Reading Revelation After Supersessionism

An Apocalyptic Journey of Socially Identifying John’s Multi-Ethnic Ekklēsiai with the Ekklēsia of Israel

Ralph J. Korner

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9781725274655
  9781725274662
• eBook ISBN:
  9781725274679
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Criticism & Interpretation

In this volume, Ralph Korner argues that John's extensive social identification with Judaism(s), Jewishness, and Jewish institutions does not reflect a literary program of replacing Israel with the ekkl?siai ("churches"/"assemblies"), that is the Jewish and non-Jewish followers of Jesus as Israel's Messiah. Rather, John is emplacing his Christ-followers further within Israel, without thereby superseding Israel as a national identity for ethnic Jews who do not follow Jesus as the Christos. There are three primary roads travelled in this investigative journey. First, Korner explores ways in which a Jewish heritage is intrinsic to the literary structure, genre, eschatology, symbolism, and theological motifs of the Apocalypse. Second, he challenges the linear chronology of (generally) supersessionist dispensational readings of Revelation's visionary content by arguing for a reiterative/repetitive structure based on certain literary devices that also provide structure for visions within Jewish apocalypses and Hebrew prophecies. Third, he incorporates the most recent research on ekkl?sia usage, especially in Asia Minor, to assess how John's ekkl?sia associations might have been (non-supersessionally) perceived, especially by Jews in Roman Asia.