JEREMY DUNCAN. Upside-Down Apocalypse: Grounding Revelation in the Gospel of Peace. Harrisonburg, VA: Herald Press, 2022. Pp. 215. $17.99 (U.S.)
There is perhaps no part of Scripture more widely misunderstood at the popular level than the Book of Revelation. The bloody battles, grotesque beasts, and fiery cataclysms that mark its pages overwhelm the senses, and the book’s complex structure prompts many readers to rely on summaries by dispensationalists and end-times prophets who claim that the book is comprised of secretly encoded visions of near-future world events. Revelation’s violent imagery poses a secondary interpretive challenge for those who believe that the teachings of Jesus require a nonviolent, love-of-enemy ethic. Attempts to square these realities have been made, often targeted at academics and those with seminary training. Yet similar works directed to a more general readership are rare, making those that occasionally come along most welcome.
Among the most recent attempts to explore Revelation from a nonviolent worldview is this book by Jeremy Duncan, pastor of Commons Church in Calgary, Alberta. This work tries to present the case for a subversive, empire-rejecting view of Revelation in an approachable format. References to movies and popular culture abound as helpful parallels for those without theological training, with an implied readership of college-educated adults. Duncan’s thesis is that “Revelation, when read through the lens of the Gospels, will help us uncover the prophetic hope that saves us from nihilistic despair. The Apocalypse will reveal a God so deeply invested in the renewal of all things that the story will push us back into the world with new eyes to uncover the divine in our neighborhoods, our politics, and even the cosmos” (19).
As with many Revelation scholars before him, Duncan observes that the author of Revelation exploits cultural images and stories to challenge the imperial ideology of his day. The review of conventional imagery is well done, providing summaries of the major Hebrew and Greco-Roman backdrops for Revelation’s most dramatic scenes. Many of the usual highlights are present: Isaiah and Ezekiel’s heavenly visions and the picture of Jesus in Revelation 4-5, the Leto myth and the dragon in chapter 12, the revived Nero myth and the beast of chapter 13, and the goddess Roma and the prostitute of chapter 17. Duncan correctly observes that Revelation subverts audience expectations by portraying the deified emperors as “beasts” and the crucified Jesus as the king of kings. Helpfully, these surveys are presented in a straightforward manner to assist readers who are not well-versed in ancient literature.
I appreciate how succinctly Duncan introduces key concepts in the study of Revelation, such as the apocalyptic literary genre, the book’s cyclical organization, and its complex synthesis of Hebrew and Greco-Roman imperial imagery. Such overviews will prove beneficial for the target audience and may act as a helpful resource for individuals used to approaching Revelation through the lens of the popular Left Behind series. Duncan (briefly) addresses prominent theories about Revelation, including the futurist, historicist, and preterist views. He also alludes to on-going debates concerning the millennium and the potential for universalist readings of the book’s final chapters. These discussions are too short to recommend on their own, and supplemental reading would help clarify these matters for most readers. The book’s second and third chapters, which discuss Revelation’s literary genre and structure, are more comprehensive and offer a sufficient glimpse at how the author employed repeating images to expose the Roman empire’s flaws from multiple vantage points.
Duncan explores these structural concepts in a writing style that should not overwhelm his intended readers. He also draws his readers’ attention to instances where Revelation’s violent imagery is potentially ambiguous and how such ambiguity might expose alternatives to violent retribution. The quintessential examples in this regard are the descriptions of Jesus as a lion and a slaughtered lamb in Revelation 4 and his bloody robe prior to the battle in chapter 19. Finally, for readers whose first exposure to critical readings of Revelation might come through this book, Duncan’s citations are a veritable who’s who of biblical scholars that should serve as a helpful starting point for further reflection. His bibliography points readers to high quality commentaries as well as works that approach Revelation through feminist, literary critical, pacifist, and political lenses.
Curiously, despite challenging his readers to approach Revelation “through the lens of the Gospels,” Duncan infrequently engages the gospels themselves. By my count there are only six focused discussions about gospel stories (41-42, 56-59, 120-122, 134, 153-155, and 169-174) and these instances barely address whether Jesus himself was as critical of the empire as Revelation appears to be. Throughout this book a nonviolent Jesus is assumed, but he is rarely described. Furthermore, no attention is given to instances where Jesus’s own words in the gospels might be read as adopting violent apocalyptic rhetoric. Duncan is correct that Jesus is the center of God’s self-revelation and therefore ought to be at our hermeneutical center. And he is also correct that Revelation creatively offers harsh criticisms of the evils of human empire and its supernatural supporters. Revelation can even convincingly be read in a way that questions the very violence that a surface level reading of its imagery might highlight. But the contention that these factors find their focus in the Jesus of the gospels is unfortunately underdeveloped in this book’s pages.
These criticisms aside, I commend this book as a potential resource for discussion groups within a Brethren in Christ context. As a church with roots in the Anabaptist traditions that stresses nonviolence as an integral part of the Christian walk, we need additional popular level resources that address questions raised by violent imagery in the Scriptures. Such a need is especially strong in an American context where the culturally dominant variety of pop-evangelicalism promotes militarism and culture war ideologies through selective proof-texting. Resources like Upside-Down Apocalypse, when studied in a small group context and with pastoral sensitivity, may help to re-orient our people away from that militant mindset and towards kingdom values.