Interpreting the Book of Revelation (Guides to New Testament Exegesis) , livre ebook

Baker Publishing Group - Ramsey Michaels J.

Découvre YouScribe en t'inscrivant gratuitement

Je m'inscris

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

94 pages

English

Vous pourrez modifier la taille du texte de cet ouvrage

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

A propos
Informations
Extrait

Description

An introduction to the study of Revelation reviewing the book's linguistic structure, vocabulary, and variant readings, as well as differences of opinion regarding its message.

Informations

Publié par	Baker Publishing Group
Date de parution	01 septembre 1998
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781441215079
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	3 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0547€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Guides to New Testament Exegesis Scot McKnight, General Editor
Introducing New Testament Interpretation Interpreting the Synoptic Gospels Interpreting the Gospel of John Interpreting the Book of Acts Interpreting the Pauline Epistles Interpreting the Book of Hebrews Interpreting the Book of Revelation

© 1992 by J. Ramsey Michaels
Published by Baker Academic a division of Baker Publishing Group P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287 www.bakeracademic.com
Ebook edition created 2015
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
ISBN 978-1-4412-1507-9
All Scripture quotations are the author’s translation.
Contents

Cover
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Editor’s Preface
Author’s Preface
Introduction
Part 1 General Considerations in the Exegesis of Revelation
1 Genre and Authorship
2 Historical and Social Setting
3 Problems of Structure
Part 2 Specific Examples of Exegesis in Revelation
4 Text Criticism
5 Grammar and Style
6 Narrative Criticism: The Voices of the Revelation
7 Tradition History: Images Transformed
8 Theological Interpretation: The Horizons of Patmos

Select Bibliography for the Book of Revelation
Notes
Back Cover
Editor’s Preface

F our literary types (genres) comprise the New Testament: the Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, the Letters, and, finally, the Apocalypse. Each genre is distinct, and, as has been made abundantly clear by contemporary scholars, each requires different sensitivities, principles, and methods of interpretation. Consequently, applying the same method to different genres will often lead to serious misunderstandings. Consequently, students need manuals that will introduce them both to the specific nature of a particular genre and to basic principles for exegeting that genre.
The Guides to New Testament Exegesis series has specifically been designed to meet this need. These guides have been written, not for specialists, but for college religion majors, seminarians, and pastors who have had at least one year of Greek. Methods and principles may change, but the language of the New Testament remains the same. God chose to speak to people in Greek; serious students of the New Testament must learn to love that language in order to better understand the Word of God.
These guides also have a practical aim. Each guide presents various views of scholars on particular issues. Yet the ultimate goal of each is to provide methods and principles for interpreting the New Testament. Abstract discussions have their proper place, but not in this series; these guides are intended for concrete application to the New Testament text. Various scholars, specializing in given areas of New Testament study, offer students their own methods and principles for interpreting specific genres of the New Testament. Such diversity provides a broader perspective for the student. Each volume concludes with a bibliography or appendix recommending works for further study.
Previously the point was made that different genres require different methods and principles. Α basic exegetical method that can be adapted to various genres, however, is also essential. Because of the inevitable overlap of procedures, an introductory volume to the series covers the basic methods and principles for each genre. The individual exegetical guides will then introduce the student to more specific background procedures for that particular genre.
The vision for this series comes from Gordon Fee’s introduction to New Testament exegesis. [1] Without minimizing the important contribution Fee has made to New Testament study, this series goes beyond what he has presented. It intends to develop, as it were, handbooks for each of the genres of the New Testament. [2]
Finally, this series is dedicated to our teachers and students, in thanksgiving and hope. Our prayer is that God may use these books to lead his people into truth, love, and peace.
Scot McKnight
Author’s Preface

T his book is the product of a sabbatical in Cambridge, England, in the winter and spring of 1991. The setting was idyllic, even in winter, yet strangely apocalyptic, like the Book of Revelation itself. The “Gulf War” between the United Nations forces and Iraq broke out two weeks after Betty and I arrived in Cambridge. We were awakened one night by a telephone call from our son in Boston, telling us that Saddam Hussein had just bombed Tel Aviv. The pages I wrote during those uncertain days from January to April will always be linked in my mind to the Middle East and the crisis in the Gulf. I finished the manuscript during a period in April when Betty was back in the United States helping out with the birth of our seventh grandchild, Michael Julian.
Long before that, friends had smiled knowingly when I said I would be writing a book on Revelation. Would I have light to shed on Saddam and his intentions, on the fate of Israel, or on the time of Christ’s return? As the Gulf War progressed, even I mused about Isaiah’s messianic figure coming “from Bozrah in garments stained crimson” (Isa. 63:1) and—in words remembered from another time—“trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored.” Yet I knew that whatever light my book might shed on the crisis of the moment, it would not be exactly what my friends—and many other Americans—had in mind.
Interpreting biblical prophecy is more complex, and yet in a strange way more simple, than we suppose. What the Book of Revelation requires is not that we know in advance what is coming, but that we knοw how to meet it when it comes (see Rev. 13:10; 14:12). All the author asks is that we, his readers, stand beside him in his visions, see what he saw, hear what he heard, and share his wonder at things even he did not fully understand. This is what I want to help my readers do in this brief guide.
I thank my colleagues in religious studies, as well as the administration and trustees, at Southwest Missouri State University for making the half-year sabbatical possible. I also thank the staff at Tyndale House in Cambridge, who provided a quiet haven, richly stocked with the resources I needed, and an atmosphere of Christian warmth and friendship. Many new friends in Cambridge welcomed us and helped, more than they know, to make our stay happy and productive. Above all, I am grateful to my wife Betty for those days of work, play, love, and reflection we shared. With her I dedicate this volume to our children and grandchildren, the whole clan—to Carolyn, Linda, David, and Ken; to William, Renee, Luke, Stephen, Grace, Kyle, and Michael Julian—and to the future.
J. Ramsey Michaels
For thou hast laid a mighty treasure by
Unlocked by Him in Nature, and thine eye
Burns with a vision and apocalypse
Thy own sweet soul can hardly understand.
George MacDonald, “The Beloved Disciple”
The Poetical Works of George MacDonald ,
2 vols. (London: Chatto and Windus, 1911), 2:304.
Introduction

T wo young candidates, just beginning their Ph.D. studies in mathematics, were invited to attend the annual meeting of a learned society. As they listened to an extremely complex and abstract lecture on some aspect of mathematical logic, one asked the other, “Do you understand what she’s saying?” “Yes,” was the reply, “I understand what she’s saying. I just don’t know what she’s saying it about.”
The student of the Book of Revelation naturally wants to know both what the last book of the Bible is saying and what it is saying it about. The purpose of this guidebook is to provide the student with some help in those tasks. All but two of the chapters in this volume are addressed to the simple—though by no means easy—question of what the Book of Revelation is saying. Chapters 2 and 8 (in very different ways) tackle the more formidable issue of what the Book of Revelation is about.
The latter question is the one that interests the general public and probably led the student to the Book of Revelation in the first place. Various answers to that question have been given. The first, naive, answer is that the Book of Revelation concerns the actual future of the world in which we live, and that alone. It was written to make known “what must happen soon” (Rev. 1:1). This is the answer with which many students have grown up, the answer they heard from Bible believing parents or preachers or from television evangelists. They may even have heard it from a secular mass media fascinated with the number 666 (Rev. 13:18) in relation to witchcraft and the occult, and with the battle of Armageddon (Rev. 16:16) in relation to current world crises. A second, more scholarly, answer is that the Book of Revelation describes the past, not the future, specifically a conflict taking place in the author’s own time between Christians in Asia Minor and the imperial power of ancient Rome. A third answer, one favored by many evangelical students and their teachers, is that the Book of Revelation refers both to a late-first-century crisis between Christians and the Roman Empire and to a last or “eschatological” crisis just before the end of the present world order and the second coming of Jesus Christ. A fourth answer is that the Book of Revelation refers neither to past nor future events, that it is not “about” anything at all, except what was going on in the mind of the author and the apocalyptic community to which the author belonged.
Whether the Book of Revelation is about the future or the past, or both, or neither, the question of the reality to which it refers cannot be avoided and will not be avoided in this guidebook. Because of this question, rai