The time has come, the Walrus said,
To talk of many things:
Of shoes -- and ships -- and sealing-wax --
Of cabbages -- and kings --
- Lewis Carroll
"The Walrus and the Carpenter"
I thought of those nonsense verses of Carroll's because they seemed to fit with the idea of summing up in a final blog posting. But it seems to me that there is a further connection between Lewis Carroll's writing and "The Revelation of John": they both use vivid and concrete images to create an almost hallucinatory effect.
There is so much almost hysterical "end-times" talk in the popular media, it's great to read de Silva's calm, rational analysis of Revelation. I have always found it the most difficult book of the NT, and de Silva's deconstruction makes it a lot more comprehensible as a "wake-up call" to the seven churches in Asia to whom his letter is addressed. Thus it serves the same purposes as most of the other letters of the NT, also using the epistolary form but a vastly different symbolism and imagery. John's aim was the fostering of Christian unity and solidarity in the face of scorn and persecution by the dominant social-political factions, the Romans and their supporters in the local communities and the non-Christian Jews. De Silva makes it especially clear in this chapter how devastating it was that the Christians were unable to make even pro forma bows to the pagan gods, because of course anything that smacked of idolatry was contrary to their belief in the One God which was a heritage from Judaism. The Jews had historically enjoyed immunity from these obligations - but once the Christians were barred from the synagogues, they lost the protection they had enjoyed as a Jewish sect. It would seem that the pressures on the Christians were growing exponentially even as their movement spread throughout the Roman Empire. It is in this atmosphere of growing hostility on all sides in the latter part of the First Century A.D. that Revelation was written.
De Silva indicates that the name of the author doesn't seem to be a pseudonym, as "John" doesn't make any of the claims one would expect if a later writer was claiming to be writing as the apostle John. On the other hand, de Silva concludes that the author is not the same as the author of the Gospel of John and thus is probably not the apostle who was the brother of James and the son of Zebedee. De Silva adopts Aune's analysis that Revelation was written in several stages, starting at about the time of the First Jewish War and then being completed toward the end of the First Century A.D. by a man who originally lived in Palestine and then relocated, perhaps to the region of the Seven Churches in Asia and later to the island of Patmos.
De Silva rejects the interpreters who hold that Revelation`s prophecies apply to our own day, or even further in the future. De Silva notes that, as an example of the ``apocalyptic`` genre, the prophecies would have been intended to apply to the author`s time or just slightly in the future of him and his audience. Thus, ``Babylon`` is a reference to the Rome of John`s day, the ``Beast`` is a reference to the Emperor Nero, whose name and title ``Nero Caesar`` add up to 666 in Greek, or 616, which appears in some texts where the Latin version of the name is used.
Besides the history of composition and the socio-political background, de Silva also analyses the rhetorical strategies of John and illustrates the ways in which John shows the honour due to God and the Lamb and the doom which will be visited on unjust and the faithless on the "day of the wrath" of God. I found it particularly insightful that de Silva noted that, whereas Paul, for example, wrote on his own authority, by using the form of an "apocalypse," John's work gained in authoritativeness as a divine revelation. This authoritativeness was enhanced by John's techniques of dramatic repetition of certain words and phrases, and evocative use of phrases from the Hebrew Scriptures.
I found my thinking about Revelation - which I have had a rather negative impression of for most of my lifetime (I don't go for "fire and brimstone" preaching) - has become much more sympathetic by viewing it as a passionate message to churches of John's day, who, like the Galatians and the Corinthians of Paul's day, were faced with daunting challenges to their faith. I wonder how John would have reacted had he known that within 200 years the leader of the Roman Empire, Constantine would adopt Christianity as the official religion of the Empire.
With this chapter on Revelation we have come to the end of de Silva's wonderful text and the end of our course on the New Testament. I have been exposed to many textbooks over my lifetime in diverse subject areas, and de Silva's is one of the very best. Readable and detailed, his title says it all: An Introduction to the New Testament: Contexts, Methods, and Ministry Formation. He discusses all the major schools of thought with many sources cited for further reading. Even though I had classes on the history and art of Greece and Rome in college, I feel I have learned more about the Hellenistic world of the era in this course, so essential for learning about the life and the teachings of Jesus and his early followers. I expect to keep this book handy and refer to it often.