John’s Ego

In a 2000 article in CBQ , Francois Bovon applies French literary critical studies of autobiography to the self-presentation of John in Revealtion. He points out that John’s self-identification in Revelation 1:9-10 tells us nothing about John’s distant past, age, education, or future. “The narrator is a person of the present and a person of a recent and narrowly defined past.”

This makes John’s identification an example of what French critics have called a “low degree homodiégétique” narrative. Here, the “I” is present but not the central character, and the narrator uses this device to “bring the narrative closer to the reader, or to give witness to the truth, or to manifest the nature of the narrative.” John thus becomes “an indispensable link between the divine realm and the human one.” Bovon compares the effect to a computer with two screens open: On one, we see the visions that John sees, while the other contains JOhn’s commentary on these visions. For the most part (excepting 10:8-11; 11:1-2), John doesn’t enter into the action of things that must shortly take place.

Bovon traces the uses of John’s personal name in the first chapter, noting that John moves from an identification with Christ in 1:1 (as slave) to an identification with the brothers in 1:9-10. Thus, “He keeps company with Christians, but his responsibility as a prophet is also to Jesus Christ and to God. Therefore, we are not surprised to discover beside John’s ??? an alter ego ,” another “I,” the I that declares “I am the Alpha and Omega,” the I who is communicating through John’s I to the brothers with whom John also identifies.