Abstract
Jon Morales conducts a narrative analysis of the nations in Revelation to argue that attention should not focus as much on their destiny as on their dilemma, not so much on outcome as on process. Attention to process highlights rhetorical concerns: will the nations recognize the danger and repent? His study pursues four key questions: “What is John's story of the nations? How does he tell it? What is his message to the nations? And what is his message to the church about the nations?” (p. 24).
Chapter one discusses and critiques five approaches in the state of research (the church becomes the nations, thoroughgoing universalism, large-scale conversion, the text is inconsistent, and the language is rhetorical) and presents his own approach which seems to be an extension of the rhetorical approach. Morales argues that in the new creation the church and the nations are the same but arrive along different literary tracks in order to show that the nations belong to God and Christ is their shepherd (pp. 15, 24).
Chapter two discusses methodological issues involved in a narrative analysis and argues that Revelation can be approached as a narrative text and the nations can be treated as a narrative character. Chapters three through six discuss each reference to the “nations” in Revelation. An extensive word-study of the “shepherding” motif convincingly argues, against most translations, that poimanei in Revelation 2:26 should be translated as “shepherd” instead of “destroy” or “rule” (pp. 46–69). The narrative of Revelation makes it clear that the nations are not the enemy: “the burden of the narration in Revelation 12–19 has lain with unmasking the oppressive forces that deceive the nations, not with the nations’ destruction” (p. 116). Morales recognizes that “[t]he narrative of the nations reveals both a sympathetic view toward the nations and a substantive critique” (p. 143). While some interpreters view this as inconsistency or paradox, Morales highlights the rhetorical function of this narrative development to call gentile hearers (both Christian and non-Christian) to reject the beast and identify with the lamb. The story of the nations can be summarized as follows: “(1) The death of Christ is for the nations, to purchase from them an innumerable multitude. The church has authority to shepherd them, and John and the church are commissioned to prophesy concerning them. (2) But the nations are hostile to God's people and rage against them. (3) Yet, greater than their conflict with God's people is the cosmic conflict in which the nations find themselves against the dragon and his allies. But the nations are not alone. God and his agents lay a claim on the nations as those who belong to God. (4) As the destruction of the evil forces approaches …, their attempts to deceive the nations intensify, and the nations aligned with the devil suffer destruction…. (5) but in the vision of God's new world, the nations walk by the light of God's city” (pp. 141–142).
Chapter seven summarizes and concludes the volume. Morales cogently argues that “while the final resolution of conflict in Revelation is binary—judgment or salvation—the present-day struggle, for hearers in any age, is characterized by process. Each person's allegiance is in the process of being formed, not ever quite completed until the end” (p. 161; cf. p. 4). The monograph closes with a bibliography and indexes.
This is a well-researched and argued monograph but there are several weaknesses. First, focusing on the nations as a narrative character seems to downplay how they are related to John's other terms for humanity (tribes, peoples, crowds, languages) and the way in which John's seven references to a list of four groups function to indicate universality (pp. 71–72). This would suggest that the nations are synonymous with other terms (even the inhabitants of the earth in some contexts). Morales recognizes that characters in Revelation appear by various names and terms (p. 28), but this insight is not applied to “nations” and the narrative analysis is unhelpfully focused exclusively on this lexical term.
Second, Morales is aware that John's target audience is the seven churches but insists on speaking of John's message to the nations (including unbelieving Gentiles). He provides a nuanced discussion of the possibility that some unbelievers could get access to the book (pp. 4, 42) but moves without sufficient warrant from this possibility to a conviction that John wrote with non-believers as part of his intended audience (pp. 1, 156–157).
Third, he shifts the future orientation of several statements regarding Jesus’ (pp. 97, 108) and the overcomer's role as shepherd of the nations to the present and interprets the promise to the one who overcomes as a call to shepherd the nations in the present (pp. 67, 102, 138, 142, 159; see his defense of this on pp. 151–153).
Despite these concerns, Morales provides strong and cogent support for the rhetorical function of John's paradoxical presentation of the nations. This book will prove valuable to students and researchers focused on Revelation and/or narrative criticism.