The final book of the Bible, Revelation prophesies the ultimate judgement of mankind in a series of allegorical visions, grisly images and numerological predictions. According to these, empires will fall, the "Beast" will be destroyed and Christ will rule a new Jerusalem. With an introduction by Will Self.
In this lively introduction, J. Nelson Kraybill shows how the book of Revelation was understood by its original readers and what it means for Christians today. Kraybill places Revelation in its first-century context, opening a window into the political, economic, and social realities of the early church. His fresh interpretation highlights Revelation's liturgical structure and directs readers' attentions to twenty-first-century issues of empire, worship, and allegiance, showing how John's apocalypse is relevant to the spiritual life of believers today. The book includes maps, timelines, photos, a glossary, discussion questions, and stories of modern Christians who live out John's vision of a New Jerusalem.
Edmondo Lupieri's main goal in A Commentary on the Apocalypse of John is to introduce readers to the mental and spiritual world of John as both a first-century Jew and a follower of Jesus. The fruit of over ten years of research, a constructive response to postmodern criticism, and an academic best-seller in its Italian edition, Lupieri's commentary offers both new proposals and traditional interpretations to shed light on this complex coda to the biblical message. In an illuminating preface Lupieri discusses the strange world of the Apocalypse and promises an open commentary, full of original treatments of knotty interpretive problems. Maintaining a strong historical perspective throughout, he examines the text of the Apocalypse line by line, paying careful attention to the Greek text, offering a new translation, making wide use of apocryphal, pseudepigraphal, and Qumran literature, and often analyzing John's Apocalypse as compared to other Jewish apocalypses. Thoughtful, thorough, and nonsectarian, Lupieri's Commentary on the Apocalypse of John will appeal to anyone with a serious interest in the meaning of the biblical text.
This book fills these gaps in a striking and original way by means of ten concise thematic chapters which explain the origins of these concepts from the book of Revelation in an accessible way. These explanations are augmented and developed via a carefully selected sample of the ways in which the concepts have been treated by artists through the centuries. The 120 visual examples are drawn from a wide range of time periods and media including the ninth-century Trier Apocalypse, thirteenth-century Anglo-Norman Apocalypse Manuscripts such as the Lambeth and Trinity Apocalypses, the fourteenth-century Angers Apocalypse Tapestry, fifteenth-century Apocalypse altarpieces by Van Eyck and Memling, Dürer and Cranach's sixteenth-century Apocalypse woodcuts, and more recently a range of works by William Blake, J.M.W. Turner, Max Beckmann, as well as film posters and film stills, cartoons, and children's book illustrations.
Scott Sigler called Doucette’s cozy apocalypse story, “entertaining as hell.” Come see how the world ends, not with a bang, but a whatever . . . The whateverpocalypse. That’s what Touré, a twenty-something Cambridge coder, calls it after waking up one morning to find himself seemingly the only person left in the city. Once he finds Robbie and Carol, two equally disoriented Harvard freshmen, he realizes he isn’t alone, but the name sticks: Whateverpocalypse. But it doesn’t explain where everyone went. It doesn’t explain how the city became overgrown with vegetation in the space of a night. Or how wild animals with no fear of humans came to roam the streets. Add freakish weather to the mix, swings of temperature that spawn tornadoes one minute and snowstorms the next, and it seems things can’t get much weirder. Yet even as a handful of new survivors appear—Paul, a preacher as quick with a gun as a Bible verse; Win, a young professional with a horse; Bethany, a thirteen-year-old juvenile delinquent; and Ananda, an MIT astrophysics adjunct—life in Cambridge, Massachusetts gets stranger and stranger. The self-styled Apocalypse Seven are tired of questions with no answers. Tired of being hunted by things seen and unseen. Now, armed with curiosity, desperation, a shotgun, and a bow, they become the hunters. And that’s when things truly get weird.
The book will equip the reader with a stronger understanding of the religious and historical background to these late medieval texts. It will provide insight into the influence of the biblical Apocalypse upon the literature of the period in a systematic way. Importantly, by treating the writings of Julian of Norwich and William Langland as contemporaneous the book balances the female and male approaches to and engagement with the biblical Apocalypse.
The Book of Revelation's legacy of visual imagery is evaluated here, from the 11th century to the end of World War 2 illuminated manuscripts, books, prints and drawings of apocalyptic phases are examined.
“There has never been a book provoking more delirium, foolishness and irrational movements, without any relationship to Jesus Christ [than the Book of Revelation].” —Jacques Ellul, Introduction Known for his trenchant critique of modernity and of those Christians who celebrate their captivity to it, Ellul here cuts to the heart of the theological intention of the Book of Revelation, and thereby reveals the liberating gospel in all its offensiveness. Neither an exhaustive commentary nor a work of historical-exegetical analysis, Apocalypse is a provocative, independent interpretation. Ellul seeks to rescue Revelation from the reassuring and orthodox banality to which commentators often reduce it. The goal is to perceive the totality of the book in its movement and structure. “Architecture in movement” is the key to understanding Revelation’s puzzling but simple message. This edition also comes with a new foreword by Jacob Marques Rollison who provides an essential aid for guiding readers through Ellul’s thorough engagement with Revelation.