THE TRIBES OF REVELATION 7 AND THE LITERARY COMPETENCE OF JOHN THE SEER

Abstract

Richard Bauckham1 has recently oˆered some criticisms of my analysis2 of the 144,000 “sealed out of all the tribes of Israel” depicted in Rev 7:5–8. As others have by now begun to draw applications from my conclusions,3 I nd it appropriate to reply brie y to some of the concerns Bauckham has raised. I believe it is important to continue this discussion not simply for the sake of the interpretation of these verses, although they are of crucial importance for an assessment of such systems as dispensational premillennialism, but also for the sake of an appreciation of the literary skill of the author of the last book in the canon. At stake in our discussion is whether he was in command of his craft, making purposeful creative use of traditional imagery and expectations to communicate a clear message, or, rather, plagued by carelessness and forgetfulness, unable ultimately to execute the grand design upon which he had embarked. I should note, rst of all, that Bauckham and I share an essentially similar interpretive approach to the book of Revelation. We both understand the technique of the author of the book (“John,” by his own description) to be the ironic transformation of conventional Jewish messianic expectations into Jewish-Christian images. We diˆer only on how this transformation is actually accomplished in Revelation 7. Bauckham’s particular understanding, based on a parallel between this chapter and Revelation 5, is that an opening “hearing” section (7:4–8) announces a conventional Jewish messianic expectation, but then a “seeing” section (7:9–14) ironically transforms this expectation, giving it a Christian interpretation. An important corollary for him is that

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 13 citations exist upstream.