Revelation
Apokalypsis Iōannou
Rome is Babylon reborn, a persecuting empire whose apparent power will be shattered in an imminent, cosmically staged final battle, and the faithful who refuse to compromise with it now will reign afterward with Christ.
- Rome portrayed as Babylon under imminent divine judgment
- dense reuse of Daniel and Ezekiel's apocalyptic imagery
- polemic against Roman imperial cult and economic power
- the New Testament's sole fully apocalyptic book
An apocalyptic vision, addressed as a circular letter to seven churches in Roman Asia Minor, portraying imperial Rome as a monstrous, idolatrous "Babylon" doomed to violent, imminent destruction, followed by cosmic battle, the defeat of Satan, and a new heaven and earth. Its imagery draws with unusual density on earlier Jewish apocalyptic literature, above all Daniel and Ezekiel, adapting their beasts, thrones, and numerological symbolism (famously, "666") into a sustained polemic against Roman imperial cult and economic power. Written during a period of at least localized persecution and social pressure on Christian communities to participate in emperor worship, it is the only fully apocalyptic book in the New Testament and became, alongside Daniel, one of the two central texts of the entire later apocalyptic tradition in both Judaism and Christianity.
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