The Woven Rings of Revelation: Intro

The book of Revelation is like a palindrome, a word that spells the same forwards and backwards. You could say that the entire book folds back on itself. In the lingo of literary structure, it's a chiasmus (or chiasm, which takes its name from the Greek letter Chi that is shaped like an X). The "crossing over" feature appears in how the first unit of structure in the book matches the last. The second matches the second from the last, and so on until we get to the middle where the structure pivots like at the crossing point of the letter X.

I can express this in another way. What is written in Revelation 1:1 through 12:9 is repeated in 12:10 through 22:21 in reverse order. The text hinges between verses 9 and 10 of chapter 12.

You can picture this kind of structuring of the text like concentric rings, like what appears when a pebble is tossed into a pond. When I refer to the "woven rings", I'm describing the chiastic structure with a refined view to how every word of the text is accounted for, where nothing is ignored. This more comprehensive approach yields an enhanced version that showcases the Author's skillful handiwork and elegant design and more vividly illustrates His nuanced nesting and layering patterns in the weave of the fabric of holy scripture.

Given the scope of the larger body of work, the content of each presentation has been limited by bundling the rings as follows:

The Woven Rings of Revelation: The Inner Six
The Woven Rings of Revelation: Rings 7 through 10

Generated with the Chiasmatron 2000

For more explanation, see: About These Thematic Patterns

For more examples, see: Interactive Content