Journal: Tyndale Bulletin
Volume: TYNBUL 63:1 (NA 2012)
Article: The Affective Directives Of The Book Of Revelation
Author: Andrew Harker

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TynBull 63:1 (2012) p. 115

The Affective Directives Of The Book Of Revelation1

Andrew Harker

Summary

In contemporary study of the Johannine Apocalypse both at the academic and popular levels there continues to be a strong bias towards questions of hermeneutics and semantics. This is true despite the calls of many commentators and pastors over the last two millennia to receive the prophecy as pictures to move the heart rather than puzzles to tease the mind. This paper adds volume and clarity to their call. The approach here is an emic one—How does the text itself invite the recipient to engage with its words? Picking up on J.-P. Ruiz’s suggestion that Revelation is punctuated by ‘hermeneutical imperatives’ (sc. Rev. 1:3; 2:7, 11, 17, 29; 3:6, 13, 22; 13:9-10, 18; 17:9; 22:7, 18-19), this article argues that these texts are just as much, if not more, ‘affective imperatives’ or better ‘affective directives’. Thus to read the book in line with its own explicit directions is much more a matter of being moved at the level of the heart and will than of solving a hermeneutical conundrum.

1. Introduction

Teach on Revelation or even mention the book in conversation and the most common question you are likely to receive is, ‘What does it mean?’ or, perhaps specifically related to a particular portion, ‘What exactly is the …’ Less common is the question, ‘How is the text trying to move me as its hearer?’ It is true that since the 1980s Revelation has

TynBull 63:1 (2012) p. 116

been subject to a good deal of very fruitful rhetorical analysis but even this often tends to be used as a means to a hermeneutical end.2 C. Rowland has recently noted the danger in Revelation scholarship, as in the study of William Blake’s work, ‘that the poetry and pictures in the end are in danger of becoming just an elaborate political allegory, comprehensible only against the peculiarities of a a [sic] reconstructed historical setting’.3

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