From: Carlton L. Winbery (winberyc@popalex1.linknet.net)
Date: Mon Jul 01 1996 - 09:11:54 EDT
Theresa J List wrote;
>
>I was taught in undergrad and grad school that the semitic approach to
>time is different than our own. In specific, we were taught in
>reference to the book of Revelation that the seemingly confusing
>repetition of events over and ove is caused by looking at the time
>passing between each chapter literally ... that is, as if chapter one
>preceeded chapter 5 preceeded chapter 15 in chronology.
>
>The Semitic thought pattern which I was then taught was that a event was
>looked at spirally: for example, first one would tell the literal event
>in the literal time in which it transpired. Then one would double back
>and look at it again, but only mention aspects of the event which
>emphasized the aspect under discussion. Then double back a third time
>and look at different aspects of the same event, etc ... So, applied to
>Revelation again, later chapters were just retelling in different
>perspective earlier chapters. My question is NOT about Revelation in
>particular, but wheter anyone else has heard of that Semitic view of time
>and therefore might be able to tell me where to read up on it? I ran
>across a Greek scholar here who had never heard of that and found it quite
>dubious. Let me know. Thanks.
>
A book that I encountered early on in my studies (hence a long time ago) is
the work on Revelation by Mathias Rissi, Time and History: A Study on the
Revelation. Other books would be James Barr, Biblical Words for Time (a
corrective to TDNT).
The phenomena in Rev that you refer to has as much to do with the dramatic
structure of the book as it does with the concepts of time, tho both are
important. On the structure of Rev a good presentation is a little book by
John Wick Bowman, The First Christian Drama, ca. 1959 I think. As I
remember he also did several articles in Interpretation during the 50's on
the structure of Rev.
Grace,
Carlton Winbery
Fogleman Prof. Religion
Louisiana College
winberyc@popalex1.linknet.net
Fax 1 (318) 487 7425
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Sat Apr 20 2002 - 15:37:45 EDT