John’s symbols come out of his and his readers’ background and would have been familiar to the churches to which he first wrote. 4. John draws on images primarily from the Old Testament but also the Greco-Roman world to describe his vision. One of the keys to understand the meaning of John’s symbols is to understand their source (see next chapter). Revelation is replete with symbols that draw on the Old Testament. Nearly every verse contains an allusion to an Old Testament text, so it is almost impossible