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Unholy Allegiances: Heeding Revelation's Warning
Amid the fervor of popular apocalyptic "end-time" speculation, David deSilva invites readers to encounter Revelation as a word written to seven real congregations living under the shadow of the Roman empire. He shows how John "lifts the veil" from the public story by which Rome promotes the legitimacy and benefits of its rule, calling his readers to withdraw from participating in the systems that perpetuate exploitation, violent suppression of the truth, and lies about the nature of human empire. John is seen to invite his seven congregations, and, through them, us, to discover a radical obedience to the One true God and that God's vision for authentic and life-giving human community.
Chapter 1. Debunking Popular Myths about Revelation
Chapter 2. Divine Emperor, Eternal The Public Story About Roman Imperialism
Chapter 3. The True Center and the Unholy John's Biblical Critique of the Public Story
Chapter 4. Looking at the Immediate in Light of the The Seven Oracles to the Churches of Asia
Chapter 5. John's Proclamation of the One Who Is, Who Was, and Is Coming
Chapter 1. Debunking Popular Myths about Revelation
Chapter 2. Divine Emperor, Eternal The Public Story About Roman Imperialism
Chapter 3. The True Center and the Unholy John's Biblical Critique of the Public Story
Chapter 4. Looking at the Immediate in Light of the The Seven Oracles to the Churches of Asia
Chapter 5. John's Proclamation of the One Who Is, Who Was, and Is Coming
132 pages, Paperback
First published November 1, 2013
30 people are currently reading
98 people want to read
About the author
David A. deSilva
85 books68 followersDavid A. deSilva (PhD, Emory University) is Trustees’ Distinguished Professor of New Testament and Greek at Ashland Theological Seminary in Ashland, Ohio. His numerous books include Introducing the Apocrypha and An Introduction to the New Testament: Contexts, Methods, and Ministry Formation.
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
May 6, 2016
This is a tremendously helpful book for engaging the Book of Revelation as a message for the church in any generation. DeSilva doesn't spend much time trying to debunk Futurist readings of the book, rather he focuses on understanding the message that Revelation would have spoken to its original audience--the seven churches of Asia Minor--and then asking questions about how the church in any age would be called into account in the same way.
DeSilva has helpful questions throughout his chapters to aid readers in appropriating the text to their lives. He also has many useful pictures that illustrate is historical background. The one downside to the book, if you could call it that, is that it doesn't spend a great deal of time trying to convince you of its method of interpreting the book. I can imagine some readers finishing with, "Yeah...ok but what about...?" DeSilva's goal is to show us how Revelation functioned for the original churches and should function for us today.
DeSilva has helpful questions throughout his chapters to aid readers in appropriating the text to their lives. He also has many useful pictures that illustrate is historical background. The one downside to the book, if you could call it that, is that it doesn't spend a great deal of time trying to convince you of its method of interpreting the book. I can imagine some readers finishing with, "Yeah...ok but what about...?" DeSilva's goal is to show us how Revelation functioned for the original churches and should function for us today.
May 21, 2018
This book, which represents a popularized version of his academic work, "Seeing Things John's Way: The Rhetoric of Revelation" (Westminster/John Knox, 2009), presents a wonderfully coherent reading of the book of Revelation that takes seriously the need for a consistent hermeneutic and resists the urge to "switch tactics" to fit the preferred sensational argument.
On the whole, there is much here that I agree with. I have been bothered for quite some time that futurist readings always somehow seem to find a way to "put off" the urgency of book, not recognizing its impassioned call for present faithfulness in light of imminent realities. And I think it is this particular reading strategy that comes under most direct attack in deSilva's work. Reading the book as a critique of the Roman Empire of John's day, deSilva is able to demonstrate how John both symbolically dismantles the claims of Rome while simultaneously constructing a vision of the coming Kingdom of God as the precise opposite of worldly systems' claims to power.
DeSilva is up-front about his objectives, describing in the opening chapter a series of three myths that he wishes to debunk:
1) The Revelation is about us
2) That Revelation reveals our future
3) That Revelation is written in a mysterious code
He stays true to that task and, within the confines of the book, largely succeeds.
However. His reading of Revelation is...well..."flat." The issue is not that deSilva attempts to read Revelation against its 1st-century Greco-Roman background but that he actively denies the book any other background. He doesn't simply CONNECT the book to its 1st-century context...he CAGES it there. The only connections he draws with current events are thematic and/or symbolic. Frankly, Revelation ends up simply a repetition of ideas already made abundantly clear elsewhere in the canon. DeSilva's interpretation could make one legitimately wonder at the logic guiding this book's inclusion in the canon.
What was most troubling about this move is that, in all reality, it wasn't necessary to his point. Pointing out the significance of John's prophecies to his immediate audience does not necessitate denying those prophecies' connections to future events beyond John's own time-horizon. DeSilva's unwillingness to connect Johannine predictions to current happenings dramatically undermined the power of the generic "connections" he did try to trace.
To me, it emphasized once again the importance of recognizing that Revelation does something more than simply "predict" some specific set/s of future events. Revelation shows us the overarching "pattern" of history (from both divine and human sides), a pattern that stretches back to Genesis 3 and forward to the end of the age. This means two important things:
1) EVERY generation has its Beasts and False Prophets and Mystery Babylons. Every generation must wrestle anew with what the symbols of Revelation point to in our own day.
2) History has a direction and an end-point. Each new "revolution" of the historical spiral puts us farther down the road toward that consummation point already known by God. I was reminded again as I read of the importance of envisioning God as existing not "above" history but as existing at the "end" of history, not simply watching "the world go by" from above but actively pulling the world to its only possible end, where history itself must bow at the feet of its Creator.
I want to be clear that I deeply appreciate the hermeneutical battle that deSilva is attempting to wage here and wholeheartedly agree with his negative assessments of some of the toxic readings that have skewed our view of this book. However, deSilva's unwillingness to even consider the possibility of "analogous fulfillment" of prophecies did, in the end, great damage to the force of his argument.
On the whole, there is much here that I agree with. I have been bothered for quite some time that futurist readings always somehow seem to find a way to "put off" the urgency of book, not recognizing its impassioned call for present faithfulness in light of imminent realities. And I think it is this particular reading strategy that comes under most direct attack in deSilva's work. Reading the book as a critique of the Roman Empire of John's day, deSilva is able to demonstrate how John both symbolically dismantles the claims of Rome while simultaneously constructing a vision of the coming Kingdom of God as the precise opposite of worldly systems' claims to power.
DeSilva is up-front about his objectives, describing in the opening chapter a series of three myths that he wishes to debunk:
1) The Revelation is about us
2) That Revelation reveals our future
3) That Revelation is written in a mysterious code
He stays true to that task and, within the confines of the book, largely succeeds.
However. His reading of Revelation is...well..."flat." The issue is not that deSilva attempts to read Revelation against its 1st-century Greco-Roman background but that he actively denies the book any other background. He doesn't simply CONNECT the book to its 1st-century context...he CAGES it there. The only connections he draws with current events are thematic and/or symbolic. Frankly, Revelation ends up simply a repetition of ideas already made abundantly clear elsewhere in the canon. DeSilva's interpretation could make one legitimately wonder at the logic guiding this book's inclusion in the canon.
What was most troubling about this move is that, in all reality, it wasn't necessary to his point. Pointing out the significance of John's prophecies to his immediate audience does not necessitate denying those prophecies' connections to future events beyond John's own time-horizon. DeSilva's unwillingness to connect Johannine predictions to current happenings dramatically undermined the power of the generic "connections" he did try to trace.
To me, it emphasized once again the importance of recognizing that Revelation does something more than simply "predict" some specific set/s of future events. Revelation shows us the overarching "pattern" of history (from both divine and human sides), a pattern that stretches back to Genesis 3 and forward to the end of the age. This means two important things:
1) EVERY generation has its Beasts and False Prophets and Mystery Babylons. Every generation must wrestle anew with what the symbols of Revelation point to in our own day.
2) History has a direction and an end-point. Each new "revolution" of the historical spiral puts us farther down the road toward that consummation point already known by God. I was reminded again as I read of the importance of envisioning God as existing not "above" history but as existing at the "end" of history, not simply watching "the world go by" from above but actively pulling the world to its only possible end, where history itself must bow at the feet of its Creator.
I want to be clear that I deeply appreciate the hermeneutical battle that deSilva is attempting to wage here and wholeheartedly agree with his negative assessments of some of the toxic readings that have skewed our view of this book. However, deSilva's unwillingness to even consider the possibility of "analogous fulfillment" of prophecies did, in the end, great damage to the force of his argument.
May 12, 2024
“Revelation still interprets—and calls us to interpret—the social, political, religious, and economic realities of our every day experience. It does so not by asking us to equate its images with those realities, playing the endless game of ‘pin the tail on the antichrist’ or trying to line up the seven seals with the broadcasts on CNN or reasoning such and such a nation as the real ‘Babylon.’ Rather, Revelation invites Christ-followers into the same process that guided John as he came upon his ‘apocalyptic adjustment’ to the way he looked at and evaluated the world around him, and was thus enabled to communicate this to his congregations, calling them to ever greater levels of covenant faithfulness toward God and the Lamb.” (DeSilva, Unholy Allegiances: Heading Revelation's Warning, 97–98).
David DeSilva's excellent little book, "Unholy Allegiances" is intended to be a simple guide to interpreting the book, not only in its original context, but as part of our modern, liturgical, Christian lives. Indeed, its aimed primarily at Pastors to help them navigate the complexities of a book that everyone "knows about" and no one has studied.
I used this book as part of my preparation for teaching a teen and young adult class on the book (along with Gorman, Koester, etc) and have thoroughly appreciated his approach. If you're looking for an easy, insightful, and personally challenging introduction (not a commentary!) on Revelation, this one's been really enjoyable.
Of note is that this is one of the few books that includes extremely high quality, full color, photos. It's worth buying for that, alone, so that you can better appreciate how coinage and iconography enlightens our view of the book.
David DeSilva's excellent little book, "Unholy Allegiances" is intended to be a simple guide to interpreting the book, not only in its original context, but as part of our modern, liturgical, Christian lives. Indeed, its aimed primarily at Pastors to help them navigate the complexities of a book that everyone "knows about" and no one has studied.
I used this book as part of my preparation for teaching a teen and young adult class on the book (along with Gorman, Koester, etc) and have thoroughly appreciated his approach. If you're looking for an easy, insightful, and personally challenging introduction (not a commentary!) on Revelation, this one's been really enjoyable.
Of note is that this is one of the few books that includes extremely high quality, full color, photos. It's worth buying for that, alone, so that you can better appreciate how coinage and iconography enlightens our view of the book.
May 11, 2014
An absolutely fantastic book that serves as an introduction to the book of Revelation. In a religious society that wants Revelation to be written TO them and describe all these fantastic events that will come shortly before the Judgment Day, DeSilva sets the book of Revelation in it's correct place, as a book of hope and comfort, as well as a book calling to repentance the early Christians as they were pulled between God and Rome.
Even though it was more of an introduction to the book, I couldn't stop reading it, and finished it in less than 48 hours. I would recommend this to every Christian who, not only wants to better understand Revelation, but is also concerned with how we as Christians should be within our own secular culture.
Even though it was more of an introduction to the book, I couldn't stop reading it, and finished it in less than 48 hours. I would recommend this to every Christian who, not only wants to better understand Revelation, but is also concerned with how we as Christians should be within our own secular culture.
April 25, 2024
Revelation.
The very word conjures up all kinds of crazy: crazy pictures, crazy ideas, crazed people.
And not without warrant. It is understandable why most people are a little hesitant about and leery of the Book of Revelation. It seems freaky, and the people who obsess over it are, to put it mildly, generally off-putting.
And yet there is a powerful and important message in Revelation which Christians today do well to hear. And David deSilva does well at presenting the core of that message in Unholy Allegiances: Heeding Revelation’s Warning (affiliate link).
deSilva provides a healthy contextual understanding of the Book of Revelation in its late 1st century setting in Asia Minor, and he does well at insisting on keeping the contextual focus there. Yes, this means he accepts more of a later date but certainly that it is mostly about Rome, to the chagrin of the Jerusalem camp. And deSilva does extremely well at associating the metaphors of Revelation with the situation on the ground in the Roman Empire and regarding Rome.
The book does serve as a kind of commentary: you may not notice what the author is doing, but he is explaining the use of the imagery of Babylon, etc., in terms of Rome, and then discusses select messages to the churches of Asia Minor and the contextual challenges and what they might mean for us, and then explores the rest of the themes of the book not otherwise covered by the end.
This is not a long book but well sufficient for its purpose. All of the craziness, and all of the doctrinal argumentation and misdirections too often distract us from John’s message. Christians should take comfort and strength in the victory accomplished in Jesus, and they must be on guard regarding their relationship with the nation-states of the world and the idolatry demanded therein. It is good to be reminded of what Revelation is really about and what is actually at stake for us in according to the same spirit in the twenty-first century, and not abandon Revelation to the neo-Gnostics who tie themselves into knots attempting to identify the events of Revelation in real time.
Highly recommended for those who are a bit afraid of Revelation, and all the more so for those wholly convinced they understand Revelation.
The very word conjures up all kinds of crazy: crazy pictures, crazy ideas, crazed people.
And not without warrant. It is understandable why most people are a little hesitant about and leery of the Book of Revelation. It seems freaky, and the people who obsess over it are, to put it mildly, generally off-putting.
And yet there is a powerful and important message in Revelation which Christians today do well to hear. And David deSilva does well at presenting the core of that message in Unholy Allegiances: Heeding Revelation’s Warning (affiliate link).
deSilva provides a healthy contextual understanding of the Book of Revelation in its late 1st century setting in Asia Minor, and he does well at insisting on keeping the contextual focus there. Yes, this means he accepts more of a later date but certainly that it is mostly about Rome, to the chagrin of the Jerusalem camp. And deSilva does extremely well at associating the metaphors of Revelation with the situation on the ground in the Roman Empire and regarding Rome.
The book does serve as a kind of commentary: you may not notice what the author is doing, but he is explaining the use of the imagery of Babylon, etc., in terms of Rome, and then discusses select messages to the churches of Asia Minor and the contextual challenges and what they might mean for us, and then explores the rest of the themes of the book not otherwise covered by the end.
This is not a long book but well sufficient for its purpose. All of the craziness, and all of the doctrinal argumentation and misdirections too often distract us from John’s message. Christians should take comfort and strength in the victory accomplished in Jesus, and they must be on guard regarding their relationship with the nation-states of the world and the idolatry demanded therein. It is good to be reminded of what Revelation is really about and what is actually at stake for us in according to the same spirit in the twenty-first century, and not abandon Revelation to the neo-Gnostics who tie themselves into knots attempting to identify the events of Revelation in real time.
Highly recommended for those who are a bit afraid of Revelation, and all the more so for those wholly convinced they understand Revelation.
September 8, 2025
I appreciate DeSilva's approach at going back to the culture of the time that Revelation was written. After all, John writes "these things must shortly take place."
DeSilva even focuses mainly on the contrast between worshipping the false gods/emperors versus the One True God.
Like with some of DeSilva's other works, I can see some agendas rear their head. In a couple of places he infers that 'Christians in need' (that is anyone who claims to name Christ) we should offer aid to in terms of physical relief should they endure trials. This goes beyond the words of the apostles. But then DeSilva will turn around and say that "we are built on foundation of the apostles and prophets" (Eph. 2:20) or "fully obey the LORD your God (Deut. 28:1).
All in all, this is a helpful aid to anyone who is wanting to study Revelation further. His thought processes of understanding the OT to interpret the NT is spot on.
DeSilva even focuses mainly on the contrast between worshipping the false gods/emperors versus the One True God.
Like with some of DeSilva's other works, I can see some agendas rear their head. In a couple of places he infers that 'Christians in need' (that is anyone who claims to name Christ) we should offer aid to in terms of physical relief should they endure trials. This goes beyond the words of the apostles. But then DeSilva will turn around and say that "we are built on foundation of the apostles and prophets" (Eph. 2:20) or "fully obey the LORD your God (Deut. 28:1).
All in all, this is a helpful aid to anyone who is wanting to study Revelation further. His thought processes of understanding the OT to interpret the NT is spot on.
December 7, 2024
This is another in the line of books pointing out that Revelation is a call to faithful loyalty to Christ Jesus despite living among the lures and dangers of empire. It's one of the best I've read, in that it gently but persistently asks for the reader to assess his or her life, actions, beliefs, and thoughts. It's encouraging as well as convicting. Along the way, there's a good bit of history presented, too. It's well worth reading and pondering, I think.
I'd put it at four-and-a-half stars.
I'd put it at four-and-a-half stars.
December 1, 2020
Wow! Thanks to this book, I'm actually looking forward to my seminary class, The Book of Revelation. Great read. Helped me get the bigger perspective about Revelation in that it's not about cracking the code or reading into every news story but about living as a people who worship God and not idols so that the world around us can see Jesus who is moving through our midst, even now through the churches.
September 16, 2017
Good intro to Revelation specifically to the original readers of the letter. The author does a good job of helping us see the overall premise of the letter and what can/should be taken away for modern readers and to avoid reading it as an "Armageddon 101".
I'd like to read a bit more of what he had to say specifically with chapter by chapter in Revelation. But a good intro into Revelation.
I'd like to read a bit more of what he had to say specifically with chapter by chapter in Revelation. But a good intro into Revelation.
March 8, 2021
Excellent and concise discussion on how Revelation should be read. No true fearmongering, but rather identifying how the church compromises faith (or, rather, people and churches make that compromise palatable and excused). Goes well along with books like "Reading Revelation Responsibility" by Michael Gorman.
Read
December 12, 2024This book really helped me put context to Revelation, especially when compared ti the prophetic interpretations of the many pastors I've heard in my lifetime. John's warning to the churches of his day should be taken as same for us in this day and the next.
July 30, 2020
I got this from the local library in Manurewa Auckland. Very readable. I found this treatise plausible and edifying. I'd like to read it again sometime more slowly.
October 29, 2025
An insightful and well-presented interpretation that effectively preserves the first-century perspective, which adds significant value.
December 8, 2025
Logos version
Want to read
January 21, 2026[DIGITAL COPY: Kindle]
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 4, 2016
An appropriate second subtitle might be "Ignore the Cover and Title as This Book Is Not What You Think It Is." Had I not read about the book first, I would have immediately disregarded it as another tome trying to give the *real* prophetic meaning behind the symbology of Revelation, showing how it's actually about the year 2014 omg, etc.
The reality is that it's a short, very readable work that gives a compelling overall summation of the patterns of Revelation and how it would be read by the churches to which it was addressed. In doing so, DeSilva makes a strong case that reading it as a first century work designed for first century readers in the prophetic tradition actually gives more powerful, universal implications than seeing it as being an esoteric code written primarily for modern readers.
The reality is that it's a short, very readable work that gives a compelling overall summation of the patterns of Revelation and how it would be read by the churches to which it was addressed. In doing so, DeSilva makes a strong case that reading it as a first century work designed for first century readers in the prophetic tradition actually gives more powerful, universal implications than seeing it as being an esoteric code written primarily for modern readers.
February 8, 2017
A good book, and there is little to argue with theologically. Desilva runs pretty much middle-of-the-road.
The discontinuity and pacing do seem to indicate that this is a collection of standalone articles thrown together without much effort to glue them together, which is a shame. Also, If I had a drachma/talent for each and every coin pictured in this book, I'd be quite well-off.
The discontinuity and pacing do seem to indicate that this is a collection of standalone articles thrown together without much effort to glue them together, which is a shame. Also, If I had a drachma/talent for each and every coin pictured in this book, I'd be quite well-off.
January 9, 2014
Excellent.
May 3, 2015
Insightful and thought provoking.
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews