American Christians assume that what prophecy does is predict specific events to happen. And of course that’s the way the Book of Revelation has been read. They read it, as you say, as predicting this means this, or the beast is this. But prophesy, as we know, is a highly interpretative art, and the way this book lives and has lived for two thousand years is by interpretation and reinterpretation.
Wil Gafney
The Rev. Wil(da) Gafney, Ph.D. is the Associate Professor of Hebrew and Old Testament at the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia. She is the author of Daughters of Miriam: Women Prophets in Ancient Israel and coeditor of The Peoples’ Bible and The Peoples’ Companion to the Bible. She is an Episcopal Priest and a member of both the historic African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas and Dorshei Derekh Reconstructionist Minyan, both in Philadelphia.
