Book of Revelation
 "Saint John the Evangelist on Patmos", by Hieronymus Bosch | |
| Original Title: | ἀποκάλυψις |
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| Central Theme: | |
| Synopsis: | |
| Genre(s): | Apocalyptic prophecy |
| Series: | The Bible |
| Preceded by: | Jude |
| First published: | c. 95 |
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"Blessed is the one who reads the words of this prophecy... because the time is near." |
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The last book of The Bible and the New Testament. It depicts the vision of a man named John (probably not the same John who wrote the Gospel of John) who is imprisoned on the island of Patmos. Revelation is still considered the most confusing and controversial book of the Bible.
Tropes used in Book of Revelation include:
- Anti Christ: Not. There is no mention of the Antichrist. There are the First Beast and the Second Beast, but no Antichrist.
- Most reasons they are associated with this book anyway is due to prior Biblical passages referring to a man of perdition who will deceive the nations who matches up with the description of the Beast as mentioned in Revelation. Earlier Old and New Testament Books discussing this are often compared to the contents of Revelation and hence those earlier books are viewed as connected by way of doing a Call Forward.
- Call Back: Many of the symbols have been already used by other prophets, especially Daniel.
- Demon Lords and Archdevils: Quite a lot of these.
- Distant Finale
- Drugs Are Bad: While near universally translated as "sorceries" and "sorcerers", some will point to the original Greek words of "pharmakōn" and "pharmakois" as indication their mention refers to drug users (especially of hallucinogenics) rather than spellcasters.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: Mankind's going to go through some crap before they can live Happily Ever After.
- Eldritch Abomination: Both on the forces of good and evil.
- Endless Daytime: It's mentioned that in heaven there is no night, since God is light.
- The End of the World as We Know It: Yep. We'll get a new one, though.
- Extra Eyes: Lots of the spiritual beings have more than the usual number of eyes, including four creatures who are completely covered in them.
- Gainax Ending
- Harsher in Hindsight: The book features a toxic meteorite named Wormwood, and as conspiracy nuts never tire of reminding us, Chernobyl is a type of Wormwood (rtemisia vulgaris).
- Heaven: Where much of the action takes place, obviously.
- Horsemen of the Apocalypse
- Anti Christ: The first horseman, possibly.
- The Archer: The first horseman has a bow.
- Big Freaking Sword: The second horseman has one
- Breakout Characters: They show up in Works enough to get their own page.
- Color Coded for Your Convenience: White (plague), Red (war), Black (famine) and Pale (death).
- Common Knowledge: In canon, the white horseman is actually Conquest, but popular culture knows him as Pestilence. Perhaps because Conquest's schtick is already kind of covered by War.
- Dark Is Not Evil: Possibly the last two, depending on your interpretation (as they were sent by Yahweh).
- Four Is Death: Literally.
- Grim Reaper: The fourth horseman.
- Hellish Horses
- Light Is Not Good/Light Is Good: The first horseman, depending on who you think he is and whether you see the horsemen as evil or not.
- Man in White: The one on the white horse.
- Names to Run Away From Really Fast: "His name was Death and Hell followed behind him."
- Person of Mass Destruction: Bad stuff happens when the fourth horseman comes around.
- Sickly Green Glow: Death's pale horse is actually a pale yellow-green horse. Presumably because it's rotting.
- White Stallion: The rider on the white horse is the first one mentioned, but whether he is the leader or not is not said.
- It Gets Worse: Breaking the last seal signals the angels to blow trumpets that herald disasters. The last trumpet signals the angels to pour seven bowls of God's wrath on the world. And the bad stuff done by Satan have yet to come.
- Mad Oracle: The author, possibly.
- Mind Screw
- Mix and Match Critter
- Name's the Same/One Steve Limit: It's never specified whether this was the same John the Apostle, John Mark, or John the Evangelist, or some other unknown John. He definitely isn't John the Baptizer. Probably. Most Bible scholars and commentators are of the view that John the Revelator (as this one is sometimes called) and John the disciple of Jesus are the same person.
- Numerological Motif: Boy, howdy!
- One World Order: What the Beast will set up on earth before Jesus defeats him (at least according to some interpretations).
- Religious Horror: The Ur Example of a lot of creepy religious tropes--Satan figures prominently, among other nasty demonic beings, and lots of people die.
- Rule of Seven: All over the place. The book begins with letters to seven churches, then we see seven stars, seven seals, seven trumpets, seven plagues, a beast with seven heads...
- Second Coming: Jesus comes back at the end to settle things once and for all.
- Take That: Interpreters often tend to identify the villains of the story with their own preferred religious or political targets. For instance, during the Protestant Reformation the "whore of Babylon" was often identified with the Catholic church. Then during the Cold War, the various Beasts were widely interpreted as Soviet states. And so on, and so on...
- One popular secularist interpretation of the book is that it was originally written as a political satire about the Roman Empire.
- The Stars Are Going Out: A third of them go out at once, to start with. Then It Gets Worse.
- Signs of the End Times: One of the original Trope Makers.
- Villain with Good Publicity
- Watch the World Die: The saints and angels in heaven (and John himself) get front-row seats for the Apocalypse.
- A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing: The lamb with the tongue of a dragon is probably meant to represent this.