Revelation — who's who

The author of the book, exiled to the island of Patmos for his Christian witness during the persecution under Domitian (mid-90s CE). He identifies himself as John (1:1, 1:4, 1:9, 22:8) and as a brother and partner in the tribulation of the seven churches of Asia Minor. Whether he is the apostle John, son of Zebedee, is contested — the differences in style and theology between the gospel of John and the apocalypse make a single author unlikely to many scholars. Some have proposed he is John the Elder, a distinct figure mentioned by Papias around 130 CE. What is undisputed is that he is a Jewish-Christian deeply formed in the Hebrew Bible, capable of constructing one of the most complex pieces of apocalyptic literature ever produced.

In chapter 5, when no one is found worthy to open the scroll sealed with seven seals, an elder tells John not to weep — the lion of the tribe of Judah has conquered. John turns expecting a lion and sees a Lamb, standing as if it had been slain. The substitution is the theological centre of the book. The Lamb takes the scroll, opens the seals, stands on Mount Zion with the 144,000, is the lamp of the New Jerusalem, and sits on the throne with the one who sits on the throne. The political implication is that heaven rules not by conquering force but by the slain-and-living Lamb at the centre, and the pattern of cross and resurrection is built into the cosmology of the book.

The great red dragon of chapter 12, with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on his heads, whose tail sweeps down a third of the stars of heaven and casts them to the earth. He stands before the woman who is about to give birth, intending to devour the child. The child is caught up to God; war breaks out in heaven; Michael and his angels fight the dragon and throw him down. The text gives him a fourfold identification (12:9): that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world. He gives his authority to the beast from the sea in chapter 13. He is bound for a thousand years in chapter 20, loosed briefly, and thrown into the lake of fire.

There are actually two beasts in chapter 13. The beast from the sea has seven heads and ten horns, draws its authority from the dragon, and is given to make war on the saints. One of its heads has a mortal wound that has healed — most likely a reference to the Nero redivivus legend that he would return from the dead, current in the late first century. The beast from the land (the false prophet) has two horns like a lamb but speaks like a dragon; it forces all to receive the mark of the beast, six hundred sixty-six, without which no one can buy or sell. The figure has had an enormous afterlife in later Christian apocalypticism.

The female figure of chapters 17 and 18, seated on a scarlet beast, dressed in purple and scarlet, adorned with gold and jewels and pearls, holding a golden cup of abominations, drunk with the blood of the saints and the witnesses to Jesus. The angel decodes the symbolism explicitly: the seven heads of the beast are seven mountains — in the first-century Mediterranean, unmistakably Rome. The long lament for her fall in chapter 18 is one of the most precise indictments of imperial economy in any ancient text, ending its cargo list with slaves and human lives.

The structural counterpart to the whore of Babylon and the figure of the book's closing vision. The New Jerusalem comes down out of heaven from God in chapter 21, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. The city is twelve thousand stadia on a side, a perfect cube; its walls are jasper, its streets gold; twelve gates of pearl, three on each side; twelve foundations bearing the names of the twelve apostles. There is no temple — the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. The river of the water of life flows from the throne of God and of the Lamb, and the tree of life stands on either side, with leaves for the healing of the nations. The figure is at once city, bride, and people of God.