Ancient Literary Context
John's vision begins with the words `Apocalypse (revelation) of Jesus Christ',
indicating the origin and authority of what follows. It is the only time the term
`revelation' is used in the book, which is characterized either directly or indi-
rectly as prophecy (22:18). The use of `revelation/reveal' links this apocalypse
with a range of texts written in the last centuries BCE and in late first century
CE (the closest contemporary parallel is 2 Esdras (4 Ezra) 3­14). The descrip-
tion of John's vision as an `apocalypse' (1:1) is distinctive as compared with the
ancient Jewish texts that resemble it. Texts like 1 Enoch, 2 Enoch, and the Apoc-
alypse of Abraham contain accounts of ascents to heaven and revelations con-
cerning the divine mysteries, particularly with regard to the future (Rowland
1982; see above, 2). Links with biblical prophetic texts are obvious throughout
(see the excursus for possible biblical allusions). The opening chapter includes
a call vision (1:9­20) with affinities to Dan 10 and Ezek 1 and 9, affirming
John's place in that prophetic tradition, though, as the occasional reference in
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1:1, 5, 9 indicates, one that is influenced by Jesus Christ. John becomes an inter-
mediary, like Enoch in 1 Enoch 12­15. Indeed, in the later Johannine apoca-
lyptic tradition, e.g. the Third Apocalypse of John (Court 2000: 108), John
becomes a key intermediary of heavenly secrets.
The terms `revelation/reveal' (apokalypsis) are used occasionally in litera-
ture contemporaneous with Revelation to describe the unveiling of God or
divine secrets (M. Smith in Hellholm 1989: 9). For example, in the New
Testament apokalypsis/apokalupto is found in Simeon's song (Luke 2:32; cf. 1
Pet 1:11­12) and in contexts dealing with the eschatological revelation of
human secrets (Matt 10:26/Luke 12:2; Luke 2:35), divine secrets (Matt
11:25/Luke 10:21; Matt 16:17) or God (Matt 11:27). It is also central to Paul's
description of his conversion to the way of Jesus Christ (Gal 1:12), and he
also used it in reference to a future hope (1 Cor 1:7; cf. 2 Thess 1:7; 1 Pet 1:7;
1:13; 4:13). In Revelation the term `apocalypse' is followed immediately
by a reference to the book as prophecy (1:3), suggesting that for John
prophecy and apocalypse are closely related (Mazzaferri 1989; cf. Barton 1986).
The vision of the`one like the Son of Man'is paralleled in several ancient Jewish
texts, all of which are probably inspired by the vision in Dan 10:5­10 (Rowland
1985).
John's call has its closest parallel in a text (probably Jewish-Christian)
which in its original form is roughly contemporary, the Ascension of Isaiah
(6:10­12; Knight 1996). John's experience is linked with the Lord's day,
probably a reference to Sunday rather than the sabbath (cf. 1 Cor 16:2; Acts
20:7; Matt 28:1). This was the day when the Risen Lord had appeared to dis-
ciples in the past (Luke 24:13­35; John 20:1­29). Worship as the context for a
vision recalls the Temple vision of Isaiah (Isa 6). Worship was often seen as a
communion with heaven, in which the earthly saints join with the heavenly
hosts in lauding God, as when Isaiah witnesses the song of the seraphim.
Patmos has, at least temporarily, become sacred space, hallowed by the vision.
The tension between past, present and future, which plays a great role in inter-
pretation of the Apocalypse, may reflect a liturgical sense of time, in which
different times seem inextricably mixed. What is expected in the future is expe-
rienced in the present celebration of the cult. John tells his readers that his
apocalyptic experiences occurred when he was `in the spirit' on `the Lord's day',
when in both heaven and earth the resurrection of Christ is celebrated. Paul
also repeatedly designates the parousia of Christ as `the day of the Lord' (1
Thess 5:2; 2 Thess 2:2; 1 Cor 5:5; 2 Cor 1:14; Funk 1969b: 249­68). To cele-
brate the resurrection of Jesus on the Lord's day is to experience already
the day of the Lord (Flanigan in Emmerson and McGinn 1992: 340­1; cf.
Wainwright 1993: 253).
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The Interpretations
This opening chapter offers interpretative clues regarding the character of the
Apocalypse. According to the eighteenth-century Roman Catholic commenta-
tor Robert Witham, there are three ways of expounding its visions:
The Visions are only to be fulfilled in Antichrist's time, a little before the End of
the World . . .
The visions may be applied to particular Events which happened in the
first three of four Ages of the church, under the persecuting Heathens, by
Constantine, and the succeeding Christian Emperors . . .
Finally, `by the great city of Babylon, is signified all wicked great Cities in
the World, all the multitude of the wicked in all nations, their short and Vain
Happiness; their Persecutions and oppressions of the good and faithful
Servants of God, who live piously in this world, and who are call'd to be Citizens
of the Celestial Jerusalem in the Kingdom of God' (Annotations, ii.510­11 in
Newport 2000: 86)
It is the last of these options which Witham is inclined to accept.
For sixteenth-century writer John Bale, the Apocalypse has supreme value
as a key to the nature of the Christian religion:`He that knoweth not this book,
knoweth not what the church is whereof he is a member' (Bale 1849: 252).
Since all are citizens of either Jerusalem or Babylon (Rev 17:5; ch. 21), the true
believer has to learn the nature of the two churches and take a stand with Abel
rather than Cain (in Bauckham 1978: 60). Hildegard of Bingen similarly writes:
`And whoever tastes this prophecy and fixes it in his memory will become the
mountain of myrrh [cf. Rev 21:10] and of frankincense, and of all aromatical
spices, and the diffusion of many blessings; he will ascend like Abraham from
blessing to blessing' (Hart and Bishop edn 536). Hildegard claims divinely
given insight into the meaning of Scripture (`Scivias Declaration', Hart and
Bishop edn 59), as does the sixteenth-century visionary Ralph Durden, who
was given the `gift of interpretation' (in Bauckham 1978: 188­9). Similarly,
Joachim of Fiore finds in the Apocalypse the key to the inner meaning of Scrip-
ture and the whole history of salvation (in McGinn 1979: 99). The Apocalypse,
according to Joachim, was no afterthought, a book to be tolerated but ignored,
but rather the culmination of the whole of Scripture. David Koresh agrees: `All
the books of the Bible meet and end there. This is what we have learned over
the years' (in Newport 2000: 212).
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`what must soon take place . . . what is, and what is to take place after
this': interpretative clues (1:1, 19)
Victorinus, living at a time when Christians were persecuted (he himself died
a martyr), seems to have understood `what must soon take place' (1:1) as a ref-
erence to his own time and to have taken the warnings and promises of the
Apocalypse as addressed to his own church (Matter in Emmerson and McGinn
1992: 39; ANF vii.344). That sense of immediacy has presented problems for
interpreters, nowhere more so than for those like the Millerites who had a
detailed apocalyptic timetable for the end of the world and the consummation
of scriptural promises. When Christ failed to return in 1843­4 as they had pre-
dicted, they searched the Scriptures and concluded that the error was not in
the word of the Lord but in their own understanding of it (in Foster in
Numbers and Butler 1987: 173­88). Such interpretation of experience through
expectations based on authoritative texts has been a feature of prophetic and
apocalyptic interpretation down the centuries. Failure of hopes to materialize
often, as in this case, does not lead to abandonment of the hope but to ques-
tioning of human interpretative capacity and a channelling of eschatological
enthusiasm into practical action (Foster in Numbers and Butler 1987).
`to the seven churches' (1:4)
The universal character of the vision is often noted. According to Victorinus,
the seven stars (1:16) are the seven churches that John addresses (1916: 26.17,
ANF vii.344), and together they represent the one church, as Paul also teaches
by writing to exactly seven churches (Victorinus 1916: 26. 4­11). In the Geneva
Bible likewise, the seven churches mean the church universal. According to
Bede,`the Apocalypse speaks of the seven churches of Asia which are really the
one Church of Christ' (in Matter in Emmerson and McGinn 1992: 47). The
Scofield Reference Bible says the message to the seven churches has a fourfold
application: to the churches actually addressed; to all churches in all time (`so
that they may discern their true spiritual state in the sight of God'); as exhor-
tation to individuals; and, as a prophetic disclosure, to the seven phases of the
spiritual history of the church (Scofield 1917: 1331­2).
`I, John, your brother, who share with you in Jesus the persecution . . .
was on the island called Patmos' (1:9)
The location of John's vision and the reasons for John being on Patmos have
been a matter for discussion, not least because of the long tradition that he was
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imprisoned there and subsequently released. John's situation and the nature of
his vision are portrayed in the various artistic depictions. The christological
significance of the attributes of the `one like the Son of Man' has also received
extensive attention, and John's vision prompted visionaries in succeeding cen-
turies to look to him as their apocalyptic mentor, just as he followed in the
footsteps of his visionary predecessors.
Patmos is an island off the west coast of Turkey, and the seven letters
are addressed to communities in cities on the mainland. John writes little
about himself. He mentions tribulation in 1:9, possibly suggesting persecution
(cf. 7:14). Elsewhere this word is used in a general way for upheavals expected
in the last days (Rom 8:35; Mark 13:18), so it does not necessarily imply
systematic persecution, of which there is little evidence in this particular area
in Domitian's time (L. Thompson 1990). Early Christian tradition had John
in Ephesus confronting false teachers (Irenaeus AH ii.22.5). In the Johannine
apocalyptic tradition, The Second Apocalypse of John (probably fourth
century CE) has a revelation to John set on Mount Tabor, the mount of the
Transfiguration, which is in some ways explanatory of eschatological features
of the original Apocalypse (in Court 2000: 33). There is, however, a long
tradition that John was persecuted; for example, Albrecht Dürer's sequence
depicts an apocryphal story in which John is seated in a cauldron of
boiling oil in front of the Roman emperor. According to second-century
Christian tradition, after Domitian's death John returned from exile and lived
until the age of Trajan (well into the second century CE; Irenaeus AH ii.22.5;
iii.3.4).
Irenaeus dates the text to Domitian's reign and is the first to propound a
view that continues to have wide currency, that the book's genre was chosen
to conceal its real message, for fear of imperial retribution (AH v.30.3). In the
middle of the second century Justin appeals to John and his vision to support
belief in God's future reign on earth (Dial. lxxxi.4).
Robert Browning's poem `Death in the Desert' (1864) explores the
relationship among different writings attributed to John in the light of the
challenges of higher criticism of the Bible pioneered by Renan and Strauss
(Browning had recently read George Eliot's translation of Strauss's Das Leben
Jesu). He offers the poem as a newly found manuscript recording the last words
and death of John. The different periods of John's life coincide with three
modes of knowing: from statement of what he heard and saw (the Apocalypse),
to `reasoning from his knowledge' (the Johannine epistles), to a final penetra-
tion of the essential meaning (the gospel), when `what first were guessed as
points, I now knew stars' (lines 135­75; Shaffer 1972: 191­224).
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`I, John': doubts about the Apocalypse (1:9)
Positive testimony to the book's significance has to be balanced by a long tra-
dition of suspicion that questions its origin and how it has been used. Erasmus
invoked the authority of `very many very learned men', all of whom claimed
that the book lacks `apostolic gravitas' and is no more than a history expressed
in figurative or allegorical terms. He claimed that John's repeating`I, John' (1:9)
shows that he was drawing attention to himself rather than Christ. This
contrasts with the less direct self-references in the gospel of John and
with the writings of Paul, who also had visions but describes them as if they
were someone else's (cf. 2 Cor 12:2). While there were defenders of the book's
canonicity in the sixteenth century, the challenge of Erasmus caused much
suspicion (Backus 1998).
Martin Luther likewise famously denigrated the book's importance in his
original preface to The German Bible:
About this book of the Revelation of John, I leave everyone free to hold his own
ideas, and would bind no man to my opinion and judgement: I say what I feel.
I miss more than one thing in this book, and this makes me hold it to be neither
apostolic or prophetic. First and foremost, the Apostles do not deal with visions,
but prophesy in clear, plain words, as do Peter and Paul and Christ in the gospel.
For it befits the apostolic office to speak of Christ and his deeds without figures
and visions but there is no prophet in the Old Testament, to say nothing of the
New, who deals so out and out with visions and figures. And so I think of it
almost as I do of the Fourth Book of Esdras, and I can in nothing detect that it
was provided by the Holy Spirit. Moreover, he seems to be going much too far
when he commends his own book so highly, ­ more than any other of the sacred
books do, though they are much more important . . . Let every one think of it as
his own spirit gives him to think. My spirit cannot fit itself into this book. There
is one sufficient reason for me not to think highly of it ­ Christ is not taught or
known in it; but to teach Christ is the thing which an apostle above all else is
bound to do. (1522 Preface to the New Testament 12)
Luther takes a more positive approach in his 1546 Preface to the New Testa-
ment, however, where he offers advice about how to interpret the Apocalypse:
The first and surest step toward finding its interpretation is to take from history
the events and disasters that have come upon Christendom till now, and hold
them up alongside of these images, and so compare them very carefully. If, then,
the two perfectly coincided and squared with one another, we could build on
that as a sure, or at least an unobjectionable, interpretation.
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It is a book `for our comfort' and `for our warning'. He encourages readers `to
read this book and learn to look upon Christendom with other eyes than those
of reason', thereby enabling them to do justice to its imagery. This is reflected
in the way translations were illuminated and the imagery of the book informed
popular culture of the Reformation period (Scribner 1994).
Luther's early doubts continue the qualms of certain church fathers who
questioned the book's apostolic character. According to Eusebius HE iii.28.3,
Dionysius of Alexandria regarded the expectation of a reign of God on earth
as evidence of authorship by the heretic Cerinthus rather than the apostle John
(in Backus 1998: 654). Luther's unease is also echoed by Tyndale, though in
less trenchant form: `The Apocalypse or Revelations of John are allegories
whose literal sense is hard to find in many places' (2000: 156). Tyndale was
deeply suspicious of allegorical exegesis. The preface to the Geneva Bible like-
wise urges:`Read diligently; judge soberly and call earnestly to God for the true
understanding hereof.' This is a tacit admission of the difficulties and threats
posed by the book, something exemplified also in the severely circumscribed
opportunities to hear it liturgically (Brightman 1915: i.51; see above, 29­31).
Other criticisms of the book were occasioned by its use as licence for visions
and dreams (Taves 1999: 18).
The vision of `one like the Son of Man' (1:12­17)
The details of this vision of Christ have been understood as a mine of infor-
mation about christological and ecclesiological matters. According to Irenaeus,
Jesus' appearance as `one like the Son of Man', with seven candlesticks, shows
his sacerdotal nature and the glory he has received (AH iv.20.11). He wears
priestly garments which Moses saw in a vision and copied in the vestures of
the high priest. His feet of burning brass suggest the power of faith, which is
tested and refined in the fire of the end of time (ibid.). Hippolytus links the
vision with Daniel 10:5­21, claiming that Daniel sees the Lord but not in his
perfect form (Daniel iv.36.5­6; cf. Rowland 1985). In Antichrist 12 he says
that the eyes of Christ in 1:14 symbolize the prophets who foresaw both his
suffering and his glory.
Despite his chiliastic views, Victorinus also emphasizes the meaning of the
Apocalypse for the present, especially in the first six chapters, which describe
the presence of Christ in the church and in Scripture. The Apocalypse is a reca-
pitulation of all of Scripture, in which the resurrected Christ unlocks the
meaning of the figures of the law (Victorinus 1997: 29­32). The vision of
1:12­20, for example, is an initiation into the mysteries of faith, encapsulating
central points of christology and soteriology. It reveals Christ's double nature:
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his divinity in his white head and shining face and his humanity in his priestly
garment, which symbolizes the body of the incarnate one, offered as a sacri-
fice by the eternal priest. This vision also expresses the unity of Christ as head
with his body the church: the white hair symbolizes the baptized, and the
golden sash believers who drink pure milk of doctrine from the breast of
Christ. The means by which humanity is united with Christ in the church are
indicated by the two-edged sword (Scripture: law and gospel), the `sound of
many waters' (baptism), and the seven stars (the Holy Spirit; ANF vii.344­6).
Chapters 2­3 then go on to show how Christ dispenses the sevenfold spirit (cf.
Isa 11) to the universal church (ANF vii.346­7).
The two-edged sword (1:16) has its analogies in contemporary texts like Wis
18:16 and Heb 4:14. The Valentinian Gnostic text of the late second century,
The Gospel of Truth, echoes Rev 1:16 in speaking of the divine Logos as a naked,
two-edged sword which causes division between the spiritual and material
within the individual person (26.1­15).
Lady Eleanor Davies, one of several women prophets in England in the
1640s and 1650s, identifies the figure of John's call vision (1:13) as a female
divine being who will bring peace (drawing also on other scriptural texts like
John 1, Isa 9:2 and Heb 7):
She whose throne heaven, earth her footstool from the uncreated saying, I am A
and O first and last, both beginning and ending, by whom all things were done:
not without anything done or made; Trinity in Unity, of manhood the head;
who of death have the keys, and of hell: than the Queen of the South a greater,
born a greater not of woman: Malea, by interpretation, Queen of Peace, or She-
Counsellor. And so much for this without contradiction, she his executioner
made like unto the Son of God, the Ancient of Days' likeness: owner of the title
of tithes, to whom the patriarch offered a tenth. (`The Appearance or Presence
of the Son of Man' (1650) 7­8 Cope edn 174­81, in Hobby 1988: 28)
`the Alpha and the Omega . . . the first and the last' (1:8, 17;
cf. 21:6; 22:13)
Origen uses 1:8 to argue that Christ shares in the Father's omnipotence (First
Principles i.2.10; on Origen's interpretation of `the Alpha and the Omega', see
below, commentary on Rev 22:13). Joachim of Fiore broke with the medieval
tradition of interpretation as he`translated images into a kind of cosmic geom-
etry', to borrow a phrase from Marjorie Reeves (in Reeves and Hirsch-Reich
1972: 38; cf. 46­7, 171, 192, and McGinn 1979: 104). In his later years Joachim
complemented his literary expositions of the Apocalypse with`figures'(figurae)
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that encapsulate his beliefs about history and salvation. In one, he uses the
circle as symbol of the Godhead, indicating its trinity and unity (Joachim of
Fiore 1953: plates 11a, 11b; cf. Reeves and Hirsch-Reich 1972: plate 26). The
three overlapping circles show how the Trinity relates to history. At the far left
are Alpha and Omega, as a kind of presupposition. The green circle on the left
is that of the Father and is the time of the Old Testament; the middle, blue
circle, that of the Son, interlocks with the two outer circles. The third circle is
that of the Holy Spirit and indicates that the Spirit is from the Father and the
Son since it overlaps with both the other circles. This third circle contains a
reference to the `Novum Testamentum', indicating that the New Testament is
not superseded in the final age of the Spirit. Dante may have been aware of
Joachim's figura in Paradiso 33.115­20:
That light supreme, within its fathomless / Clear substance, showed to me three
spheres, which bare / Three hues distinct, and occupied one space; / The first
mirrored the next, as though it were / Rainbow from rainbow, and the third
seemed flame / Breathed equally from each of the first pair. (In McGinn 1979:
106; cf. Herzman in Emmerson and McGinn 1992: 398)
Joachim also uses the Alpha and Omega in the `psaltery with ten strings',
a `figure' that came to him in a mystical vision (1953: plate 13; Reeves and
Hirsch-Reich 1972: plate 27, cf. pp. 46­58). After passing through a time of
struggle to a higher plane of understanding, Joachim sang to God and began
to understand the meaning of the words `blessed are they who dwell in thy
house' (Ps 84:4). He had striven to be an inhabitant of the city of God through
his own efforts and had come to know `inner peace' by the grace of vision (in
Reeves and Hirsch-Reich 1972: 51­2; cf. McGinn 1979: 99 and 1985). The
`psaltery', like the Trinitarian circles, encapsulates the character of God, but
here the angelic hierarchies are attached to the strings on one side of the
diagram, with the gifts of the Spirit on the other. Milton also uses Alpha and
Omega: `In highth or depth, still first and last will reign' (Paradise Lost ii.324;
cf. v.165). Karl Barth writes of Jesus as Alpha and Omega (1958: 463­516).
Depictions of John's call (1:9­11, 17­19)
Depictions of John's call bring out the various facets of its visionary character.
Velasquez's painting emphasizes the moment of ecstasy: John's eyes are clearly
focused on something beyond the picture (London, National Gallery).An open
book with an empty page sits on his lap. It contrasts with large books at John's
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feet, perhaps representing the earlier Scriptures that are being supplemented by
the revelation of Jesus Christ now taking place,thereby reminding us of the high
authority which attaches to this particular book (cf. 22:18). In the portrayal of
John's call in Paris BN lat. 11534, fol. 341 John's eyes are closed, and he is in
ecstasy, as also in Giotto's work in the Cappella Peruzzi in Santa Croce Florence
1335 (in Van der Meer 1978: 25, 189). One is reminded of how Thomas Phillips
(1807), when he painted William Blake (National Portrait Gallery, London, in
Hamlyn and Phillips 2000: frontispiece; cf. Bentley 2001: 290­1), asked him to
give rapt attention as if he were looking at a heavenly being. Velasquez's evoca-
tion of the ecstatic state is much more obvious, however (for a modern example
of the depiction of a visionary trance see Stanley Spencer's painting Sarah Tubb
and the Heavenly Visitors in Bell 1992: 110).
John on Patmos is often portrayed as a solitary figure on a rock: for example,
in St John on Patmos by Hieronymus Bosch (Berlin Gemaeldegalerie). This is
also emphasized by Victor Hugo in Les Misérables:
We need not speak of the exile in Patmos who mightily assailed the world as it
was with a protest in the name of an ideal world, a huge, visionary satire, which
cast upon Rome-that-was-Nineveh, Rome-that-was-Babylon, and Rome-that-
was-Sodom the thunderous light of his Revelation. John on his rock is the Sphinx
on its pedestal; he is beyond our understanding; he was a Jew and a Hebrew. But
Tacitus, who wrote the Annals, was a Latin, and, better still, a Roman. (1996: 888)
The rock also appears in an allusive reference in Dante's Divine Comedy,
where Dante follows the Joachite tradition in linking the stigmata of Saint
Francis with a seal of the Apocalypse. He describes the moment of Francis's
receipt of Christ's stigmata: `Then on the harsh rock between Tiber and Arno
he received the last seal which his limbs bore for two years'(Paradiso 11.106­8).
This points to the seal sequence of the Apocalypse (6:1­8:5) and also to John's
situation on the rock of Patmos, where he is often shown marooned, as in
Memling's altar-piece `The Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine' in Saint John's
Hospital, Bruges, and in Dürer's woodcuts on Rev 10 and 14 (in Herzman
in Emmerson and McGinn 1992: 406). Francis, like the apostle Paul (1 Cor
4:15; Gal 4:10; 6:17; Phil 3:10), became a bearer of Christ and a mediator of
Christ's eschatological presence in the present, by bearing the marks of his
death. That the angel in Dürer's depiction of Rev 7:2 holds a cross may reflect
the identification of this angel with Francis, which became a feature of Fran-
ciscan interpretation of the Apocalypse, following Joachim (see below, 100, on
Peter Olivi and Bonaventure). The Divine Comedy connects more generally
with the Apocalypse in that it relates Dante's personal experience and God's
plan for the cosmos: `Apocalypse' involves the continual attempt to try to see
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things more and more from God's perspective (Herzman in Emmerson and
McGinn 1992: 412).
Hieronymus Bosch also portrays John on a rock as he gazes up to a vision
of the Woman Clothed with the Sun (Rev 12:1; Gemälde galerie, Berlin). She
appears in a circular form in the top left-hand corner of the picture, as in
several other contemporary depictions ­ for example, Hans Memling's altar-
piece. In Bosch's picture John gazes in rapt attention at the vision of heaven,
while around him, visible over his shoulder, are scenes of death and destruc-
tion (Rev 6:8­9, 16).While the visions John records are happening around him,
his gaze is focused on almighty God. That gives perspective for everything else.
A sharp contrast is set up between the violence below and the glory above.Also,
John seems to be engaged in a kind of ecstatic automatic writing, an interpre-
tation of what it means to be writing `in the spirit' (in Blake 1991­5, Viscomi
edn 42­3).
What most distinguishes Bosch's portrayal, however, is that John is accom-
panied by creatures, a bird (a raven, perhaps a parody of John's eagle or even
a sign of death) and a little imp-like figure. The sublime moment is charac-
terized as one of threat. The bird threatens to spill the ink, and the imp-like
figure wears spectacles, evincing a certain donnish quality, and suggesting that
the gently sceptical observer might have a question about the authenticity or
validity of the vision.
One of the most remarkable openings of any sequence of illustrations of
the Apocalypse is the frontispiece by Jean Duvet (1555) (see plate 1). Duvet's
illustrations were completed at the end of his life, and he seems to have devel-
oped an affinity with the aged John who, according to tradition, died as an old
man in the reign of Trajan (Eusebius HE iii.32.1). In the frontispiece Duvet
represents himself as John on Patmos, with this inscription: `Jean Duvet aged
seventy has completed these histories in 1555'. An open book nearby is the
Apocalypse of St John, and in the bottom left-hand corner is written: `the
sacred mysteries contained in this and the other following tablets are derived
from the divine revelation of John and are closely adapted to the true letter of
the text with the judgement of more learned men brought to bear.' Elsewhere
Duvet writes: `The fates are pressing; already the hands tremble and the sight
fails, yet the mind remains victorious and the great work is completed.' His
illustrations, then, involve a `re-seeing' of John's vision as one old man enters
into the visions of another (cf. Hölderlin's fusing of his poetic inspiration with
John's in `Patmos', in Shaffer 1972: 303­9).
The sense of struggle amidst tribulation and temptation pervades Spenser's
The Faerie Queene, in which the Red Cross Knight is introduced as`faithful and
true' (cf. Rev 19:11). He endures tribulations similar to those described in the
Apocalypse and is led astray by `antichrist' figures. Nevertheless he perseveres,
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50 Revelation 1
Plate 1 Jean Duvet as John on Patmos (Rev 1:9­20). British Museum, London.
learning greater discernment about the way of darkness and the way of light
(in Sandler in Patrides and Wittreich 1984: 150). The progress of personal pil-
grimage is also found in Ingmar Bergman's film The Seventh Seal; key existen-
tial moments are linked with the seven seals (Carey 1999: 334­5).
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Interpretations that take the form of visionary appropriation
An example of a more general influence of the apocalyptic revelation is found
in the Apocalypse of John Chrysostom, in which an early Christian theologian
receives information about liturgical matters through a dialogue with Jesus
Christ (fifth century CE, in Court 2000: 67­103). Hildegard of Bingen's
Scivias contains a new vision inspired by John's (Hart and Bishop edn 482­3;
Emmerson in Emmerson and McGinn 1992: 298).
John's apocalyptic vision also inspires Blake's visionary world and informs
his understanding of his own political situation. Indeed, Blake explicitly links
his own mythical world with the vision seen by John, much as Duvet does in
his frontispiece. Blake makes this clear at the conclusion of the Eighth Night
of The Four Zoas when he sees his own mythological creations as in direct con-
tinuity with the visionary apocalypticism of John (Four Zoas 8.597). Blake also
looks back to Milton for inspiration, taking up and embodying the poetic
genius of his predecessor in his Milton. The departed poet reappears, and the
Muse has another opportunity, in Blake's writing, to express thoughts aright.
Blake sees Milton's spirit enter into his left foot (Milton 14:49). In both appro-
priations the blurring of identity and time is apparent as the eternal and the
temporal merge, and the mental dislocation this brings about is experienced
by the reader. The effect is to plunge us into a kind of madness and make us
see that what we regard as `normal' is not the only imaginable way of reading,
seeing, or thinking (so Essick and Viscomi in Blake 1991­5: 10). This may help
explain John's own apocalypse, in which images and texts of the past are minted
afresh in John's own vision. It is what happens when the prophet's visions are
seen again at a different time and place, as David Halperin says about the
appropriation of Ezekiel's vision of God's throne (merkabah) in later apoca-
lypses: `When the apocalyptic visionary "sees" something that looks like
Ezekiel's merkabah, we may assume that he is seeing the merkabah vision as
he has persuaded himself it really was, as Ezekiel would have seen it, had he
been inspired wholly and not in part' (Halperin 1988: 71).
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