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Why is Revelation’s first-century historical context important to understanding the book? How has your understanding of Revelation changed after learning more about its historical context?
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The historical context is always very important and relevant when dealing with the Biblical data, but even more so with Revelation.
My understanding of Revelation was certainly improved with the historical context.
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Understanding the first-century historical context is important because it is knowing who the book is written too and to understand what the written about.
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It is important to consider the time period when it was written because it helps readers to look at the text in a different way than if it had been written more recently. If we don’t think of it as a literal prophecy that is predicting the future, we can avoid becoming too focused on that aspect of it.
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As an apocalypse John was interested in revealing knowledge to his readers not just telling the future. I understand that I need to look at revelation in the context of a first century letter designed to communicate in a certain way.
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It was written like to help the reader understand their situation of his readers who were living under the shadow of the Roman Empire, and to help them address the problems and the crises they were facing in the first century.