reading log: thompson's revelation

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@@ -6,6 +6,45 @@ author: Joe Carstairs
 
 ## 2026-04-21
 
+### @{thompson-revelation}
+
+I was particularly struck by three big ideas, all of which I could understand a
+great deal better:
+
+- Revelation nests local contexts inside bigger contexts, finally the widest
+  possible context: cosmos. This is the role of mythological language. Although
+  the beast and Rome e.g. are connected by mythological language, the imagery cannot be reduced to mere
+  correspondence; Asian social life is found in the relationship between images
+  within, not outside, the world of the vision.
+- John's vision is not characterised by deep metaphysical dualism, conflict or
+  crisis, but rather 'moves from unbroken wholeness to unbroken wholeness.'
+- There is no evidence for a crisis facing John's audience imposed on Christians
+  from without, except perhaps a cognitive crisis induced because they are a
+  'cognitive minority,' that is, a community centred around 'deviant knowledge.'
+  Rather than responding to an obvious crisis, John interprets a situation which
+  is only a crisis from his point of view. The conflict he sees is
+  intra-Christian, not Christian-Roman.
+
+Other ideas:
+
+- Traditionally, scholars assumed that Revelation addressed a current crisis,
+  viz Domitianic persecution. But there is no evidence for a Domitianic
+  persecution. Schmidtals: apocalyptic imagination completely unrelated to
+  external crisis. Compromise: apocalypse reacts to a perceived crisis only
+  visible as a crisis from the apocalyptic point of view.
+- Apocalypses expand our vision of the world to include transcendent realities,
+  expanding in both temporal and spatial dimensions
+- John uses forms from the apocalyptic genre, viz, crisis, exhortations to
+  remain faithful, comfort, hope, even though there is no apparent crisis, no
+  need for faith/comfort/hope, except from his apocalyptic point of view
+- Revealed knowledge is a challenge to public knowledge, embedded in temples,
+  courts, priests, judges, governors, libraries, architecture, etc, thus
+  controlled by the empire or 'cognitive majority'
+- Traditionally, readers of all kinds have assumed that the end-times are the
+  central concern of apocalyptic literature, but Thompson centres it on the
+  concept of 'revealed literature', meeting the challenge from the cognitive
+  majority
+
 ### @{kvandal-2025}
 
 Big idea: pessimistic climate activists who believe in unavoidable mass