Journal: Westminster Theological Journal
Volume: WTJ 62:1 (Spring 2000)
Article: Reviews of Books
Author: Anonymous

WTJ 62:1 (Spring 2000) p. 143

Reviews of Books

G. K. Beale: The Book of Revelation: A Commentary on the Greek Text. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans; Carlisle: Paternoster, 1999. Pp. lxiv, 1245. Cloth. $75.00.

G. K. Beale: John’s Use of the Old Testament in Revelation. Journal for the Study of the New Testament Supplement Series, 166. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998. Pp. 443. Cloth. $85.00.

Beale’s commentary on Revelation provides detailed argumentation and detailed consideration of background such as a technical commentary needs. 177 pages of introduction cover the issues of date, historical situation, authorship, genre, interpretive approaches, symbolism, text criticism, the use of the OT, grammar, structure, significance of Rev 1:19, and the theology and goal of the book. Building on Beale’s doctoral dissertation and on extended study of the use of the OT in Revelation, the commentary provides special detail on OT and intertestamental background, not only in the introduction, but in the commentary on individual verses and sections.

The body of the commentary is usefully divided into sections, following the structure laid out in the introduction. The beginning of a section usually furnishes a brief theologically-oriented summary that helps readers discern the point of the section, and reminds them of its applicability. A large number of excursuses allow the commentary to devote space to special interpretive debates that arise at particular points.

Much of the value of a commentary on Revelation depends on its relation to the major interpretive issues for Revelation. What does Beale’s commentary do?

First, it is idealist. That is, it argues that the major visions of Revelation set out a general pattern of spiritual realities and spiritual war applicable throughout the period from Christ’s first coming until the Second Coming.

Second, it is recapitulationist. That is, it understands the cycles of judgment with the seals, the trumpets, and the bowls as not referring to three chronologically successive series of events, but traveling over some of the same ground from three different points of view. Each of the cycles culminates with the Second Coming and the Final Judgment. In addition, it understands the section from 12:1–14:20 or 12:1–15:4 as similarly looking over the whole interadvent period and culminating in the Second Coming (14:14–20).

Finally, it is amillennialist. It understands the reign of the saints in 20:4 as a de...