The climax of prophecy : studies on the book of Revelation

569 Pages·1993·24.3 MB·English

by  Bauckham

THE CLIMAX OF PROPHECY
This page intentionally left blank
THE CLIMAX OF PROPHECY
Studies on the Book of Revelation
RICHARD BAUCKHAM
T & T C L A RK
A Continuum imprint
LONDON NEW YORK
T & T Clark
A Continuum Imprint
Continuum
The Tower Building 15 East 26th Street
11 York Road New York 10010
London SE1 7NX, UK USA
www.continuumbooks.com
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
Typeset by Trinity Typesetting, Edinburgh
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Biddies Ltd, www.biddles.co.uk
For my mother
This page intentionally left blank
Contents
Introduction ix
1. Structure and Composition 1
2. The Use of Apocalyptic Traditions 38
3. Synoptic Parousia Parables and the Apocalypse 92
4. The Worship of Jesus 118
5. The Role of the Spirit 150
6. The Lion, the Lamb and the Dragon 174
7. The Eschatological Earthquake 199
8. The Apocalypse as a Christian War Scroll 210
9. The Conversion of the Nations 238
10. The Economic Critique of Rome in
Revelation 18 338
11. Nero and the Beast 384
Abbreviations 453
Bibliography 463
Indexes 493
vii
This page intentionally left blank
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
1For surveys of recent research on Revelation, see Vanni (1980); Schüssler
Fiorenza (1985) chapter 1; Böcher (1988).
2Bauckham (1993).
IX