This month's assignment is to read the final book of the Bible, Revelation, sometimes called the Apocalypse.
My teacher in Christian Science gave me a wonderfully
interesting book called Studies in the
Apocalypse of John of Patmos by Edyth Armstrong Hoyt. It was first published in 1944. My copy is a 1963 revised reprint. There is a typed page inside the cover of
this book. It’s headed “Notes on Edyth
Armstrong Hoyt, B.A.” and reads, in part:
Mrs. Hoyt, was a graduate of the
University of Minnesota, majoring in Oriental Literature, and subsequently did
Graduate Work at Columbia and Chicago Universities….When, in early middle age,
she had been confined to a wheel chair with cancer of the spine for seven
years, a copy of the Christian Science Textbook was given her. She turned first to the chapter entitled The
Apocalypse, and when she had finished it she said,
“Any woman who could write on the
Revelation as Mrs Eddy has done, must be on the right track.”
She studied the textbook and was
healed during the reading. She spent the
rest of her life lecturing and touring on the subject closest to her heart—The Bible.
The Preface to Hoyt’s book Studies in the Apocalypse of John of Patmos, includes the
following:
The book we are working with is
one of the greatest in all literature: beautifully coordinated, orderly in
development, and admittedly, amazing. …it
was written to be understood. That is
the reason why we are going to become familiar with its literary structure and translate
its allusions. …these allusions [are] from various sources, chiefly the Old
Testament; therefore, anyone deciphering the allusions (as one is meant to do with
Apocalyptic literature) must translate them according to what they meant in the
author’s own day.
Standing at the end of the Bible
canon, it is the consummation and completeness toward which all Scripture is
moving. It is indeed the illuminating
revelation of the highest Truth for man.
So, what is
an Apocalypse? Hoyt explains that an
Apocalypse is “a kind of literature”. The
Hebrew Bible (i.e. the Old Testament) is stacked with various types of literature,
for example the short stories of Ruth, Jonah and Esther; the lyric poetry of
Psalms; the sonnets of Proverbs 1 – 9.
And just as we refer to the drama of Shakespeare and the poetry of
Browning, so we say the Apocalypse of John, or the Apocalypse of Daniel. Note however, that John writes in Rev 1:1
that he has written the Revelation of Jesus Christ.
We learn from
Hoyt that the form of the Apocalypse is a seven-fold structural form which is “identical
with that of all vision literature
in the Bible and in other Hebrew writings.”
This seven-fold structure develops so that the fourth point is always
the climax.
4
3 5
2 6
1 7
Note that
vision literature “aims to establish eternal spiritual truth; wisdom literature
establishes the Hebrew philosophy of every day life; apocalyptic establishes
the inspiration and courage made possible by the hope of the imminent appearance
of the kingdom of God to end a period of confusion and upheaval. Apocalyptic was written only in times of
persecution to give courage and hope to those persecuted. More than that, Apocalyptic was always
written in code…” How exciting is
this? We are going to learn to read John’s
secret code!
Julie Swannell
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