Revelation Explained: an Interpretation by James B. Jordan: Volume One: Dragon

by James B. Jordan, Dean W. Arnold (editor)

Who can make sense of the book of Revelation?

Actually, James Jordan can explain it—not in all of its mystical intrigue and many-layered prophecies—but in at least one solid interpretation. Many people lament that they have never read a single take that makes sense. This real-life explanation can get one started in unraveling the enigmatic book.

Jordan’s insights and beautiful comparisons of imagery make this commentary more than just an explanation. It is an experience.

Volume 1—DragonVolume 2—ThunderVolume 3—Harlot & Bride
James B. Jordan has never held a full-time academic position. He moonlighted as an editor. These lectures were given over a four-year period to a Sunday school class where he served as an assistant pastor at a small church in Niceville, Florida. And yet, Peter Leithart (PhD Cambridge) and R.R. Reno (PhD Yale, First Things Editor) call Jordan “one of the leading Christian intellectuals of his generation.”

Dean W. Arnold is an author and screenwriter. His script on J. R. R. Tolkien was endorsed by the Oxford C. S. Lewis Society. Pulitzer winner Jon Meacham called his book Old Money, New South “well worth reading.” He grew up talking theology around the dinner table with his father, a pastor with a doctorate from Dallas Theological Seminary. Today, Dean is tonsured “The Reader Gabriel” for the Orthodox Church in America.

Revelation An Interpretation by James B. Jordan

262 pages, Hardcover

Published June 26, 2024

About the author

James B. Jordan is a Calvinist theologian and author. He is director of Biblical Horizons ministries, a think tank in Niceville, Florida that publishes books, essays and other media dealing with Bible commentary, Biblical Theology, and liturgy.

Jordan was born in Athens, Georgia, and he attended the University of Georgia, where he received a B.A. in comparative literature and participated in Campus Crusade for Christ. He served as a military historian in the United States Air Force and attended Reformed Theological Seminary in Jackson, Mississippi but ultimately earned an M.A. and Th.M. from Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania with a master's thesis on slavery in the Bible. In 1993, he received a D.Litt. from the Central School of Religion for his dissertation on the dietary laws of Moses. From 1980 to 1990 Jordan was an associate pastor of a Presbyterian church in Tyler, Texas.

Reviews

[Travis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jordan’s impassioned fidelity to the text of Scripture plus his maximalist, freewheeling, and ambitious interpretive instincts never fail to yield something that is both whiplash-inducing in its strangeness and yet radiant in its beauty, its cleanliness, what his friend Peter Leithart calls its “inevitability.” He has a way of taking two (or three, or seven) pieces that just never seemed to fit and snapping them into place. His vision is organic, never overwrought, curious, illuminating. Surely he isn’t right on everything. But, just as surely, he’s reading the Book as it’s meant to be read.

“No human being could construct a book this complicated, unless he was Jesus himself, who is actually the author of this book.”

[Jeff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Okay-you will not get, and may not even LIKE, this series if you have not listened to the Jordan lectures on Revelation. Go do that now. These are essentially creatively organized transcripts of these lectures. The writing is Jordan’s speaking voice, transcribed by Arnold, and arranged in a way that Arnold thinks makes sense. I think they are great, but I am using them to teach my own way through Revelation to my small group with Jordan as the primary guide. I have them 4 stars because they will not be what most people expect.