.9-22.5)
- The Epilogue: (22.6-21)


Then in each of these visions, there is a literary device that provides for each new thing seen to propel the viewer on to the next vision. We can see this from the beginning of Vision 1, where John sees the seven lampstands, and then is told to write letters to the seven churches of Asia, for which they stand. But we see it even more clearly in the Vision II in the section that begins by seeing the scroll with seven seals, and then each of the seals is opened one at a time. But the opening of each seal does not result in the same amount of text: the first four are very brief, only two verses each. Then the fifth is longer, and the sixth is the most important, the climax of the sequence, followed by a longer vision. Finally, comes the seventh seal, but when we get there it turns out to be the seven trumpets, and the whole process starts over again as each of the trumpets is sounded in order.

What results from this is a kind of composite picture created by the cumulative effect of all the material laid out this way. It's been likened to "chinese boxes" where one opens up a box only to discover anothe box inside. In the final analysis one gets the sense that we (that is, the ancient "reader") are always in the sixth, just on the verge of the seventh thing happening. That's what gives the book its sense of urgency and feel that something important is just about to happen. The overall impact of Vision II, then, is to show the dire and precarious position in which the faithful are now standing, as they await the final things to take place. It is described as a time of famine, plague, oppression, and woe. But all of this probably comes out of a retrospection on the First Revolt and the devastation that occurred when Jerusalem and the Temple were destroyed. That is precisely the reflection that one sees in the description of the "two witnesses" (or martyrs) who are said to have been slain in the very city where Jesus was killed (11.1-13). So, the sense of desperation and suffering that is so central to Vision II is a direct commentary on the outcome of the War of 66-70 CE.

At the end of Vision II, when the seventh angel finally sounds his trumpet (11.15-19), then the heavenly throneroom of God is once again opened, and now there appears a new scene. This is the opening of Vision III, the three Signs (or Portents) in Heaven, which are the centerpiece, both literarily and ideologically, of the entire work. For these three "signs" provide the explanation for why the woes and suffering described in Vision II have come upon the earth. The answer, we are now told, is that the war on earth is merely a continuation of a cosmic war begun in heaven between God and Satan (12.1-17). At the end Satan, the Great Red Dragon, is thrown down to earth with his evil angels, and now they begin to make war on the saints (12.18). For his henchmen, the Dragon chooses two helpers, who are called "the beast from the sea" (13.1-10) and "the beast from the land" (13.11-18), who procede to force all humans to worship the Dragon and the first beast. The result is that God also sends his angelic army to earth, led by the "Lamb who had been slain," and they will now take on the army of the dragon and the beasts (14.1-20). Now we have seven angels pronounce their woes on all who side with the Dragon followed by seven bowls of wrath, which turn out to be seven plagues (15.1-16.21). Once again it is the sixth that is the most important; it is the Battle of Armageddon (16.12-16) which results in victory for the armies of God.

Now we see another important component of how Revelation works by thinking about its sense of the time-line of the story. The various visions of Revelation are not a linear progression, so that the events in chapter 12, for example, do not follow in time after the events in chapter 11. Quite the contrary. In the way they set up, the events described in chapters 12-13 are meant to explain how those circumstances in chapters 5-11 came about. So the time-line of the story moves in a kind of cyclical fashion so that we keep coming back to the "present situation" as it stood for the ancient readers of Revelation.

The result from this way of reading is that the ancient Christians were being told how God would ultimately triumph, and the faithful would be spared. So in Vision IV we see the final judgements against the evil forces of the Roman empire, and the final rewards of the faithful. And its really only at this stage in the text (chapters 18-21) that it starts to look forward in a prospective way toward the near future. At the center of it all is the recognition of how Revelation is depicting the Roman Empire as the Great Whore, with the Emperor as the seven-headed "beast from the sea," who are the ones carrying out Satan's war against God on earth. So even Vision IV is carrying out the implications of the central scenes in Vision III. This made most clear when we are told explicitly that the Great Whore is Babylon, who is seated on the Beast with seven heads, as seven hills (17.9). This is both a clear reference to the "seven hills of Rome" and a reference back to the seven-headed beast of Rev. 13.3-10. Then it tells that the seven heads are seven kings (17.9-10), which finally give us the real clue that the "beast" is the Roman emperor himself. The visions continue to unfold information for the ancient reader in order to describe its current situation.

The key to understanding the situation is in the vibrant symbolic language that is so typical of ancient apocalyptic writings. The author viewed the religious and political force of Roman rule as a threat. It is now thought that this arose in Ephesus after the year 89 CE when Domitian instituted a new imperial cult sanctuary dedicated to his family, the Flavian dynasty. It had included his father, Vespasian, who as Roman general led the war against the Jews from 66-69. When the Emperor Nero was killed, Vespasian was summoned from Judea to Rome to become the new Emperor. Vespasian then appointed his elder son, Titus, as the commander of the legions in Judea. It was Titus who led the seige and destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE. When Vespasian died in 79 CE, Titus became the next Emperor. Titus, however, died just two years later in 81, and this left the empire to Vespasian's younger son, Domitian. Domitian was known as a strong-willed emperor who tolerated no disagreement with his policies. Nonetheless, there is no clear indication that he consciously tried to persecute Christians for their faith.

For this reason, most scholars now think that the issue revolved around the inaugurataion of the Flavian imperial cult in Ephesus. The imperial cult was a way of showing loyalty and honor to the Emperor, and was viewed as a public duty of all citizens in a city like Ephesus. Our clearest indication of how this is reflected in Revelation is seen in the description of the two "beasts" from Rev. 13. The first is called "the beast from the sea" who is given his power by Satan himself. He is described as having "seven heads and ten horns," and people worshipped him (Rev. 13.1-4). Then there is a second, "the beast from the land" who makes every everyone worship the first beast and its "image" (Rev. 13.11-18). The "image" (13.14-15) and the mysterious number "666" (13.18) refer to statues and coins or inscriptions with the emperor's image and titles. The "beast from the land" probably referred to either the provincial governor of Asia or to the highpriest of the imperial cult, who jointly would have overseen the temple and its festivals in Ephesus at just this time.

That the "beast from the sea" is the Emperor himself is made clear in a later passage in Rev. 17, where the symbolism of the seven heads is spelled out.
9 "This calls for a mind that has wisdom: the seven heads are seven mountains on which the woman is seated; also, they are seven kings, 10 of whom five have fallen, one is living, and the other has not yet come; and when he comes, he must remain only a little while. 11 As for the beast that was and is not, it is an eighth but it belongs to the seven, and it goes to destruction. 12 And the ten horns that you saw are ten kings who have not yet received a kingdom, but they are to receive authority as kings for one hour, together with the beast. 13 These are united in yielding their power and authority to the beast; 14 they will make war on the Lamb, and the Lamb will conquer them... (Rev. 17.9-14).

Accordingly, the woman sits on the seven-headed beast as a symbol of her "seven hills" -- the seven hills of Rome. The woman is the city of Roman, here depicted as the persecutor of Christians. Then it says that the seven heads are also seven kings. And we can read from its cryptic terminology the references to the Emperors of Rome. The "five fallen" refer to the five emperors who have died: Augustus (29 BCE - 14 CE), Tiberius (14-37 CE), Gaius (37-41), Claudius (41-54) and Nero (54-68). "One has a wound" refers to the emperor Nero, who died in 68, but whom comtemporary legend had it would return from the dead to continue persecuting the Christians. Thus, the beast has a head that has recovered from a mortal wound. The head "who is" refers to Vespasian (69-79) and the one that is "not yet" refers to Titus (79-81). The head that "was but is not" refers to an eighth emperor, Domitian. From this we can also see that the work looks at this history as if it were being written while Vespasian was still alive, and thus "forecasting" what terrible things would occur under Domitian only a few years later. This technique is common in apocalyptic literature, and Revelation was probably written sometime during the early 90's, when Domitian was emperor, or perhaps even after the death of Domitian in 96 CE. By portraying the Emperor and his provincial authorities as "beasts" and henchmen of the dragon, Satan, the author was calling on Christians to refuse to take part in the imperial cult, even at the risk of martyrdom.

The "Past History" view

These previous profiles of current New Testament scholarship on Revelation show what is the dominant view of how to interpret the work in its historical context. This approach is sometimes called the "preterist" (or "past history") view, meaning that the events described in Revelation all took place in the past and the work must be read in that ancient historical context. It is almost universally followed in both New Testament scholarship and by scholars of Christian history. It is also the view taken within many Christian denominations, although it is often amended to suggest that all the historical events are past and that Revelation was describing a situation in the Roman empire, but that the final judgement in some literal sense is still to come as a future event.

On the other hand, religious interpretations of Revelation throughout Christian history have not always followed this approach. We shall here profile some other ways that the book has been read by those who want to apply it to their own times. In each case, the difference is how the "historical content" of Revelatioin is understood.

The "Symbolic History" View

This view holds that while the precise historical circumstances of Revelation pertained to the Roman world at the end of the Ist century CE, that it nonetheless has a kind of universal and timeless message for God's dealing with humanity in all generations. Thus it looks for symbolic elements that may apply across the ages. This symbolic or allegorical view is what lay behind St. Augustine's reading of Revelation, in which he argued that the 1,000-year reign was not a literal number at all but a figurative way of describing the "age of the church" on earth. This view has been the dominant one in most mainstream Christian interpretation, espeically in Catholic tradition. It has also been influential in some philosophical appropriations of Revelation in western thinking.

The "Continuous History" View

While the "symbolic history" view (above0 was more-or-less the official view of Revelation adopted by the medieval church, there continuedto be literalist readings throughout the Middle Ages. In general, these views took a literal view of the 1,000 years as being the current age of the church. As a result this way of looking at Revelation led some to look to it for ongoing events in the history of Christianity. This mode of interpretation, which sees later events in Christian history as fulfilling "predictions" in the Book of Revelation, is known as the "continuous history" view.

The first major interpreter to develop this view into a system of reading Revelation with current predictive value was Joachim of Fiore (1132-1202 CE). Based on the number 42 months (Rev. 11.2), the duration of the "trampling of the temple," Joachim concluded that this was period equal to the 42 generations in Matthew's genealogy from Adam to Jesus (Matt. 1.17). So, he said that these 42 generations (or 1,260 years) marked the period from the birth of Jesus until the end he saw predicted in Revelation. He then looked identified particular events and individuals in Christian history as fulfilling elements in Revelation in a continuum from the days of Jesus until his own time. So, for example, the beast with seven heads (Rev. 13.1), which are explicitly identified as seven kings (Rev. 17.10) he identifies as evil rulers beginning with Herod the Great and continuing to Saladin, the Turkish leader who had only a few years earlier repulsed the Crusaders from the Holy Land. Joachim thus saw, a figure of his own day, as predicted in Revelation's unfolding of history from ancient to contemporary times.

From Joachim's day down to the mid-XIXth century, this pattern of calculation became the most common form of literalist interpretation of the "predictive" capacity of Revelation. It is therefore the most common mode of interpretation within literalist postmillenial expectation. It was a prominent feature of many end-time calculations and interpretations during the Reformation period in Europe. It was also used by Cotton Mather and others in colonial America and England; they regularly looked for current events that might be fulfillment of Revelation within this scheme, inevitably looking for elements that pointed toward the nearness of the end of time.

The "Future History" View

A new mode of interpreting Revelation beginning in the early XIXth century. It grew mostly out of Protestant theology with a strong reforming element, both in Britain and America. It also drew on the strong tradition of literalist interpretation of Revelation as predicting contemporary events that had become popular in these areas through the "continuous history" view. But this new mode began to look at the past history of Christianity from the New Testament through the Middle Ages and down to its own time in a different light. From this perspective, it was hard to compute how the 1,000 years, if taken literally, could refer to the past history of the church, since that would place the inauguration of the Millenium within the timeframe of the medieval Catholic Church. The new view, therefore, began to argue that none of the events described in the Book of Revelation after chapters 1-3 (i.e., John's vision and the letters to the seven churches of Asia) had yet come to pass. All the florid images of Revelation 4-22 were instead considered to be predictions of future events that would come to pass in literal terms as the return of Christ and the end approached. Thus, this view looks at Revelation as prediction of "future history."

Central to this mode of interpretation is the view that Revelation, along with most of the rest of the Bible constitutes a similar type of "prophecy" of the future, and it often refers to this overall scheme of interpretation as "Bible prophecy." Much of the interpretation that comes from this perspective involved linking various passages from different parts of the Bible to form a composite that fits current and future expectations. This mode of interpretation is also directly connected to the rise of pre-millenialism, the view that the 1,000 year reign of Christ will be a literal event that will occur only after Christ returns. Thus, the emphasis on interpreting Revelation, lies in equating its images with those events surrounding the return. Several different versions or systems have been proposed for how the actual events will work out.

The most popular has been that of John Nelson Darby (1800-1882), which is known as Dispensationalism, a view made popular in England and America in the early XXth century through the publication of Cyrus Scofield (1843-1921). First published in 1909, it came to be known as The Scofield Reference Bible. On each page it printed the King James translation of 1611 alongside of Scofield's own copious "notes" on how to read each passage of the Bible in conjunction with other "prophecies." It thus provided a chainlink interreferencing system to the Book of Revelation, by which one could jump from passage to passage to follow the "true" meaning. The Scofield Bible continued to be popular among certain Protestant Christian groups. From 1909 to 1967 it sold more than 10 million copies; reprinted in 1967, it is said to have sold another 2.5 million copies by 1990. More than any other "future history" interpretation, this one has had the most impact on current literalist interpretations of Revelation.

A summary of some key examples of Apocalypse literature during this period, and where the Apocalypse of John (Revelation) fits into this early history.

This is an early Jewish apocalyptic text (about 250 BCE) which was written by an anonymous Jew who wrote under the name of Enoch. It borrowed images from Greek mythology which were to resonate through apocalyptic literature down to the Book of Revelation. These images included Satan, Hades, the fallen angels and the conflict of good and evil.

The only true apocalypse in the Hebrew Bible, the Book of Daniel is believed to have been written soon after the Seleucid ruler Antiochus IV Epiphanes desecrated the Temple in Jerusalem by erecting a statue of Zeus. The Book of Daniel is set four centuries earlier during the Babylonian captivity and tells the story of Daniel, a Jew in exile during this time, who receives revelatory visions. In chapter 2, exerpted here, Daniel's vision gives him a key to interpret a dream of the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar which foretells the rise and fall of four kingdoms, beginning with the downfall of Babylon itself. In chapter 7, Daniel himself becomes the dreamer, receiving cryptic visions of beasts and heavenly creatures in battle. Chapter 11 offers a complicated prophecy of a final dramatic battle between "the king of the north" and "the king of the south."

The final end time battle between the forces of good and evil was envisioned by the Essenes in their War Scroll. The Essenes were an apocalyptic Jewish sect of the second century BCE; their War Scroll was discovered in 1947 among the Dead Sea Scrolls found at Nag Hammadi.

With vivid imagery of judgment and damnation, redemption and deliverance, Revelation--the last book of the New Testament-- presents the final cosmic confrontation between Satan and the forces of evil, and God and the forces of good. This imagined struggle between good and evil has not only shaped historical events--from the Crusades to the Third Reich--it has shaped the collective consciousness of the West for nearly twenty centuries.

This chapter of the Gospel of Mark is known as the "Little Apocalypse" because it includes Jesus' descriptions of the signs of the coming of the end times, and his warning to his followers that they will suffer tribulation and persecution before the ultimate triumph of the Kingdom of God.

This treatise was written about 950 by the monk Adso of Montier-En-Der at the request of Queen Gerbera of France; she wanted clarification on the rise and life of the Antichrist. Adso wrote his answer to her in the form of a saint's life. It is an important document in the history of apocalypticism because it summarizes the traditional stories of the Antichrist in an accessible and popular way. It also helped establish the idea of the "Last World Emperor," who will unite Christianity and defeat the Muslims before the Antichrist arises.

In this chart, Joachim illustrates his theory of the three overlapping eras of history. The first era, the time of the Father, was the age of the Old Testament. The second is the time of Christ, in which Joachim believed he was living. The third and final era would be the age of the Spirit, a monastic era of contemplation, which would come after the crisis precipitated by the reign of the Antichrist.

Hildegard (1098-1179) was a Benedictine abbess who documented her allegorical visions and apocalyptic prophecies in text and illuminations. Her most famous work, written over the course of ten years (1141-51). is Scivias (short for "Scito vias Domini," "know the ways of the Lord,"). In this excerpt, Hildegard describes her vision of the devil embodied as a monstrous worm. After her description, she interprets some of the key images.

The Puritan leader John Winthrop was the first governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony. As he sailed towards the New World on the "Arbella" in the spring of 1630, he composed a sermon in which he exhorted the colonists to form a community based on the Christian values of love and kindness, in order to fulfill their divinely ordered destiny to build "a Citty upon a Hill" in New England.

This 1842 flyer advertised a tent meeting in which William Miller and another preacher would debate the date on which the world would end. Miller had come up with a new key to unlocking the meaning of the Book of Revelation; his discovery pointed to the actual date for the end of the world.

Adolf Hitler's personal manifesto, Mein Kampf, conveys Hitler's apocalyptic language. In this excerpt, Hitler seems to paraphrase the Book of Daniel, when, instead of the Beast, he says "the Jews will one day devour the other nations and become lords of the earth."