This ground-breaking commentary reveals the far-reaching influence of the Apocalypse on society and culture, and the impact it has had on the Christian Church through the ages. Approaching the Apocalypse chapter by chapter, the authors consider its effects, not only on theologians from Origen and Augustine to late twentieth-century theologians of liberation, but also on writers, artists, musicians, political figures, visionaries and others, including Dante, Hildegard of Bingen, Milton, Newton, the English Civil War radicals, Durer, Turner, Blake, Handel and Franz Schmidt. They show that, despite the enormous range of interpretations, those who use the Apocalypse tend either to see it as a kind of sophisticated code to interpret history, or as a parable about the appropriate response to God in political, ecclesiastical, or personal life.

Judith Kovacs is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia. She is the author of a forthcoming book on the church fathers’ interpretation of 1 Corinthians.

Christopher Rowland is Dean Ireland's Professor of Exegesis of Holy Scripture at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Queen's College, Oxford. His previous publications include The Open Heaven (1982), The Book of Revelation (1998), Christian Origins (revised edition, 2002) and Radical Christian Writings: A Reader (Blackwell, 2002).