by Karen Pusey

Created on: October 07, 2009   Last Updated: October 12, 2009

If I gave a copy of Mark's gospel to a complete stranger to Christianity, I guess on reading it, she'd have some idea about what we believe. But give a stranger a copy of the last book in the Bible, Revelation and tell him that's what we believe, I think he'd run a mile!

Someone has dubbed it The most revealing book of the Bible, but just what does it reveal? It's full of blood and fire, thunder and lightning, strange beasts, vials of wrath and other horrors. It features a bottomless pit, yet it ends in a city of gold.

Before we open its pages, we need a little background. We can gain a little comfort from Martin Luther's words taken from his preface of 1552 to the book, My spirit cannot accommodate itself to this book.

It has, of course, been the playground of fanatics, who have used its symbols to predict world events to come. Those who saw the ten headed beast as the Common Market, were silenced as the European Union manifested itself and added country after country to its grouping.

We will attempt a more sober assessment of this, probably the most difficult book of the Bible to understand.

Who wrote it? Early Christian writers attributed it to the Apostle John, ( although the church historian, Eusebius tells us that some thought it to be so unintelligible that it must have been written by John's arch enemy, Cerinthus). Justin Martyr, whose writings are early in the 2nd.c, reports a strong tradition that the author was John, However, it would take too long to go over all the arguments.

The genre is something new. Apocalyptic. New to Christians, but not to Jews and since th earliest Christians were Jews it is likely that they were acquainted with Jewish books of this sort, books like 1 Enoch and 2 Esdras, written perhaps 200 or 100 BCE. However, 1:3 calls the book prophecy.

There was, as you might expect, some opposition to its inclusion in the canon. The Western church admitted it earlier than the Eastern. Athanasius (4th.c) was happy with it and it is listed by the Third Council of Carthage (397 CE) as canonical and finally the Eastern church at the Third Council of Constantinople (680 CE) accepted it as Scripture

Adela Yarbro Collins has called the book a revelatory narrative and this perhaps best describes the book we are going to read. Read is the important word here. The early church had few readers and few manuscripts, so as we transport ourselves into the world of the 1st.c. of the Christian era our ears, rather than our eyes, with our minds active

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