Dr. Olivia Stewart Lester (Loyola University Chicago) guides us through Revelation 12-14. We discuss:

* The woman who gives birth and is chased by the dragon (12:1–6, 13–16)

* The conflict between the woman’s child and the dragon as a combat myth and how Revelation critiques the Apollo-Python combat myth

* The two wings of the great eagle that the woman receives, and her escape to the wilderness (12:14)

* The beast who receives its authority from the dragon, the beast’s mortal wound (13:1–8), and how Daniel 7 helps us understand the beast

* The prophetic warning and call to endurance in 13:9–10.

* The second beast that marks people’s foreheads with the number 666 (13:11–18)

* The 144,000 who have the name of the lamb and of the Father on their foreheads and their masculine-virginal description (14:1–5)

* The mysterious song that John hears (14:3)

* The three angels who speak and deliver messages of God’s judgment (14:6–12)

* Whether the description that “the smoke of their torment will rise for ever and ever” indicates a never-ending conscious punishment (14:11); and how to understand the depiction of God’s violence (14:10–11)

* The Son of Man, the angels, and their sickles for harvest (i.e., judgment; 14:14–20)

Works by Dr. Olivia Stewart Lester

* "Revealed History as Prophetic Rivalry: John's Apocalypse, the Sibylline Oracles, and the Prophecy of Apollo," Early Christianity 10 (2019): 461–480

* Prophetic Rivalry, Gender, and Economics: A Study in Revelation and Sibylline Oracles 4–5. WUNT 2/466. Mohr Siebeck, 2018.

Dr. Olivia Stewart Lester recommends

* The TV show, The Bear 

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