Interpreting The Book of Revelation

Dennis Bratcher

I. The Nature of Scripture

George Ladd: “The Bible is the word of God given in the words of men in history.”
Dennis Bratcher: “The Bible is God’s word in human words.”

A.  Because it is God’s word, the Bible has: (a) ongoing relevance, (b) authority, (c) testimony to the nature of God.  These cannot be investigated or proven; they are accepted by faith as a given, so we cannot study the Revelation from any of these perspectives.   

B.  Because it is in human words, the Bible has: (a) historical and cultural particularity, (b) features of human creativity and expression, (c) concerns common with human existence today.  These can be investigated with various tools; this is the starting point of study. The process of doing so is described by two terms: exegesis andhermeneutics.  

1) exegesis: using various methods of studying the Scripture for historical, cultural, and religious background; methods of writing; use of language and features of the Bible as literature; use in the ancient community of faith; development of the canon of Scripture for later use; etc. The purpose here is to understand, as much as possible, what the text would have communicated in the context of the time and culture that produced and used it, while still understanding that our questions are conditioned by our own language, culture, and history and so provide only one angle of vision into the text.

2) hermeneutics: taking that understanding of the text and hearing what that community tells us about God, about us, and about how we should relate to God. The purpose here is to understand how we can or should apply that witness to our modern culture and spiritual lives.  Here also we realize that while the communication of the text may be established within certain parameters, it may be applied in different ways in different contexts.

C.  Understanding what a text intended to communicate in the community (or communities) that produced and used it is the only proper context for understanding what a text "means." A text cannot mean what it never could have meant to its original authors or hearers (Fee & Stuart, How to Read the Bible for All It's Worth). It can be re-interpreted in light of new historical events, so it may come to have more meaning than it had originally in a specific historical context. But that new meaning always lies along a historical and theological track that is connected to and includes the original meaning (the technical term here is theological vector).

[There are several other articles available on biblical interpretation; they can be found from the menu page Issues in Biblical Interpretation]

II. The Nature of The Book of Revelation

A. The book as apocalypse:  An apocalypse is a very specific kind of literature with no modern equivalent. While there is only one OT apocalyptic book (Daniel) and one NT book that demonstrates some features of this type (Revelation), it was a common form of writing in the two centuries before and after the birth of Christ. There are several distinct features of apocalyptic writing.

1) It arises out of a historical context of great turmoil, persecution, and oppression. The prophets looked forward to God balancing the scales of justice within history; apocalyptic has given up on history and has become so pessimistic of change that it can only see God acting by bringing a radical end to history, destroying all evil, and beginning again with a new world.

2) It is carefully crafted literature. It was not spoken (like prophetic sermons), but was composed. That means it exhibits certain features of normal writing, such as structure, form, flow of thought, creative use of language, etc.

3) It is presented in the form of visions, dreams, and other worldly journeys. Several features intend to communicate a sense of mystery, the revealing of secrets long hidden in the mists of the past. Therefore, most apocalyptic writing is written under the name of a long dead person of some reputation (Abraham, Moses, Enoch) who is instructed to keep the book for the "latter days," which, of course, would be the time the book was actually being written. Also, there is often a guide to reveal the secrets or mysteries.

4) Its images and symbols are forms of fantasy rather than reality, and its language is cryptic, metaphorical, and highly symbolic. These symbols are not drawn from our modern world, but from the language, experience, and cultural "pool" of the ancient world.  The assumptions that underlie those symbols are likewise not those of a modern scientific world view of the 21st century Western world, but those of the Ancient Near East of 2,000 years ago. Strange multiheaded beasts, weird creatures, dragons, and odd combinations of normal images (locusts with scorpion’s tails and human heads) are common ways of writing. It purposely presents a world that does not exist except as a means of communication.

5) It is a highly stylized and schematized way of writing. There are neat packages of time and event, all moving in a very ordered way. Sequences of numbers, people, or events are common. Numbers, especially, take on symbolic value, even to the point of ciphering (certain numbers standing for certain letters of the alphabet). There are frequent uses of certain numbers, such as 3, 7, and 12 (and multiples, such as 144,000).

6)  However, simply because a writing exhibits some of the features of an apocalypse does not necessarily mean that itsmessage or theology must conform to that genre.  That would be to ignore both the dynamic of inspiration (God's word) and  the creativity of the author/community of faith (in human words).   While the book of Revelation is obviously modeled in some ways on the classic form of apocalyptic writings, the message of the book implies something far different than "traditional" apocalyptic writings. 

B. The book as prophecy:  Because the Book of Revelation is written in John’s own name, it is related to OT prophecy, perhaps more closely than it is to apocalyptic. But it is not prophecy in the popular (and incorrect) modern sense of "predicting the future."  OT prophecy was overwhelmingly concerned with speaking God’s message to people of the prophet’s own time, interpreting God’s will for them in light of then current historical events. The prophets were primarily "covenant mediators," calling the people to be faithful to God in the midst of the ups and downs of history.

1) In this sense, Revelation is a message, not for the far future, but for the first century Church whose very existence was being threatened by persecution from both Romans and Jews.  But as a message to the first century church, since we accept it as Scripture, it is also a "word" of God to the church today.

2) This relation to OT prophecy also underscores the fact that the Book of Revelation is related to a particular time in history, to a particular set of circumstances, and to particular people. This does not mean it is irrelevant for us today; it just means we cannot make it address the issues we want it to address directly, without first understanding something about what it meant to the early church.

III. Interpreting the Book

Several principles need to guide any study of the Book of Revelation.

A. "The primary meaning of the Revelation, or at least the anchor point of any meaning, is what John intended it to mean, which in turn must also have been something his readers could have understood it to mean." (Fee and Stuart, How to Read the Bible for all It’s Worth. . ., p. 209)

B. "Any keys to interpreting the Revelation must be intrinsic to the text of the Revelation itself or otherwise available to the original recipients from their own historical context." Fee and Stuart, How to Read the Bible for all It’s Worth., p. 209)

C.  The rich and varied cultural context of the ancient world must be the frame of reference for interpreting the names and symbols of the book, but also with a sensitivity to how creatively they are used in the book.

D. The visions and symbols should not be pressed into allegory in which every detail has some meaning; most often the meaning is in the entire vision and its impact rather than every detail.

E. Apocalypses (or writings modeled after them) do not intend to give a detailed chronological map of the future; the message is much more historically conditioned, and much more theologically oriented. Rather than a map of the future, it is an encouragement for the present.