The Number of the Beast? The End of Days? Everyone knows about them, but few understand them in their historical context. Set in the ancient Mediterranean, “Revelation” takes as its theme the contents of the world's most famous letter, a lengthy document sent from the Greek island of Patmos by a notorious exile, John the Elder, a Presbyter from Ephesus. Universally believed to be a prophetic insight to our time, Revelation, the final book of the Bible, is historically and more accurately regarded as allegory, reflecting on the political and religious upheavals of the first century CE. Despite hundreds of published theories about the supposed prophecies, no novel has dealt with this subject in the context of the age in which the letter was written. Unique in this aspect, “Revelation” examines not only Christian origins but the metaphorical flux and flow of apocalyptic thought throughout the era in which that mystically symbolic work was written. From Jerusalem to Rome and on Patmos, the early Christian world is revealed.
