Session 5: Learning to Ask the Right Questions (Genre)
Session 5 discusses what genre is and how it can help us ask the right questions about the book of Revelation. This section also includes the different genres of the Book of Revelation.
If you ask the wrong questions, then you will get the wrong answers.
So…How do we know what questions to ask? Genre!
All about Genre
What is Genre?
Who Cares About Genre?
Genre works as a governing tool for the reader to know how to read what
they are reading.
The primary importance for understanding a genre, then, is to be able to
ask the right questions of the particular text, because the genre dictates the
appropriate questions (cf. Who won the game? Have the Tigers been
captured? etc.)
How Do I Learn Genres?
What are the Genres of the Book of Revelation?
Revelation actually is governed by three different genres:
Epistolary Genre
Rev. 1:4-5a; 22:21
Why is this important for interpretation?
The message must first have made sense to the 7 churches
in Asia Minor.
KEY QUESTIONS: Who is writing to whom? Why is the person
writing to them? How does this book apply to the original
audience?
Prophetic Genre
Revelation 1:3; 22:7, 10, 18
Why is this important for Interpretation?
More than merely prediction, Revelation is a clarion call for God’s people to both “stand firm” in the face of
opposition and for those who have compromised with the
opposition to “repent.”
Why?
Because of who God is—the sovereign ruler
over all creation and history
And what God desires—the return to a
garden where the curse is in reverse
KEY QUESTIONS: What is this prophecy revealing about who
God is? What is this prophecy revealing about what God desires?
What is this prophecy revealing about what God demands from us?
Apocalyptic Genre
What is it?
Apocalyptic Literature = A revelation of transcendent
realities often communicated by other-worldly beings with
a great amount of symbolic language to comfort and exhort
an oppressed people.
How do we know?
Revelation 1:1
John’s use of symbolic language (Rev. 1:20; 12:9; 19:8b)
KEY QUESTIONS: What does this symbol point to? A principle?
A reality? Where are these symbols used in the Old Testament?
How would these symbols effect the original audience?
Revelation is a Christian Prophetic-Apocalyptic Letter.
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