How to Approach Reading Revelation

While this study attempts to render what Revelation’s manuscripts communicate, it is impossible to grasp the depth of this book in English.

Revelation is deeply patterned, and English cannot carry those patterns faithfully. Reading in English will cause you to see patterns that simply do not exist, and to miss patterns that do — and either one can completely misguide you.

Where English Flattens, and Where It Expands

English has no equivalents for many of the Greek words in Revelation. Read these two verses in the King James and see whether anything separates them:

“And another angel came out from the altar, which had power over fire; and cried with a loud cry to him that had the sharp sickle, saying, Thrust in thy sharp sickle, and gather the clusters of the vine of the earth; for her grapes are fully ripe.”

— Revelation 14:18 (KJV)

“And he gathered them together into a place called in the Hebrew tongue Armageddon.”

— Revelation 16:16 (KJV)

Both say “gather.” Nothing on the page suggests they are doing different work. But the word behind the first is “gather” (τρυγάω) — the vintage verb, the picking of ripe fruit from the vine. It is used three times in the whole New Testament, and every one is about grapes. The word behind the second is a different verb altogether (συνάγω), the mustering word of the war passages: the kings brought together to the war of the great day, the armies against the rider, the birds to the supper, Gog and Magog after the thousand years.

One English word, two Greek words doing two different jobs. A reader working only from the King James sees “gather” in chapter 14 and “gather” in chapter 16 and has every reason to think they belong together. The grape harvest is a vintage; the gatherings for war are an assembling.

That is the flattening, and it is fixable. English does have a second word available, so this study spends it: the vintage word keeps “gather,” and the war word takes “assemble.”

“And another messenger [came out], from the altar, who has power over the fire, and sounded with a great voice to him who had the sharp sickle, saying, Send thy sharp sickle and gather the clusters of the vine of the earth, for her grapes are fully ripe.”

— Revelation 14:18 (URV)

“And he assembled them into the place called in the Hebrew tongue Har-Magedon.”

— Revelation 16:16 (URV)

Two words now, for two words. A reader can see at a glance that the harvest and the muster are not the same act, and nothing has to be explained in a note to make it visible.

The expansion runs the other way: sometimes English hands a word more range than the Greek intends, and a reader builds on meaning that was never in the text.

Both problems are invisible from inside English. That is what makes them dangerous.

The Warning Is Also Instruction

“I testify unto every man who hears the words of the prophecy of this scroll: if any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this scroll, and if any man shall take away from the words of the scroll of this prophecy, God shall take away his part from the tree of life and out of the holy city, which are written in this scroll.”

— Revelation 22:18–19 (URV)

That is not only a warning. It also provides guidance on how the book must be approached. If words may not be added or taken away, then the words themselves — the actual ones, in the language they were written in — are what a conclusion has to rest on.

Anything but the Greek will absolutely leave you missing something.

So read Revelation in English. That is fine, and it is what most reading will be. But consult the Greek before you conclude; conclusions must be built on the Greek. This is one of the most important findings I encountered in doing this study, and it is the first one I hope you learn.

What This Study Does About It

None of that is a reason to give up on English. It is a reason to build an English text that keeps pointing back to the Greek rather than quietly covering it.

Splitting “gather” and “assemble” is one way that works. It is not always available — English runs out of words before Revelation runs out of them. Where English is forced to spend a single word on two Greek words, a superscript letter says which one is behind this one. At Revelation 6:9 the martyrs under the altar are “the lives of them who were slain,” and “lives” carries a mark there because the Greek word is ψυχή, the living self, while the plain word “life” elsewhere in the book stands for a different word, ζωή. Where the manuscripts disagree, square brackets show the disagreement rather than silently settling it.

The other marks do a different job. Revelation explains itself, and the cross-references and coloured tags point at the connections this study wants you to see — a phrase that returns, a number that ties two scenes together, a title given twice. Those are not failures of English. They are the book doing what it does, made visible.

How to Read This Study explains every one of those marks with examples. The Greek Interlinear puts the Greek beside the English word by word, so checking a word takes seconds rather than a trip to a lexicon.

Alongside that, one English word is matched to one Greek word wherever English allows. When a word repeats in this text, it repeats in the Greek. That single discipline is what makes the patterns visible — and it is why the text sometimes reads a little stiffly. Where smoothness and accuracy pulled against each other, accuracy won.

Why There Are No Speech Marks

This study’s rendering (URV) does not place quotation marks around spoken words because the Greek manuscripts do not.

In several places in Revelation it is not clear who is speaking, or how long they continue speaking. Many translations add speech quotes to ease reading — and, to be fair, punctuation in general is supplied the same way. But every speech quote placed in the text pre-loads it with an interpretive assumption about who is speaking and where their speech begins and ends.

Rather than settle those questions silently, this study leaves them open and does not mark speech with quotation marks in its text rendering at this time.

That choice is the whole approach in miniature. Where the text is open, leave it open, show the reader that it is open, and let the conclusion be argued rather than assumed.