Reading Revelation in Context: John's Apocalypse and Second Temple Judaism

by Zondervan,

Charles is not alone in his appreciation for this body of texts and its significance for unlocking Revelation.16 In the decades that have followed, his contention has come to be shared by many others, including Bauckham, who remarks, “The tradition of apocalyptic literature is the living literary tradition to whose forms and content [John of Patmos] is most indebted.”17 Yet even as scholars now routinely acknowledge the value of studying Revelation within the context of apocalyptic literature, sustained attention to the book’s Jewish historical and literary context is still too often bypassed as a result of the sometimes greater scholarly fascination with the book’s relationship to the non-Jewish world, particularly the sociopolitical milieu of the Roman Empire.