Performing the Apocalypse

People love to tell stories. In the ancient world most people interacted with these stories primarily through the spoken word as opposed to the printed text. The book of Revelation is one such story. Not only is the narrative Revelation intended to be read aloud (Rev 1:3), but the written text itself betrays a number of features characteristic of oral storytelling. The aim of this monograph is to analyze John’s Apocalypse with the listening audience in mind, in order to validate that indeed the text was composed as a text for performance.

An eclectic methodology combining tools from oral-biblical criticism, discourse analysis, and biblical performance criticism is utilized to explore three representative sections of Revelation, working from sounds and syllables to the oral patterns that structure the book itself. This book contributes to scholarship, proposing that Revelation must be re-heard, just as it was by the original recipients. Since syllables, sounds, cola, and periods are often ignored in current scholarship, this monograph aims to help scholars re-hear these neglected features. The many endless proposals regarding the macrostructure of Revelation frequently overlook the way in which material was arranged for oral performance, and this book serves as a corrective.