The Temple scene in Revelation 7:9-17 : location and temporality

Abstract

This thesis attempts to identify the location and the time of the temple service in Rev 7:15. The text contains a textual problem which causes a difficulty in determining the spatial and the temporal loci of the scene. This study investigates Rev 7:15 by means of a thorough and meticulous text-oriented analysis that employs linguistic, literary, and intratextual procedures. Chapter 1 presents a survey of previous studies on Rev 7. It gives an overview of the methods utilized in studying Rev 7. In addition, it summarizes scholarly views on the time and the space of the temple scene. These two overviews pave the way for the methodology of the current research, that is, the text-oriented approach which combines linguistic (morphology, syntax, semantics, and text-linguistics), literary (style, structure, and thematic arrangement), and intratextual analyses. Chapter 2 contains the linguistic analysis and the literary analysis in the context of Rev 7:15. The linguistic study consists of the grammatical-syntactic and the semantic analyses of key words and phrases in each clause in Rev 7:14d-17. The text-linguistic analysis determines the interclausal relations in the passage. The literary study analyzes the genre of Rev 7, determines and develops various structures, and investigates the distribution of semantic fields in the chapter. Both linguistic and literary analyses complement one another and together provide adequate answers to the formulated questions of the research. Chapter 3 builds on the findings of the linguistic and the literary studies. It explores the overall spatial-temporal coherence between the temple scene in Rev 7 and other similar scenes in the Book of Revelation. To establish intratextuality, the chapter examines lexical, thematic, and structural correspondences between Rev 7 and other texts in Revelation. Then, the spatial and the temporal loci of the parallel texts are independently analyzed and compared with the time and space of the temple scene in Rev 7. Chapter 4 presents the summary and conclusions of the research. It highlights the findings in linguistic, literary, and intratextual studies. The chapter underlines main contributions and outlines the areas for future research. The studied passage, Rev 7:14b-17, is a well-crafted literary piece, which implements a wide array of linguistic features which clarify the temple scene in 7:15. Contrary to the general opinion, the speech describes not one but three scenes. While the tribulation and the eternal consummation take place on earth, the temple service, which is the main scene, occurs in the heavenly realm during the millennium.