Quotes from Richard Bauckham

The profoundest points of New Testament Christology occur when the inclusion of the exalted Christ in the divine identity entails the inclusion of the crucified Christ in the divine identity, and when the christological pattern of humiliation and exaltation is recognized as revelatory of God, indeed as the definitive revelation of who God is.

We can answer the question "Who is God?" only by attending to who God has revealed himself to be.

the Bible contains the record of a dynamic, developing tradition of thought, and the aim of interpretation should be to let Scripture involve its reader in its own process of thought, so that the reader's own thinking may continue in the direction it sets

This means that "meeting the current toward elimination of names is the counter current of late development, which . . . gave to simplified matter the verisimilitude of proper names.

Always it refers to God's favor and care for those he chooses to be "with." It makes all the difference to their lives.

At the outset of Jesus's ministry God tore apart the curtain of the heavens in order to come down and be present and active in Jesus. At Jesus's death he tore apart the curtain in the temple in order to come out and be present and active through Jesus in the world at large.

the images of Revelation are symbols with evocative power inviting imaginative participation in the book's symbolic world. But they do not work merely by painting verbal pictures. Their precise literary composition is always essential to their meaning. In the first place, the astonishingly meticulous composition of the book creates a complex network of literary cross-references, parallels, contrasts, which inform the meaning of the parts and the whole.

All this – with much more in these chapters – makes up a wonderfully varied but coherent evocation of the biblical and theological meaning of the divine judgment John's prophecy pronounces on Rome; but if we try to read it as prediction of how that judgment will occur we turn it into a confused muddle and miss its real point.

As well as their pervasive allusion to the Old Testament, the images of Revelation also echo mythological images from its contemporary world.

The point is not to predict a sequence of events. The point is to evoke and to explore the meaning of the divine judgment which is impending on the sinful world.

if we try to read it as prediction of how that judgment will occur we turn it into a confused muddle and miss its real point.

The method and conceptuality of the theology of Revelation are relatively different from the rest of the New Testament, but once they are appreciated in their own right, Revelation can be seen to be not only one of the finest literary works in the New Testament, but also one of the greatest theological achievements of early Christianity. Moreover, the literary and theological greatness are not separable.

Perhaps enough has been said to indicate that the imagery of Revelation requires close and appropriate study if modern readers are to grasp much of its theological meaning. Misunderstandings of the nature of the imagery and the way it conveys meaning account for many misinterpretations of Revelation, even by careful and learned modern scholars.

If Jacob is now to find himself apart from his family, if he is to find who he can be in this newly uncertain world in which he is alone, he must also now find God as his own God. Not that he thinks of this for himself. It is not Jacob who turns to God but God who turns to Jacob.

What is remarkable about Jacob's dream is that he sees God not, as one would expect, at the top of the stairway but at the bottom.

Misinterpretations of Revelation often begin by misconceiving the kind of book it is.

Thus Revelation seems to be an apocalyptic prophecy in the form of a circular letter to seven churches in the Roman province of Asia.