165 - Breaking the Code: Understanding the Book of Revelation

Breaking the Code: Understanding the Book of Revelation
By Bruce M. Metzger
Nashville, Abingdon 1993. 111 pp. $6.95.

The book is better than the title. The book itself is a clearly written brief introduction to Revelation suitable for the general reader and church school classes as well as for pastors and teachers. The apocalypse is understood in terms of its historical setting as pastoral encouragement to the churches of Asia Minor facing a (threatened) Roman persecution near the end of Domitian's reign in 96 C. E. By the use of disciplined imagination, the modern reader can perceive the enduring message of the book by first hearing its ancient message in its own setting. The book offers a concise, readable summary of mainstream New Testament scholarship, presented without either academic paraphernalia or scholarly condescension.

The title is unfortunate in that it contributes to the popular understanding of Revelation that Metzger, in fact, wishes to avoid. He properly understands Revelation as replete with symbolic language and provides a helpful brief discussion of how to interpret it. This is a different matter than "code," in that, while symbols point beyond themselves to their referents, they do not do so in a code-like, one-to-one manner that allows the symbol to be discarded once its referent is known. On the other hand, once a "code" is "broken," the original communication is no longer needed. Interpretations of Revelation, however, helpful, can never replace the imagery of the book itself. Metzger's is certainly aware of this, yet he can occasionally lapse into a decoding kind of allegory, so that the red of carnelian indicates fire of God's wrath, while the green of the heavenly rainbow is "soothing." There is also an occasional over-simplified resolution of difficult problems, such as when Revelation's repeated expectation of the soon coming of the end is explained as being "moral rather than chronological." All in all, however, the book is to be heartily welcomed, for the author's own description is accurate; it is "both a scholarly and devotional consideration of this remarkable book."

M. Eugene Boring
Brite Divinity School
Fort Worth, TX.