Need help... with Revelation...

[gav]

It is my observation that the vision that John the Revelator received, and the way he records it, has a training section in the simpler first three chapters. These three chapters could be to prepare the reader for the more advanced and complicated material that is to follow.

In these three chapters it appears that John demonstrates, in a slightly more obvious way, and in a simpler setting, many of the literary devices he will be using extensively throughout the book. These devices are then very helpful in discovering what relates to what and exactly what is going on in the rather bizarre portions of the book that follow. 

Chapter 1 contains:

1. A prologue.
2. The vision of Jesus Christ vs 10-20.

Chapter 2 and 3 contain:

1. A sequence of 7 messages or mini epistles to the seven churches.
2. Each message in the series has a similar repeated structure set out by repeated phrases or themes.

• And unto the angel(jst. servant) of the church of ...name of place... write. (as a literary opening parenthesis)
• These things saith... (then an internal allusion back to the attributes from the preceding vision of Jesus Christ)
• I know thy works... followed by an acknowledgement of challenge/s
• An admonition or admonitions
• A promise (later alluded to from chapters 19-22)
• He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches (as a literary closing parenthesis)

In the first three messages the "He that hath an ear, let him hear..." comes before the promise and splits the sequence of 7 into two groups of 3 and 4

In the first 4 messages the attributes of Christ alluded to are in reverse order than they are articulated in the vision and so create a chiasm

The last three are also in reverse order and so another chiasm.

These chiasms split the sequence or 7 into two groups, this time as 4 followed by 3.

All the allusions and repetitions send us back to look more closely at the initial vision of Jesus Christ and we notice repetitions and structures there as well.

Balaam, Jezebel and key of David are external allusions to parts of the Old Testament.

To Summarize:

John's record demonstrates the use of:

• allusion(internal and external),
• repetitive structure including chiasms within a sequence,
• groupings, sub-sequences and sub-structures within sequences and within structures.
• The series in this instance is a series of 7 but twice it is divided into groups of 3 and 4 in two different ways.
• literary parentheses

This potentially alerts the reader that this is no ordinary narrative they are reading and that they need to pay close attention repetitive wording, structures, sequences, groupings and literary parentheses. These devices, once detected will likely add additional context, associations and information to the more difficult visions that follow and assist the reader in their interpretation and confirming when it is correct.

The Help Needed...

What literary devices have I missed from these first three chapters that have come to your notice as you read them? I'm sure there are more than a few. Or perhaps you will dive in again and see what pops out for you this time...

 

[Rain]

I'm seeing a lot of parallelism. It may be what you mean by "groupings".

I just went through the first 3 verses of chapter 2.  There may be more. Not positive on all of these, but I do see a connection espcially if you account for the different types of paralleism.  I've made the pairs the same color.

1 Unto the angel of the church of Ephesus write; These things saith he that holdeth the seven stars in his right hand, who walketh in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks;

2 I know thy works, and thy labour, and thy patience, and how thou canst not bear them which are evil: and thou hast tried them which say they are apostles, and are not, and hast found them liars:

3 And hast borne, and hast patience, and for my name’s sake hast laboured, and hast not fainted.

 

[gav]

13 hours ago, Rain said:

I'm seeing a lot of parallelism. It may be what you mean by "groupings".

I just went through the first 3 verses of chapter 2.  There may be more. Not positive on all of these, but I do see a connection espcially if you account for the different types of paralleism.  I've made the pairs the same color.

1 Unto the angel of the church of Ephesus write; These things saith he that holdeth the seven stars in his right hand, who walketh in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks;

2 I know thy works, and thy labour, and thy patience, and how thou canst not bear them which are evil: and thou hast tried them which say they are apostles, and are not, and hast found them liars:

3 And hast borne, and hast patience, and for my name’s sake hast laboured, and hast not fainted.

 

Thanks! this is great!

I've been thinking about parallelism but have always been distracted by something else at the time. The examples you list should get me to sit down and apply my mind properly!

"Groupings" are my own word, I should probably look for a well recognised more technical definition but it's definitely not parallelism as you point out. It's a set of similar items and maybe "set or sets" is a better definition. What do you think?

What would a parallelism be called when the paralleled pair contains opposites? Like the one you quoted below?

Quote

thy patience, and how thou canst not bear them

 

[Rain]

28 minutes ago, gav said:

Thanks! this is great!

I've been thinking about parallelism but have always been distracted by something else at the time. The examples you list should get me to sit down and apply my mind properly!

"Groupings" are my own word, I should probably look for a well recognised more technical definition but it's definitely not parallelism as you point out. It's a set of similar items and maybe "set or sets" is a better definition. What do you think?

What would a parallelism be called when the paralleled pair contains opposites? Like the one you quoted below?

 

Keep in mind that I am in no way an expert.  I just learned about parallelism this year.

From my understanding of the article I linked above I would call the opposites antithetic.

If you want even more info than the article Ben Spackman also reccomended The Art of Biblical Poetry.  I loved so much of what I read of it before I got distracted with a different topic. I was making notes like crazy in my bible.

 

Edited January 5, 2023 by Rain

[Pyreaux]

2 hours ago, gav said:

What would a parallelism be called when the paralleled pair contains opposites? Like the one you quoted below?

 

In the same line it's a step parallelism, words and phrases like “morning” parallels “evening”, “flourish” parallels “cut down”, and “grows up” parallels “withers”. It's an Antithetic Parallelisms if they are opposites "A and -A". Synonymous Parallelism if they are the same "A and A".

 

Edited January 5, 2023 by Pyreaux

[gav]

17 minutes ago, Pyreaux said:

In the same line it's a step parallelism, words like “morning” parallels “evening”, “flourish” parallels “cut down”, and “grows up” parallels “withers”.

 

Would the use of parallels and other OT type poetic devices explain at least some of Revelations "bad" greek?

[gav]

1 hour ago, Rain said:

Keep in mind that I am in no way an expert.  I just learned about parallelism this year.

From my understanding of the article I linked above I would call the opposites antithetic.

If you want even more info than the article Ben Spackman also reccomended The Art of Biblical Poetry.  I loved so much of what I read of it before I got distracted with a different topic. I was making notes like crazy in my bible.

 

Thanks for the links!

[Pyreaux]

38 minutes ago, gav said:

Would the use of parallels and other OT type poetic devices explain at least some of Revelations "bad" greek?

And Revelation was probably originally in Aramaic, the grammatical monstrosities are evidence that it was not originally written in Greek

[gav]

9 hours ago, Pyreaux said:

And Revelation was probably originally in Aramaic, the grammatical monstrosities are evidence that it was not originally written in Greek

So I was perusing the internet based on this exchange and found the following... So thanks for this.

Quote

Still others point to possible reasons for the appearance of these irregularities.Tenney sees the irregularity mentioned above as being evidence of the Hebraic material and thought of the author:

The reason for this strange rendering is that the Greek had no past participle of the verb “to be,” and so the author used a finite form. Furthermore, the case did not change because evidently the entire expression had become stereotyped as a title, and so did not alter the construction to fit the context. The writer translated a Hebrew title directly and literally into Greek without attempting to conform to the Greek idiom. He thought in Hebrew or Aramaic; he wrote in Greek. The relative certainty of this fact shows that the book of Revelation does not emanate chiefly from Greek and pagan sources. [emphasis added]

Beale too observes a correlation between the irregularities and Old Testament allusions:

A significant number of these irregularities occur in the midst of OT allusions. A number of expressions appear irregular because John is carrying over the exact grammatical forms of the allusions, often from the various versions of the Greek OT and sometimes from the Hebrew. He does not change the OT grammatical form to fit the immediate syntactical context in Revelation, so the OT expression sticks out like a sore thumb. . . . the solecisms of the Apocalypse function in this way.

So I followed the Beale source and found this

The book of Revelation : a commentary on the Greek text by G. K. Beale

https://archive.org/details/bookofrevelation0000beal

Quite an impressive 1200+ page commentary on just Revelation and filled with examples of how John the Revelator alludes to the Old Testament and then in those allusions mimics the grammar of the source he is alluding to.

It's going to keep me occupied for ages.

Looks to me like the "monstrous greek" may be serving as a "checksum" to affirm that the reader has found the correct allusion.

 

[Navidad]

I have nothing to add about literary devices. I will however ask these three questions - within the LDS paradigm for visions - which seem much more frequent than in my world of Christianity, which member of the Godhead sends or provides the vision to the human recipient's mind or mind's eye? Are there various forms or modes of receiving a vision in the LDS paradigm (dreams, etc.)? Last, does deity play a role in how the vision is recorded? Was John a brilliant guy to come up with these literary devices in his native language (Aramaic, most likely), and/or was the recording of the vision as supernaturally supervised as was the mode or method of its transmission? Or, are the literary devices the product of the literary prowess of those who translated the vision in whatever century BCE, and not the work of John at all? That's it for now.

[Pyreaux]

1 hour ago, Navidad said:

within the LDS paradigm for visions - which member of the Godhead sends or provides the vision to the human recipient's mind or mind's eye? Are there various forms or modes of receiving a vision in the LDS paradigm (dreams, etc.)? Last, does deity play a role in how the vision is recorded? Was John a brilliant guy to come up with these literary devices in his native language (Aramaic, most likely), and/or was the recording of the vision as supernaturally supervised as was the mode or method of its transmission? Or, are the literary devices the product of the literary prowess of those who translated the vision in whatever century BCE, and not the work of John at all? That's it for now.

The Holy Spirit is the source of all Prophetic Visions. Ideally waking dreams and trances seem to be very similar if not the same. Dreams seem common but hard to recall. John was commanded to write what he saw, but I do not think he was commanded how to write it.

I think hinges on the literary prowess to use repetition, patterns, and sentence structure to help the reader understand, it naturally stands out by nature of its sound pattern and symmetry. Framed into a form easier to memorize and recite. 

We've been entertained by Chiasmus, due to that before the West noticed or understood there was Chiasmus in the Bible, after Joseph's death we discovered the masterfully complex and long Book of Mormon Chiasmus. And how there is not so much of the style in the revelations in Joseph's own book, the Doctrine and Covenants. It seems that his revelation he was mandated to writing didn't require that structure as Semitic cultures. 

[Navidad]

2 hours ago, Pyreaux said:

The Holy Spirit is the source of all Prophetic Visions. Ideally waking dreams and trances seem to be very similar if not the same. Dreams seem common but hard to recall. John was commanded to write what he saw, but I do not think he was commanded how to write it.

I think hinges on the literary prowess to use repetition, patterns, and sentence structure to help the reader understand, it naturally stands out by nature of its sound pattern and symmetry. Framed into a form easier to memorize and recite. 

We've been entertained by Chiasmus, due to that before the West noticed or understood there was Chiasmus in the Bible, after Joseph's death we discovered the masterfully complex and long Book of Mormon Chiasmus. And how there is not so much of the style in the revelations in Joseph's own book, the Doctrine and Covenants. It seems that his revelation he was mandated to writing didn't require that structure as Semitic cultures. 

Perhaps I should know this, but I don't or I can't remember it. . . . Do we know who was Joseph Smith's primary editor, copywriter, and stylist for recording his revelations, especially those that are recorded for us? Thanks.

[Pyreaux]

23 hours ago, Navidad said:

Perhaps I should know this, but I don't or I can't remember it. . . . Do we know who was Joseph Smith's primary editor, copywriter, and stylist for recording his revelations, especially those that are recorded for us? Thanks.

I think he mostly did it himself, being more educated, but he still had secretaries and scribes. Though for our purpose, Joseph received the individual revelations compiled in the Book of Commandments, and later he also received revelation to improve, modify, revise, and expand his own revelatory product into the Doctrine and Covenants. He also wrote the volumes, the History of the Church.

I am also reminded of the scientific wordprint analysis done by John Hilton and non-LDS colleagues at Berkeley. It required works of at least 5,000 words, a machine looks and counts word patterns that occur frequently, and considers common alternate expressions, and use rates to see which tends to become habitual for the author. Beyond vocabulary but subconscious habits very difficult to notice. They analyzed works by Joseph Smith, his scribe Oliver, suspected author Solomon Spaulding against the Book of Mormon. And because Nephi and Alma were over 5,000 words, they split and pitted the authors of the Book of Mormon against each other. The analysis suggests that it was "statistically indefensible" to claim that Joseph, Oliver, or Solomon Spaulding wrote the 30,000 words in the Book of Mormon attributed to Nephi and Alma. Interestingly, whoever wrote Nephi has a different writing style than the author of Alma. No one person wrote the Book of Mormon, nor are the usual suspects responsible for the word placements in either part of it.

Edited January 6, 2023 by Pyreaux

[Saint Bonaventure]

On 1/4/2023 at 9:16 AM, gav said:

It is my observation that the vision that John the Revelator received, and the way he records it, has a training section in the simpler first three chapters. These three chapters could be to prepare the reader for the more advanced and complicated material that is to follow.

In these three chapters it appears that John demonstrates, in a slightly more obvious way, and in a simpler setting, many of the literary devices he will be using extensively throughout the book. These devices are then very helpful in discovering what relates to what and exactly what is going on in the rather bizarre portions of the book that follow. 

Chapter 1 contains:

1. A prologue.
2. The vision of Jesus Christ vs 10-20.

Chapter 2 and 3 contain:

1. A sequence of 7 messages or mini epistles to the seven churches.
2. Each message in the series has a similar repeated structure set out by repeated phrases or themes.

• And unto the angel(jst. servant) of the church of ...name of place... write. (as a literary opening parenthesis)
• These things saith... (then an internal allusion back to the attributes from the preceding vision of Jesus Christ)
• I know thy works... followed by an acknowledgement of challenge/s
• An admonition or admonitions
• A promise (later alluded to from chapters 19-22)
• He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches (as a literary closing parenthesis)

In the first three messages the "He that hath an ear, let him hear..." comes before the promise and splits the sequence of 7 into two groups of 3 and 4

In the first 4 messages the attributes of Christ alluded to are in reverse order than they are articulated in the vision and so create a chiasm

The last three are also in reverse order and so another chiasm.

These chiasms split the sequence or 7 into two groups, this time as 4 followed by 3.

All the allusions and repetitions send us back to look more closely at the initial vision of Jesus Christ and we notice repetitions and structures there as well.

Balaam, Jezebel and key of David are external allusions to parts of the Old Testament.

To Summarize:

John's record demonstrates the use of:

• allusion(internal and external),
• repetitive structure including chiasms within a sequence,
• groupings, sub-sequences and sub-structures within sequences and within structures.
• The series in this instance is a series of 7 but twice it is divided into groups of 3 and 4 in two different ways.
• literary parentheses

This potentially alerts the reader that this is no ordinary narrative they are reading and that they need to pay close attention repetitive wording, structures, sequences, groupings and literary parentheses. These devices, once detected will likely add additional context, associations and information to the more difficult visions that follow and assist the reader in their interpretation and confirming when it is correct.

The Help Needed...

What literary devices have I missed from these first three chapters that have come to your notice as you read them? I'm sure there are more than a few. Or perhaps you will dive in again and see what pops out for you this time...

 

You might consider that, in addition to literary content, the Book of Revelation is liturgical.

The following is from the Catholic Bible Dictionary edited by theologian Scott Hahn. I have used it in my Adult Bible Study:

Quote

 

A. Context

John receives his visions on the Lord’s Day, the day when Christians everywhere celebrate the Liturgy (Rev 1:10). There is a “word” from God addressed to various churches, and intended to be read to them in the liturgical assembly. In Rev 1:3, for example, the “one who reads” and “those who hear” remind us of the lector and listeners during our Liturgy of the Word.

B. Content

Worship is both part of the plot and the primary action of the book. Revelation presents us with overtly Christian worship: it is directed both to God (chap. 4) and to the Lamb (chap. 5).
The visions are filled with the sights and sounds of the liturgy of Israel. John sees a Temple in heaven with the ark of the covenant (11:19), an altar of incense (8:3), golden lamp stands, priestly vestments, sacred gemstones, scrolls, trumpets, palm branches, harps, incense and libation bowls, and at the center of everything the sacrificial Lamb (5:6). There are songs of praise: “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come!” (4:8).
All these sights, sounds, and even scents are familiar from the worship of ancient Israel: they are heavenly counterparts of earthly realities. The same liturgical actions continue in the Christian Church: Revelation shows us that the Christian liturgy on the Lord’s Day is a participation in the eternal divine liturgy that never ceases in heaven.

Scott Hahn, ed., Catholic Bible Dictionary (New York; London; Toronto; Sydney; Auckland: Doubleday, 2009), 773.

 

 

Edited January 7, 2023 by Saint Bonaventure

[gav]

On 1/8/2023 at 1:43 AM, Saint Bonaventure said:

You might consider that, in addition to literary content, the Book of Revelation is liturgical.

The following is from the Catholic Bible Dictionary edited by theologian Scott Hahn. I have used it in my Adult Bible Study:

 

Good observation. As Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints are often temple going people much of the liturgy you mention, the sights and sounds of ancient temple worship resonate.

[gav]

On 1/5/2023 at 10:44 PM, Pyreaux said:

The Holy Spirit is the source of all Prophetic Visions. Ideally waking dreams and trances seem to be very similar if not the same. Dreams seem common but hard to recall. John was commanded to write what he saw, but I do not think he was commanded how to write it.

I think hinges on the literary prowess to use repetition, patterns, and sentence structure to help the reader understand, it naturally stands out by nature of its sound pattern and symmetry. Framed into a form easier to memorize and recite. 

I'm particularly interested in how these devices are used both to record deeper details for the observant and then confirm those details discovery and interpretation.