THE TEXT IN THE INTERPRETIVE TRADITION
The image of Rome as the garish “whore of Babylon,” wearing gold jewelry and a scarlet dress, and seducing victims with her cup of fornication (17:3–6), is one of the most unforgettable images of Revelation. Throughout the history of art and literature, the whore of Babylon has become the ultimate evil woman in cultural imagination—linked also to “Jezebel” of Rev. 2:20 via the vocabulary of “deception” (2:20; 18:23). Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter speaks of Hester Prynne as “a scarlet woman and worthy type of her of Babylon” (Bond).
Both the violence and incongruity of interpreting the whore and bride as literal human women, and the Lamb as a literal sheep, can be seen in the sixteenth-century Brussels tapestry The Marriage of the Lamb, depicting Rev. 19:7–10. On his hind legs, the lamb stands on the dining table, being cradled by a beautiful woman, his bride, who “looks adoringly at him” (Pippin, 14). Above their heads another woman—Babylon the whore—is consumed by flames as she is being burned alive.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton critiqued the image of the whore of Babylon in her 1902 Women’s Bible, lamenting Revelation’s “painfully vivid” pictures and including much of Revelation 17‒18 among texts that should “no longer be read in churches” (Callahan 1999, 54).
Novelist D. H. Lawrence critiqued the “endless envy” embodied in the cargo list of the Babylon vision of 18:12–13, embodying the “Christian desire to destroy the universe” that he saw reflected throughout Revelation (Lawrence, 48).
Yet Revelation’s anti-empire critique is vital to liberation theology, especially the condemnation of the Roman economic system. Classicist Ramsay MacMullen sees Revelation 18 as the most daring anti-Roman polemic written by any ancient author during the empire’s rule. Most important has been Revelation’s critique of the slave trade, the clearest articulation of slave trading as evil in the New Testament. In the nineteenth century, abolitionists, including the Reverend Uzziah C. Burnap and others, lifted up Rev. 18:13 in denouncing slavery and the slave trade in the United States (Callahan 1999, 60n45).
During twentieth-century liberation struggles in Latin America and South Africa, Revelation’s analysis and critique of the violent Roman economic system inspired analyses and critiques of modern-day empires and economic systems. In the Caribbean, an indigenized Rastafarian reading of the Bible developed in response to the brutality of conquest, depicting Babylon as the colonial system of oppression (Murrell). The practice of “chanting down” Babylon is reflected in the lyrics of songs by Bob Marley and others: “Get up! Stand up!” “Let’s get together to fight this Holy Armageddon” (“One Love”) and “We’re leaving Babylon, we’re going to our Father’s land” (“Exodus”).
THE TEXT IN CONTEMPORARY DISCUSSION
Feminist liberationist scholars debate how to interpret the destruction of Babylon/Rome in 17:16, since it is presented as the destruction both of a city and of the metaphorical body of a woman. In chapter 17, imagery of the feminine figure is foregrounded, whereas in chapter 18 the emphasis shifts primarily to the metaphorical description of a city. Whether the pronouns for Babylon are translated as “she” or “it” and whether translations are applied consistently to both the Babylon and new Jerusalem visions, affect how the balance between woman and city are interpreted. Unfortunately, English translations typically use “she” for most references to Babylon but “it” for the new Jerusalem (RSV, NRSV), effectively inscribing the duality as that of an evil woman versus a good city, rather than a pair of cities.
What does it look like to “come out” of Babylon? Part of the answer depends on whether the addressees of all the imperatives of 18:6–7 are “my people.” The first command to “come out” is clearly addressed to the audience (“my people”). But there has been a reluctance to see the audience as the addressee of the four additional plural commands to “give back” and “double” the punishment Babylon gave to others, and to “mix” and “give” to Babylon a dose of its own torture and grief. To solve the problem, some scholars have introduced hypothetical divine “ministers of justice” (Swete 1911), “heavenly beings” (Collins 1984, 193), or even God (Talbert) as the addressee. The question is important for understanding how the audience (of “my people”) plays an active role—not only in coming out of empire but also in “divesting” itself of Babylon/Rome’s cup, and even participating in the empire’s demise. A few later manuscripts added “to you” to make clear the identification as “my people” for all the imperatives of 18:4–7. The audience’s role is “vindication,” not vengeance (Callahan 1999, 63; deSilva, 266), actively handing back Babylon’s cup in order to divest themselves of all participation in empire. If so, this poses interesting questions for churches and communities of faith today about how to actively “come out” of empire.
THE TEXT IN ITS ANCIENT CONTEXT
Revelation 19–20 presents multiple visions of the defeat of evil. The purpose of these scenes is to show that God’s justice wins in the end. Systems of oppression must be brought to judgment. Babylon/Rome’s economic system has already been tried and sentenced in the divine courtroom (Revelation 18). Other aspects of Rome and its systemic oppression, represented as Satan and his other agents, must also be defeated. Each different vision begins with “I saw” (19:11, 17; 20:1, 4, 11; 21:1). The multiple visions are symbolic, defying any literal chronology.
Heaven is opened and Jesus comes out, riding on a white horse, to “judge with justice and make war.” The imagery may draw from the Wisdom of Solomon, where the personified Word of God is imaged as a mighty warrior, wielding God’s commandment as a sword (Wis. 18:15). The sword from Christ’s mouth symbolizes the power of his word (Isa. 11:4; 49:2).
A number of features make this scene highly unusual. The garment Jesus wears is already stained with blood before the battle even starts (19:11–13). The source is Isa. 63:1–3, a battle scene in which the blood on the rider’s garments is that of Israel’s enemies. John changes the imagery so that the blood on the rider’s robe most likely is Jesus’ own blood, shed on the cross—not the blood of his enemies (Caird, 243–44; Boring, 196; Metzger 1993, 91). For Revelation, the key battle was already won in the crucifixion, not some future battle of “Armageddon.”
A heavenly army on horses accompanies Jesus, but they have no weapons. Robed in white linen garments, they do not fight. This is different from other texts’ image of eschatological battles, as in the Qumran War Scroll (1QM 1). In Revelation, the saints do not participate in the final battle.
The picture of the return of Jesus as a heavenly warrior has led to the idea of Christ’s second coming, or parousia. But “second coming” is not a biblical phrase, nor does Revelation use the word parousia. The picture of Christ’s arrival on a white horse, wearing diadems and inscription of his titles, resembles a post-battle “triumph,” a well-known Roman celebration after a victory in which the victorious general and his army parade home with the spoils of war (Aune 1998, 1050–51). If this is the model, the triumph may celebrate the judgment and defeat of Babylon that already took place in chapter 18, or the defeat of Satan that happened in chapter 12, rather than a future end-times return of Christ for war.
No actual battle is ever narrated. Instead, preparation for war leads immediately to the aftermath: the grisly supper of God’s enemies (19:17–21). On the menu are the defeated military leaders and nations, modeled on Ezekiel’s portrait of the mythical warrior nations of Gog and Magog being eaten by wild animals (Ezek. 39:17–20). This meal serves as the revolting counterpart to the Lamb’s marriage supper, to which readers were invited in 19:7–9. If the angel calling the birds from “mid-heaven” (19:17) is the same as the angel of mid-heaven in 14:16, then this scene has a similar function of “urgent warning” (Schüssler Fiorenza 1991, 106).
The defeat of evil continues with the capture and imprisonment of Satan’s two beasts (20:1–3), familiar from chapter 13. “False prophet” is another name for the second beast, which “deceived” people (13:14; 19:20), probably representing local imperial elites in Asia Minor. John makes clear that the lies and deceptions by which the empire dominates the world must come to an end (20:3, 10). The lake of fire represents the threat of punishment (20:14; 21:8).
The defeat of oppression and evil culminates when Satan himself is tied up and imprisoned in the underworld, completing the expulsion from heaven begun in chapter 12. Satan symbolizes all the forces of evil in the world, represented by his many names—“the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the Devil and Satan” (20:2)—the same list as 12:3. The image of shutting up evil in a pit echoes Isa. 24:22 (cf. 1 En. 10:4–6; 53‒54). The point is to remove imperial evil from any further deceiving of the nations. But for reasons that are not made clear, Satan’s defeat happens in two steps, with an interlude between them. Satan must be released one more time before his final defeat.
In the interlude, between the first binding of Satan for one thousand years and his final capture and judgment, John introduces the notion of the “first resurrection” (20:4–6), in which those martyred are raised to life to sit on thrones and reign with God. This scene functions as an answer to 6:9, where the souls of the slaughtered cried out from under the altar for vindication (Blount 2005, 59). Now they get their vindication by being raised to life to reign with Christ.
Other Jewish apocalypses such as 2 Baruch and 4 Ezra similarly depict a temporary messianic kingdom between the destruction of the Roman Empire and the final judgment, with a duration of four hundred years specified in 4 Ezra 7:28.
The symbolic millennium is not meant to furnish a literal chronology of linear time. The entire book follows a kind of journey-like “vision time” (Friesen, 158) in which the thousand years represents “vindication time” for the victims of Roman imperial rule. Although the location is not specified as earth or heaven, most likely this picture is intended as a vision of hope for life on earth after the fall of the Roman Empire. The scene ends with the fourth of Revelation’s beatitudes, calling “blessed and holy” those who share in the first resurrection (20:6). They are priests of God (reprising the priestly image for the community from 1:6 and 5:10; drawing on Isa. 61:6; Exod. 19:6).
After the thousand years, Satan is released from the Abyss to deceive the mythical nations of Gog and Magog (from Ezekiel 38‒39). That these nations apparently survived the previous destruction of hostile nations in 19:11–21 underscores that these visions are not to be understood chronologically. Fire from heaven defeats them, and Satan is thrown into the same lake of fire as the two beasts.
Only the final scene of judgment, 20:11–15, focuses on the judgment of individuals rather than judgment of systems of oppression. God is seated on a great white throne, with all the dead standing before the throne. Books are opened, including the book of life inscribed with people’s names from the foundation of the world (13:8; 17:8; 21:27). Each person is judged according to the ledger of his or her “deeds” (erga). The last enemy to be destroyed is the personified figure of Death, thrown into the lake of fire along with Hades, to join the rest of Satan’s agents. No actual humans are depicted as being thrown into the lake of fire.
Earth and heaven flee from God’s presence (20:11)—presumably because they represent the world corrupted by life-destroying forces and imperial oppression (see 21:1).
THE TEXT IN THE INTERPRETIVE TRADITION
Disputes about the millennial reign of a thousand years almost kept the book of Revelation out of the Bible, and continue to play an inordinate role in discussions about Revelation. No other New Testament passage mentions a temporary messianic reign before the last judgment, nor is the millennium part of any of the early church’s creeds. The brevity of the millennium passage makes clear that it is not the center of Revelation (Murphy).
Early interpreters such as Papias, Justin Martyr, and Irenaeus understood the millennium as a literal time of earthly bliss, combining it with Isaiah 65 and other Scriptures about the renewal of the earth, even though John himself does not make such paradisiacal connections. Irenaeus’s hyperbole included descriptions that “vines will grow, each having ten thousand shoots … and in each cluster ten thousand grapes, and each grape when crushed will yield twenty-five measures of wine” (Against Heresies 5.33.3). Such earthly interpretations came about in part as a way of counteracting gnostic anti-earth tendencies. The thousand years were not necessarily literal years, however, since “the day of the Lord is as a thousand years” (Ps. 90:4; cited by Justin, Dialogue with Trypho 80).
Tyconius and Jerome shifted the millennium in a timeless, spiritual direction. The battle depicted in Revelation became the spiritual battle within the individual soul. Augustine completed the turn by claiming Christians are already living symbolically in the millennial age, in the church. The binding of Satan had happened in the first coming of Christ, embodied in Jesus’ exorcisms when Satan was bound, and it would last until Jesus’ second coming. The first resurrection happened in baptism, with the second resurrection being identified with the final raising of the dead for the judgment at the end of the age.
Augustine’s became the dominant interpretation until Joachim of Fiore (1132‒1202), when futurist interpretations once again emerged. Today’s premillennial dispensationalists continue to critique Augustine’s symbolic interpretation of the church as living already in the millennium.
Throughout history, social movements have drawn on Revelation’s idea of an earthly millennium in order to promote reform. From the People’s Crusade of 1095 (Cohn, 61–68) to the Taborites in fifteenth-century Bohemia to the attempt to establish new Jerusalem in Münster, Germany, in the 1530s (Moore, 298) to the nonviolent communal life of sixteenth-century Anabaptists to Franciscan and Jesuit missionaries pursuing millennial dreams in the New World to the “Diggers” movement advocating for restructuring land ownership in England in the seventeenth century or the Shakers and their Millennial Laws in early nineteenth-century New England, popular movements throughout the centuries have read their own history in light of the millennial vision of Rev. 20:4–6 (Reeves). Even Sir Isaac Newton, a prolific commentator on Daniel and Revelation, gave extensive interpretations of the millennium.
The great white throne of judgment from Revelation 20, combined with the judgment of the sheep and goats from Matt. 25:31–46, has shaped Christian imagination about the last judgment. Medieval cathedrals portrayed this scene over the entrance tympanum, threatening worshipers with judgment as they entered. The twelfth-century sculpture at the Cathedral of St. Lazare in Autun, France, by Giselbertus shows a terrified crowd waiting for the weighing of souls, with tiers of graphic punishments for the damned on Christ’s left side, and the blessings of eternal life for those on his right side. Dante Alighieri’s late-thirteenth-century Italian poem The Inferno depicts the last judgment as one of the church’s teachings of “four last things” (death, judgment, hell, and heaven), detailing tortures far surpassing Revelation’s lake of fire. Michelangelo’s painting of the last judgment before the great white throne, influenced by Dante, occupies the most prominent wall in the Sistine Chapel in Rome. William Blake’s allegorical painting The Day of Judgment (1808) retains the traditional right/left division between heaven and hell, including vivid rewards and punishments, with the great white throne in the center. He adds the element of earth convulsed with the resurrection life of the dead rising up from their graves.
The mysterious nations of Gog and Magog (Rev. 20:8; Ezekiel 38–39), prevalent in Jewish apocalypticism (cf. 3 En. 45.5; Sib. Or. 3.319), have fueled multiple attempts to correlate Revelation with geopolitical events unfolding in interpreters’ own times. Josephus (Ant. 1.6.1) identified Gog with the Scythians. Some medieval maps such as the thirteenth-century “Psalter” even pictured a wall in northeastern Europe behind which Gog and Magog were imprisoned (Boyer). Joachim of Fiore identified them as the Saracens; Martin Luther identified them as the Turks (Kovacs and Roland, 213). One British legend combined them into a single figure of a giant named Gogmagog (Jeffrey of Monmouth’s History of Britain; Emmerson and McGinn, 312).
Twentieth-century premillennial dispensationalists identified Russia as Magog, an identification made popular by Cyrus Scofield’s best-selling 1909 Scofield Reference Bible. Hal Lindsay’s original The Late Great Planet Earth includes an entire chapter titled “Russia Is Gog,” expanded more recently to include Islamic nations (Planet Earth: The Final Chapter, 1998, 280). John Hagee in 2014 interpreted the crisis in Ukraine as a signal that biblical prophecies about Gog and Magog will be fulfilled in an imminent invasion of Israel by Russia, along with Iran, Libya, and other Muslim nations.
THE TEXT IN CONTEMPORARY DISCUSSION
Much scholarly debate focuses on how to interpret the violence and judgment of these final scenes. Whereas Jesus has been depicted as a Lamb since chapter 5, here he is depicted as a warrior, wielding the sword of his word as a weapon. The question is whether Jesus now uses violence to kill his enemies—a departure from the nonviolent Lamb—and how John employs the violent imagery of Isaiah 63. Liberation scholars do not all agree. Brian Blount has changed his position from understanding the blood on his garments to be Jesus’ own blood to understanding it now as the blood of his enemies (Blount 2009, 352; contra Blount 2005, 82), although he still underscores that “John depicts the Lamb as a nonviolent resister.” In Blount’s view, John closely follows Isaiah, working with the imagery of a warrior and the trodden winepress (Isa. 63:1–6; Rev. 20:15), including Isaiah’s depiction of the robe dipped in enemies’ blood. Other liberation scholars such as Pablo Richard counter that John radically changes the imagery of Isaiah so that the blood is Jesus’ own (Richard 1995, 147).
Justice is the focus of all the scenes in Revelation 19‒20. When the victims of Rome’s injustice are raised to sit on thrones, Richard translates their role as “doing justice” (20:4), with “justice” as a preferred translation rather than “judgment” for the Greek word krisis throughout the book. For Richard, the millennium must be reclaimed from the two poles of a fundamentalist literalist interpretation on the one hand or a “spiritualizing” ecclesiastical approach on the other hand that collapses the millennium into the church. The millennial vision’s importance for mobilizing poor and oppressed people throughout history needs to be reclaimed as a vision for justice for victims on earth.
The location of the thousand-year reign of the resurrected martyrs is also an important question. While the location has sometimes been understood as heaven (Beale, 998), if it is on earth, as liberation scholars argue, then Revelation gives one of the most important visions for helping us imagine life after empire, on earth—an important element also for ecological hermeneutics.
THE TEXT IN ITS ANCIENT CONTEXT
The promise of a “new heaven and new earth” offers the most earth-centered eschatological picture of the entire Bible, a countervision to Babylon/Rome. Contrary to the escapism or “heavenism” of some interpretations today, the picture of Revelation promises God’s future dwelling with people in a radiant, thriving cityscape located on a renewed earth. Heaven is not mentioned again after 21:2.
The entire book leads up to this wondrous vision of renewal and joy. The Lamb’s bride (introduced in 19:7) now becomes transformed into a magnificent bridal “city” (polis). Images of radiance and beauty persuade readers who have “come out” of empire (18:4) to “enter in” (22:14) as citizens of this landscape of blessing and healing.
Repetition of the word “new” (21:1–2) underscores the distinction between God’s renewed world and the Roman imperial world that has gone before. The first earth and the sea have “passed away” (apēlthon, 21:1). The identity of the “first earth” that passes away is debated. It likely represents the earth as dominated by Roman imperial violence and exploitation. While some scholars interpret the word “new” (kainos) as implying cosmic catastrophe and discontinuity of the new earth from the present earth, similar to 2 Pet. 3:10 (Roloff; Adams), John’s point is probably not that the whole cosmos will be annihilated and then replaced (Stephens). Rather, it is the Roman imperial world and the world of sin that must be replaced.
Belief in a heavenly Jerusalem was widespread in biblical times (see Gal. 4:26, “Jerusalem above … is our mother”; Heb. 12:22; 2 Bar. 3:1; 5Q15). Isaiah 54 imagines the renewed Jerusalem as made of precious stones and “married” to God in covenantal love. What is so striking in Revelation—unlike any other Jewish apocalypse—is that this heavenly city descends from heaven to earth.
The radiant new city that descends to earth fulfills Isaiah’s promises of newness (Isa. 43:19, 65:17) as well as covenantal promises from Ezekiel and Zechariah, and promises from Revelation’s seven letters (Schüssler Fiorenza 1991, 111). Greco-Roman utopian hopes about the ideal city are also fulfilled in the vision’s majestic processional street and verdant green space (Georgi 1980).
The repeated phrase “no more” (ouk eti, Rev. 21:1, 4) underscores new Jerusalem’s contrasts with the toxic city of Babylon/Rome (Revelation 17–18). Mourning, pain, and death—all found in Babylon—come to an end in God’s holy city. With great tenderness, God wipes away people’s tears. The most pointed contrast between the political economies of Babylon and new Jerusalem is John’s declaration that “the sea was no more” (21:1). Although this declaration may reflect biblical chaos traditions associated with the sea (Boring), more likely it serves as part of the political critique of Rome (Wengst), a perspective shared also by the Sibylline Oracles 5.447–49. The Mediterranean Sea was the location of Rome’s unjust trade, condemned in the cargo list of Rev. 18:12–13. Therefore, in God’s new Jerusalem, there will be no more sea trade.
God’s presence will have its “dwelling” or will “tabernacle” (skēnē, skēnoō, Rev. 21:3) in the midst of the bridal city, recalling God’s “tabernacling” with Israel in the wilderness (Lev. 26:11–12; Ezek. 37:27; Zech. 2:10–11). The descent of God’s dwelling to earth draws on the descent of the personified feminine figure of Wisdom in Sir. 24:4–8, 10–11.
Readers who have come out of Babylon/Rome now are named “victors” or “conquerors” who will inherit all the promises of God (Rev. 21:7). The designation brings to fulfillment the promise to each of the seven churches in Revelation 2‒3 (“to the one who conquers,” 2:7, 11, 17, 26; 3:5, 12, 21).
God speaks for the first time since Rev. 1:8, not through angelic intermediaries but directly, “Behold, I make all things new.” God promises water of life for all who thirst, free of charge. This twice-repeated promise of the water of life dorean, “without price” (Rev. 21:6; 22:17), underscores the economic contrast between God’s political economy and Rome’s. Unlike the unjust commerce of Babylon/Rome, in God’s new Jerusalem the essentials of life are given to all who thirst as a free gift, “without money” (Isa. 55:1; Sir. 51:25), even to the poor who cannot pay for them.
The city’s descent is narrated a second time, this time as an architectural tour of new Jerusalem (21:9–22:5). The same angelic guide who showed John the judgment of Babylon (17:1) now takes him to a high mountain to “show” him features of God’s radiant city. The city is huge (1,500 miles in each direction), shaped as a cube, with golden streets, twelve pearly gates, and foundations of precious stones.
The tour is modeled on the angel’s tour of the new temple in Ezekiel 40–48. Revelation makes important changes to open up Ezekiel’s priestly vision to everyone. One striking modification is that the new Jerusalem has “no temple” (21:22). God’s presence now extends to the entire city’s landscape, with all of God’s people serving as priests (Rev. 1:6; 5:10; 20:6; 22:3, 5). New Jerusalem is a welcoming city, not a gated community. Ezekiel’s temple gate was shut so that “no one shall enter by it” (Ezek. 44:1–2), but the gates into new Jerusalem are perpetually open (21:26). Even foreigners are invited to enter into this radiant city, whose lamp is the Lamb, Jesus. Nations will walk by its light, streaming in through its open gates (21:24, 26).
The bridal city represents the entire renewed world, not just the church (Schüssler Fiorenza 1991, 112; Richard 1995, 164; Krodel, 359). Whereas in the Pauline tradition the bride is the church (2 Cor. 11:2; Eph. 5:25), in Revelation the bride is much more. The city’s walls, whose twelve foundations are the twelve apostles, likely represent the church. But the size of the city itself is much larger than the walls and foundations.
Only those whose names are written in Jesus’ book of life may enter as citizens into God’s new Jerusalem. A lengthy vice list (21:27), similar to other vice lists (21:8, 22:15), warns those excluded from the city. The function of such threats is exhortation, in the tradition of a prophetic wake-up call. John’s goal is to persuade readers to be faithful, so that their names will be written in God’s book of life.
The final section of this city vision (22:1–6) features paradise-like images of nature and healing. God, nature, and human beings all become reconciled (Georgi 1980).
The image of the “throne” recurs twice in this section (Rev. 22:1, 3). Although it is not explicitly stated, Rev. 22:1, 3 suggests that God’s throne will now move down from heaven to earth, in the midst of the city. God’s river of life and green space fill out the final description of the city. Revelation 22:1–5 recreates the Garden of Eden in the center of a thriving urban landscape, drawing on Ezekiel’s vision of a river flowing out from the temple (Ezek. 47:1–12). In Revelation the river of life flows not from the temple but from the throne of God and the Lamb, through the center of the processional street of the city. Ezekiel’s fruit trees on both banks become the wondrous “tree of life” in Revelation (Rev. 22:2), invoking paradise traditions. The fruit of the ever-bearing tree of life satisfies the hunger of all in need, overcoming the prohibition of Gen. 3:22.
Most importantly, the tree’s leaves provide healing. In contrast to the toxic pharmakeia (“sorcery,” Rev. 18:23) of Babylon, God’s tree of life gives medicine—therapeia—for the world. Healing for the earth is an important apocalyptic theme also in 1 Enoch (“Heal the earth, announce the healing of the earth,” 1 En. 10:7). The prophet Ezekiel described trees with leaves for healing; Revelation universalizes Ezekiel’s vision by adding the “healing of the nations” to the tree’s healing leaves (Rev. 22:2; cf. Ezek. 47:12). Revelation’s medicinal leaves offer a vision of a political economy that heals the entire world. Healing comes not directly from God but through the creation, from a tree.
The tour of the city concludes with reference to God’s servants who offer service and worship (latreusousin) before the throne (Rev. 22:3). God’s servants shall reign forever and ever. At a time when Rome claimed to reign forever, Revelation boldly proclaimed that it is God who reigns—not the empire—and that God’s servants will also reign with God. There is no object of the verb “reign.” God’s servants do not reign over anyone else.
THE TEXT IN THE INTERPRETIVE TRADITION
The vision of the city with the gleaming golden street and pearly gates, where death and tears are no more, has given form and voice to the dreams of God’s people through the ages. From Augustine’s City of God through William Blake’s “Jerusalem” and Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream,” Revelation’s holy city has promised life and healing, reconciliation and justice.
A prophet of the New Prophecy (“Montanist”) movement in the second century, Priscilla, taught that the new Jerusalem would descend in rural Pepuza in Asia Minor (Epiphanius, Pan. 49.1.2–3). Partly in reaction to such apocalyptic speculation, Augustine and Tyconius identified the church itself as the new Jerusalem, and baptism as the water of life.
Many have looked for the new Jerusalem as an actual city of hope within history, overturning injustice. African American spirituals and gospel songs inspire hope by evoking imagery of the golden holy city and its river of life. “Blow Your Trumpet, Gabriel” longs for the trumpet to “blow me home” to the new Jerusalem, with its tree of life:
Blow your trumpet, Gabriel
Blow louder, louder
And I hope dat trumpet might blow me home
To the new Jerusalem.
For Martin Luther King Jr., the new Jerusalem was an ethical vision, offering a view of “what we have to do.” King appealed to this vision in his 1968 speech “I See the Promised Land.”
It’s all right to talk about “streets flowing with milk and honey,” but God has commanded us to be concerned about the slums down here, and his children who can’t eat three square meals a day. It’s all right to talk about the new Jerusalem, but one day, God’s preacher must talk about the new New York, the new Atlanta, the new Philadelphia, the new Los Angeles, the new Memphis, Tennessee. This is what we have to do. (Washington, 282)
Revelation’s tree of life gave rise to a rich interpretive history, especially in art. The twelfth-century apse mosaic of the basilica of San Clemente in Rome depicts Christ’s crucifix as a life-giving tree for nesting birds and other creatures, from which flows a stream of water giving drink to two deer. The foliage of the tree is portrayed as a new Jerusalem cityscape, with vignettes of people’s vocations in daily life encapsulated in the branches of the tree. The tree of life tradition is also present in the “green cross” of the stained glass windows at Chartres cathedral.
Revelation’s healing tree inspired the Nobel Peace Prize—winning Green Belt work of Wangaari Maathai in Kenya. She situated her work of planting hundreds of thousands of trees in the tradition of John and other biblical prophets who ask “why we do this to the earth,” and she responded that “they are commanding us to heal and replenish it now” (Maathai, 125). Revelation’s tree and river also inspired US poet laureate Maya Angelou’s poem “On the Pulse of the Morning,” invoking the invitation of “a rock, a river, and a tree,” read at President Bill Clinton’s inauguration in 1993.
The new earth imagery of Revelation 21 became Christopher Columbus’s inspiration for his explorations in the vision of the new earth of Revelation 21: “Of the new heaven and earth which our Lord made, as St John writes in the Apocalypse … he made me the messenger thereof and showed me where to go” (Kovacs and Rowland, 226).
C. S. Lewis based his “New Narnia” image on Revelation 21, envisioning “new” in terms of both continuity and transformation. In The Last Battle, the New Narnia where Lucy and her companions find themselves at the end of their journey is not an escape from old Narnia, but rather an entry more deeply into the very same place. Everything is more radiant. It is “deeper country.” New Narnia is “world within world,” where “no good thing is destroyed” (Lewis, 181).
THE TEXT IN CONTEMPORARY DISCUSSION
Continuity or discontinuity between the present earth and the eschatological future is a subject of scholarly debate. Traditionally, scholars thought of apocalyptic literature as reflecting a pessimistic outlook of “cosmic dissolution and annihilation” of the present world as a precondition for any new creation (Adams). But recent scholarship has made the convincing case that what was viewed as “cosmic catastrophe” may in fact be more political than cosmic. Apocalypses are resistance literature (Portier-Young, xxii). In times of imperial oppression, Jewish apocalyptic authors employed hyperbolic imagery of the earth rent asunder, followed by a “new heaven” (1 En. 91:16), as a way of assuring the audience that oppressive rule will be terminated. The new heaven of 1 Enoch “consists in the restoration of divine governance” and renewal for the people (Horsley, 2003, 76, 79). Similarly, Revelation’s language of the new heaven and the new earth reflects renewal and radical transformation, not replacement or annihilation of the present earth (Stephens; Bauckham 2010, 175).
For ecological hermeneutics, Revelation 21‒22 is the most important vision of the book. Revelation suggests that our future dwelling with God will be on a radiant earth. Revelation’s declaration of water given “without cost” (dorean) can be an important corrective to modern capitalist tendencies to commodify or “festishize” everything (Richard 1995, 130), where even water must be bought and sold. The world’s rivers of life and trees of life are not for sale.
As a biblical image common also to many other religions, the tree of life can be an important resource for interreligious dialogue, including “the menorah of Judaism, the tree pattern on an Islamic prayer carpet, the kadamba tree of Krishna in Hinduism, the bodhi tree in Buddhism … and the Lakota tree of life at the center of the world” (Ramshaw, 118; Rasmussen, 195–207). Revelation’s nation-healing tree of life can invite us into interreligious dialogue with people of other faiths.
Scholars disagree as to the function of the threats of 21:8 and 21:27, and whether John envisions the possibility of universal salvation. If these threats are modeled on Ezekiel 44, they may delineate those forbidden to enter the new Jerusalem. Yet Revelation makes numerous changes to open up the city, especially the proclamation in 22:3 that nothing shall be accursed any longer—perhaps even intending an end to the lake of fire. John depicts a “radically inclusive city” (Boring, 221). Even kings, previously condemned, contribute positively to the splendor of the city in 21:24. These and other verses lead a few scholars (Georgi 1980, 183; Rissi, 80–81) to suggest that Revelation implies the salvation of all. The new Jerusalem vision’s proclamation of healing for the nations “brings to fulfillment the conversion of the nations” (Bauckham 1993a, 318). Possibly, what John hopes for is the conversion and salvation of everyone—although most scholars stop short of claiming that John envisions such universalism.
Revelation 22:6–21: Epilogue: Closing Blessings and Exhortations
THE TEXT IN ITS ANCIENT CONTEXT
Revelation 22 concludes the prophetic letter with formulaic blessings, warnings, and exhortations. Frequent changes in speaker between the sayings make it difficult to know whether an angel, or John, or the risen Christ is speaking.
Eschatological and ethical urgency underlie this chapter, with the repeated proclamation that Christ will come “soon” (tachy, Rev. 22:6, 7, 12, 20) and the declaration that he is the first and the “last” (eschatos), the Alpha and Omega (22:13). These themes parallel the opening verses, 1:1–8. The proclamation that Christ would come soon was good news for those who cried out “How long, O Lord?” (Rev. 6:10).
Revelation’s journey ends as it began, pronouncing as blessed everyone who “keeps” what is written. Two references to “keeping” (22:7, 9; recalling 1:3) underscore a sense of ethical urgency. The two blessings or beatitudes in verses 7 and 14 are the last of Revelation’s seven beatitudes, a typical form of speech used by Christian prophets (see Rev. 1:3; 14:13; 16:15; 19:9; 20:6; 22:7, 14). Recalling the promises to Ephesus and Philadelphia (2:7; 3:12), the beatitude of Rev. 22:14 promises the tree of life and citizenship in the holy city as a reward (“so that they may have the right to come into the city by the gates”). The beatitude assures those who have come out of Babylon (18:4) that they will “come into” God’s city of blessing as citizens and heirs. Repetition of imagery of the tree of life and holy city both in this beatitude and in the closing threat of 22:19 underscores their centrality. John invites readers to desire a share (meros, 22:19) in the holy city and its tree of life rather than a share (meros) in the lake of fire (21:8).
Authentication is one function of the entire closing section. John establishes the book’s authority by his claims to have seen the visions (22:8). Even here (as in 19:10), he has to be corrected to worship God alone. The directive not to seal up the vision contrasts with 10:4, where John was directed to seal up the vision (echoing Dan. 8:26).
Multiple threats and warnings also underscore a sense of urgency in this final section. The vice list of 22:15, listing those “outside” the city, like the other vice lists (21:8, 27), may be read as exhortation rather than prediction. It is harder to know what is meant by the imperatives of 22:11. They may indicate that it is too late for repentance—although the beatitude of 22:14 suggests otherwise (Harrington 1993, 222).
Jesus is the bright morning star of Balaam’s oracle in Num. 24:17, a text that was already interpreted messianically by the time of the New Testament. “Washing their robes” recalls the vision of the community in 7:14.
Revelation concludes with a liturgical dialogue (Vanni). The entire book has brought hearers on a transformative journey, through hearing the book read aloud in the worship service. This final scene is the homecoming. The antiphonal “Come” (Rev. 22:17) may be part of a eucharistic liturgy in which the Spirit and the bridal new Jerusalem call the community to participate. The reference to “manna” in 2:17 also hints at Eucharist, as does the gift of water for those who thirst—perhaps analogous to some early churches’ Eucharists that included water along with wine (Hippolytus, Apostolic Tradition 23; Daly-Denton). The invitation to “take the water of life” (Rev. 22:17) draws the new Jerusalem vision to a sacramental close. Drinking and eating at the eucharistic table transport readers in some measure into God’s future holy city, to glimpse the throne of God and taste its life-giving water. As in Rev. 21:6, God gives the water of life dorean (“without cost”), contrasting the Lamb’s gift-economy once again to the ruthless economies of all of Babylon/Rome.
The threats in verses 18–19 against “anyone who adds to” or “takes away from” the words of this book may reflect the prophetic dispute between John and other Christian leaders evidenced in the seven letters of chapters 2‒3. Distinguishing true and false prophets was a concern also in other early Christian texts such as the Didache.
The closing invocation of 22:20, “Come, Lord Jesus,” translates the Aramaic expression maranatha, which also appears in Didache 10.6 and 1 Cor. 16:22. The letter closing, like the opening, resembles a Pauline letter, with a final announcement of grace (22:21; cf. Gal. 6:18). Ancient manuscripts of Revelation differ by one word as to whether this is a final grace given to “all” or simply to “all the saints”—again raising the question of how far Revelation pushes toward universalism (Boring, 226).
THE TEXT IN THE INTERPRETIVE TRADITION
The threats of chapter 22 led Martin Luther, in his 1522 preface to Revelation, to criticize Revelation as “neither apostolic nor prophetic.” John “seems to be going much too far when he commends his own books so highly … and threatens that if anyone takes anything from it, God will take away from him.” By the time of his second preface (1530), Luther had come to see more value in the book.
Many other interpreters have found resonances in this concluding section of Revelation. Hildegard of Bingen appealed to John’s threats and pronouncements of authority in order to claim authority for her own book of mystical interpretations, Scivias (Kovacs and Rowland, 243). Johnny Cash quoted 22:11 in his 2002 song “The Man Comes Around,” the title track of the album. In addition to the pessimistic “let the filthy still be filthy,” other images from Revelation fill Cash’s song about the Christ’s coming in judgment, including Armageddon, the white horse, “It’s Alpha and Omega’s kingdom come” (21:6; 22:13), and the elders’ casting of golden crowns. Cash’s song is deeply personal and also dark, perhaps reflecting the sense of his own approaching death.
THE TEXT IN CONTEMPORARY DISCUSSION
Four times in this chapter, Jesus says he is coming “soon.” His coming means not a terrible final battle at Armageddon or inevitable doomsday for the world, but rather an end to oppression—a radical apocalyptic hope that still resonates today.
Revelation’s apocalyptic hope can be read in multiple ways, evoking a broad range of ethical responses. In the area of public policy, for example, when Interior Secretary James Watt was asked by the US House of Representatives in 1981 about the importance of preserving the environment for future generations, he qualified his “yes” with the now-famous remark, “I do not know how many future generations we can count on before the Lord returns.” Belief in Christ’s imminent coming can lead some people to a disregard for environmental issues and denial of global warming (Northcott; Barker and Bearce). For many others, however, the hope of Christ’s coming empowers their commitment to stewardship of God’s earth, and even their nonviolent resistance against systems of domination.
Revelation’s sense of time can sound threatening. But hope, not threat, is the book’s central message. When musician Olivier Messiaen composed his Quartet for the End of Time from a Nazi prison camp in 1941, he inscribed the score with words borrowed from Rev. 10:6: “In homage to the Angel of the Apocalypse, who lifts his hand toward heaven, saying, ‘There shall be time no longer.’ ” Revelation’s sense of time can sound threatening. But hope, not threat, is the book’s central message. Messiaen, like many before him, was able to articulate the radical eschatological hope of Revelation that has been proclaimed through centuries by artists, musicians, poets, reformers, activists, prophets, mystics, and many others.
John’s Apocalypse has led hearers through 22 chapters, including dire diagnosis of their situation. His mission has been to help communities see the inevitable end that lies ahead, and then to give them the courage and hope to follow the Lamb, to “come out” of empire before it is too late (Rev. 18:4).
The hope John proclaims is that unjust empires and systems will soon come to an end—in fact, they have already been defeated. The message of hope assures communities thirsting for justice that God hears their cries and that God dwells with them. The hope of Revelation centers on a slain Lamb and a radiant city with gates open to all, with a river of life and a tree that gives healing for the whole world, and healing for each one of us. It is this hope that John intends in the final, summative words, “Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.”
Adams, Edward. 2007. The Stars Will Fall From Heaven: Cosmic Catastrophe in the New Testament and Its World. New York. T&T Clark.
Alexiou, Margaret. 1974. The Ritual Lament in Greek Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Aune, David E. 1983. “The Influence of Roman Imperial Court Ceremonial on the Apocalypse of John.” BR 18:5–26.
———. 1990. “The Form and Function of the Proclamations to the Seven Churches (Rev 2‒3).” NTS 36:182–204.
———. 1997‒1998. Revelation. 3 vols. WBC 52. Dallas: Word.
Barker, David, and David H. Bearce. 2012. “End-Times Theology, the Shadow of the Future, and Public Resistance to Addressing Global Climate Change.” Political Research Quarterly 66:267–79.
Barr, David L. 1984. “The Apocalypse as Symbolic Transformation of the World.” Int 38:39–50.
———. 1997. “Towards an Ethical Reading of the Apocalypse.” SBLSP, 358–73. Atlanta: Scholars Press.
———. 1998. Tales of the End: A Narrative Commentary on the Book of Revelation. Santa Rosa, CA: Polebridge.
Bauckham, Richard. 1977. “The Eschatological Earthquake in the Apocalypse of John,” NovT 19:216–25.
———. 1993a. The Theology of the Book of Revelation. New Testament Theology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
———. 1993b. The Climax of Prophecy: Studies on the Book of Revelation. Edinburgh: T&T Clark.
———. 2010. The Bible and Ecology: Rediscovering the Community of Creation. Waco: Baylor University Press.
———. 2011. Living with Other Creatures: Green Exegesis and Theology. Waco: Baylor University Press.
Beale, G. K. 1999. The Book of Revelation: A Commentary on the Greek Text. NIGTC. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.
Betz, Hans Dieter. 1969. “On the Problem of the Religio-Historical Understanding of Apocalypticism.” Journal of Theology and Church 6:134–56.
Blount, Brian. 2005. Can I Get A Witness? Reading Revelation through African American Culture. Louisville: Westminster John Knox.
———. 2009. Revelation: A Commentary. NTL. Louisville: Westminster John Knox.
Boesak, Allan A. 1987. Comfort and Protest: Reflections on the Apocalypse of John of Patmos. Philadelphia: Westminster.
Bond, Ronald. 1992. “Whore of Babylon.” In A Dictionary of Biblical Tradition in English Literature, edited by David Lyle Jeffrey, 26–28. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.
Boring, M. Eugene. 1989. Revelation. IBC. Louisville: Westminster John Knox.
Boyer, Paul. 1992. When Time Shall Be No More: Prophecy Belief in Modern American Culture. Studies in Cultural History. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Boxall, Ian. 2013. Patmos in the Reception History of the Apocalypse. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Caird, G. B. 1966. The Revelation of Saint John. Black’s New Testament Commentaries. London: A. & C. Black.
Callahan, Allen. 1995. “The Language of Apocalypse.” HTR 88:453–70.
———. 1999. “Apocalypse as Critique of Political Economy: Some Notes on Revelation 18.” HBT 21:46–65.
Carey, Greg. 1999. Elusive Apocalypse: Reading Authority in the Revelation to John. StABH 15. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press.
———. 2008. “The Book of Revelation as Counter-Imperial Script.” In In the Shadow of Empire: Reclaiming the Bible as a History of Faithful Resistance, edited by Richard A. Horsley, 157–75. Louisville: Westminster John Knox.
Cohn, Norman. 1970. The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Collins, Adela Yarbro. 1976 The Combat Myth in the Book of Revelation. HDR 9; Missoula, MT: Scholars Press.
———. 1980. “Revelation 18: Taunt-Song or Dirge?” in Jan Lambrecht (ed.) L’Apocalypse johannique et l’apocalyptique dans le Nouveau Testament. Gembloux: J. Duculot.
———. 1984. Crisis and Catharsis: The Power of the Apocalypse. Philadelphia: Westminster.
———. 1993. “Feminine Symbolism in the Book of Revelation.” BibInt 1:20–33.
Daniel, E. Randolph. 1992. “Joachim of Fiore: Patterns of History in the Apocalypse.” In The Apocalypse in the Middle Ages, edited by Richard Emmerson and Bernard McGinn, 72–88. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Daly-Denton, Margaret. 2011. “To Hear What Water Is Saying to the Churches.” In Water: A Matter of Life and Death, edited by Norman Habel and Peter Trudinger, 111–25. Interface 14, no. 1. Hindmarsh, Australia: ATF Press.
DeSilva, David. 2009. Seeing Things John’s Way: The Rhetoric of the Book of Revelation. Louisville: Westminster John Knox.
Duff, Paul B. 2001. Who Rides the Beast? Prophetic Rivalry and the Rhetoric of Crisis in the Churches of the Apocalypse. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Emmerson, Richard Kenneth, and Bernard McGinn, eds. 1992. The Apocalypse in the Middle Ages. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Flannery, Frances. 2014. “Dreams and Visions in Early Jewish and Early Christian Apocalypses and Apocalypticism.” In Oxford Handbook of Apocalyptic Literature, edited by John J. Collins, 104–20. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Frankfurter, David. 2001. “Jews or Not? Reconstructing the ‘Other’ in Rev 2:9 and 3:9.” HTR 94:403–25.
———. 2011. “Revelation to John.” In The Jewish Annotated New Testament, edited by Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler, 463–98. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Fretheim, Terrence. 1991. “The Plagues as Ecological Sign of Historical Disaster.” JBL 110:385–96.
Friesen, Steven J. 2001. Imperial Cults and the Apocalypse of John: Reading Revelation in the Ruins. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Georgi, Dieter. 1980. “Die Visionen vom himmlischen Jerusalem in Apk 21 und 22.” In Kirche: Festschrift fur Gunther Bornkamm, edited by Dieter Luhrmann and Georg Strecker, 351–72. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. ET: “John’s Heavenly Jerusalem.” In The City in the Valley: Biblical Interpretation and Urban Theology. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2005.
———. 1986. “Who Is the True Prophet?” HTR 79:100–126.
González, Justo L. 1999. For the Healing of the Nations: The Book of Revelation in an Age of Cultural Conflict. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis.
Hagee, John. 1999. From Daniel to Doomsday: The Countdown Has Begun. Nashville. Thomas Nelson.
Harrington, Wilfrid J. 1993. Revelation. Sacra Pagina 16. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press.
Horsley, Richard A. 2003. Jesus and Empire: The Kingdom of God and the New World Disorder. Minneapolis: Fortress Press.
———, 2010. Revolt of the Scribes: Resistance and Apocalyptic Origins. Minneapolis: Fortress Press.
———, ed. 1997. Paul and Empire: Religion and Power in Roman Imperial Society. Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International.
Huber, Lynn R. 2013. Thinking and Seeing with Women in Revelation. New York: T&T Clark.
Hughes, Donald. 1996. Pan’s Travail: Environmental Problems of the Greeks and Romans. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Humphrey, Edith M. 1995. The Ladies and the Cities: Transformation and Apocalyptic Identity in Joseph and Aseneth, 4 Ezra, the Apocalypse, and the Shepherd of Hermas. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press.
Jeffrey, David Lyle, ed. 1992. Dictionary of Biblical Tradition in English Literature. Grand Rapids. Eerdmans.
Johns, Loren. 2003. The Lamb Christology of the Apocalypse of John: An Investigation into Its Origins and Rhetorical Force. WUNT. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck.
Keller, Catherine. 1996. Apocalypse Now and Then. Boston: Beacon.
Kinney, Dale. 1992. “The Apocalypse in Early Christian Monumental Decoration.” In The Apocalypse in the Middle Ages, edited by Richard Kenneth Emmerson and Bernard McGinn, 200–216. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Klauck, Hans-Joseph. 2001. “Do They Never Come Back? Nero Redivivus and the Revelation of John.” CBQ 63:683–98.
Klein, Peter K. 1992. “The Apocalypse in Medieval Art.” In The Apocalypse in the Middle Ages, edited by Richard Kenneth Emmerson and Bernard McGinn, 159–99. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Koester, Craig R. 2001. Revelation and the End of All Things. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.
Kovacs, Judith, and Christopher Rowland. 2004. Revelation: The Apocalypse of Jesus Christ. Oxford: Blackwell.
Kraybill, J. Nelson. 2010. Apocalypse and Allegiance: Worship, Politics, and Devotion in the Book of Revelation. Grand Rapids: Brazos.
Krodel, Gerhard. 1989. Revelation. ACNT. Minneapolis: Augsburg.
LaHaye, Tim. 1973. Revelation Illustrated and Made Plain. Rev. ed. Grand Rapids: Zondervan.
Lawrence, D. H. 1988. “Apocalypse.” In The Revelation of Saint John the Divine, edited by Harold Bloom, 45–53. Modern Critical Interpretations. New York: Chelsea House.
Lewis, C. S. 1956. The Last Battle. New York: MacMillan.
Luther, Martin. 1530. “Preface to the Revelation of St. John.” In LW 35:398–99.
———. 1972. Luther’s “September Bible” In Facsimile. Part I. Das Newe Testament Deutzsch. Part II. Brief Historical Introduction by Kenneth A. Strand. Ann Arbor, MI: Ann Arbor Publishers.
Maathai, Wangari. 2010. Replenishing the Earth: Spiritual Values for Healing Ourselves and the World. New York: Doubleday.
Maier, Harry O. 2002. Apocalypse Recalled: The Book of Revelation after Christendom. Minneapolis: Fortress Press.
Martin, Clarice. 2005. “Polishing the Unclouded Mirror: A Womanist Reading of Revelation 18:13,” in David Rhoads, ed., From Every People and Nation: The Book of Revelation in Intercultural Perspective. Minneapolis: Fortress Press. 82–109.
McGinn, Bernard. 1994. Antichrist: Two Thousand Years of the Human Fascination with Evil. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco.
———, ed. 1998. The Encyclopedia of Apocalypticism. Vol. 2, Apocalypticism in Western History and Culture. New York: Continuum.
Metzger, Bruce M. 1993. Breaking the Code: Understanding the Book of Revelation. Abingdon.
Miller, Lisa. 2010. “Some Say BP’s Oil Spill Heralds the Apocalypse.” Newsweek June 3, 2010. http://www.newsweek.com/some-say-bps-oil-spill-heralds-apocalypse-73117.
Moore, Rebecca. 2011. “European Millennialism.” In The Oxford Handbook of Millennialism, editd by Catherine Wessinger, 284–303. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Morris, Ian. 2010. Why the West Rules—for Now: The Patterns of History, and What They Reveal about the Future. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Moyise, Steve. 2001. “Does the Lion Lie Down with the Lamb?” In Studies in the Book of Revelation, edited by Steve Moyise, 181–94. New York: T&T Clark.
———. 2004 “Singing the Song of Moses and the Lamb: John’s Dialogical Use of Scripture,” Andrews University Seminary Studies 42: 347–60.
Murphy, Frederick. 1998. Fallen Is Babylon: The Revelation to John. Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International.
Murrell, Nathaniel. 2001. “Wresting the Message from the Messenger: the Rastafari as a Case Study in the Caribbean Indigenization of the Bible.” In African Americans and the Bible, edited by Vincent Wimbush, 558–76. New York: Continuum.
Norris, Kathleen. 1999. Introduction to Revelation. Pocket Canon Series. New York: Grove.
Northcott, Michael. 2009. “Earth Left Behind? Ecological Readings of the Apocalypse of John in Contemporary America.” In The Way the World Ends? The Apocalypse of John in Culture and Ideology, edited by William John Lyons and Jorunn Økland, 227–39. Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix.
Pagels, Elaine. 2012. Revelations: Visions, Prophecy, and Politics in the book of Revelation. New York: Viking.
Perry, Peter Soren. 2009. The Rhetoric of Digressions: Revelation 7:1–17 and 10:1–11:13 and Ancient Communication. WUNT 2/268. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck.
———. 2010. “Things Having Lives: Ecology, Allusion and Performance in Revelation.” CurTM 37: 105–33.
Pippin, Tina. 1992. Death and Desire: The Rhetoric of Gender in the Apocalypse of John. Literary Currents in Biblical Interpretation. Louisville: Westminster John Knox.
Portier-Young, Anathea. 2011. Apocalypse against Empire: Theologies of Resistance in Early Judaism. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.
Ramshaw, Gail. 1995. God beyond Gender. Minneapolis: Fortress Press.
Rasmussen, Larry. 1996. Earth Community, Earth Ethics. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis.
Reeves, Marjorie. 2008. “Dragon of the Apocalypse.” In A Dictionary of Biblical Tradition in English Literature, edited by David Lyle Jeffrey, 210–13. Grand Rapids. Eerdmans.
Resseguie, J. L. 1998. Revelation Unsealed: A Narrative Critical Approach to John’s Apocalyptic. Leiden: Brill.
Rhoads, David, ed. 2005. From Every People and Nation: The Book of Revelation in Intercultural Perspective. Minneapolis: Fortress Press.
Richard, Pablo. 1995. Apocalypse: A People’s Commentary on the Book of Revelation. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis.
Rissi, Matthias. 1972. The Future of the World: An Exegetical Study of Revelation 19:11–22:15. SBT 23. London: SCM.
Roloff, Jürgen. 1993. Revelation. CC. Minneapolis: Fortress Press.
Rossetti, Christina. 1892. The Face of the Deep: A Devotional Commentary on the Apocalypse. London: SPCK.
Rossing, Barbara. 1999. The Choice Between Two Cities: Whore, Bride and Empire in the Apocalypse. HTS 48. Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International.
———. 2002. “Alas for the Earth: Lament and Resistance in Revelation 12.” In The Earth Bible. Vol. 5, The Earth Story in the New Testament, edited by Norman Habel and Shirley Wurst, 180–92. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press.
———. 2003. “(Re)Claiming Oikoumene? Empire, Ecumenism and the Discipleship of Equals.” In Walk in the Ways of Wisdom: Essays in Honor of Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, edited by Shelly Matthews, Cynthia Briggs Kittredge, and Melanie Johnson-DeBaufre, 74–87. Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International.
———. 2004. The Rapture Exposed: The Message of Hope in the Book of Revelation. Boulder, CO: Westview.
Rowland, Christopher C. 1998. “Revelation: Introduction, Commentary, and Reflections.” In Hebrews-Revelation. Vol. 12, The New Interpreter’s Bible, edited by Leander E. Keck, 503–736. Nashville: Abingdon.
Ruiz, Jean-Pierre. 1992. “Betwixt and Between on the Lord’s Day: Liturgy and the Apocalypse.” SBLSP 31. Ed. Eugene H. Lovering. 654–72.
———. 2001. “Praise and Politics in Revelation 19:1–10.” In Studies in the Book of Revelation, edited by Steve Moyise, 69–84. New York: T&T Clark.
Sánchez, David. 2008. From Patmos to the Barrio: Subverting Imperial Myths. Minneapolis: Fortress Press.
Schüssler Fiorenza, Elisabeth. 1991. Revelation: Vision of a Just World. Proclamation Commentaries. Minneapolis: Fortress Press.
———. 1998. The Book of Revelation: Justice and Judgment. 2nd ed. Minneapolis: Fortress Press.
———. 2001. “The Words of Prophecy: Reading the Apocalypse Theologically.” In Studies in the Book of Revelation, edited by Steve Moyise, 1–20. New York: T&T Clark.
Smith, Robert H. 2000. Apocalypse: A Commentary on Revelation in Words and Images. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press.
Stenstrom, Hanna. 2013. “ ‘They Have Not Defiled Themselves with Women …’: Christian Identity According to the Book of Revelation.” In A Feminist Companion to the Apocalypse of John, edited by Amy-Jill Levine. New York: T&T Clark.
Stephens, Mark B. 2011. Annihilation or Renewal? The Meaning and Function of New Creation in the Book of Revelation. WUNT 2/307. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck.
Suggit, John N. 2006. Oecumenius: Commentary on the Apocalypse. Fathers of the Church. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press.
Swete, Henry B. 1911. The Apocalypse of St. John. 3d ed. London: MacMillan.
Talbert, Charles H. 1994. The Apocalypse: A Reading of the Revelation of John. Louisville: Westminster John Knox.
Thompson, Leonard L. 1990. The Book of Revelation: Apocalypse and Empire. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Thuesen, Peter, ed. 2008. The Works of Jonathan Edwards. Vol. 26, Catalogues of Books. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Vanni, Ugo. 1991. “Liturgical Dialogue as a Literary Form in the Book of Revelation.” NTS 37:348–72.
Wainwright, Arthur W. 1993. Mysterious Apocalypse: Interpreting the Book of Revelation. Nashville: Abingdon.
Washington, James M., ed. 1986. Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr. New York: HarperCollins.
Wengst, Klaus. 1987. Pax Romana and the Peace of Jesus Christ. Philadelphia: Fortress Press.
Westhelle, Vitor. 2005. “Revelation 13: Between the Colonial and the Postcolonial, a Reading from Brazil,” in David Rhoads, ed., From Every People and Nation: The Book of Revelation in Intercultural Perspective. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 183–99.
Wink, Walter. 1998. The Powers That Be: Theology for a New Millennium. New York: Doubleday.