Towards
a new spatio-temporal
macrostructure for the book of Revelation
New views on an old mystery
Overview: This chapter proposes a spatio-temporal methodology and macrostructure for the book of Revelation that may be new to Theology. It proposes that Revelation’s description of the cosmos controls the structure of the text, and it can be translated into a modern metaphor: the spacetime (or space-time) continuum. The cosmic spaces in the proposed model are the heavenly throne-room, heaven’s environs, two earthly spaces (physical-spiritual earth and biblical earth) and below-the-earth. Based upon this methodology, the macrostructure of Revelation reflects a single story, from Creation to the New Order, which contains four steps back in relative time (at 4:2, 12:1, 12:13 and 15:1). These relocations result in John’s cosmic journey containing two linked dramas (from 4:1 and 12:1) and a surface, literary spiral (16:12-21:8). What happens as time passes in each space (time-lines) highlight eighteen ‘time-parallels’, which are like text parallels but with a chronological component. The Framework chapter defines and interprets the eighteen time-parallels. This chapter includes the introduction to the study, its methodology and its relationship to other macrostructures.
1) Introduction
The aim of this chapter is to introduce the new macrostructure for the book of Revelation. The study began as an essay on the structure of Revelation for a theological MA and the background research began in two ways: reading how others understood the structure of Revelation (see the following Macrostructure section) and repeatedly reading and listening to recordings of the book. This chapter tells the story of how the proposed macrostructure was uncovered and it considers the methodology and how the proposed model relates to published macrostructures.
Listening to the recordings encouraged an interest in how Revelation’s author, John, may have experienced the vision(s) and/or prepared his manuscript. Revelation is a drama set in different locations, so what happens in each place and does more than one event occur at any one time? Revelation is an apocalyptic prophecy, wrapped in the story of John’s event-driven visionary journey through the cosmos and described in a letter, so is it possible to deduce from the structure or text of Revelation whether John wrote about his vision experience(s) or did he create the book as a literary masterpiece? Or was Revelation a hybrid of divine inspiration and imagination? These questions are in the background for this study but they can be distilled into three approaches: an interest in the historical setting of Revelation; a spatio-temporal analysis of the text; and consideration of the theological implications of the text. There is one hypothesis: the book of Revelation has a structure that can be recognised today. Comparing every literary, linguistic or ideological model for Revelation is outside the scope of this study, so the present author encourages others to map their preferred macrostructure onto a cosmic setting and compare it with the proposed model.
1a) Genre
Revelation is a letter which contains seven messages to individual congregations and it follows a common pattern for New Testament letters, with the introduction containing the main themes of the body of the letter in ‘seed form’ (1:1-3:22, or ‘even’ 1:1-20, Beale, 1999: 39). The main body of the letter is a unified prophetic-apocalyptic narrative of destruction on earth and the divine majesty in heaven. The letter reminds the recipients of the hidden, real spiritual struggles and how victory over spiritual threats and compromise comes from the heavenly throne (Beale, 1999: 38). There are three starting points within the letter: from the start of the letter to the congregations (1:1), from the start of the vision itself (1:10) and from the start of the main story (4:1). This study suggests John formats his letter so that the whole of 1:1-3:22 is the introduction. Revelation’s story ends with New Jerusalem descending to the new earth. The letter ends with closing words in the vision and an epilogue (22:6-21).
1b) An abductive insight - how the macrostructure was uncovered
My interest in Revelation began when I was sitting on an African hill side when the sky darkened, the man and child on the hillside opposite stopped talking, and an electric storm filled the sky with sheet lightning and thunder for about half an hour; there was no rain. If four horsemen had appeared in the sky, I would not have been at all surprised – such was the cultural impact of the book of Revelation on an ordinary English person witnessing nature’s power. John’s descriptions are reminiscent of the storm and vision in Ezek. 1:1-3:15. The literary complexity and the boundlessness of the meaning of the text of Revelation are evident, but when I read Revelation even now, in my mind’s eye I picture Revelation’s setting as analogous to a cosmic, electric storm to end all storms.
When I came to study the book many years after the storm, I was interested in Revelation’s shape/ structure, as a vital precursor to understanding its meaning. John describes Revelation as a letter that contains his experience of a vision that he had on the island of Patmos when he was praying one Lord’s Day (1:9-10). The vision is described in cosmic terms, with its setting on the earth, in heaven and at the boundary between earth/ below-the-earth. The abyss and earth opening, and the fiery lake are boundary events; caves and craters of active volcanoes (fiery, sulphurous lakes) were considered to be entrances to below-the-earth in John’s era and John does not enter or see into below-the-earth. Revelation follows the earthly concept of chronological time by describing several series of events which have a beginning, middle and end, and John is told to write ‘what you have seen, what is now and what will take place later’ (1:19).
As an ex-marine geologist, reading about the cosmic locations and how time passes in the story, I wondered if these visionary locations could be mapped. Seeing the verses written in the Bible reminded me of sedimentary cores, with each verse equivalent to a sedimentary layer. In Geology, unique events such as volcanic ash layers are traceable across a wide region and they provide a chronological link between the different locations. An equivalent event in Revelation is the shedding of the blood of the Lamb at the crucifixion, resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ (i.e. the Cross) and the immediate impact of this would be synchronous across every dimension. The repetitions of the immediate impact of the Cross, for example, suggested to me that the whole book is like a single, concatenated core containing layers from every location. This is illustrated in the following diagram, in which a reader can work backwards from the concatenated core (the unfolding story in Revelation), to the individual core descriptions (what happens in each cosmic space), to the alignment of key events, like ash layers (events like the Cross), to the 3-dimensional mapping of the area (how the cosmic spaces relate to one another), i.e. the overview of the macrostructure of Revelation.
Mapping
Mapping is an inter-disciplinary method which is already well established in Theology, particularly in areas linked to the Social Sciences. However, geological-style mapping (a spatio-temporal analysis which maintains a chronological dimension) of literary units, such as verses or passages, is rare.
Spatio-temporal analysis investigates the relationships between cosmic locations and relative time and this study translates the setting of the story into its modern equivalent: a spatio-temporal macrostructure that reflects a spacetime (or space-time) continuum metaphor. This is a non-physicist’s interpretation of the cosmos that John would have recognised: the cosmos is a 3-dimensional volume and the passing of time moves in one direction only, like an arrow into the future, and consequences follow causes (see the following Methodology section).
Time-lines and time-parallels
In both Geology and Theology, what happens before and after a unique event helps build a picture of the sequence of events (a time-line) within each space. Unique events, such as references to the Cross (like ash layers) which are found in different spaces, are cross-boundary events. In Theology, these are like text parallels but if they have a chronological component and they are synchronous, I call them ‘time-parallels’. Eighteen time-parallels are recognised in the proposed macrostructure (see the Macrostructure Model) and these are described in the Framework chapter. In Geology, the rules for this methodology follow the Law of Superposition and sediments are laid down sequentially; they are only deformed by an external force – like the beds being overturned or shifted by tectonic forces or distorted by slumping or tsunami. In Revelation, disturbances within a linear pattern (such as repetitions) suggest John saw some unique events several times. These different descriptions would only be possible if John stepped back in time on his journey through the cosmos. Comparing subject matter, location and relative time for each verse, it is probably John stepped back in time at 4:2, 12:1, 12:13 and 15:1 (see Section 4c).
Support for this kind of approach comes from Leonard Thompson, who provides a spatio-temporal analysis of Revelation in which he describes it as if it is a landscape seen ‘as from an airplane’ with fields and boundaries that delineate distinctions between different sorts of spaces. For Thompson, these spaces reflect John’s literary and social world as centre-less, bound-less multi-dimensional ‘laminated overlays’ of meaning (Thompson, 1990: 76, 187-188) and Time is like a hill (‘a “topographical” arrangement in space’) so time and space are related coordinates in this transcendental ‘map’ (Thompson, 1990: 84-86). Steven Friesen considered Thompson’s book (especially his emphasis on boundaries) to be groundbreaking (Friesen, 2001: 161) and it was very influential in this study as a spatio-temporal concept. This study also considers the geography of Revelation, but as a basis for its structure like a geological model, rather than an ideological study. This study recognises the setting of Revelation as a multi-dimensional cosmos within which John describes events with spatial (heaven, earth, below-the-earth) and temporal (past, present, future) dimensions which can be mapped to yield a macrostructure for the whole book.
1c) Revelation's overview
Revelation is an account of a vision the author, who gave his name as John, wrote that he had whilst on the island of Patmos ‘because of the word of God’ (1:9), probably in the second half of the first century A.D. John may have been exiled under Roman Emperors Nero or Domitian in the late 60’s or mid 90’s A.D. (Osborne, 2002: 2-9). Today, Patmos is a Greek island, about 30km off the Turkish coast. Revelation is an apocalyptic-prophetic letter containing a prologue, seven messages to Christian groups in Asia Minor (present-day Turkey) (1:1-3:22) and an epilogue. G.K. Beale suggests 1:1-3:22 (or ‘even’, 1:1-20, Beale, 1999: 39) is an intrinsic part of Revelation, like an introduction that contains the main themes of the letter in ‘seed form’ (Beale, 1999: 38-39). Revelation’s book outline summarises what John wrote, in verse order, and Adela Yarbro Collins comments: ‘There are almost as many outlines of the book as there are interpreters.’ (Collins, 1976: 8) but the following outline is typical for Revelation:
1:1-3:22 Introduction: prologue and messages to seven churches in Asia dictated to John by the Warrior.
4:1-11:19 John moves to heaven’s throne-room ‘in the spirit’ (4:2); the slain Lamb appears (5:6) and he takes a sealed scroll from the one seated on the throne (5:7); the seven seals open, seven trumpets sound and earth is tormented (6:2-11:19); the heavenly sanctuary opens (11:19).
12:1-18 the story of satan and humanity: the Lamb assumes his authority; satan attacks the Lamb’s followers.
13:1-18 satan’s two beasts appear.
14:1-20 the Lamb appears on Mt Zion (v.1), as one-like-a-son-of-man (v.14); three angels’ messages; harvests.
15:1-19:4 the seven bowls’ torments; armies gather at Armageddon; Babylon is destroyed; heaven rejoices.
19:5-20:15 the Lamb’s wedding celebration; the Rider defeats satan; millennium; final war; final judgement.
21:1-22:21 the New Order replaces the old cosmos; Jesus stresses the value of the vision (22:16); epilogue.
The book outline describes John’s visionary journey through the cosmos but the story told within it may have a different framework. This study investigates the relationship between the book outline and the story outline. The story begins with someone-like-a-son-of-man (a visionary Warrior) standing behind John when he was praying and he (John) turns around (1:12) when the Warrior talks with him. John is transported in the spirit from earth into heaven’s throne-room (4:1-2) and he most probably returns to earth to witness the impact on earth of the breaking of the seven seals on the scroll (6:2-8); John is certainly on earth again by 10:8. His journey has at least one pause (8:1) and he moves around within his vision: John is carried by a bowl angel to the desert (17:3) and a mountain top (21:9-10). At times, John prostrates himself in worship (1:17, 19:10, 22:8). On his journey, John describes occasions in which he sees or hears multiple references to major events, such as: the immediate impact of the shedding of the blood of the Lamb (5:5-7, 12:9-12, 12:17), the fall of Babylon (14:8, 16:17-21, 18:1-3, 19:1-4) and the Parousia (14:1-5, 19:11-16). There are also paradoxical transitions in the story: the seventh trumpet and open sanctuary are followed by the appearance of the dragon/ satan, not by the Parousia (11:19/12:1), and the open sanctuary follows the appearance of the Lamb on Mt Zion (14:20/15:1). The repetitions, abrupt transitions, paradoxes and the problems raised for macrostructures in Revelation on these occasions, and how they define Revelation’s macrostructure, are the focus of the shorter Repetitions chapter.
Page updated 18 May 2024