Book of Revelation

=== Academic ===
{{Further|higher criticism|apocalyptic literature}}
Modern biblical scholarship attempts to understand Revelation in its 1st-century historical context within the genre of Jewish and Christian apocalyptic literature.<ref name="Martin 2009"/> This approach considers the text as an address to seven historical communities in Asia Minor. Under this interpretation, assertions that "the time is near" are to be taken literally by those communities. Consequently, the work is viewed as a warning not to conform to contemporary Greco-Roman society which John "unveils" as beastly, demonic, and subject to divine judgment.<ref name="Martin 2009">[[Dale Martin (scholar)|Dale Martin]] 2009 (lecture). {{YouTube|XJ9Gt_R5a-k|"24. Apocalyptic and Accommodation"}}. [[Yale University]]. Accessed 22 July 2013. [http://www.cosmolearning.com/video-lectures/apocalyptic-and-accommodation-6817/ Lecture 24 (transcript)] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140906132019/http://www.cosmolearning.com/video-lectures/apocalyptic-and-accommodation-6817/ |date=6 September 2014 }}</ref>

New Testament narrative criticism also places Revelation in its first century historical context but approaches the book from a literary perspective.<ref>David L. Barr, Tales of the End: A Narrative Commentary on the Book of Revelation (Santa Rosa: Polebridge Press, 1998); Barr, "Narrative Technique in the Book of Revelation". In Oxford Handbook of Biblical Narrative, ed. Danna Nolan Fewell (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 376–88</ref> For example, narrative critics examine characters and characterization, literary devices, settings, plot, themes, point of view, implied reader, implied author, and other constitutive features of narratives in their analysis of the book.

Although the acceptance of Revelation into the [[Biblical canon|canon]] has, from the beginning, been controversial, it has been essentially similar to the career of other texts.<ref name="Martin 2009b">{{cite web|url=https://cosmolearning.org/video-lectures/from-stories-to-canon-6796/|title=Lecture 2: From Stories to Canon |publisher= CosmoLearning Religious Studies}}</ref> The eventual exclusion of other contemporary apocalyptic literature from the canon may throw light on the unfolding historical processes of what was officially considered orthodox, what was [[heterodox]], and what was even heretical.<ref name="Martin 2009b"/> Interpretation of meanings and imagery are anchored in what the historical author intended and what his contemporary audience inferred; a message to Christians not to assimilate into the Roman imperial culture was John's central message.<ref name="Martin 2009"/> Thus, the letter (written in the apocalyptic genre) is pastoral in nature (its purpose is offering hope to the downtrodden),<ref name="Ehrman Apoc"/> and the symbolism of Revelation is to be understood entirely within its historical, literary, and social context.<ref name="Ehrman Apoc"/> Critics study the conventions of apocalyptic literature and events of the 1st century to make sense of what the author may have intended.<ref name="Ehrman Apoc">{{cite web|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sE2oaGa2fJU| archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/varchive/youtube/20211028/sE2oaGa2fJU| archive-date=2021-10-28|title=Bart Ehrman Discusses the Apocalypticist|last=Bart D. Ehrman|date=9 June 2016|via=YouTube}}{{cbignore}}</ref>

Scholar [[Barbara Whitlock]] pointed out a similarity between the consistent destruction of thirds depicted in the Book of Revelation (a third of mankind by plagues of fire, smoke, and brimstone, a third of the trees and green grass, a third of the sea creatures and a third of the ships at sea, etc.) and the [[Persian mythology|Iranian mythology]] evil character [[Zahhak]] or Dahāg, depicted in the [[Avesta]], the earliest religious texts of [[Zoroastrianism]]. Dahāg is mentioned as wreaking much evil in the world until at last chained up and imprisoned on the mythical Mt. Damāvand. The Middle Persian sources prophesy that at the end of the world, Dahāg will at last burst his bonds and ravage the world, consuming one in three humans and livestock, until the ancient hero [[Garshasp|Kirsāsp]] returns to life to kill Dahāg. Whitlock wrote: "Zoroastrianism, the state religion of the Roman Empire's main rival, was part of the intellectual environment in which Christianity came into being, just as were Judaism, the Greek-Roman religion, and the worship of Isis and Mithras. A Zoroastrian influence is completely plausible".<ref>Barbara Whitlock, "Tracing out the convoluted sources of Christianity" in George D. Barnes (ed.), "Collected New Essays in Comparative Religion"</ref>