Frankfurter, David2024-09-172024-09-172023-09-21Frankfurter D. The Fiction of the Seven Letters in the Apocalypse: Representing Heavenly Authority in the Shadow of Paul. Harvard Theological Review. 2024;117(1):79-98. doi:10.1017/S001781602300038X1475-4517https://hdl.handle.net/2144/49264While scholars have traditionally taken Revelation’s “letters to the seven churches” (Rev 2–3) as documentation for the experiences of the Christ-movement in those cities, this article argues that the letters amount to a fictional device—that the Apocalypse appropriates epistolary forms in response to the increasing authority of early Pauline collections among the late first-century Asia Minor Christ-movements. With its divine epistolary authority and heavenly sevenfold “collection,” the Apocalypse attempts to exceed and denigrate Pauline authority in the Christ-movement, and it elevates a Jewish Christ-devotion based in priestly apocalyptic traditions. In the end, we can see John of Patmos both as a competitor to the Pauline tradition and as a witness to the earliest circulation of Pauline collections.pp. 79-98en-USCopyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the President and Fellows of Harvard College. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution and reproduction, provided the original article is properly cited. This article has been published under a Read & Publish Transformative Open Access (OA) Agreement with CUP.http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0Book of revelationAncient letter collectionsPauline authorityApocalyptic literatureJewish Christ-beliefEarly Christian prophecyEpistolary fictionArticle10.1017/S001781602300038X