THE CLIMAX OF PROPHECY

Studies on the Book of Revelation

RICHARD BAUCKHAM

T&T Clark

A Continuum Imprint

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Copyright © T&T Clark Ltd, 1993

All rights reserved. No part of the publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of T&T Clark Ltd.

First published 1993

Latest impression 2000

Reprinted 2003

Reprinted 2005

ISBN 0 567 08625 9

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

For my mother

Contents

Introduction

1. Structure and Composition

2. The Use of Apocalyptic Traditions

3. Synoptic Parousia Parables and the Apocalypse

4. The Worship of Jesus

5. The Role of the Spirit

6. The Lion, the Lamb and the Dragon

7. The Eschatological Earthquake

8. The Apocalypse as a Christian War Scroll

9. The Conversion of the Nations

10. The Economic Critique of Rome in Revelation 18

11. Nero and the Beast

Abbreviations

Bibliography

Indexes

Introduction

The Apocalypse of John is a work of immense learning, astonishingly meticulous literary artistry, remarkable creative imagination, radical political critique, and profound theology. Yet, among the major works of early Christianity included in the New Testament, it remains the Cinderella. It has received only a fraction of the amount of scholarly attention which has been lavished on the Gospels and the major Pauline letters. The present volume is a contribution to remedying this neglect.1

The essays in this volume are products of my own fascination with and study of the Apocalypse over a period of twenty years. Some have been published before, in various journals and volumes, and are here collected and re-published in revised (in most cases very thoroughly revised) form. About two-thirds of the contents of the volume have not been previously published. Each chapter can be read as a self-contained essay, but they are also interconnected (and cross-references help the reader to make the connexions). They belong to a single sustained enterprise of understanding both the form and the message of the Apocalypse in its literary and historical contexts. While writing the previously unpublished essays in this volume, over the past two years, I was also writing a shorter, systematic account of the theology of the Apocalypse.2 Many of the lines of interpretation advanced in the latter are explored and justified in much greater detail in the present volume. While the other volume focuses on the theology of the Apocalypse, the present volume, though not neglecting theology, devotes more attention to the literary and historical questions which are in the end inseparable from the Apocalypse’s theological message. Thus the two volumes are complementary.

The approach to understanding ...