Robin M. Jensen's Review of Revelation's New Jerusalem in Late Antiquity (Mohr Siebeck 2024)


Just saw that Robin M. Jensen, the well known scholar of Early Christianity teaching at Notre Dame (USA) has written a thorough and nicely complementary review about the volume that Anthony Dupont, Johan Leemans, and I edited a couple years ago. Most of it was done while I had the FWO fellowship, but much of the editing was done with FWO funding, and so deserves mention on this DFG project blog as well. It appears in in the Review of Biblical Literature, 2/2026 issue.

Jensen writes...

This edited collection of fifteen essays is an excellent contribution to Mohr Siebeck’s scholarly studies on the history of biblical exegesis. This volume, focused on the book of Revelation, looks specifically at the ways the image of the New Jerusalem was interpreted through various eras, places, and media. The range of approaches is impressively broad and interdisciplinary, combining both textual and material evidence. It includes close literary studies of ancient exegetical texts, attention to lived religious practices (liturgy and pilgrimage), parallels in non-Christian literature, and the ways the image of the new Jerusalem is depicted in architecture and visual art....  

...In sum, this volume is a rich addition to studies of the book of Revelation, its interpretation in textual commentaries and artworks (both literary and visual) from the second century through the early Middle Ages, and from a wide diversity of authors and languages. The careful textual studies are balanced with consideration of liturgical practices and a much appreciated and impressive inclusion of visual evidence. The range of sources is matched by the depth of the discussion and the extensive citations of key secondary scholarship. Future research on this subject will be indebted to the authors and editors. 

 

Lovely to know that Jensen knows my work (apparently she's kept track of my articles as well...) and recognized it as deserving of being spotlighted in RBL. 

Anyway, read the whole review here. 

(And, of course, you can buy the book here.)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Bringing God's Kingdom to Earth: Activism, Assassination, or Another Way Entirely?

Image
My research into the New Jerusalem has proven constantly relevant throughout my research. Surprisingly often, the news cycle reminds me of aspects of the reception of Revelation's holy city that I'm looking into for this current DFG project. This has been happening a lot recently. (In fact, it's part of why I wanted to study this topic in the first place.) Tragically this time, it happened again last week with what seems to be the at-least-partly politically motivated assassination of Charlie Kirk. Folks back home in America are talking more and more about politics and faith and how they may, ought, may not, or ought not come together, especially in light of the growing number of recent politically motivated assassinations or attempted assassinations in the USA. I'm thinking of, in the last year or so, the targeting of Charlie Kirk, Rep. Melissa Hortman (D-MN), and Pres. Donald Trump. I'm also thinking of the credible threats of hanging against Vice Pres. Mike Pence...
Read more

Next book, first chapter written!

Image
As much as I enjoy having written, I don't always enjoy the writing itself.  Like Flannery O'Connor famously said, writing well is "like giving birth to a piano, sideways." I'm the sort of writer that needs incentives to put words on paper. So when an email came into my inbox announcing two seminars--one the Uni Regensburg Post-Graduate Theological Seminar this past week, and another as part of a Göttingen-Regensburg Theological Seminar scheduled for late March--I knew it was time to commit to presenting two chapters--the first two I'll write!  Because promising to colleagues that I'll present on two chapters means that I'll have to actually write those two chapters in order to present them. And that's progress.  The Regensburg seminar happened this past Friday. Via Zoom, it turns out, because of inclement weather--Glatteis, which also cancelled our daughter's school that day.  The paper was called "'The World’s Most Miraculous Place’:...
Read more

The Point of it All: New Jerusalem and Teleology

Image
Stream of consciousness, un-proofread update. Here we go... I've been writing up a storm in the last half year. Mainly papers for conferences in Chicago (NAPS), Leuven, Sophia (EABS), and other things I'm probably forgetting about, and then polished and expanded versions for publishing in various venues. Ending versus Meaning  One of the main ideas I've been trying to develop circles around my attempt to make sense of a certain fact that is becoming more and more apparent to me as my research proceeds.  And that's this: The New Jerusalem, both in John's thinking when he writes Revelation, and in the late antique reception of it, is a condensed symbol that stands not principally for the end of everything but of the point of everything--a symbol that somehow  makes sense of everything.   Yes, early Christian authors and intellectuals were concerned about what some modern Christians like to talk about as "the end times." But, unlike many modern Christians...
Read more