Far from spinning a fantasy of what will never be, the book of Revelation depicts an alternate social world in order to shape the community and individual identity of an audience living under imperial rule. To highlight the Apocalypse’s meaning for its original audience, this volume focuses on two interrelated themes pulsing throughout Revelation: rhetoric and politics. It considers rhetorical strategies and tactics in Revelation and demonstrates how its rhetoric fits the situation in Roman Asia Minor and the struggle within the Apocalypse community. It also examines community and cultural conflicts, showing how myth, symbol, and liturgy function as means of resistance in an imperial setting. By offering a fresh window on the lively interplay between imagination and history, between words and worlds, this volume will be indispensable for anyone seeking to understand current scholarly analysis of the book of Revelation.

In an alternate world where the mere presence of American superheroes changed history, the US won the Vietnam War, Nixon is still president, and the cold war is in full effect. WATCHMEN begins as a murder-mystery, but soon unfolds into a planet-altering conspiracy. As the resolution comes to a head, the unlikely group of reunited heroes-Rorschach, Nite Owl, Silk Spectre, Dr. Manhattan and Ozymandias-have to test the limits of their convictions and ask themselves where the true lineis between good and evil. In the mid-eighties, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons created WATCHMEN, changing the course of comics' history and essentially remaking how popular culture perceived the genre. Popularly cited as the point where comics came ofage, WATCHMEN's sophisticated take on superheroes has been universally acclaimed for its psychological depth and realism. WATCHMEN is collected here in deluxe hardcover, with sketches, extra bonus material and a new introduction by series artist Dave Gibbons.

All over the world people look forward to a perfect future, when the forces of good will be finally victorious over the forces of evil. Once this was a radically new way of imagining the destiny of the world and of mankind. How did it originate, and what kind of world-view preceded it? In this engrossing book, the author of the classic work The Pursuit of the Millennium takes us on a journey of exploration, through the world-views of ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, and India, through the innovations of Iranian and Jewish prophets and sages, to the earliest Christian imaginings of heaven on earth. Until around 1500 B.C., it was generally believed that once the world had been set in order by the gods, it was in essence immutable. However, it was always a troubled world. By means of flood and drought, famine and plague, defeat in war, and death itself, demonic forces threatened and impaired it. Various combat myths told how a divine warrior kept the forces of chaos at bay and enabled the world to survive. Sometime between 1500 and 1200 B.C., the Iranian prophet Zoroaster broke from that static yet anxious world-view, reinterpreting the Iranian version of the combat myth. For Zoroaster, the world was moving, through incessant conflict, toward a conflictless state--"cosmos without chaos." The time would come when, in a prodigious battle, the supreme god would utterly defeat the forces of chaos and their human allies and eliminate them forever, and so bring an absolutely good world into being. Cohn reveals how this vision of the future was taken over by certain Jewish groups, notably the Jesus sect, with incalculable consequences. Deeply informed yet highly readable, this magisterial book illumines a major turning-point in the history of human consciousness. It will be mandatory reading for all who appreciated The Pursuit of the Millennium.

In The Conflict Myth and the Biblical Tradition, Debra Scoggins Ballentine analyzes the ancient west Asian theme of divine combat between a victorious warrior deity and his enemy, typically the sea or a sea dragon.

This book explores the relationship between the new context that John provides for his allusions and their context in the Old Testament. For example, did John choose texts to meet the needs of the recipients or did his meditation on the scriptures give him a unique insight into their situation? Ramsay held that local knowledge led to John's choice of texts whereas Beale believed that Revelation is a midrash on Daniel. Both are one-sided, as a study of John's use of Ezekiel shows. John based a number of his incidents on Ezekiel, in much the same order. Nevertheless, there are also major discontinuities, such as his denial of the very thing-the temple-that Ezekiel 40-48 is all about. To do justice to John's use of the Old Testament requires an interactive model, which involves the use of scripture at Qumran and the concept of intertextuality. Moyise shows John to be a master of combining and juxtaposing images.