The Shape of 1-3 John & Jude

The man of God on the mountain is not only given the blueprint for the City of God in a vision, he himself-in his flesh-is also to be the blueprint. The Gospel of John and the Revelation both employ the elements of the Tabernacle as a pattern for their literary composition. The possibility that John used the same pattern to govern the composition of the three preserved epistles is worthy of investigation. Indeed, the complexity of the multilayered "construction" of these letters indicates a miraculous gift from God, the literary equivalent of the cunning work of the Spirit-filled artisans Bezalel and Aholiab. The difference, of course, is that John is building tents out of words, ministering to the camp of the saints in anticipation of the coming holy city. Identification of the literary "tessellations" not only reveals John's internal logic, and explains many, if not all, of the oddities and ambiguities in the text, but it also sheds light upon the authenticity of its infamous textual variant. The Revelation can only be understood in the light of Old Testament symbols and sequences, and the same is true of the epistle of Jude, which employs the pattern of Israel's wilderness trek to sort the sons of men from the Sons of God, serving as a blistering hors d'oeuvre to John's fiery feast.