Revelation of John, The

What Is the Book of Revelation?

The Revelation of John — also called the Apocalypse — is the final book of the Christian Bible and the most formally complex, most contested, and most misread text in the New Testament canon. Written by a figure identified only as John, exiled on the island of Patmos during a period of Roman imperial persecution of Christians, probably during the reign of the Emperor Domitian around AD 95, it is a letter addressed to seven churches in the Roman province of Asia, containing a series of visions of cosmic conflict, divine judgment, and ultimate restoration.

The book belongs to the genre of Jewish apocalyptic literature — a genre that uses symbolic imagery, numerology, and visionary narrative to reveal the hidden spiritual reality behind historical events. Its symbols — the beast whose number is 666, the whore of Babylon, the four horsemen of the apocalypse, the Lamb who was slain — are drawn from the symbolic vocabulary of Daniel, Ezekiel, Isaiah, and Zechariah, and would have been immediately recognizable to readers steeped in the Hebrew prophetic tradition.

Revelation has generated more commentary, more controversy, and more misinterpretation than any other biblical book. It has been read as a precise timetable of future events, as pure allegory with no historical reference, as a coded message about first-century Roman politics, and as the capstone of the entire biblical narrative. TLA reads it primarily as the last of these: the book that brings the conflict described in Genesis 3:15 to its promised resolution and reveals the shape of the ending that the entire Bible has been moving toward.

In Their Own Words

Selected Bibliography

• Revelation 1–3 — Letters to the seven churches of Asia
• Revelation 4–5 — The throne room of heaven; the Lamb who was slain
• Revelation 6–18 — The seven seals, trumpets, and bowls; the beast and the whore of Babylon
• Revelation 19–20 — The defeat of the beast; the millennium; the last judgment
• Revelation 21–22 — The new creation; the New Jerusalem; the river of life