of the 7 angels;sees multiple visions of God’s reign
1. See the Apocalypse of Baruch, Enoch, IV Ezra, and parts of Ezekiel and Daniel.
2. Robert H. Mounce, The Book of Revelation (NICNT; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1977); J. Massynberde Ford, Revelation (AB 38; Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1975); Elizabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, Revelation: Vision of a Just World (Proclamation Commentaries; Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1991).
3. David E. Aune, Revelation 6–16 (WBC 52B; Nashville, TN: Nelson, 1998), 373.
4. George B. Caird, The Revelation of St. John (San Francisco, CA: Harper, 1966), 96.
5. See also J. P. M. Sweet, Revelation (PNTC; London: SCM, 1979), 150–51.
6. Richard Bauckham, The Climax of Prophecy: Studies on the Book of Revelation (Edinburgh: Clark, 1993), 216.
7. Steve Moyise, The Old Testament in the Book of Revelation (JSNTSup 115; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995), 132.
8. For some analysis of this issue see David L. Barr, “The Apocalypse as a Symbolic Transformation of the World: A Literary Analysis,” Int 38 (1984): 39–50.
9. Gregory K. Beale, The Book of Revelation (NIGTC; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999), 425. For an extensive analysis of the ‘hearing’ formula in Revelation, see also Anne-Marit Enroth, “The Hearing Formula in the Book of Revelation,” NTS 36 (1990): 598–608. Her analysis, however, does not relate hearing to “seeing.”
10. Rebecca Skaggs and Thomas Doyle, “Lion/Lamb in Revelation,” Currents in Biblical Research 7/3 (2009): 362–75.
11. Edith M. Humphrey, And I Turned to See the Voice: The Rhetoric of Vision in the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2007).
12. Greg Carey and L. Gregory Bloomquist, eds., Vision and Persuasion: Rhetorical Dimensions of Apocalyptic Discourse (St. Louis, MO: Chalice, 1999).
13. David A. deSilva, Seeing Things John’s Way: The Rhetoric of the Book of Revelation (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2009).
14. Humphrey, I Turned to See the Voice.
15. Carey, “Introduction” in Vision and Persuasion, 1–17 (12–13).
16. DeSilva, Seeing Things John’s Way, 257.
17. Aristotle defines an enthymeme as a statement supported by a rationale, the adding of the “why/wherefore” (Rhetoric 2.21.2). However, David Aune, “The Use and Abuse of the Enthymeme in New Testament Scholarship,” NTS 49 (2003): 299–320 (305), reminds us that there are more definitions of enthymemes in the ancient world than just Aristotle’s. Also, the goal of an enthymeme is not to achieve logical certainty but to convince an audience; in other words, it provides logical probability, not logical certainty. DeSilva, Seeing, 232, explains that enthymemes may assume some necessary steps in the argument made by the reader (see also Lloyd Bitzer, “Aristotle’s Enthymeme Revisited” in Aristotle: The Classical Heritage of Rhetoric [ed. Keith V. Erickson; Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow, 1974], 149–55).
Hence, the hearer forms a partnership with the speaker or writer in constructing the argument; there is often a need for “audience participation” in the construction of parts of the argument. John T. Kirby, “The Rhetorical Situations of Revelation 1–3,” NTS 34 (1988): 197–207, sheds light on the nature of enthymemes in that “[they] advance conclusions on the strength of premises which may or may not be explicitly formulated. Premises are often expressed in Greek by oti or gar, conclusions by oun. The use of logos here is important because the pronouncements, though absolute, are seen not to be irrationally despotic: there is logos, a rationale, underlying them all” (202–203).
18. Humphrey, I Turned to See the Voice, 154.
19. Ibid., 36–37.
20. DeSilva, Seeing Things John’s Way, 257–58.
21. Ibid., 234.
22. Humphrey, I Turned to See the Voice, 28.
23. Ibid., 18.
24. Ibid., 28, 155, 200.
25. Ibid., 151. For adherence to this idea, see deSilva, Seeing Things John’s Way, 235, n. 21, and Jorg Frey, “The Relevance of the Roman Imperial Cult for the Book of Revelation: Exegetical and Hermeneutical Reflections on the Relation Between the Seven Letters and the Visionary Main Part of the Book” in The New Testament and Early Christian Literature in Greco-Roman Context: Studies in Honor of David E. Aune (ed. John Fotopoulos; NovTSup 122; Leiden: Brill, 2006), 251–55 (246).
26. Beale, Revelation, 203.
27. Aune, Revelation 6–16, 85. See also p. 88 for further discussion and examples.
28. Skaggs and Doyle, “Lion/Lamb.”
29. Some scholars (e.g., Beale, Revelation, 424–25; Robby Waddell, The Spirit of the Book of Revelation [JPTSup 30; Dorset, UK: Deo, 2006], 140) interpret Rev 7 as comparable to ch. 5:5–6. They suggest that the same way John “hears” the lion introduced, and “sees” the Lamb, he also “hears” the number of the tribes of the 144,000 and “sees” the great multitude. Two significant points must be taken into account, however, before this comparability is taken seriously:
Whereas 5:5–6 (lion/Lamb) is one single vision, in ch. 7 there are two distinct visions, introduced by Meta_ tou~to ei]don (7:1) and Meta_ tau~ta ei]don (7:9): the activity of the 144,000 in 7:1–8 and the vision of the great multitude in 7:9–17 (see Ekkehardt Muller, Microstructural Analysis of Revelation 4–11 [Berrien Springs, MI: Andrews University Press, 1994], 258, for the analysis of the formula introducing
