Learning to Ask the Right Questions

In Session 5, Dr. Shane J. Wood highlights the significance of asking appropriate questions in interpreting Revelation, focusing on the genres that govern the text—Epistolary, Prophetic, and Apocalyptic. Understanding these genres helps uncover the intended message for the original audience and decode the symbolic language, ensuring a more precise interpretation.

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**_Simplifying Revelation: How to Read the Book of Revelation_**

***Session 5:* Learning to Ask the Right Questions (Genre)**

I. Introduction

a. If you ask the wrong questions, then you will get the wrong answers.

b. So…How do we know what questions to ask? Genre!

II. All about Genre

a. What is Genre?

b. Who Cares About Genre?

i. Genre is a governing tool for the reader to know how to read what they are reading.

ii. 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.)

c. How Do I Learn Genres?

III. What are the Genres of the Book of Revelation?

a. Revelation is governed by three different genres:

i. Epistolary Genre

1. Rev. 1:4-5a; 22:21

2. Why is this important for interpretation?

a. The message must make sense to the 7 churches in Asia Minor first.

3. KEY QUESTIONS: Who is writing to whom? Why is the person writing to them? How does this book apply to the original audience?

ii. Prophetic Genre

1. Revelation 1:3; 22:7, 10, 18

2. Why is this important for interpretation?

a. More than mere 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.”

i. Why?

1. Because of who God is—the sovereign ruler over all creation and history

2. And what God desires—the return to a garden where the curse is in reverse

3. 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?

iii. Apocalyptic Genre

1. What is it?

a. 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.

2. How do we know?

a. John’s use of symbolic language (Rev. 1:20; 12:9; 19:8b)

3. 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 affect the original audience?

b. Revelation is a Christian Prophetic-Apocalyptic Letter



Session 05

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