Visionary Experiences and Communication in the Revelation of John. Between Selective Memories and Individual Authority

In this essay, the Author uses some methodological elements from Cognitive Science of Religion (CSR) to examine how the seer of Patmos' cognitive experience led to the literary account in his revelatory account. He draws on the work of Martin Castells, who theorized about the role of communication in the creation of power within a society. Castells shows that neural networks structure how we understand narratives and, further, that these neural networks are themselves structured on social organization (340-342). These altered states of consciousness allow us to understand narratives through analogical connections, which may be a means of establishing authority within certain human groups (342-345). The essay then applies this methodology to the study of John’s Apocalypse (347-356). This essay, more specifically, cares to emphasize the sorely neglected experiential dimension of John's Apocalypse, one that induces discomfort in many scholars, and appeals to the results of modern CSR studies to buttress its arguments.