Speaker 1In the first century, a man named John had a prolonged vision. After experiencing it and pondering it, he wrote it down in the form of a carefully crafted letter. A letter we call the Revelation. It's the last book in the Bible. It's a confusing book. It's full of symbols,
Speaker 2but these symbols aren't random. In a way, the book of Revelation is the culmination of all the design patterns in the Hebrew Bible. And then it gives you, the reader, the commission to go look at your reality through the lens of the design patterns.
Speaker 1The reality is to understand the book of Revelation, you kind of need to understand the entire biblical story and be fluent in the images that begin from the very first pages of the Bible and weave all the way through it. If you've been following along with us, this might become an easier task for you. It requires a lifelong of meditation and you shouldn't do it alone.
Speaker 2By far, the Revelation is off the charts, the most dense allusions to the most different number of books. Whatever you need to read this book, you're going to need the insights of other people in present and past.
Speaker 1So today we're going to get practical. We're going to look at five historic strategies on how to interpret the Revelation. And we're going to look at common pitfalls that we make when we read it. Thanks for joining us. Here we go.
Speaker 2The time is near. Yes, the time of the apocalypse is near or now. Is it near or now? Or is it past? Or is it all of them? Oh boy. These are the questions that one must ponder when you read biblical,
Speaker 1apocalyptic literature. So that's what we're doing. We're going to make a video on how to read apocalyptic literature in the Bible. And this is maybe the last episode.
Speaker 2Yeah. Depends on how talkative we are. How talkative we are. I don't really feel like recapping. I just feel like going. Okay. Yeah, this is, we're well into a conversation. If you haven't listened to previous episodes, you can probably follow what we're doing, but it will make a lot more sense in light of where we've gone up till now. So here we've been talking about the meaning, apocalyptic literature, the world in which it makes sense. From this point on, what I want to get is more practical, like how to actually read this literature and understand it, at least take a step forward in your understanding of it. So one part of it is to understand we're not interpreting this literature in a vacuum. So it's important to know that you're likely already somewhere on a grid of how people read the book. So what I want to quick is use the work of a scholar, Michael Gorman, who's created a really helpful map to understand all the different approaches and why they are the way
Speaker 1they are. Different approaches to how to read apocalyptic literature.
Speaker 2Yeah. Different views on how to read this literature. That will help us zero in on an approach that we're going to recommend in the video, which actually could be at home in almost any of the approaches. So first of all, Jewish apocalyptic literature is widespread, both in, the Hebrew Bible, in the New Testament, and in literature that was never considered part of the biblical collection. So that's the first thing to notice, is when we say how to read apocalyptic literature in the Bible, we're narrowing to really a small section of a much wider body of literature from ancient Judaism. That's just helpful to realize. So what we're doing now would actually hold true for reading 1 Enoch, or 2 Baruch, or 4 Ezra. It would or it wouldn't. It would. Oh, would. It would. Yeah. So in terms of the two books that are given the label apocalyptic, there's one in the Hebrew Bible, one in the New Testament, Daniel and Revelation. With Daniel, it's a bit of a misnomer, because half of the book is these dreams and visions, but the first half of the book are narratives about Daniel and his friends. Yeah. And they go together, those two halves go together in a crucially important way, but the whole book isn't an apocalyptic, like the Revelation is. It's also true that there are sections of other books that are apocalypses, like Zechariah, the first half of the book, is about his dreams and visions in the heavenly temple. Sections of the book of Ezekiel, at the beginning, middle, and end. The prophet Isaiah has an apocalypse in one chapter, chapter 6. The prophet Amos has a series of apocalypses, chapter 7 through 9. And then we talked about Abraham has dreams and visions, so does Jacob. So there you go. In a way, what we're focusing in on, is when you have a whole book or a section of a book that is full of this kind of dream imagery. That's what we're focusing in on. So Michael Gorman is a New Testament scholar who's written the most clever title of a book on Revelation. And seriously, it's the first thing I recommend hand to people. It's called Reading Revelation Responsibly. So good. You handed that to my mom, because she had it on her coffee table. Oh, sweet. And I thumbed through it. Oh, that's cool. Yeah. It's so well written for a wide audience. You don't have to know Greek or Hebrew. So he presents the history of interpretation and mapping out approaches to how people read the book in a really helpful way. So Gorman presents this map in the form of a cross that creates a box with four quadrants. So the vertical line is called the time axis, the vertical axis. So from here, this would be from the perspective of the reader. Is apocalyptic literature only about the past? Okay. Some historical thing that happened in the past. This is what Daniel saw for his day and his near future. This is what John saw for the churches in Asia in the first century. That's one end of the spectrum. That's the top. The middle of the whole square, the middle line is what he calls the present focus. The reader's present. It's about my time here and now. Okay. Or the bottom is the future focus. It's about events that are yet to come. Okay. So that's, you can line up approaches all along that line. There's also a horizontal axis that divides between two approaches, and this is very helpful. On the left is people who read the revelation as a code, as a divine secret code. And it's a coded map predicting a certain set of events that will have or did happen based on where you are on the, you know, right, the past or future axis. But the whole point is it's a code of this, about a very particular specific series of events that once they have happened, you can decipher the code and the book will have served its function. Okay. So the goal of these reading strategies for these approaches will be decoding, deciphering, finding one-to-one correspondence between an image or symbol and a historical event, person or place, something like that. On the other end of that spectrum, end of the Y-axis. Y-axis is what he calls. Reading the text as a lens. So this is about letting apocalyptic literature give you imagery through which you see the world. So the goal is not to view it as a code, but to see it as a set of images that allow you to think of analogies and similarities in your own environment. So the goal here is to see patterns, to understand symbols and images that help you see the world. To see your own world, past, present, or future in a different way, in light of a transcendent perspective. So that's the map. So you just go through, there's about five kind of patterns through which people read apocalyptic literature. So one would be the predictive futurist. This is how I was taught to read. Yep. This has been a very popular approach throughout history, but especially it's become the majority view in popular Christianity in modern America. This is the Left Behind series. Correct. And in the generation before that, the late great planet Earth, with Hal Lindsey and so on. So this is, the text is a code, and it was written down without the author fully understanding, or even the original audience fully understanding, because its real meaning can only be unlocked once the specific set of events that it's predicting will take place.
Speaker 1And the events are all in the future.
Speaker 2And the events are all in the future for the author and the original audience for sure. And for us. Perhaps even for us. The reader. Though, at some point in the last. Some point in human history, it'll happen. That's right. Though, a big part of this movement, the predictive futurist interpretive movement, was to say, we're beginning to see the signs. Yeah. The idea is that you read Revelation in one hand and a newspaper in another, or your news phone app in another. And you're like, oh, okay, this is happening in the Middle East. This fulfills this thing in Revelation 13. Therefore, the train must be common.
Speaker 1Which, in a way, is very close to the other side of the y-axis, which is reading it pastorally.
Speaker 2Oh, that it is meant to make you think about the present and future, but with a totally different purpose. So, I actually think more similar to this is its opposite end of the spectrum, which is what's called the preterist, or past. preterist is a word for the past. Yeah. Namely, that it is a. It is a code to be deciphered. But it was all about stuff that happened in the first century. And it all happened in the first century. Yeah. Within the generation of the. author and the readers so you know you can see how those those two have dominated interpretive history okay however there have always been and there is a resurgence of views that have more of a reader's present focus and viewing the text not as a code of secret fulfillments but of viewing it as a lens through which the reader is to look at their present in a new way so he calls these one is called the poetic or theopoetic and i'll just let him define it he says the revelation uses mythical and poetic symbolism and language to express ultimate truths about god evil and history this is sometimes called the idealist or spiritual approach essentially it's all of the images symbolize ideals good and evil god's kingdom and it's not trying to locate it at any point particular time or moment in history it's about realities that are always happening in any time in any place yeah okay fourth in this family over here would be he calls it the theopolitical it's essentially the the book originated out of a time of suffering and persecution which is partially true it's a document that is a form of political protest and dissent from the powers that be namely the roman empire and the first century and so its main purpose is actually to give readers a vision of the kingdom of god as the antithesis of the kingdoms of this world and it's meant to fuel endurance and faithfulness despite opposition another approach in here he calls pastoral prophetic in the and this is the most encompassing in that it was comes from the past but it's meant to speak to every generation of readers through our present and on into the future by means of its imagery through which we see the world in a new way through these images and symbols and that it's essentially a pastoral letter calling the church to faithfulness giving comfort and giving warning and challenge so all of those are in the viewing the text as a set of
Speaker 1glasses you put on those span from more of a past focus to more of a
Speaker 2future focus correct that's right so i find that helpful and the longer at least i'm sitting with the revelation and seeing how it works i am very compelled completely compelled actually that viewing the text as a lens through which every audience of this book from its original audience to me to my grandkids and every generation in between is the addressee of the book and is meant to see their time and place in light of the images the images and the narrative of work in the book so and so it is working as a poetic work i think that's how it transcends it's the first century it speaks to us it is theopolitical it's very much about economics and politics and religion and power and it's also pastoral it's a word spoken to communities of jesus followers so it's essentially on that side of the column or that side of the table that we're going to fill out
Speaker 1but the preterist view it does seem like there were things happening in the first century correct that was being talked about but is it because you're not decoding yeah is that why you wouldn't put yourself in the preterist
Speaker 2view in a way this is what happens when you create these five views on how to read the revelation all of them actually have their thumb on something really important yeah that's why it's a such a prominent view so the book was written in the first century yeah so that's its primary context of meaning which means there's going to be a lot of reference to first century stuff and there is but the book like all apocalypses you get up on the mountain and you can see the whole landscape of human history yahweh looks down from his throne yeah right and he looks on the kingdoms of humanity and so it is also ultimately driven by a vision of the ultimate future ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ that emerges out of the old. But the thing is, is that these symbols have referred to so many different kinds of political social events. I don't think we should mistake the image for the reality. The image is help us understand the meaning of reality and the meaning of human history. And so what the actual set of events is that marks the culmination, I don't think we're meant to see these texts as giving us that kind of information.
Speaker 1Of when and how we'll see the culmination? Correct. Right. But it is hope in that there will be a culmination. Very much so, yes.
Speaker 2And that's where the predictive futurist approach understands a key element of apocalyptic. It is about where things are going in the ultimate future. But what it underemphasizes is the rooting of all of the symbols and images in the past and the ability of those images to. To speak to our present, not just the future. Otherwise, the book essentially just becomes a sealed scroll, so to speak, that is waiting for the right set of events to decipher the code. And then all of a sudden, 2,000 years plus later, now we understand what it means. And it's been sealed in its meaning to every generation before us. And that is an uncharitable way to say it. But what a presumptuous point of view. But it's so Western. Because clearly, America is the culmination of history. And so it would be in our day and time. Well, everyone feels like they're living in the culmination of history. That's exactly the point. Right? That's right.
Speaker 1That's right. But there's something uniquely presumptuous. And in some way, we always are living in the culmination of history.
Speaker 2That's true. Good point. That's really well said. That's true. Every generation is living at its version of the culmination of history.
Speaker 1Yeah. And it feels like this must be the end almost all the time. Yeah. For a lot of people.
Speaker 2Yeah, I was thinking about this the other day. Oh, yeah. Oh, 1917. I watched the film 1917. Oh, yeah. I haven't seen that. Holy cow. Man, to think about that generation. Did that show up in the Oscars? Yeah. It got Best Cinematography. And well-earned, man. It's a stunning achievement. To have lived in the 19-teens and early 20s through World War I, and to have seen what felt like the civilized world collapsing in on itself. How many young men were shipped off to their deaths? I mean, it's millions. And then, within. And then, within. And then, within. And then, you know what? 25 years, it happened again. You know, the two world wars were in many ways the end of a world. And the world that emerged out the other side is what we call the modern West. It's a different world in many ways. Those wars and cataclysms reshaped much of the human population's reality. And so, in a way, yeah, that was the end of a world. That was the end of the world. It was the apocalypse. I just used the word apocalypse in its improper sense. Oh, yeah, you did. Sorry. It's hard. Old habits die hard.
Speaker 1It was the end of the world. It was the culmination of human history. And yet, human history continues. And heaven and earth have not been united. Correct. And that seems to be, you know, you can look back. Or at least not fully. At least not fully. Yeah. True. And there's this hope that one day it will be fully. And there's this almost expectation that, oh, I bet it's this time in human history. Yeah. That it fully is realized. Correct. And on and on for every generation for thousands of years. Would it surprise you if you were carried in the spirit or something? Of course it would surprise you. But you somehow were shown that human history survived in some sort of form of us just on earth figuring stuff out 10,000 years from now? Or on Mars or something.
Speaker 2I'm sure partly on Mars. Would you just be like, oh, okay. No, you know, not anymore. I wouldn't be surprised. You wouldn't be surprised. One of the fundamental portraits of God and especially the Hebrew Bible is that the divine sense of time is very different. Not just very different, fundamentally different than my experience and perception of time. It's a major theme, especially in the wisdom literature. So however the divine purpose is working itself out in history, clearly time efficiency is not.
Speaker 1Yeah. Yeah, right? Not a value. I know. To God. Well, especially, when each of us only gets whatever, 80 years.
Speaker 2Yeah. But then you just have to reckon with the fact that God is so patient and accommodating, even just within the storyline and time scope of the Bible with so many generations of people allowing them to fumble through some wins, many losses, and yet God is persistently, right, at work. Yeah. Patiently. That portrait anymore is so powerful to me that I have no idea how long God's going to let this thing go. Okay. And in the light of whatever we mean by transcendent and ultimate time and eternity, even our sense of the deep abyss of time of the universe is nothing compared to that. And so I don't even know. This is the point where I don't know how to have a conversation about it anymore.
Speaker 1Hey, there's a YouTube video. It basically goes from today and then it starts clicking off years and showing you where the universe is heading in terms of, I mean, it's a lot of assumptions, but then it goes all the way. It's just trillions of years into the future. And it kind of speeds up exponentially. But you know, because our star, it's not going to burn out for another 5 billion years. And that's a long time to imagine. Totally. But we're still in, even at that point, in the very earliest embryonic stages of the universe.
Speaker 2Sure. Yeah, sure.
Speaker 1As we can understand the progression of the universe.
Speaker 2Yep. As far as the heavens, as far as the heavens are above the earth. So, thank God's sense of time and space. Thank you. So, I think that arms us, I think with some awareness of what Gorman calls the most common pitfalls. If you get the most common pitfalls in reading a work like what we're trying to describe and you understand the map, I think that can arm you with some simple steps. Actually, no matter what view you hold, I think some simple steps that can take your reading of Daniel and Revelation to the next level.
Speaker 1Okay. Can we do this with a text in our mind?
Speaker 2So, yeah. We can pick either the first throne scene in the Revelation. I thought we could pick the sign in heaven about the woman and the stars and the baby boy and the dragon. Let's do that one. Okay. Revelation 12. All right. So, first, let's kind of scan through a chapter in the book of the Revelation. Okay. And then we can work through what are the pitfalls that we want to avoid and what are some helpful tools for how to read a text like this. The first, actually, the helpful thing is to recognize this is chapter 12. And it comes at an important moment in the literary design and sequence of the book that we don't have time to unpack. But you made a video about it. Yeah, we made two videos about it.
Speaker 1The overview of Revelation and about 20 minutes, both videos, 20 minutes.
Speaker 2Yeah, together. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, that's right. So, this is what's called, it's a pause. The story is, hey, churches, seven churches, things are going to get hard. Hang in there and Jesus will reward you in the new creation. Opening, vision in heaven, chapters four and five. And he sees the lamb as the crucified and risen Jesus is the Lord of history. And so he can open up the scroll which symbolizes God's purposes and plan for the cosmos.
Speaker 1What was that psalm? Oh, Psalm 33. Psalm 33. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And you said, wouldn't it be great to be able to know the plan? Yeah, to know the plan. And here is the lamb. Yeah, here's the lamb.
Speaker 2Unrolling the plan. Seizing and opening the scroll of God's purposes. And what fold out of it are three cycles of seven, of seven acts of divine justice that represents God's justice on humanity's evil and that vindicate the blood of the innocent that has been spilled on the dry land. It's all about the Cain and Abel story and the flood narrative, purifying the land from the innocent bloodshed upon it.
Speaker 1What is? The first seven? The book of Revelation. The seven seals?
Speaker 2And what the sevens represent. All of the sevens are iterations of the flood designed by God. design pattern in the Hebrew Bible. Huh. Because the flood design pattern then becomes the ten plagues. Okay. Which is a new flood. Okay. Of divine justice which becomes the conquest of Joshua on the Canaanites is a new flood of divine justice. And there's all hyperlinks and word patterns and so on. But you get this portrait of when there are moments of God bringing the hammer on the city of man because of the shedding the blood of the innocent. Yeah. All of that's rooted in Genesis 1 through 11. And so, these cycles of seven, the opening of the scroll, the seven seals of the scroll, the seven trumpets, the seven bowls of God's anger. Each one of those is working out literally the language of all these sevens. If you take the flood narrative, the ten plagues, the conquest narrative, and then a bunch of stuff from the prophets about the fall of Babylon, and you put them in a blender, that's what you get. So chapter 12 through 15 represents a pause in between the second and third cycle of seven. It gives you almost a meta-commentary on the whole biblical story. It retells the whole biblical story in a set of seven signs. There's seven signs that he sees, and this is the first one, Revelation 12. A great sign appeared in the heavens. A woman closed with the sun, the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. She was with child. She's pregnant. She cried out in labor, and in labor pains gave birth. Another sign. In the skies, a great red dracon, dragon. Seven heads, ten horns. On the heads are seven crowns. His tail swept away a third of the stars of heaven, throwing them to the land. The dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth, so that when she gave birth, he could eat the child. Whoa. She gave birth to a son, a male child, who was to rule all of the nations with a rod of iron. But that child? Was snatched up to God and his throne. The woman fled into the wilderness, where a place was prepared for her, where she could find nourishment for 1,260 days. This is what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1We've done like five hours of conversation about, and it's been wonderful. Yes. But then you just start reading this. Totally. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's like, what in the world?
Speaker 2Totally. Totally. Okay. It's a cryptic fantasy novel. It's totally. All right. So, step one in reading apocalyptic literature, read the work as a whole. Okay. All right. That's not going to help you for this, but just read the whole work. And as you do, start to pay attention to. And be prepared to be confused 90% of the time. Yeah, just like the rest of the Bible. It's meditation literature. Understanding will not come quickly when you're reading Jewish meditation literature. It's just, there's no two ways about it. You have to listen to it. Because the opening paragraph of this book, Revelation, said it was designed to be listened to. Yeah. It says it. Yeah. Second step is recognize that it's dream literature. And then it's dream literature that happened to people who were the most ultimate Bible nerds you could imagine. And so, their dreams and then how they represent those dreams in literary works is going to be like Jewish meditation literature. Super dense, full of hyperlinks and illusions. And because it's dream literature, symbolism. I think the easiest way to communicate the fact that it's imagery and symbolism is that it's rooted in dreams and visions. Just to go back to our first episodes even.
Speaker 1Yeah. And that it's about design patterns too.
Speaker 2It's about design patterns. That's exactly right. So, in the same way that these aren't as popular anymore in our culture. When I was growing up, for some reason I found out about the comics page of the newspaper. And then particularly political cartoons. I don't know why I like them. I loved them as a kid. I thought they were funny. And because they were usually really fantastic images of caricatured political leaders. Right. And then often. But often people are depicted as animals. Yeah. And so, it'd be like a donkey, you know, a democratic donkey sitting on top of a building, you know, or an elephant, a publican, sitting, you know, in the national mall with a big plate of food in front of it. Actually, this is a great analogy for apocalyptic literature. From another culture, you would look at that and just be like. Silly. These people think elephants sit in the national mall. Right. Eating meals. Like, what is this? Obviously. It's an insider lingo to a subculture. And apocalyptic symbolism works the same way. You're just supposed to know what the symbols are.
Speaker 1So, you talked about that y-axis of like Dakota ring to lens. And here it feels like you kind of have to use the biblical theology Dakota ring. In order to discern the lens. Correct. Correct. What is a dragon? Yes. Okay. Well, how does the Bible talk about dragons? Okay. That's the Dakota ring. That's it. And then now let's look at that. Not as now we need to decode a specific event in human history. Now, it's a lens to look at all of human history.
Speaker 2Exactly. Right. We're into it. Key steps for reading apocalyptic literature wisely. First thing we talked about just a minute ago. Read the work as a whole and look at how themes and ideas develop and especially look for the. Most repeated anchor images. Okay. So in the revelation, this is going to be the heavenly throne room. The lamb Jesus has only referred to in two places in the book as something other than the lamb. He's the son of man in the first chapter and he's the word of God on a riding on a white horse in the end. Okay. And in the middle, he's always the lamb the dragon and the beast. Yeah. Essentially. These are the the one on the heavenly throne the lamb the dragon and the beast. Yeah, and may are like. The key characters in the story. So those are clearly anchor images. And so as I want to go through the book as I'm reading it in sequence, then is to begin to identify what the symbols are and then begin to decode them not decode the book to look for predictive fulfillment, but to decode the symbols to understand what they mean. And there's two places that you need to look. The first is always the Hebrew Bible. The second layer. Is first century Greco-Roman context, which is a little bit harder because you can't just turn there, right? Like you can with the Hebrew Bible. So let's start with the Hebrew Bible and let's go back to Revelation 12. So a great sign appeared in the heavens. There's a cosmic woman in the skies. So there's actually we could get really nerdy on this 12 stars, you know, something to do with the zodiac and people go a lot of places with this. Let me just go very basically. Can I think of anywhere in the Bible where humans male and female are described in a way that have a cosmic identity where they in some way are associated with the transcendent divine realm of the stars? And I think the should send our imaginations to the exaltation of the humans in Genesis 1 and then in God's promise to Abraham that your seed will be like the stars. Psalm 8. God's taken the dirt creature but exalted him above with divine glory to rule above the cosmos. So a cosmic woman. Cosmic woman. Elevated among the stars.
Speaker 1Now we also have the Proverbs cosmic woman. Is that related? Lady wisdom. Lady wisdom.
Speaker 2Yeah. Yeah. Oh, for sure. Yeah, that's right. A cosmic woman who's pregnant and in grief in labor. This is Genesis 3. Yeah. It's Genesis 3.
Speaker 1Great pain. No childbirth. But through that
Speaker 2grievous toil of childbirth, a redemptive seed is brought forth. Yeah. So we're first introduced to the cosmic woman. Then we're introduced to a great dragon. So then I get out my concordance and I'm looking for dragons in the Hebrew Bible. And there's lots of them. And they're also associated with snakes and reptilian sea creatures and so on. And then I think, oh, yes, Genesis 3 once again. The woman. Versus the snake. This whole chapter is about Genesis 3, verse 15. The seed of the woman and the snake and hostility between them. And then hostility between the seed of the woman and the seed of the snake. Seven heads, ten horns, and diadems. Oh, yeah. Later in the book, I'll be given a clue that the seven dragon heads are seven kings. Okay. I know seven from Genesis 1 is the number of completeness or totality. So all the kings. Yeah. This dragon is at work among all the kingdoms of the earth. Okay. Seven, ten horns. Ten horns is? This is from Daniel chapter 7. Yeah. Yep. The horns of the beasts, which represent these little towers of human arrogance that emerge from the kingdoms of this earth. And so this dragon is represented through the kingdoms of the earth, the heads and the horns. But he's also rallied alongside. Inside of him, some of the stars of heaven.
Speaker 1Yeah. The hosts of heaven.
Speaker 2The rebel divine council. And now we're to the sons of God in Genesis 6 and the Nephilim, the rebel warrior kings of the ancient world. Yeah. Now we've got the seed of the snake, kings of the earth and rebel violent humans. Oh, the seed of the snake. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, wow. So then we're back to the snake. But here's the thing.
Speaker 1Because of Genesis 3, the prophecy that God gives or the, what would you call it? Oh. Is it a prophecy? - It's a promise. - The promise. The seed of the woman will be at odds with the seed of the snake. Yeah. And the seed of the woman will crush the head of the snake. Correct. Yeah. The snake will bite. Yeah. The humans heal. Venomous bite. Mm-hmm. But the snake will be destroyed.
Speaker 2Yep. So notice then at the end of verse 4 the dragon is standing there trying to eat the child. Trying to kill it. Like Pharaoh. Trying to kill the seed of the woman. Verse 5. She gives birth to a son and the description of the son comes from Psalm 2. He's going to rule the nations with a rod of iron. It's copy and paste from Psalm 2. Which is about the seed of David. And then that child is exalted up into the heavens and to God's throne. Mm-hmm. So if we're talking about Jesus here, this is about Jesus coming onto the scene and then exalted up to the divine throne. And then the woman then becomes this stand-in as it were for her child. Her child's exalted up in the heavens and she's now down in the realm of the dragon. And so she goes into exile in the wilderness and God provides for her in exile. This is Hagar. It's Hagar and it's Lady Zion from the book of Lamentations. And then God cares for her for three and a half years. Twelve hundred and sixty days. Half of seven. Which is a half of seven. The meaning of that all comes from the book of Daniel. It's that God's work is coming in Sabbath cycles in seven. His work of creation happened in a Sabbath cycle. His work of new creation is going to happen in Sabbath cycles. And so to say somebody's there for half a Sabbath cycle is to say it's like forty days and forty nights in the wilderness. You're waiting in the wilderness. But God is he has a purpose. The seven is yet to come. To say half of seven. Okay. That was short. But you kind of get it. You have to Yeah. You kind of have to know the whole Bible. You have to know the whole Bible to make sense of apocalyptic literature. Yeah. How does that feel?
Speaker 1Well, actually in one sense we read that. When we were reading that I was picking up on a lot of it because I think we've been reading the Bible together for a long time. I got thrown at the 1260. I had no idea what that was. Iron scepter. I didn't know that from the Psalms. The woman fleeing into a wilderness. And then the woman fleeing. Yeah. So when we got to the iron scepter and the woman fleeing into the wilderness for 1260 days I just was like I'm lost. Yeah. But up till there I was like oh yeah this is about Genesis 3. I was picking it up. Yeah. I wouldn't have before. The tail sweeping out the stars of the sky I didn't pick that up as the seed of the snake. I thought that was more maybe God's judgment in some sense. Yeah. So I mean it's hard. Yeah. It's like there's a lot here.
Speaker 2It's true. But to be honest this is just as dense as biblical narrative. Yeah. And it's just as dense as the prophetic books. It's as dense as the Psalms are. It's biblical literature. But somehow like the bizarreness factor is more on the surface. At least for a lot of modern readers.
Speaker 1Yeah. It's as dense but then it's also got that bizarro part of it which makes it feel even less attainable. It makes me go how am I supposed to be? What kind of jujitsu am I supposed to be doing to figure this out? Yeah. Versus when I'm reading a really dense narrative or something I'm not really thinking that. I'm not like distracted by that.
Speaker 2Yeah. So really the art of interpreting apocalyptic revelation in Daniel is the art of reading the Bible as a unified whole. And understanding how design patterns and symbols developing images work throughout the story. And the revelation in Daniel, they're like the deep end of the pool of the Old and New Testaments. And they assume a lot of the reader. So one of the best things you can do to understand these two books in the Bible is to read the rest of the Bible. And then also learn how to use a concordant. Which there's digital versions now. So many of them. And where you can just look up dragon. And then you'll start seeing that dragons are in the same context as snakes. And then it would be like a theme study on dragons and snakes.
Speaker 1Well honestly though, how much of this can you pick up on your own versus I mean like for example you you read the Bible and I'm sure you pick up on this kind of stuff. But also you just read other scholars who have picked up on it.
Speaker 2Totally. Oh yes. That's right. So it's not simply just. This is our mantra. Don't read the Bible alone. Like do, but also don't.
Speaker 1Right. Yeah. Put me on an island with the Bible. And every day I'm going to read it and meditate on it with this paradigm in mind. I'll find some of it. But man it would take a lifetime to connect dragons to serpents to the sea and I'm like oh my goodness. We did it. But I just that was just like scratching the surface where when you're reading it in community with other people who have been doing it for lifetimes. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. It's like such a head start.
Speaker 2Yeah. No that's it's totally right. Yeah. You have to read it in community. It was designed to be read aloud to seven communities. And that's exactly right. Yeah. I have this interesting chart by scholar Steve Moyes called the Old Testament in the book of Revelation. It's about hyperlinks to the Hebrew Bible. And he has these cool comparative charts about the number of direct references or quotations for the revelation. Just quick scan here. Eighty two references to places in the Torah. Ninety seven to the Psalms. Hundred and twenty two references to Isaiah. Wow. Forty eight to Jeremiah. Eighty three to Ezekiel. Seventy four to Daniel. Seventy three to the you know the minor prophets. So and he compares it to references in Hebrews, Matthew and Romans. And by far the revelation is off the charts. The most dense allusions to the most different number of books. Whatever you need. To read this book you're going to need the insights of other people. Yeah. In present and past. But it's really these steps are almost too simple because they're imply so much. The first is read it as a literary whole. Great. Because what preterist and futurist approaches tend to do is isolate images and symbols as codes out of context in there in the whole. So you know the most famous one is like the whatever the demon locust beasts of one of the seals. Like helicopters. Yeah. Yeah. This is Hal Lindsey in like the late 70s thinking that they're you know like Apache helicopters. Yeah. And so it's so ignoring what that particular like strike of God's justice is doing in the sequence that it's in in that place in the book.
Speaker 1And what locusts do throughout the whole story of the Bible.
Speaker 2And then what locusts symbolize throughout the Hebrew Bible. So reading it as a whole. And then second is a lifetime of a just creating your own little spreadsheet of symbols. What's the symbol? And here's the thing. There's about a dozen different symbols interpreted for you the moment they're introduced. Especially in the book of Revelation. So in chapter one Jesus has
Speaker 1seven. It's kind of like when you get the worksheet from school. Totally. And the first couple are filled in.
Speaker 2Yeah. That's totally. Yeah. Yeah. In chapter one Jesus is holding seven stars and seven lamps. Yeah. These are the angels and the seven churches. The angel in chapter eight has a sensor. Incense bowl with incense going up to the divine throne. And you're told these are the prayers of the saints. This happens multiple times in the book. So you're already being told. Those are the ones that John doesn't think you'll get on your own. I guess so. Yeah. That's a good point. Yeah. I don't want to believe this point. I think we've already made the point. Let me just pause and an implication of this. It's an implication that I wanted to highlight when we talked about poetry and metaphor in our How to Read the Bible series. This is yet another whole section of the Bible that's primarily appealing to our imagination. Imagery and symbols. And imagery and symbols communicate more than just an idea. They shape your view of reality. When you shape somebody's imagination, you're shaping their sense of what is real. And here we are to two more books of the Bible and the sections of a bunch of others where when people ascend into the heavenly realm they get a God's eye view of past, present, and future. But what they see are symbols. To me that's just, that's so important to protect and honor that. It's another part of the Bible shaping us more than it is giving us information. Thank you. And the image of a
Speaker 1slain lamb on a throne shaping us.
Speaker 2Yes. The victor of Daniel in the Revelation is a human who's been trampled by beasts, who's vindicated by God to rule the world. And in the Revelation, it's a sacrificed lamb with a slit bloody throat that is the king of the cosmos.
Speaker 1Yeah. Yeah. Because these are images that will shape us to be. be true humans. That's right. To shape us to be the image bearers when we let them do their work
Speaker 2on us. Yes. What else does an image of a victorious slain lamb mean except that those who follow the lamb, which is the description of Jesus' followers in the book of Revelation, those who listen to the lamb's voice and follow him wherever he goes. It's an image that undercuts all sense of triumphalism and superiority. Whatever God's kingdom looks like, it doesn't exalt people. It exalts the one human who did for us what none of us could do for ourselves and whom we killed, with whom we all partnered with the dragon in participating and contributing to a world system that killed our creator. But his love and creative power is so great that even death can't conquer his love and life that he wants to give us as a gift. That's what these images mean. So powerful. And so this is Michael Gorman's point, then, the pastoral function of this book is to summon every generation of its readers to follow the lamb in its footsteps and to resist the beast within and without and to suffer along with the lamb if need be and bearing witness to what he's done. Yeah, if that's not where it ends, then we've totally missed the purpose of
Speaker 1apocalyptic literature. Next week, we're going to do a question and response episode on how to read apocalyptic literature. And then after that, we're going to begin a brand new series on how to read New Testament letters. It's a series we skipped so that we could get to apocalyptic literature quicker. So we're going to circle back and we're going to look at the small books at the end of your Bible written by apostles of Jesus to the early Jesus communities in the Roman world. The first two episodes we actually recorded live in Dallas, and it was a lot of fun. And I can't wait for you to hear it.
Speaker 2The letters actually become easy and accessible, I think, only when we ignore their literary form. And when we honor their literary form, all of a sudden we have a way to account for all of what's there, not just some of what's there. And all of what's there includes a lot of texts that are really challenging for us to appropriate or understand in our modern context. And so this is the swirl of challenges that comes along with interpreting the New Testament. Letters. Talk about how y'all are living stones. Oh, you laughed because I said y'all. Yeah. Sorry. I was like, I don't know why that's funny. It's cool, but it's not funny. Maybe it is funny. I don't know.
Speaker 1Today's show was produced by Dan Gummel. Our theme music comes from the band Tents. If you're new to The Bible Project, we are a crowdfunded nonprofit in Portland, Oregon. Our mission is to experience the Bible. As a unified story that leads to Jesus. So we make all sorts of resources, this podcast, videos. We've got some study notes and other downloads on our website. It's all free, and you can find it at BibleProject.com. Thanks for being a part of this with us.
Speaker 3Kajima Ratatu. That's hello, how are you in Irish? My name is Kiva, and I am from Cleallam, Washington. That's in central Washington. I use The Bible Project in my, in the ministry that I work in, where I do discipleship training and character training. We believe that the Bible is a unified story that leads to Jesus. We're a crowdfunded project by people like me. Find free videos, study notes, podcasts, and more resources at TheBibleProject.com.
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