This reading of Revelation views the text as John's response to the problem of social accommodation in the churches of Asia Minor. Knight works from the hypothesis, now increasingly argued in scholarly circles, that there was no persecution of the Christians by the emperor Domitian at the end of the first century CE, and he explains the references to martyrdom in the Apocalypse as mainly symbolic. Knight argues that John is creating awareness of a crisis in order to call his readers to a stricter pattern of behaviour than Paul had allowed when writing to the Corinthians. This readable...

The Ascension of Isaiah is an important but neglected apocalypse from the early second century CE. Its author wrote at a time when charismatic prophecy was falling into decline and when the experience of oppression from the Roman government was causing deep problems for pious Christians. He responded by providing assurance about the promised parousia and also by offering theoretical attempt to explain how the heavenly Christ had defeated the cosmic powers who inspired hatred of the Christians. The Ascension of Isaiah gives a badly-needed insight into the state of Syrian Christianity just...

This is the most thorough investigation yet published on the early Christian apocalypse called the 'Ascension of Isaiah'. Knight examines all the critical issues in the study of this document, including matters of date, provenance and purpose. Particular attention is paid to the book's concepts of christology (with a view both to that christology's Jewish mediatorial background and to its relationship with wider Christianity) and millenarianism (with a view to the social setting of the writer and his readers). Questions concerning the author as haggadist and exegete are also addressed.