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[Shawna Erholm]

TheBook of Revelation or Book of the Apocalypse is the final book of the New Testament (and therefore the final book of the Christian Bible). Written in Koine Greek, its title is derived from the first word of the text: apokalypsis, meaning 'unveiling' or 'revelation'. The Book of Revelation is the only apocalyptic book in the New Testament canon.[a] It occupies a central place in Christian eschatology.

The book spans three literary genres: the epistolary, the apocalyptic, and the prophetic.[7] It begins with John, on the island of Patmos in the Aegean Sea, addressing letters to the "Seven Churches of Asia". He then describes a series of prophetic visions, including figures such as the Seven-Headed Dragon, the Serpent, and the Beast, which culminate in the Second Coming of Jesus.

The obscure and extravagant imagery has led to a wide variety of Christian interpretations. Historicist interpretations see Revelation as containing a broad view of history while preterist interpretations treat Revelation as mostly referring to the events of the Apostolic Age (1st century), or, at the latest, the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century. Futurists, meanwhile, believe that Revelation describes future events with the seven churches growing into the body of believers throughout the age, and a reemergence or continuous rule of a Greco-Roman system with modern capabilities described by John in ways familiar to him; and idealist or symbolic interpretations consider that Revelation does not refer to actual people or events but is an allegory of the spiritual path and the ongoing struggle between good and evil.

The book's commonest English name is "[Book of] Revelation". It is also called "[Book of] the Apocalypse" (for example in the Catholic Church[8]), "Revelation to John",[9] or "Apocalypse of St. John".[10] Abbreviations of these are "Rev." (traditional), "Rv" (shorter), or "Apoc."[11][12]

The predominant view is that Revelation alludes to the Old Testament, although it is difficult among scholars to agree on the exact number of allusions or the allusions themselves.[21] Revelation rarely quotes directly from the Old Testament, yet almost every verse alludes to or echoes ideas of older scriptures. Over half of the references stem from Daniel, Ezekiel, Psalms, and Isaiah, with Daniel providing the largest number in proportion to length and Ezekiel standing out as the most influential. Because these references appear as allusions rather than as quotes, it is difficult to know whether the author used the Hebrew or the Greek version of the Hebrew scriptures, but he was often influenced by the Greek.[22]

Conventional understanding has been that the Book of Revelation was written to comfort beleaguered Christians as they underwent persecution at the hands of an emperor. This is, however, not the only interpretation; Domitian may not have been a despot imposing an imperial cult, and there may not have been any systematic empire-wide persecution of Christians in his time.[23] Revelation may instead have been composed in the context of a conflict within the Christian community of Asia Minor over whether to engage with, or withdraw from, the far larger non-Christian community: Author Mark B. Stephens posed that the Revelation chastised those Christians who wanted to reach an accommodation with the Roman cult of empire.[24] This is not to say that Christians in Roman Asia were not suffering for withdrawal from, and defiance against, the wider Roman society, which imposed very real penalties; Revelation offered a victory over this reality by offering an apocalyptic hope. In the words of professor Adela Collins, "What ought to be was experienced as a present reality."[25] There is also theological interpretation that the book mainly prophesies the end of Old Covenant order, the Jewish temple and religious economy.[26]

Revelation was among the last books accepted into the Christian biblical canon, and to the present day some churches that derive from the Church of the East reject it.[27][28] Eastern Christians became skeptical of the book as doubts concerning its authorship and unusual style[29] were reinforced by aversion to its acceptance by Montanists and other groups considered to be heretical.[30] This distrust of the Book of Revelation persisted in the East through the 15th century.[31]

Dionysius (AD 248), bishop of Alexandria and disciple of Origen, wrote that the Book of Revelation could have been written by Cerinthus although he himself did not adopt the view that Cerinthus was the writer. He regarded the Apocalypse as the work of an inspired man but not of an Apostle (Eusebius, Church History VII.25).[32]

The Apocalypse of John is counted as both accepted (Kirsopp. Lake translation: "Recognized") and disputed, which has caused some confusion over what exactly Eusebius meant by doing so. The disputation can perhaps be attributed to Origen.[34] Origen seems to have accepted it in his writings.[35]

The Decretum Gelasianum, which is a work written by an anonymous scholar between 519 and 553, contains a list of books of scripture presented as having been reckoned as canonical by the Council of Rome (AD 382). This list mentions it as a part of the New Testament canon.[43]

The Synod of Hippo (in AD 393),[44] followed by the Council of Carthage (397), the Council of Carthage (419), the Council of Florence (1442)[45] and the Council of Trent (1546)[46] classified it as a canonical book.[47]

Doubts resurfaced during the 16th-century Protestant Reformation. Martin Luther called Revelation "neither apostolic nor prophetic" in the 1522 preface to his translation of the New Testament (he revised his position with a much more favorable assessment in 1530),[49] Huldrych Zwingli labelled it "not a book of the Bible",[50] and it was the only New Testament book on which John Calvin did not write a commentary.[51] As of 2015,[update] Revelation remains the only New Testament book not read in the Divine Liturgy of the Eastern Orthodox Church,[52] though Catholic and Protestant liturgies include it.

There are fewer manuscripts of Revelation than of any other part of the New Testament.[53] As of 2020, in total, there are 310 manuscripts of Revelation. This number includes 7 papyri, 12 majuscules, and 291 minuscules. But, in fact, not all of them are available for research. Some of them have burned down, vanished, or been categorized wrongly.[54][55] While it is not extant in the Codex Vaticanus (4th century), it is extant in the other great uncial codices: the Codex Sinaiticus (4th century), the Codex Alexandrinus (5th century), and the Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus (5th century). In addition, there are numerous papyri, especially ?47 and ?115 (both 3rd century); minuscules (8th to 10th century); and fragmentary quotations in the Church fathers of the 2nd to 5th centuries and the 6th-century Greek commentary on Revelation by Andreas.[56]

Divisions in the book seem to be marked by the repetition of key phrases, by the arrangement of subject matter into blocks, and associated with its Christological passages,[57] and much use is made of significant numbers, especially the number seven, which represented perfection according to ancient numerology.[58] Nevertheless, there is a "complete lack of consensus" among scholars about the structure of Revelation.[59] The following is therefore an outline of the book's contents rather than of its structure.

Revelation has a wide variety of interpretations, ranging from the simple historical interpretation, to a prophetic view on what will happen in the future by way of God's will and the Woman's (traditionally believed to be the Virgin Mary) victory over Satan ("symbolic interpretation"), to different end time scenarios ("futurist interpretation"),[60][61] to the views of critics who deny any spiritual value to Revelation at all,[62] ascribing it to a human-inherited archetype.

This interpretation, which has found expression among both Catholic and Protestant theologians, considers the liturgical worship, particularly the Easter rites, of early Christianity as background and context for understanding the Book of Revelation's structure and significance. This perspective is explained in The Paschal Liturgy and the Apocalypse (new edition, 2004) by Massey H. Shepherd, an Episcopal scholar, and in Scott Hahn's The Lamb's Supper: The Mass as Heaven on Earth (1999), in which he states that Revelation in form is structured after creation, fall, judgment and redemption. Those who hold this view say that the Temple's destruction (AD 70) had a profound effect on the Jewish people, not only in Jerusalem but among the Greek-speaking Jews of the Mediterranean.[63]

They believe the Book of Revelation provides insight into the early Eucharist, saying that it is the new Temple worship in the New Heaven and Earth. The idea of the Eucharist as a foretaste of the heavenly banquet is also explored by British Methodist Geoffrey Wainwright in his book Eucharist and Eschatology (Oxford University Press, 1980). According to Pope Benedict XVI some of the images of Revelation should be understood in the context of the dramatic suffering and persecution of the churches of Asia in the 1st century.[64]

In the Coptic Orthodox Church, Armenian Apostolic Church and Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church the whole Book of Revelation is read during Apocalypse Night after Good Friday.[66] Biblically Ugo Vanni and other biblical scholars have argued that the Book of Revelation was written with the intention to be read entirely in one liturgical setting with dialogue-elements between the reader (singular) and the hearers (plural) based on Rev 1:3 and Rev 1:10.[67] Beniamin Zakhary has recently shown that the structure of the reading the Book of Revelation within the Coptic rite of Apocalypse Night (this is the only biblical reading in the Coptic church with a dialogue in it, where the reader stops many times and the people respond; additionally the entire book is read in a liturgical setting that culminates with the Eucharist) shows great support for this biblical hypothesis, albeit with some notable difference.[68]

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