Book of Revelation

=== Setting ===
Conventional understanding has been that the Book of Revelation was written to comfort beleaguered Christians as they underwent persecution at the hands of an emperor. This is, however, not the only interpretation; Domitian may not have been a despot imposing an imperial cult, and there may not have been any systematic empire-wide persecution of Christians in his time.{{sfn|Stephens|2011|pp=143–145}} Revelation may instead have been composed in the context of a conflict within the Christian community of Asia Minor over whether to engage with, or withdraw from, the far larger non-Christian community: Author Mark B. Stephens posed that the Revelation chastised those Christians who wanted to reach an accommodation with the Roman cult of empire.{{sfn|Stephens|2011|p=152}} This is not to say that Christians in Roman Asia were not suffering for withdrawal from, and defiance against, the wider Roman society, which imposed very real penalties; Revelation offered a victory over this reality by offering an apocalyptic hope. In the words of professor [[Adela Yarbro Collins|Adela Collins]], "What ought to be was experienced as a present reality."{{sfn|Collins|1984|p=154}} There is also theological interpretation that the book mainly prophesies the end of Old Covenant order, the Jewish temple and religious economy.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Chilton |first=David |title=The Days of Vengeance |publisher=Dominion Press |year=2011 |isbn=978-0-930462-09-3 |location=Tyler, Texas |pages=55 |language=English}}</ref>