Re: date of revelation

Greg Carey - Religion (CAREY@rhodes.edu)
Mon, 14 Apr 1997 10:13:45 -0500 (CDT)

As one who has written on Revelation from a literary-rhetorical perspective,
I'm wondering: How important is its date, anyway? I don't ask this in a
polemic spirit, only to help focus the issue.

We know precious little about how early Christians and Jews related to one
another and to their neighbors in the first century CE, whether in 68 or in 96.
We don't even know what was up with the imperial cult from one era to another.
And we because cannot assume that things were the same all over, it is possible
that one context in 68 might be nearly identical to another context in 96. As
Jon Marshall is emphasizing in his Princeton dissertation, we're not even sure
whether the term Christian is an anachronism.

So I am wondering about the payoff for a firm date. Thank you for your
insights.

--Greg Carey

Department of Religious Studies
Rhodes College
Memphis TN 38112 USA
carey@rhodes.edu