Abstract
Guffey begins his book with an historical overview of the definition of image and its place in apocalyptic interpretation. He believes that we need to “relinquish the reduction of the images to discursive meaning” and embrace the “‘aesthetic power’ of apocalyptic images.” He argues for a pictorial turn similar to Saussure and Wittgenstein’s linguistic turn, however, the linguistic turn was about changing the center of knowledge from reality to language, because, according to that view, there is no pre-linguistic thought. It was an epistemic turn and Guffey believes he is making another, when he claims that images resist reduction to language.
The pictorial turn:
(1) does not indicate the opposition of text and picture. . . . Images may be translatable into linguistic information or into ideas, but their impact seems to extend beyond any such translation. (2) describes a recognition . . . that previous attempts to apprehend and understand images have . . . not exhausted what we feel there is to understand.
He seems to be arguing that images are more unique than other forms of communication. When translating from one media to another something is lost. His example of this loss, in the conversion of the Mona Lisa painting to description, makes sense, but it is equally true that when poetry is translated into painting something is lost as well. The same is true in translation between different languages. Images are not unique. Guffey merely draws out a reality of translation, regardless of the medium before and after, and does not seem to establish his pictorial turn.
The discussion then moves on to define and provide a history of ekphrasis and its prominence in the Greco-Roman education system, along with the likelihood of a Jewish author being educated in that system, before concluding that Revelation is ekphrasis, because it resembles a rhetorical style called a combat myth. He goes on to describe the circumstances in which ekphrasis would be utilized, before providing a brief argument for Revelation fitting those cases. The last three chapters demonstrate how a few images from Revelation fit into the visual culture of Asia Minor.
While Guffey’s desire for readers to look at the images in Revelation as ekphrasis and to appreciate them in their own right, rather than focusing on attempting to find linguistic meaning in them, is an interesting thought experiment, it ends up rendering the images impotent. If Revelation is the work of an apocalyptic rhetorical master and the images are his creation for the purpose of dramatic effect, then John’s claim to be conveying a real experience was a lie, thereby invalidating any message contained therein. Thus, while it is interesting to explore the images in their own right, if one never attempts to discover a linguistic meaning, then the images are of no use in understanding God’s interaction with mankind. If understanding God’s interaction with mankind is irrelevant in interpreting Biblical texts, then the Bible is of no more value than any other anthropological text, whether or not this was an intended implication of this project.