sidered heretical by many communities, and was almost the last book to be admitted to the New Testament canon.
What Ford argues is that Revelation is a meditation upon the theological significance of the destruction of Jerusalem, an event that changed the course of Jewish, Christian, and indeed world history. The concept revealed in the final chapter is that the earthly Jerusalem had to perish, else the heavenly Jerusalem would not be able to come. This is parallel to JesusÆ saying in Jn 16:7 that if he did not go, the Spirit or Paraklete could not come. Why was it necessary for John to thus apply a theology of the cross to Jerusalem? Consider the religious significance of that city.
Second-Temple Judaism was a complex civilization, and in it there were many ways to be Jewish. There were Pharisees, Sadduccees, Essenes, Zealots, Christians, Hemerobaptists, and Therapeutae, as mentioned by Josephus and Philo of Alexandria, and no doubt many others of whom no records have survived. An unquestioned assumption held by almost all Jewish sects was that when the M
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