How to Read This Study

The verse text carries a few small marks — brackets, coloured tags, superscript letters, and a bracketed [r.1]. None of them are decoration, and they are there for two different reasons.

Some mark what the Greek could not carry into English silently. Where the manuscripts disagree, where one English word has to stand in for two Greek ones, where the King James has a word the oldest copies do not. Hiding any of those would have meant deciding a question on your behalf.

The rest are pointing at something. Revelation explains itself, and the cross-references and coloured tags mark 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 problems in the text. They are the reason the book rewards reading it whole.

This page is the key to all of them.

Square Brackets — Where the Manuscripts Disagree

Revelation survives in Greek manuscripts that do not always match one another. Where they differ, this study shows the difference rather than picking one quietly. Nothing in brackets was added to smooth the English out — every bracket marks a real question in the text itself.

[this/that] — two competing readings

The slash separates two readings the manuscripts disagree about.

The reading before the slash is this study's priority — the one it judges most likely. The reading after the slash is the serious alternative, kept in view because the evidence is not strong enough to throw it away. So at 1:17, “first” is the reading followed here, and “firstborn” is what other manuscripts carry.

Every one of them, with the priority reading first:

Where a verse has a footnote on the decision, it will name which manuscripts stand on each side and why the priority falls where it does. In the text these brackets carry a faint dotted underline; hover or tap one and a note says this much — the manuscripts differ, and the word before the slash is the one this study finds more likely. (The brackets that open with a dash — 5:9, 5:10, 6:4, 19:6 — are the form described next.)

[word] — a word that may or may not belong

A bracketed word with no slash is one that some manuscripts have and others do not, where the question is not settled. It is shown rather than dropped, so you can see exactly what is in question:

Also at Revelation 1:6 [of the ages], 3:20 [and], 5:6 [seven] Spirits, 11:7 [the fourth] beast, 5:10 [unto our God], 14:3 [as it were], 18:2 [hated], 19:5 [and], 19:6 [our], and 21:12 [and at the gates twelve messengers] and [the names].

These too carry the dotted underline, and the note on hover says what the bracket means: the word is not in every manuscript, and it is kept in brackets because it may or may not be original.

[–/a phrase] — the dash means the text read here goes without it

Some brackets open with a dash before the slash. As in every slash bracket, the part before the slash is the reading this study follows — and a dash there means that reading is nothing at all: the witnesses given priority do not carry the phrase. The words after the slash are what the other manuscripts read, kept in view rather than letting them vanish:

In the text these brackets carry a yellow wavy underline — the counterpart of the red one on Received-Text redactions — and hovering or tapping one shows a note saying exactly this. Read the verse as though the whole bracket were not there. The audio edition does exactly that — a dash-marked bracket is never read aloud. Wherever this form appears, the verse also carries an [ms] note naming the manuscripts on each side.

name[s] — an uncertain ending

Sometimes the only question is whether a word is singular or plural. The bracket then sits on the ending alone, following the printed Greek text's own way of marking it:

Wavy red underline — the Textus Receptus reading behind the King James

Separate from the brackets, some words appear in italics with a red wavy underline:

Those words are in the Textus Receptus — the printed Greek text the King James Version was translated from — but absent from the older manuscripts this study follows. They are kept rather than deleted, so anyone reading alongside a King James can see exactly what differs, and where.

They are hidden until you ask for them — which is why you may never have seen one. Nothing on the page tells you they are missing.

With it off you read the text as this study renders it. With it on you see every place the Textus Receptus carries a word the older manuscripts do not — which is most of what a King James reader would notice as missing.

[r.1] — Cross-References

Revelation explains itself. The same images, titles, and numbers return across the book, and following those returns is most of the work of reading it. A cross-reference marks one of those connections.

Two things to notice, because they are easy to miss:

First — the tag opens a list of verses. Hover or tap it and you get the passages it ties together, with their text, so you can read them without leaving the page. They come from across the book. At Revelation 1:1, [r.1] opens Revelation 1:1, 1:3, 1:19, 4:1, 22:6 and 22:10 — the verse you are on, and then the five elsewhere in Revelation that speak of what must shortly come to pass.

Second — the bold phrase tells you what the connection is about. The bold immediately before a tag marks which part of the verse those other passages connect to. “Shortly come to pass” is the phrase behind [r.1]; “sending it by his messenger” is the phrase behind [r.2]. The bold is not emphasis and it is not there to make the verse louder — it marks the span, and the tag sits immediately after it, never before and never drifting to the end of the sentence.

When you see two tags in a row, both belong to the same bold phrase and open different sets of verses. The numbering restarts at [r.1] in every verse, so [r.1] in one verse has nothing to do with [r.1] in the next.

(a) — Coloured Markers

Coloured tags connect passages that sit far apart in the book but belong together — a shared moment on the timeline, a repeated device, a term that means something specific each time it appears.

Each marker has its own colour, held steady everywhere it appears, so a marker can be recognised across chapters without reading its note again. Hover or tap one to see what it connects.

A marker is used only for a connection or a split a reader would otherwise miss. Some examples of what they do:

Numbers and letters are both used, and the token itself is only a handle — the note is where the meaning is.

ᵖ — Superscript Letters

These are the smallest marks in the text, and they answer one question: which Greek word is behind this English word?

They exist because of a rule this study holds to — one English word for one Greek word, kept consistent from Revelation 1 to Revelation 22, so that when you see a word repeat in English you can trust it repeats in Greek. Sometimes English simply does not have enough words to go around. Two different Greek words both want “life”; two different Greek words both want “power.” When English is forced to spend a word twice, a superscript says which Greek word this particular one stands for.

There, “lives” carries ᵖ because the Greek word is ψυχή (psychē) — the living self, the person — while the plain word “life” elsewhere in the book renders a different Greek word, ζωή (zōē). Most translations render both as “soul” or “life” and the distinction disappears. Here it does not.

Most superscripts do exactly that job — they stand where English was forced to spend a word twice. Two do a related one. At Revelation 21:12 the names on the gates are inscribedᶜ rather than written, because the Greek there is a different verb from the one behind every other “written” in the book; English does not reuse a word, but the two are close enough to be mistaken for one. And ⁿ marks a Greek verb standing in the present tense inside past narrative — the one mark that speaks to grammar rather than vocabulary.

Hover or tap any superscript for the full explanation.

What None of These Marks Do

They do not tell you what a passage means. Every one of them is an observation about the text — this is what the manuscripts say, this word returns over here, this is the Greek behind that English — set down so you can weigh it yourself.

Where this study does reach a conclusion, it says so, gives its reasons, and names what would count against it. The marks in the verse text are the evidence, kept in the open. What you do with them is yours.