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Book of RevelationWhat do we have?
Revelation or Revelations?
Visions and/or compositions
Reading perspectives
Genre
“A literary genre consists of a group of texts that exhibit a coherent and
recurring pattern of features constituted by the interrelated elements of form, content, and
function”(Aune, lxxi).
Revelation as Genre
Letter Formal framework Possibly functioned to be read in worship Mostly deemed of little interpretive importance
Prophecy Distinction from apocalyptic fuzzy
Call and vision report Threat and benevolence Conditional rather than deterministic
Apocalypsedefinition
Apocalypse is a genre of revelatory literature with a narrative framework, in which a
revelation is mediated by an otherworldly being to a human recipient, disclosing a transcendent
reality which is both temporal, insofar as it envisages eschatological salvation, and spatial,
insofar as it involves another, supernatural world .
(Semeia 14 [1979] 9; Apocalypse, 4)
Apocalypse form
First person prose narrativeEpisodic structureRevelatory visions
Often mediated by supernatural revealer
Reached a literary climaxFramed by a narrative offering an
explanation of surrounding circumstances
Apocalypsefunction
Legitimate the authorization of message
Encourage the readers to pursue or modify their thinking and behavior in conformity with transcendent perspectives.
Literary Form of Vision Section
Seven Seals, Seven Trumpets, Seven Bowls ( 4-16)
Two Paired Angelic Revelations frame a middle section (17-22:9)
Structure
The Two Witnesses
The seventh Trumpet
The woman, child and dragon
The beasts from the sea and the land
Several visions