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Written by Ian Boxall
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Friday, 01 January 2010 00:00 |
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 Ian Boxall is Tutor in New Testament and Senior Tutor at St Stephen’s House,
Oxford, and member of the Theology Faculty in the University of Oxford. He is also Editor of Scripture Bulletin. His most recent book on the Apocalypse is The Revelation of St John in the Black’s New Testament Commentary series
Using the Imagination
The ruined Greek and Roman cities of Asia Minor have played a crucial role in the scholarly interpretation of the Apocalypse for well over a century. No serious commentator on the book can afford to ignore the monumental studies of Sir William Ramsay and Colin Hemer even if one wishes to dissent from aspects of their readings. Nor is the usefulness of the seven cities confined to stones, artifacts and inscriptions. What one might call the ‘imaginative landscape’ also comes into play: the ability to visualise, for example, the sheer magnificence of Pergamum’s acropolis, looming like Satan’s throne over the surrounding plain, or the gleaming white marble of Ephesus’ Temple of Artemis, dominating the approach from the sea. Or in more recent writing, use of the imagination has also been called for to appreciate the symbolic world such cities evoke (Steven Friesen’s splendid book John’s Apocalypse and the Imperial Cults, significantly subtitled ‘Reading Revelation among the Ruins’, is a fine example of the latter).
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