Interpreting Revelation: A Detailed Guide to Historicist, Futurist, Preterist, and Idealist Views

I just finished is a lengthy guide that overviews the 4 major interpretations of the Revelation given to St. John. It is primarily a resource book that has direct quotations from various authors within the 4 major interpretive schools of thought, beginning in the patristic era, and ending in contemporary theology.

Overall, it’s approximately 70 pages, and includes 80+ citations with 70+ key figures and movements discussed.

To my knowledge, this is the first work in a long time to assemble quotations directly from original sources, and compile them alongside one another for comparison!

Here’s an excerpt:

In the early Church, chiliasm, a term derived from χίλια chilia, or “a thousand”, was a predominant futurist interpretation of Revelation that Christ would return and reign on earth for a literal thousand years. Many, if not most, chiliasts believed that Christ would return at the 6,000th year of the world’s existence [cf. Irenaeus, Commodianus, Hippolytus, Methodius, Lactantius, and Bardesan]. Additionally, several pronounced heretics were chiliasts who sensualized the millennial kingdom. For understandable reasons, then, chiliasm became a very unpopular interpretation with later fathers, the middle ages, and even during the reformation. It was later revived by Protestant futurist commentators in the late 1500’s.

Eastern Patristic

Papias of Hierapolis, c. 60-130 AD, (Chiliast), “As the elders who saw John the disciple of the Lord remembered that they had heard from him how the Lord taught in regard to those times, and said]: “The days will come in which vines shall grow, having each ten thousand branches, and in each branch ten thousand twigs, and in each true twig ten thousand shoots, and in every one of the shoots ten thousand clusters, and on every one of the clusters ten thousand grapes, and every grape when pressed will give five-and-twenty metretes of wine. And when any one of the saints shall lay hold of a cluster, another shall cry out, ‘I am a better cluster, take me; bless the Lord through me.’ In like manner, [He said] that a grain of wheat would produce ten thousand ears, and that every ear would have ten thousand grains, and every grain would yield ten pounds of clear, pure, fine flour; and that apples, and seeds, and grass would produce in similar proportions; and that all animals, feeding then only on the productions of the earth, would become peaceable and harmonious, and be in perfect subjection to man.” –Fragment 4, p. 410, ANF01. Source.

Interested? Consider getting the whole book!