This study proposes that Revelation 19:11-21 and 20:1-6 are cohesively linked
with each other. The major implication for this is that the millennial binding of Satan
(20:1-3) and the millennial vindication of the saints (20:4-6) are consequent effects of
Christ’s victory at the eschatological battle (19:11-21). Christ’s Parousia then is the
occasion for the punishment of the millennial binding of Satan and the reward of the
coterminous millennial reign of the saints. Scholars who disconnect 20:1-6 from 19:11—
21 recapitulate the millennial binding of Satan and the vindication of the saints as the
interadvent period. Consequently, this non-sequential interpretation breaks John's
unified, cohesive message by creating a new semantic environment at 20:1. The
millennial contextual setting, however, does not begin at the chapter break, where many
interpreters inevitably place it. Rather than disrupting the cohesion by building a
semantic wall between 19:11-21 and 20:1-6, John chooses linguistic resources that
signal a semantic thread of continuity. This study models Halliday and Hasan's Systemic
Functional Linguistics (SFL) theory of cohesion, a robust linguistic theoretical
framework for discourse analysis. The analysis focuses on two types of textual meanings
within SFL. The first type, adapted in this study for Hellenistic Greek, is Ruqaiya Hasan’s Cohesive Harmony Analysis (CHA), a tool that identifies semantic relations
such as cohesive devices as ties, cohesive chains, and chain interactions. This model
quantifiably measures the degree of a reader’s perception of coherence in Rev 19:11—
20:6. The second type oftextual meaning devoted to the latter half ofthe study is the
discourse analytical tool ofInformation Flow (IF). It is an exegetical tool that analyzes a
further dimension of cohesion concerned with thematization and prominence, locating
lexicogrammatical resources in the ranks of clause, sentence, paragraph, section, and the
broader co-text of the discourse, in this case, the book of Revelation. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:mcmaster.ca/oai:macsphere.mcmaster.ca:11375/29163 |
| Date | January 2019 |
| Creators | Kurschner, Alan E. |
| Contributors | Porter, Stanley E., Christian Theology |
| Source Sets | McMaster University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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