Ancient Sources and A Recent One
Two incubators for my interpretation of Revelation
Audio Version!
A number of years ago I heard or read a statement that I had never considered but rung true in every instance I could think of:
Every new invention is not actually new but a combination of at least two things that already exist.
“There is nothing new under the sun,” Solomon wrote.
Think about it: every “novel” invention is built on the shoulders of others.
I say this to acknowledge that though my interpretation of Revelation may seem novel or outside of the norm, my framework is a combination of not only my thirty-five years of thinking and study, but the input of some particular interpreters before me.
I’ve learned from many, especially those I listed several posts ago.
Yet all but one of the books I mentioned follow a fairly traditional line of interpretation developed over the last two hundred years.
My issue with them has been not just various points of interpretations, but in almost every case, the notion that John composed his visions on the model of other apocalypses and with an eye to events around him.
I have no problem with the understanding that John wrote down the visions with language that connected the Old and New Testaments.
But that he created the visions as a fiction to get across his message—a creation even implied in much of conservative scholarship— is a bridge too far for me.
I have chosen as an adherent to the belief that the Bible is the written word of God, to accept John at his word and to treat Revelation as an actual record—inspired in its writing—of what John actually experienced on Patmos.
(continued)
In Plain Sight is a subscriber supported publication. If you appreciate the content and insights of this Substack, please consider a paid subscription. Subscribers receive additional material at the end of most posts with more subscriber only material to come.
And I have models for this: the early interpreters of Revelation were of the same mindset. There is certainly a variety of interpretations, but the approach to Revelation as Scripture and as John’s witness to what he saw is firm.
A particularly cogent interpretation is the earliest available Greek commentary on Revelation by Oecumenius.
I have found a fellow interpreter who sees Revelation as centered around Jesus and the gospel. Other early interpreters have some great insights also.
William C. Weinrich and Thomas C. Oden, eds., Revelation, Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture 12 (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2005).
The Revelation volume in the series, Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, edited by William Weinrich, is a verse by verse compendium of ancient opinions on Revelation including Tertullien, Irenaeus, Victorinus, Augustine, Origen, Oecumenius, Andrew of Caesarea, Venerable Beade, and more (I have the full translated commentaries of Oecumenius and Andrew of Caesarea on the way and I’m reading the Greek original of Oecumenius).
I’ve found these to be fascinating and insightful.
Though with different perspectives, a symbolic approach is evident in almost all of their commentary.
I am going my own way, but always with a respect and often specific insights from these early interpreters.
Their world-view put them in a way better position to see what was going on in Revelation than the “scientific” approach today (usually called “historical-critical”).
(cont.)
My approach (as some of my former students will recognize) is “post-critical” in that I appreciate modern scholarship, but build my interpretation on the Biblical text and ancient sources that enlighten it.
Clifford Winters, Argument Is War: Relevance-Theoretic Comprehension of the Conceptual Metaphor of War in the Apocalypse (Leiden ; Boston: BRILL, 2020).
I did however recently encounter a mind-bending approach to Revelation that immediately gave validation to so many things I have both struggled with and sought to articulate in the past decades, but did not have the theoretical framework to think through them.
Back in November (providentially I believe), I attended a conference and heard a paper by Dr. Cliff Winters that summarized the basic thesis of his dissertation, Argument is War.
He argued that the language of war in Revelation is actually a metaphor for argument, specifically the gospel. Winters graciously sent me a copy of the published dissertation.
In it he set out an extensive theory of metaphor with respect to Revelation. Over and over as I read it I yelled, Wow, or Yes!
Finally I had a frame for expressing my own intuitions about Revelation.
I cannot even begin to explain the sophistication of his ideas—and his work is far from a commentary—but all of the sudden my core expression, Gospel of the Exalted Jesus, finally had a way to be explained in the minute details of Revelation.
Since then I’ve developed, on the foundations of some of Winter’s key insights, my own language of vision, visionary metaphor, and reality as a framework to dissect and interpret Revelation.
Most crucially for the seals, both Oecumenius and Winters see the weapons of the seals as the gospel that brings salvation—and metaphorical death—to the saints.
My next post will lay the New Testament foundations for this metaphor, one that is extensively used in Revelation.
What you can expect from me are my particular prayerful and studied conclusions that hopefully provide a coherent and robust account of the meaning of Revelation.
But my ability to do this is done with the acknowledgment that I am writing surrounded by the scholarship of others who have influenced me.