Full of biblical references
One key to understanding the book of Revelation is to interpret it through the Bible itself, since the book is saturated with references to the rest of Scripture. But is that really true, and would the original readers even have picked up on it?
Compressed references
As we’ll see throughout this study, a great deal of biblical material lies behind Revelation’s text, and it’s rarely simply quoted. More often it’s combined, reversed, or set into an entirely new context.
That raises a fair question: could the early readers actually comprehend information packed that densely?
The early readers
The early readers were, in fact, well equipped to grasp it, for several reasons.
- The churches of Asia Minor, where Revelation’s first readers lived, were made up of both Jewish believers and Gentiles who had close, ongoing contact with the synagogues — a pattern we can see throughout the book of Acts.
- The churches in Smyrna and Philadelphia, in particular, were in close contact with synagogues that assumed a deep knowledge of the Old Testament. The same assumption shows up when many Jews become Christians — a change that presupposes believers able to demonstrate that Jesus fulfills Old Testament prophecy.
- The reference to false prophets under the Old Testament label Jezebel shows that these churches were already fluent enough in Old and New Testament material to have it twisted by false teachers in the first place.
- It would be strange indeed if John had filled his letters to these churches with Old Testament references — manna, Jezebel, temple, New Jerusalem, Balaam — that the recipients simply wouldn’t have understood.
- John saw himself as a prophet, a role the church evidently accepted, which means he likely also functioned as a teacher who had already instructed them in the Old Testament — itself a further explanation for why false, familiar teachings could be so easily exposed in these churches.
- We also know from Acts and elsewhere in the New Testament that Jews and Gentiles alike were taught from the Old Testament, the Bible of the early church: in Berea, in Ephesus, with Timothy as a teacher, and in Paul's emphasis on the importance of the whole of Scripture.