This book takes an interesting and fresh approach to the interpretation of the book of Revelation.

The Bible Today

Few scholars on the book of Revelation can match Andrew R. Guffey's sensitive appreciation of its visual character. In this beautifully-written monograph, Guffey engages broader scholarship on image and visuality, laying out a robust challenge to exegetes: to focus less on precise sources such as Roman coins or monumental buildings than on analogues from John's cultural milieu and to 'unlearn' long-established patterns of reading the Apocalypse which tend toward decoding John's images at the expense of appreciating their aesthetic power. Instead, Guffey refocuses the crucial question: what is an apocalyptic 'image', and what does it do? This is an important book, which will revolutionize how scholars speak about the 'visuality' of this most visual of biblical texts.

Ian Boxall, The Catholic University of America

Guffey's study offers a rich reading of the visuality of Revelation. In its careful integration of texts and images, history and theory, this book represents an exemplary interdisciplinarity for readers of Revelation and for broader biblical scholarship.

Olivia Stewart Lester, Loyola University Chicago

In a fresh and imaginative exploration of the visions of the prophet John, Andrew R. Guffey explores the book's striking images in the context of the visual and rhetorical culture of the ancient Greco-Roman world, considering for example temple complexes, statues of the gods, and iconography of the emperor Domitian and the goddess Artemis Ephesia. Particularly impressive is the section that considers the striking images of Revelation in relation to a prominent ancient rhetorical device called ekphrasis (painting a vivid picture in words). Guffey argues that John's images, like ekphrasis as described in ancient rhetorical handbooks and utilized by ancient orators, seek to evoke pathos and to encourage action. Most importantly, these images aim to make the divine world and its operations virtually present for John's audience. This book reflects Guffey's long-standing interest in apocalyptic texts, and it benefits from his studies of art history and readings in ancient philosophy, ancient and modern literary theory, visual culture, and image studies, and his keen theological sense.

Judith Kovacs, University of Virginia, emerita

Andrew Guffey offers an important new contribution to the field of Apocalypse studies which will also be of interest to biblical scholars working on ekphrasis. His unveiling of the visual theology of Revelation is engaging, taking readers into the visual and rhetorical world of ancient Asia Minor in order to better see how the word pictures of Revelation's visions resonate in their context. I recommend this to anyone interested in the interplay between the verbal and visual, between text and context, as a sophisticated study of how one ancient text embodies and navigates those spheres.

Robyn Whitaker, Pilgrim Theological College, University of Divinity

The book is well-researched, well-argued, and well-written. It contributes to the study of Revelation, Jewish apocalyptic literature, and material culture from first-century CE Asia Minor.

Religious Studies Review