APOCALYPSE: The Book of Revelation

Those who read the Bible for nourishment generally see the New Testament book of Revelation as bizarre and forbidding. Jacques Ellul sees it as ""written for movement, play of colors, multiple interaction, multiple meaning."" The author is a layman of the (French) Reformed Church and a theologian of considerable reputation. His work is its own good bush, but its readers look for his cool independence of fashion, and are attracted by the distancing from professional religious studies represented by his professorships of law and social history at the University of Bordeaux, and by his works of analysis like The Technological Society. Revelation's interpreters have made piecemeal use of its imagery, or treated it as a coded message of fortitude in second-century persecution. Ellul ignores neither symbolical detail nor historical setting, but looks mainly to the structure of the book and the overall message it conveys now, as at the time of writing. Anyone who stays with this demanding examination of what remains a difficult text will find it a rewarding and coherent piece of exposition.