The People of God in the Apocalypse: Discourse, Structure, and Exegesis
Cambridge University Press, 2004
256 pages
Stephen
Pattemore examines passages within Revelation 4:1-22:21 that depict the
people of God as actors in the apocalyptic drama and infers what impact
these passages would have had on the self-understanding and behaviour
of the original audience of the work. He uses Relevance Theory, a
development in the linguistic field of pragmatics, to help understand
the text against the background of allusion to other texts. Three
important images are traced. The picture of the souls under the altar
(6:9-11) is found to govern much of the direction of the text with its
call to faithful witness and willingness for martyrdom. Even the
militant image of a messianic army (7:1-8, 14:1-5) urges the audience in
precisely the same direction. Both images combine in the final image of
the bride, the culmination of challenge and hope traced briefly in the
New Jerusalem visions
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