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In this podcast episode, Dr. Alex Stewart and host Tyler Sanders discuss the second principle for guiding interpretation of the book of Revelation, which is Historical Context. Focusing on understanding the time, location, culture, and language of the original audience can guide interpretation, provide a broader significance, and give you a better read and grasp on the message of the book.
Creators & Guests
What is The Study Podcast?
The Study Podcast is an in-depth look at the Bible with Dr. Paul Wegner and Dr. Alex Stewart.
Tyler Sanders 0:00
You're listening to The Study Podcast with Dr Alex Stewart on Revelation. I'm your host, Tyler Sanders, and I'm here with Dr. Alex Stewart, who is our dean, New Testament professor at Gateway. And we're talking about Revelation today. Specifically, we've been going over the five principles for interpreting Revelation. Today, we're looking at the second one, which has to do with historical context. I think the way you put it is, letting the original historical context guide your interpretation. So let's start with, like the biggest question, what all is included in historical context?
Dr. Stewart 0:33
That's a great question. And we talk at least about the time, the location, the author, the recipients. So most New Testament introductions go into all that. Who the author is, who are the recipients, what's the purpose for it, the geographical setting for this. So that's there. And then you go beyond that, even into the culture, as it were. The culture, the worldview of the broader surrounding society. And then you can get very specific into the layout of cities and how cities were structured, how trade guilds, how voluntary associations, how regional cults are there. So there's all sorts of stuff. Historical context is very, very broad. And it's not all equally relevant.
Speaker 1 1:19
But they all could be potential reference points, basically, is that kind of how it's working?
Dr. Stewart 1:24
Yes, the more we could sort of put ourselves imaginatively into the position of the original hearers, the better we'll read. So that's sort of the one goal. So it's not just to know historical details for their own sake, but to try to get a feel, even an intuitive feel, for how first century readers would have encountered this text, the book Revelation. How they would have responded to it, how they would have understood it. And it's impossible to have that perfectly, because we [have a] 2000 year difference. And so there is a huge historical gulf. And some even, there's extreme skepticism that would despair of ever bridging that gulf. That we can't fully, or barely even at all. All we end up doing is reading our own interests and concerns into the past, that it's impossible to actually gain any type of first century perspective. And there is caution that we need to have there, in terms of overstating what we can gain from historical context, but you also don't want to be too pessimistic. So we can learn quite a few things from history about how the first readers would have understood things, and how the original author...what he likely meant by certain expressions or certain phrases. And we do this all the time as well, lexically. So he didn't mention that earlier, but even the meaning of words, that's historical context.
Speaker 1 2:38
I was going to ask about that actually, because I would imagine language would have to be part of historical context.
Dr. Stewart 2:43
Yes. And we know quite a bit. There's a lot of ancient Greek literature that survived, that we can get sort of synchronic understanding of what words mean, not just diachronic, because that's sort of the etymology of words, so that only takes you so far. How are words being used in these decades of the first century? Even in that geographical area, how specific can we get? And so I think that even the words themselves are part of historical context.
Speaker 1 2:44
Now an interesting line you have, I think it's right in the beginning, it may even be in the heading of this chapter, you do some lifting with the prepositions, right? "It's written for you, but not to you." So could you unpack that? I think you've kind of gotten a little bit into that, but I think that's a really good distinction to make.
Dr. Stewart 3:31
Yeah, that's a phrase. "The book of Revelation is written for you, but not to you." You actually draw that, in my memory I may have heard it elsewhere, but I explicitly remember hearing it from John Walton in his work on Genesis. And I don't think he invented that. It was just the basic sort of hermeneutical observation, that the biblical texts are written originally to the original recipients of them. And then they are written by extension and through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and the providence of God, they're written for us, for God's people. Spanning the centuries, but they weren't directly written to us. And so I play with that a little bit. I think it sometimes could be taken to say too much. Because [people could] say, 'Well, the Bible is written to us.' Well, it is. I think, we take a big picture and say, 'Well, God's writing this and inspiring the authors and preserving the text through the centuries to let the author speak to us.' Both the original author and the Spirit speaking through them. But so, I don't want to push it too far, but I think I capture that in the sense that it's for us. So that's how I explored it a little bit, where God's applying it for us. It's written for us, for our benefit, for our good, for our instruction, to shape us, to motivate us, even if it's not directly written to us originally. But the caution that brings is to say, 'well, we need to try to understand as much as we can about those to whom it was originally written.' So the Christians in Western Asia Minor at the end of the first century. So that's sort of the focus, trying to understand how they would have read these texts.
Speaker 1 4:57
So that leads me to one more question. I think this could be a big question. It may be a really big question. I think there's probably a scale in terms of, like, how deep you need to know this stuff and how you can access this information. So maybe, what are some easy resources for anyone listening, if they want to learn more about some historical context, maybe not just for Revelation, but for all kinds of books in the Bible? And then, what's the other side of that, like, how do you get really deep into that? What are those kind of resources?
Dr. Stewart 5:33
Oh, well yeah, that is a huge question. I mean, there are some commentary series that are focused on backgrounds. I can't remember the exact names, or the exact names of the authors for different books, but like the Biblical Backgrounds commentary series, things like that. Or different resources on historical backgrounds more generally. The specific way to do is to just immerse yourself in ancient sources. So primary sources. So get access to the main authors of the first century. And there's quite a few that have survived. And they have different contributions to make. So Plutarch is writing right around the same time. He wrote a lot, and sort of this representing middle Platonism, but it's an educated, literary author who's just writing about a lot of topics. With stoicism, Seneca Epictetus will give a lot of, sort of the philosophical focus there. There's a lot of great stuff where you could just immerse yourself in primary sources to get a feel for what people, you know, how they thought or what they were talking about. I mean, there's some ancient novels from the first century. I was just reading these, even this past week. There's a couple in Latin, and they're bizarre. They're strange, they're interested. But they give you these windows into life in the first century. There's other primary source stuff I've been reading the last few months with epigraphic evidence in Western Asia Minor. There's a lot of that that survived and it's carved in stone. And you can learn a lot from the concerns and the cares about people and what they memorialize that way, in stone.
Dr. Stewart 6:59
So there's lots of ways to try to get at that. The key takeaway, though, when you say 'how much do we need to know of that?' There it's...there's that spectrum, like a continuum. And the more we know, the better, in terms of trying to understand how the original hearers would have understood these visions. But the initial takeaway is, 'does a proposed interpretation only makes sense in the 21st century or whatnot. Would it only make sense?' So if I have some vision, and I have some idea of what it means, would that have made sense in the first century? Would my, what I think this vision means, would that have had any relevance, not to the first century readers? And so the easy sort of way to take that, if it involves like technology that was only invented the last few decades, well, that's probably not the right interpretation. That would have been irrelevant to the first century hearers. And so, we talk about military technology or computer chips, or all these things that only make sense in our particular generation. Then it would have been irrelevant to any Christian readers through history, more or less. Then this principle would sort of undermine those. It's not that it's impossible, because some would argue, 'well, God gave him visions of things in the distant future that he had no way [of knowing], tanks or helicopters or whatnot. And so he's just trying to describe them the best he can.' And that's possible. I think that's very improbable, though. I think it's very unlikely. So this principle of reading, particularly with attention to the historical context, prompts us to ground our interpretations in the first century and what would have been understandable to a first century reader. So that's sort of the initial takeaway. And you could have a feel for that, actually, with very little historical background. You don't have to be an expert in history to sort of know if some interpretation would only make sense to you here, based on current technology and whatnot.
Speaker 1 8:51
Yeah, right. We could probably go through a process of elimination to get something closer, where you could kind of take out some of those more exclusively modern, or exclusively probably from any time, maybe any historical context. If you're reading like medieval scholars or something, and they have some interpretation that really only makes sense in their context, we can probably kind of start saying, 'Well, maybe that's not quite the right thing.'
Dr. Stewart 9:18
Oh, yeah. And you can see that in some of the reception history of Revelation. Different church leaders in different centuries, in how they approach the visions. And when they tie it too closely to their generation, is when they're normally wrong about something.
Speaker 1 9:34
Now you do have an example in the book of a letter. It's not a letter...no, it is a letter. Is it a letter?
Dr. Stewart 9:40
Yeah, the letter from Pliny the Younger to Trajan.
Speaker 1 9:42
Can you tell us a little bit about that? Because that is a good historical context that fits some of the stuff you've been saying already. But I think there's some good examples in there of how that can kind of illuminate the text in a way.
Dr. Stewart 9:53
So in this chapter, looking at historical context, I don't draw a lot of examples from Revelation. I present the general principle, that we want to let the original historical context guide our interpretation. And then I present one major example related to the beast of Revelation 13. And I start by illustrating it with this letter that's been discovered from Pliny the Younger to Emperor Trajan. Pliny was the governor of Pontus Pithinia. So it's a little north and east of the seven churches. But it's pretty close geographically. It's written from AD 111 through 113, that's when it could be dated to. So it within 20 years or so from when most people date the book Revelation. And it's written by a non Christian. He's quite hostile to Christianity. So in terms of historical evidence, it's gold, as it were. Like, it's similar geographical times, similar temporal time, chronological time, by someone who's not sympathetic. And he's making observations about early Christianity and the early Christians, and particularly describing how he was trying to suppress them. And reaching out to the Emperor for advice or opinion or direction on this. So one of the things, it's a fairly long letter. I won't read it all, but he talks about his process for questioning the early Christians who were accused of this to him and some he had tortured and whatnot. But the main process was, he would bring in the images of the idols, that were images of the gods, and the image of the Emperor. And if they would pray, you know, offer the wine and incense to the statue of the Emperor and revile the name of Christ, then he would release them. That was proof. And he says, 'I know that no genuine Christian would do that right.' And so the idea of the image of the Emperor being the litmus test, and worshiping the image of the Emperor. So this, of course, shows up in chapter 13 of Revelation with the second beast, the beast from the land. It makes the image of the first beast and it compels worship. And those who refuse to worship then, and take the mark of the beast are killed. And they're excluded from the economic life of the city in buying and selling. And then those who would worship it, well, then they're released as it were, they have the favor of the beasts. And so when you think about how the first readers in the first century would have understood the vision, remember Revelation 13 of the two beasts, this goes a long ways towards giving us that kind of historical context. That it's not hypothetical, it's not something in the distant future, but it was happening or being fulfilled right then. Right within their lifetimes.
Dr. Stewart 12:18
And so there's a lot of other interesting things about this letter that we could comment on, but that's the main point. And then I go on in the chapter, a little more to illustrate with ancient coins. Illustrate the phenomena of emperor worship. Particularly in Western Asia Minor at this time. And so it was a big deal. Emperor worship was promoted as more of a grassroots effort. It wasn't the Emperors, per se, trying to promote it. Although they didn't try to put it down, it's a great way to unify the provinces and get their allegiance. But it was a competition among the provinces themselves, for the favor of Rome and the Roman Emperor. So, they'd be competing with each other for the most extravagant cult sites and festivals, etc. And so there's lots of different coins, as well. Both from the provinces and from the Empire itself, the Senate, that would promote emperor worship. Divs, Augustus. There's this Latin abbreviation, 'divine, Augustus'. And coins were propaganda. So it's the main medium of mass communication in antiquity. So there isn't radio, there's not TV, there's not the internet. But you have coins. And everywhere that coin is being used, it has the image of the Emperor on it. And it's sort of the demonstration of the extent of his rule and his domain. So his image is everywhere. It's ubiquitous throughout the empire, just sort of promoting his rule and his reign, his claim to that area where his images on the coin being used. So coins are very significant, and they're surrounded-they'll have the image of the emperor, the head of the Emperor, on the front, and then the obverse would be some image of some deity, or goddess Roma, on quite a few coins, but different local deities or whatnot. And so the coins are connecting the Emperor with the divine realm. And that's also supporting his claim to rule, and his own claim to be part of this divine realm. The patronage of the gods. And then eventually, at their death, the deification of the emperors. And so there were occult sites for the emperors throughout these cities in Revelation, to goddess Roma. And so this was a significant reality on the ground in the first century. And then it does relate to the sort of economic mobility. So all the different trade guilds and trade associations, any career you'd want. If you told your children about your career, well, back then more or less what you did, your kids are going to be doing. There isn't that much career hopping in antiquity, per se. But the ability to progress economically, you'd be connected to a trade guild in whenever you did. And all the trade guilds would have patron deities. And at whatever gatherings they would have, they would pour out libations or prayers to the gods. And so this is a reality on the ground in the city. All the cities of Western Asia Minor. And so for John to be calling the Christians to distance themselves from that, because of the syncretism that's involved, because of the compromise that's involved, was calling them really to poverty, to a life of poverty for their faith. Not necessarily in every case. So poverty is not the virtue for its own sake, but it's the avoidance of idolatrous syncretism, the avoidance of compromise with the idolatry of the cities that would be necessary to really gain prominent positions in many places. That Christians, if they withdraw from that, they will be impoverished, they will be marginalized in their cities in different ways. And so that's some of the historical context that I fill out in this chapter that helps us.
Dr. Stewart 15:30
And when we turn now to Revelation 13, so John has a vision of the beast, and the Beast has the seven heads. You know, it's built-well, there's lots of things about this. It's modeled after the dragon in chapter 12, and so there's a family resemblance between the dragon and the beast. Chapter 12 ends with the dragon enraged against the seed of this woman that he has the vision of in chapter 12. And the dragon's trying to destroy all the offspring of the women, the seed of the woman, God's people, those who are faithful to Christ and hold to the testimony of Jesus. And the dragon, though, enlists the beast to fulfill that purpose. So that's sort of how chapter 12 connects to chapter 13. The dragon empowers the beast, enlists him for this murderous purpose, to oppose God's people. The dragon gives the beast his authority and his power to do this. And then the beast has this family resemblance to the dragon. So that's part of it. And it has blasphemous names all over its heads. And I just draw some connection to the coins. So the coins of the Roman emperor, there's blasphemous phrases all around it. In Latin, and the provincial ones in Greek on the coins. And the Beast has authority, of course, and wins for a time. Conquers God's people, persecutes God's people, and draws the worship away from God. So it's a contest of worship. Who has the rightful rule of the world, and it's contested. So Revelation has the vision, in chapters four and five, God's on the throne, God's ruling, God's reigning, but His rule is not recognized on Earth by everyone, and it's contested on earth. And the beast is promoting that and opposing God and drawing the allegiance and the worship of humanity towards itself. And so that's the first beast, and then the second beast comes along and enforces worship of the first beast. So with this historical background in place, we could ask the question, how would the first readers have understood this vision? What would they have thought about it? And they would have immediately connected the first beast with Rome and the Emperors there. That's the obvious connection. You know, Rome came to Asia Minor from the sea, and the beast comes from the sea here. And then the second beast is from the land. So it's the beast from Asia Minor itself. So it's the local leadership, the local, either magistrates or political power, that's enforcing the allegiance of the first beast, enforcing the worship of the first beast. So it seems pretty clear how the first readers would have understood chapter 13 and the two beasts. And so we want to start there. So we want to start our interpretation as best as we could tell from how the first readers would have understood these visions. And that doesn't necessarily exhaust them, but it's the right starting place. And there are some hints that they go beyond that. And so the beast itself, the way it's described, draws elements from all four of Daniel's beasts.
Dr. Stewart 18:06
So Daniel has this vision, Daniel 7, of four different beasts, and each one's an empire. And all cumulatively, Daniel's four beasts spend centuries of time. And then John's beast, in Revelation, has details and features from all four of those beasts. Which I think Beal is where I first read this. And he may not be the only one who's argued this in his commentary. But he's saying that would point to the transtemporal nature of the beast, that Daniel's four beasts span many nations, over many centuries, and this beast embodies elements from all of those. Which would suggest for me, that in the first century, that the readers are identifying with Rome. But 'Rome' in the first century, doesn't exhaust the beast, as it were. So it does, in a sense, that the shoe fits, that the beast is active through history in all sorts of different ways. And that fits a little bit what we hear about the Antichrist in First John. Where, in First John, talks about the Antichrist. Revelation never does. Revelation never uses that phrase, but First John does and he talks about there's lots of antichrists, and they're already here. And that would be, in a sense, with the beast. Where the beast is this image, this symbol of the human political power, a military power, the rulers of the earth being utilized by Satan to oppose God and His people. In the first century, it's this. It's Rome. And then it's bigger than that And so I think that's the way we'd want to read it, but we start grounding this first in the first century context. And that's what we talk about in this chapter.
Speaker 1 19:27
Well, and that kind of puts the foundation in the right spots in a way.
Dr. Stewart 19:32
Well, yeah. It protects us from reading Revelation with the text in one hand and the newspaper in the other hand. And so we're trying to just always draw connections. And some people can't help themselves. That's what they do. Everything that's happening in Israel or Russia or Iran or China or wherever. Or America. They're trying to find the connections to Revelation. And I think for so many reasons, that's the wrong way to go about trying to read Revelation. And if we start with the first century in mind, it pushes us, it keeps us grounded historically, in how the first author would have been trying to communicate to the first readers. But it also protects us from the dangers of just getting so caught up in our moment in time, in our generation. So yes, there's much more I think we could say about that.
Dr. Stewart 19:32
Well, yeah. And I think I just have one more question really for you, and it's another big one. So if we start there, what is like that next step? How do we start? How does a reader start taking all this information and kind of understanding what it could mean for their life today?
Dr. Stewart 20:38
Well, that goes a little bit to the genre. And so the apocalyptic genre itself, in the visions-and you ask, 'Well, why visions?' You know, couldn't John have written like Paul or like one of the gospel authors? Why is Revelation so bizarre? And that's an honest question. Was he on drugs when he's seeing these visions? Psychedelics or what's up with this guy and these visions that he's having? And it is an ancient genre, and it is grounded in visionary experiences. So some would try to claim it's just a literary creation, because there's so many allusions to the Old Testament, but there is no real basis for arguing that it's a purely literary creation. There's no reason. There's no evidence that would say he didn't have visions, he didn't see these things. And then he was interpreting what he saw, and as he reflected on what he saw and wrote it down, he did shape it. And he shaped it in a literary way, with lots of intratexual and intertextual illusions within the book itself, and the whole Bible. So it does have the marks of literary shaping, but that can't be used to say that he didn't have visions. And so I think that raises the question of the genre itself. Why did God communicate in this genre? And the symbolism, which we'll get to in a future chapter, we'll talk a little bit more about symbolism, but it is polyvalent, as it were. So every generation of Christians through history could see themselves in these visions, like they find themselves in the story. And so like, from the first generation on, these things are being fulfilled in terms of the visions that he's seeing, and we identify ourselves as participants in these visions. And so when the beast is drawing worship from all the inhabitants of the earth and those who refuse that, they're being persecuted. Their life is hard for them. They're being killed and being excluded from economic mobility. That's the reality for Christians in most generations in some place in the world, through human history, or from the first century through today. And so that's one way that in chapter 13, I think every generation-in the visions themselves, because they can't be pinned down fully and finally to any single individual, any single historical period, then they're relevant and they're applicable in every single one, as we're finding ourselves. And so many of the visions are like that, where we can see ourselves in this story as participants in the vision itself. So I think that's one of the reasons why the genre itself is compelling, and that got communicated in this way to us in the Book of Revelation. And then also, to sort of answer that question for how do we apply it to ourselves. And I think that's what you're getting at, how do we respond to these visions.
Dr. Stewart 21:11
It's kind of the key interpretive question, I guess. I mean, we're kind of building all these principles, to probably get to that.
Dr. Stewart 23:12
They'll work together. So the last time we met, we talked about the original purpose, keeping that always in mind, and it's motivational. And so the genre itself is calling us to action. The visions are calling us to action. And then the apocalyptic genre helps us to do that by identifying where we fit in these visions. So which of the churches, are we identifying with, based on what our need is. Do we need to repent, or do we need to persevere because we're suffering, or what the need is? Every reader of Revelation could connect with one of those seven churches in some way. In some of those messages. Then all of us, as God's people, connect at various points through these visions themselves. And then we're able to see ourselves there and hear the force of that, that we need to persevere. We're in this conflict, but the dragon is out to destroy us. The dragon has enlisted help. He has human authorities, human powers, the powers arrayed against Christians and against the advance of the gospel. And we're in this conflict, and we wage war. Not through physical violence, but through witness. So in Revelation, the themes of witness and of worship, are how we're engaging in this conflict, how we're waging this war. And so this book forces us sort of, to see the world in this different way, and see how we're engaged in this conflict through our witness or our worship through our perseverance.
Tyler Sanders 24:39
I think that's fantastic.
Dr. Stewart 24:40
Well, great. Yeah, that's a little bit for chapter two. Again, this one is just focusing on the importance of the historical context to ground our interpretations.
Tyler Sanders 24:52
That's our guiding factor. That's really good. Well, I'm really looking forward to our next one, because we're talking about repetition next, and I can't wait to get into that topic as well.
Dr. Stewart 25:00
Great. Look forward to it.
Tyler Sanders 25:02
Perfect. Thank you so much for your time.