The ‘Apocalypse’ We Had to Have?

In the last couple of years, I have come, in increasing measure, to the rather pessimistic conclusion that it will most probably take some sort of ‘apocalyptic’ event to finally make us humans realise that our current trajectory is unsustainable.

Obviously, this is somewhat at odds with my usually fairly optimistic, hope-filled outlook on possibilities for social change, however I am more and more (reluctantly) convinced by the argument that only an upheaval (or series of upheavals) of epic proportions will cause us to see with the required clarity that we can’t go on the way we are currently living.

Daniel the Prophet and His ‘Sealed Scroll’

Lately I’ve been doing a bit of reading and thinking about the early ‘apocalyptic’ texts, especially the book of Daniel. It’s a truly fascinating text for so many reasons, and has proven itself over and again to be an enigma to many who have tried to navigate these difficult waters but who’ve found themselves hermeneutically shipwrecked along the way.

 As a (partial) tangent, I’ve had the joy of re-reading an excellent article written by my friend, the brilliant Dr George Athas (of Sydney’s Moore Theological College), entitled “In Search of the Seventy ‘Weeks’ of Daniel 9.” It is an historically, theologically, and exegetically astute article, and offers what is, I think, a very helpful way of thinking about this issue. You can find a post summarising the article (which also contains a link to the original article in JHS) on George’s blog: With Meagre Powers.

Anyway (and getting back to the real point of writing this post), something that has often bugged me about the way many have interacted with this text is the issue of the prophet being told to ‘seal up’ his prophetic words.

More Resources for Reading Revelation: Matt Anslow’s ‘Beauty and the Beast’

Though I outlined a few (I think) helpful resources for further reading at the end of my final post on Reading Revelation, I wanted to link here to some posts from my friend Matt Anslow over on his blog Life:Remixed.

Matt’s blog is one that I reckon you should read as a matter of course, but these posts in particular may be helpful in going a little deeper into some of the prominent themes in the book of Revelation. You will notice that Matt and I understand things quite similarly in regards to the book of Revelation, but Matt brings a number of very special observations to his work on this topic, and I just love reading pretty much everything that he writes!

His posts on Revelation centre around the idea of ‘Beauty and the Beast’ in the book of Revelation, with a specific focus on Empire. He takes some of the significant images on display in the text and unpacks them each a little bit, in a very helpful way. I highly recommend checking the posts out.

1. Part I: Revelation in Context
2. Part II: The Beast – Might and Power
3. Part III: The Prostitute – Seduction and Luxury
4. Part IV: The Lamb – The Witness of the Cross

Reading Revelation (Part V)

So, here we are at the final post in this 5-part series. If you’ve made it this far, then I tip my hat to you : )

In the first post, I suggested that the traditional interpretive frameworks for approaching the book of Revelation are all a bit naff, and that we would be better off approaching the text with a more well-rounded triple-layered approach consisting of a contextual examination, an intertextual  examination, and a literary-rhetorical  examination. In the next three posts, I explained each of these ‘layers’ in order seeking to lay-out a reasonably comprehensive introduction to approaching the text in the space available here (excluding, obviously, detailed exegetical examination).

In this last post, I want to try to bring it all together (…as best I can). In order to do that, I am basically going to be asking the following questions:

1) What did the text mean to the original recipients?
2) What might it mean to us?

Reading Revelation (Part IV)

In my first post in this series, I outlined my belief that the traditional interpretive categories used to approach the book of Revelation were less than helpful, and suggested that there was a more excellent way.

In my second post, I started to outline an alternate reading strategy, consisting of three interwoven ‘layers’, and discussed the first of these: the contextual layer.

In my third post, I discussed the second of these interpretive ‘layers’: the intertextual layer.

In this post, then, I wish to discuss the final interpretive ‘layer’: the literary-rhetorical layer. It should be noted, however, that all of these ‘layers’ of interpretation are integrally connected. The ‘intertextual’ layer is, in a sense, the meeting point of the contextual and literary-rhetorical examination, and binds them all together in a way that means that there is a fair amount of overlap between the categories themselves. Although I am treating them separately here, this does not take away from the inherent inter-connectedness of these interpretive elements.