by Leland Ryken
The Two Types of Literature
THE CONTENT OF LITERATURE AS A WHOLE falls into two large categories. Some literature presents a replica of existing reality; the usual term for such literature is realism. Other literature presents an alternative to known reality. It does not imitate empirical reality but creates or imagines an alternate reality. The standard term for such literature is fantasy.
The Bible’s tendency toward realism is a commonplace. Its staple is historical narrative and biography. Even the fictional parables of Jesus stay close to the way things are in everyday reality.
Visionary Literature Defined
But the other type of literature is also well-represented, chiefly in the related genres of prophecy and apocalypse. I have decided to discuss this amorphous body of literature under the single heading of visionary literature. Visionary literature pictures settings, characters, and events that differ from ordinary reality. This is not to say that the things described in visionary literature did not happen in past history or will not happen in future history. But it does mean that the things as pictured by the writer at the time of writing exist in the imagination, not in empirical reality.
Prophecy and Apocalypse Are Partly Visionary
In discussing prophecy and apocalypse together I do not mean to imply that these biblical forms do not have distinguishing traits that make them different from each other. Nor am I saying that they are wholly visionary. Prophecy, especially, contains much that is straightforward preaching and prediction, and many of its judgments can best be approached under the literary category of satire.
Still, the visionary element is strong in both genres, and my purpose is to delineate the rhetoric and literary forms that will allow a reader to make literary sense of these writings. They are among the most literary parts of the Bible but are so different from familiar types of literature that they often get bypassed in literary discussions. By discussing them under this visionary aspect, I am obviously omitting much that could be said about both genres. I should also note that the visionary element in such literature should by no means be regarded as necessarily futuristic in orientation.
The Element of Otherness
I have already hinted at the first thing we should notice about visionary literature: the element of otherness. Visionary literature transforms the known world or the present state of things into a situation that at the time of writing is as yet only imagined. In one way or another, visionary literature takes us to a strange world where ordinary rules of reality no longer prevail.
Reversal and Transformation as Visionary Themes
The simplest form of such transformation is a futuristic picture of the changed fortunes of a person or group or nation. In the prophetic oracle of judgment, for example, the currently powerful individual or group is pictured as defeated, contrary to all that is apparent at the time of writing:
You women who are so complacent,
rise up and listen to me;
you daughters who feel secure,
hear what I have to say!
In little more than a year
you who feel secure will tremble;
the grape harvest will fail,
and the harvest of fruit will not come. . . .
The fortress will be abandoned,
the noisy city deserted;
citadel and watchtower will become a
wasteland forever,
the delight of donkeys, a pasture for flocks
(Isa. 32:9-10, 14).
In the oracle of redemption, this pattern is reversed. Instead of a coming woe more terrible than anything that presently exists, those to whom the oracle is addressed will receive a blessing that is the opposite of anything they currently experience:
“The days are coming,’’ declares the LORD,
“when the reaper will be overtaken by the
plowman
and the planter by the one treading grapes.
New wine will drip from the mountains
and flow from all the hills’’
(Amos 9:13).
The motifs of transformation and reversal are prominent in visionary literature, and they lead to this principle of interpretation: in visionary literature, be ready for the reversal of ordinary reality.
Transcendental Realms as a Visionary Theme
The otherness of visionary writing is often more radical than the temporal reversals and changing fortunes just noted. A leading element of visionary literature is the portrayal of a transcendental or supernatural world. In the Bible this other world is usually heaven, but there are also visions of hell. Visions of either type do not primarily take the reader forward in time but rather beyond the visible spatial world. One thinks at once of such passages as Isaiah’s vision of God sitting on his heavenly throne (6:1-5), or Ezekiel’s vision of the divine chariot (Ezek. 1), or scenes of heavenly worship in the Book of Revelation (e.g., ch. 4), or the description of the New Jerusalem in the last two chapters of Revelation. The element of transcendence is pervasive in visionary literature, and it, too, can be formulated as a principle: when reading visionary literature, be prepared to use your imagination to picture a world that transcends earthly reality. Visionary literature assaults a purely mundane mindset; in fact, this is one of its main purposes.
The Cosmic Scope of Visionary Literature
The strangeness in visionary literature extends to both scenes and actors. The scene is cosmic, not localized. In Old Testament prophecy it extends to whole nations. In apocalyptic works it encompasses the entire earth and reaches beyond it to heaven and hell. In the Book of Revelation, for example, we move in a regular rhythm between heaven and earth, and the scenes set on earth involve the entire planet. The action, moreover, eventually reaches out to include the whole human race throughout all of history. Old Testament prophecy is similar; Richard Moulton writes:
These prophetic dramas are such as no theatre could compass. For their state they need all space; and the time of their action extends to the end of all things. The speakers include God and the Celestial Hosts; Israel appears, Israel Suffering and Israel Repentant; Sinners in Zion, the Godly in Zion; the Saved and the Doomed, the East and West, answer one another.1
Supernatural Agents and Strange Creatures
Filling this cosmic stage are actors that do not fit ordinary expectations. God and angels and glorified saints in heaven seem appropriate enough in the heavenly scenes, and they are leading actors in the visionary literature of the Bible. But other creatures are more startling to earthly eyes: a great red dragon (Rev. 12:3-4), “living creatures” with “six wings and. . .covered with eyes all around” (Rev. 4:8), a warrior riding a red horse (Rev. 6:4), two flying women with wings like those of a stork (Zech. 5:9), or a beast that “was like a lion, and it had the wings of an eagle,” which had its wings plucked off and then stood “on two feet like a man” (Dan. 7:4).
Inanimate Forces as Actors
Such mingling of the familiar and unfamiliar, a hallmark of visionary literature, takes an even stranger form when inanimate objects and forces of nature suddenly become actors, as in this vision of imminent military invasion in Isaiah 13:10:
The stars of heaven and their constellations
will not show their light.
The rising sun will be darkened
and the moon will not give its light.
Such breaking down of ordinary distinctions between the human and the natural realms is equally pervasive in the Book of Revelation:
The woman was given the wings of a great eagle, so that she might fly to the place prepared for her in the desert. . . .Then from his mouth the serpent spewed forth water like a river, to overtake the woman and sweep her away with the torrent. But the earth helped the woman by opening its mouth and swallowing the river that the dragon had spewed out of his mouth (Rev. 12:14-16). .
Anything Can Happen
In the strange and frequently surrealistic world of visionary literature, virtually any aspect of creation can beco
me a participant in the ongoing drama of God’s judgments and redemption. It is a world where a river can overflow a nation (Isa. 8:5—8), where a branch can build a temple (Zech. 6:12) and a ram’s horn can grow to the sky and knock stars to the ground (Dan. 8:9-10). Sea, clouds, earthquake, storm, whirlwind, and assorted animals are constant actors in visionary literature. This is obviously a type of fantasy literature, not because the events symbolically portrayed are unreal or untrue, but because the form in which they are pictured as happening is purely imaginary.
The visionary strangeness of such writing leads to a related rule for reading it: visionary literature is a form of fantasy literature in which readers must be willing to exercise their imaginations in picturing unfamiliar scenes and agents. It requires what the poet Coleridge called “the willing suspension of disbelief.” We know that people do not fly through the air on wings, but when reading such visions we suspend our disbelief and enter the realm of make-believe in order to appropriate the truth it conveys about reality. The best introduction to such visionary literature in the Bible is other fantasy literature, such as the Narnia stories of C. S. Lewis.
Visionary Literature as a Subversive Form
What is the point of such writing? Why would a biblical writer resort to fantasy instead of staying with realism? Visionary literature, with its arresting strangeness, breaks through our normal way of thinking and shocks us into seeing that things are not as they appear. Visionary writing attacks our ingrained patterns of deep-level thought in an effort to convince us of such things as that the world will not always continue as it now is, that there is something drastically wrong with the status quo, or that reality cannot be confined to the physical world that we perceive with our senses. Visionary literature is not cozy fireside reading. It gives us the shock treatment.
Kaleidoscopic Structure
The element of the unexpected extends even to the structure of visionary literature. I will call it a kaleidoscopic structure. It consists of brief units, always shifting and never in focus for very long. Its effects are similar to those of some modern films. The individual units not only keep shifting, but they consist of a range of diverse material, including visual descriptions, speeches that the visionary hears and records, dialogues, monologues, brief snatches of narrative, direct discourses by the writer to an audience, letters, prayers, hymns, parables. Visionary elements, moreover, may be mingled with realistic scenes and events.
This disjointed method of proceeding places tremendous demands on the reader and is the thing that makes such literature initially resistant to a literary approach. The antidote to this frustration is a basic principle of interpretation: instead of looking for the smooth flow of narrative, be prepared for a disjointed series of diverse, self-contained units.
Dream Structure
Dream, and not narrative, is the model that visionary literature in the Bible follows. Of what do dreams consist? Momentary pictures, fleeting impressions, characters and scenes that play their brief part and then drop out of sight, abrupt jumps from one action to another. This is exactly what we find in visionary literature.
Pageant Structure
Sometimes, it is true, the units form a more discernible sequence than this, as in the visions of the four horsemen of Revelation (6:1-8). The model we should have in mind for such passages is the pageant—a succession of visual images that suggest in symbolic fashion an event or situation. In no case, however, does visionary literature in the Bible follow the typical structure of a story.
Narrative Elements
Even though visionary literature is not structured as a story, some of the standard narrative questions are exactly the right ones to ask. Individual units normally consist of the usual narrative elements of scene, agent, action, and outcome. The corresponding questions to ask of individual passages are:
Where does the action occur?
Who are the actors?
What do they do?
What is the result?
Not just the individual units but usually the books as a whole will yield some type of unity and organization if we ask these narrative questions:
What overall plot conflicts govern the work?
Who are the main actors in the work?
What changes occur as the book unfolds?
What final resolution is reached in regard to the overriding conflicts?
Symbolism as the Basic Mode
Visionary literature not only has story-like qualities; it makes even more use of the resources of poetry. And above all, visionary literature uses the technique of symbolism. In fact, it is symbolic through and through, a point that cannot be overstated. To insist that the Old Testament prophetic books and the Book of Revelation use symbolism as their basic mode is not to deny that they describe supernatural and historical events that really happen. The crucial question, however, is how the writers go about describing history.
The Reality of What Is Portrayed
It can be easily documented by ordinary historical means that the events described in visionary literature are historical in nature. For example, Israel and Judah were carried into captivity (as predicted in Old Testament prophecy), and the Roman Empire did fall (as predicted in Revelation). The literary question is, How are these historical realities portrayed in visionary literature? The answer usually is, By means of symbolism.
Symbolism in Old Testament Prophecy
Consider some typical specimens. The youthful Joseph dreamed that the sun, moon, and eleven stars bowed down to him. This symbolic picture was fulfilled later in his life, but the fulfillment was not literal. Isaiah described a river that overflowed the land of Judah. This symbolic picture was fulfilled historically (but not literally) when Assyria invaded and conquered Judah. The dream, interpreted by Daniel, of a statue composed of various minerals (Dan. 2:31–45) pictured historical realities, but it is not a literal description of those realities.
Symbolism in the Book of Revelation
The same type of symbolism prevails in the Book of Revelation. It is already present in the letters to the seven churches, the most realistic part of the whole book. We read, for example, about people “who have not soiled their clothes” (3:4) and who are destined to become “a pillar in the temple of my God” (3:12). Surely no one will interpret such statements literally. When the Christians at Laodicea are said to be lukewarm (3:16), we are obviously not talking about body temperature, and when they are described as being “poor, blind, and naked” (3:17) it is not a literal picture of their physical state but a symbolic picture of their spiritual condition. Nor does Christ literally stand at a physical door and knock (3:20). If there is this much symbolism already in the letters to the churches, how much more can we not expect in the futuristic sections of Revelation?
The action that unfolds in the opening verses of Revelation 12 is also a good index of the symbolic mode of the book. This passage narrates how a woman of cosmic dimensions (symbolic of Old Testament Israel) gives birth to a child “who will rule all the nations” (Christ), and it tells of the futile attempt of a great red dragon (Satan) to destroy the child, who is caught up into heaven. The most plausible interpretation of the passage is that it is a symbolic account of the incarnation and ascension of Jesus as narrated in the Gospels.
The corresponding question we need to ask of visionary literature in the Bible is a further principle of interpretation: of what historical event or theological reality or event in salvation history does this passage seem to be a symbolic version?
An example of a theological reality in symbolic form would be God’s forgiveness of sins as seen in Zechariah’s vision of the replacement of the high priest’s filthy garments with clean ones (Zech. 3:3–5). Similarly, the sealing of believers in Revelation (7:2–3) is a symbolic picture of redemption. By “events in salvation history” I mean such events as the moral degeneration of the end times and the final judgment that are repeatedly pictured in the Book of Revelation.
Visionary Literature Is Sy
mbolic Rather Than Pictorial
We need to make a distinction between symbolic and pictorial effects. Visionary literature in the Bible is heavily symbolic but rarely pictorial. Many of the scenes in Revelation become grotesque the moment we visualize them as pictures. The portrait of Christ in Revelation 1:12-16, replete with a hand holding seven stars and a mouth with a sword issuing from it, is a series of symbols representing various aspects of Christ’s character, not a composite picture of him. Someone has expressed the distinction thus:
Symbolic writing. . .does not paint pictures. It is not pictographic but ideographic. . . .The skull and crossbones on the bottle of medicine is a symbol of poison, not a picture. . . .The fish, the lamb, and the lion are all symbols of Christ, but never to be taken as pictures of him. In other words, the symbol is a code word and does not paint a picture.2
Interpreting the Symbols
How can we know what a given symbol means? It is relatively easy. In Old Testament prophecy the immediate context usually provides an interpretive framework for a given symbol or scene. Similarly, whenever a symbolic vision has been fulfilled in subsequent history, we can use that fulfillment to interpret the prophecy in which it was portrayed. This includes New Testament fulfillments of Old Testament prophetic and messianic visions.
Symbols Are a Universal Language, Easily Grasped