What is Revelation?

Part 1

The revelation of Jesus Christ. Revelation 1:1.

Sometime during my doctoral studies in Louisville, Kentucky, I was listening to a public radio show called “Radio Reader” as I drove our (long-discontinued) Subaru Loyale somewhere about town. 

The narrator was reading from a book about the Civil War and the scene depicted Confederate soldiers coming into Washington, DC, and proceeding right up to the steps of the White House. President Lincoln came out to meet them.

I was very confused.

I thought I knew the basic history of the Civil War, but I didn’t remember anything like that.

The problem at the moment for me was that the book being read sounded like history but wasn’t.

Instead I was listening to historical fiction.

The book was entitled The Guns of the South and it speculated what would have happened if Confederate soldiers had access to repeating rifles instead of single shot muskets or muzzle-loading rifles.

My mistaken notion from that short segment was that this book was history writing instead of historical fiction. They sound so similar it is often hard to tell the difference between them.  

I had the wrong genre in mind, so couldn’t process the words correctly.

When it comes to interpreting the Bible, the same problems arise. Even though the Psalms and the prophetic books are both poetry, they are different genres in conception and purpose. Though Jesus’s parables sound realistic, they are fictional stories meant to illustrate the kingdom of God. A letter of Paul may be a historical document, but is not history writing like Acts.

Then there is the book of Revelation.

What exactly is Revelation?

The various answers to that question explain why there are so many different interpretations.

If I don’t understand what kind of book Revelation is, I will almost certainly not explain it well.

The issue of genre starts with the very first phrase, “The Revelation of Jesus Christ.”

To understand this phrase and other clues throughout the book keys the reader into the kind of book Revelation is and so what to expect from it (and what NOT to expect).

Throughout this series I will constantly be talking about genre.

Today I will introduce, but not nearly exhaust, the genre “apocalypse.”

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Revelation

What’s in a word?

When I see the word “revelation” in English I think of a sudden clarity on an issue: “I just had a revelation!”

Of course, in some religious groups, Christian and otherwise, individuals often claim to have “Received a revelation.” The claim is that somehow God has imparted special information to them. Unless that “revelation” coheres with the Christian scriptures, I take such talk with a grain of salt. Often a “new revelation” contradicts the old one from a week earlier. 

I don’t think God changes His mind that quickly (actually never).

When John referred to “The revelation of Jesus Christ,” he had indeed received something special from God, but that something special was grounded in an event. 

John personally knew the Jesus of this revelation—he was a witness. 

And in fact, part of the revelation itself was the inseparable connection between Jesus the exalted Son of Man and the crucified and risen human that John knew personally.

But there is much more to this word “revelation” than our notion of it in English.

The Greek term for “revelation” is apocalypsis from which we derive “apocalypse” and “apocalyptic.” 

Today these terms are often used to refer to disasters, but not so in the first century.

The word apocalypsis is literally “an uncovering” of something hidden. 

An apocalypse was an exposure of something previously covered up. 

In Jewish religious literature a particular type of writing (aka “genre”) depicted a revealing or uncovering of future events to an ancient figure after the fact (1 Enoch is one such Jewish work). Thus Enoch or Adam or Abraham or Moses would be shown as predicting the future. Once you read one or more of these you can easily see why they are not in our Bibles: they are called pseudepigrapha (“false writing”) because the writer wrote in the name of someone long dead.

In the Old Testament, portions of Isaiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, and Zechariah point to another type of unveiling: a view into heaven to see what God is up to. Many Jewish apocalypses also contain this element.

What makes Revelation remarkable as an apocalypse is that a known and living Christian—John— who witnessed the incarnate Jesus, now witnessed in striking visions this same Jesus as the exalted Son-of-Man-Lamb-standing-as-slain-at-the-throne-of-God-Victorious-rider-on-a-white-horse-with-the-name-Word-of-God-King-of-Kings-and-Lord-of-Lords-wearing-a-robe-dipped-in-blood. The Jesus John only glimpsed at in the Transfiguration was unveiled in these visions in his full divine glory.

Besides these astounding visions of Jesus, this apocalypse uncovers what is happening in the heavens while the disastrous events on earth take place. 

In the book of Revelation John recounts these visions that roll back the veil of heaven so we can witness the majesty and sovereignty of God over all creation while at the same time allowing human freedom and evil to take its course (goaded by the machinations of Satan).

John’s apocalypse is a two level series of visions: heaven above and earth below leading to a melding of the two in the new heaven and new earth in Revelation 21-22 after the judgment of Satan, the beast, and death.

This basic understanding of an apocalypse is only the beginning, but enough to show that this complicated book has no easy interpretation.

Patience is required.

Of Jesus Christ

Most Bibles have the title “The Revelation of  John” or “The Revelation of John the Divine” which translates Apocalypsis Joannou (Theologou).

But the first three words of the text are Apocalypsis Iēsou Christou “The Revelation of Jesus Christ.”

This was the title that John gave to his book.

“Of Jesus Christ” is an ambiguous phrase with two potential meanings. It can refer to the source of the apocalypse, something like “The Revelation from Jesus Christ.” Or it can refer to the topic of the apocalypse, something like “The Revelation about Jesus Christ.” The first several verses of Revelation would suggest the first sense, but the rest of the book would suggest the second sense (see Notes on the Greek Text for more). 

No matter, the title makes clear that Jesus Christ is the very epicenter of Revelation. No verse in the book is to be read without reference to Jesus Christ.

Jesus Christ

The final important feature of this title is the name itself: Jesus Christ.

Jesus Christ is the Greek translation of Yeshua HaMashiach—Jesus the Messiah.

John definitively affirms with this name that he is speaking about the same Jesus of Nazareth spoken of in the Gospels, who through word and deed and death and resurrection, showed himself to be the long-expected Jewish Messiah or “Anointed one” who would deliver his people from their captivity.

But the captivity was not political but spiritual, a captivity to sin and evil, though political captivity was often a corollary.

In the book of Revelation, this Jesus, Jesus Christ, is depicted as the victorious Lord over all creation, whose work on the cross has sealed the redemption of those who have put their trust in him, even to death.

In that realization, Revelation is a book of supreme hope and peace.

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An Invitation: Beginning on November 5, 2023 and going through December, I will be teaching a course for Right on Mission entitled, “Interpreting Scripture 1.” Here is the description:

The task of interpreting Scripture is foundational to doing responsible Christian theology. Biblical interpretation, often referred to as "biblical hermeneutics," is intellectual work that calls for honesty, not prejudice, from the interpreter. It also calls for knowledge of language, vocabulary, grammar, sentence structure, and more. It takes longer than eight weeks to learn hermeneutics. What this course does is introduce students to the discipline of reading the Old and New Testament with respect to genre, dialogue, and authorial intent.

I would love to have anyone of you who desires to know more about studying the Bible.

Notes on the Greek Text of Revelation

1. ΑΠΟΚΑΛΥΠΣΙΣ ΙΩΑΝΝΟΥ. This title of Revelation is missing in many early manuscripts including the original copiers of Codex Vaticanus (B) and Codex Sinaiticus (א).