35 An Explanation for the Anacolutha in the Book of Revelation regularly do not obey the laws of Greek and are therefore incorrect. Black counters such assumptions when approaching a text by saying that ‘...the notion of “correct” Greek has no basis in the language itself... There is no intrinsically “best” Greek, although one can with full justification speak of the more appropriate or effective variety of language for some par- ticular type of communication’11. The issue ultimately is whether John is using ‘appropriate’ or ‘effective’ Greek. Brown and Yule say that discourse ‘...cannot be restricted to the description of linguistic forms independent of the purposes or functions which those forms are designed to serve in human affairs’12. It is possible that the grammatical ‘errors’ in Revelation have a purpose. Commentators tend to assume that Revelation is badly written. However, Newmark says: If a text is well written, the text will reflect the writer’s personality – complex syntax will reflect subtlety… plain syntax, simplicity. Words will be freshly used with unusual connotations. A badly written text will be cluttered with stereotyped phrases, recently fashionable general words and probably poorly structured. Note that language rules and prescriptions have nothing much to do with good writing13. Commentators tend to assume that Revelation is badly written be- cause it does not obey the ‘rules’ of grammar. They expect to read the text ‘cluttered with stereotyped phrases’ and ‘recently fashionable general words’. Revelation does not conform to this superficial linguistic con- struct, rather, it is a vibrant, living text, written to challenge the mind and stimulate thought. This article shall explore the possibility that the unusual grammatical aspects of the book of Revelation have a pragmatic purpose. If this is true, then it would be inappropriate to refer to them as ‘solecisms’, and it would be more fitting to refer to them as ‘anacolutha’ because the latter term does not charge the author with an error. One difficulty with the anacolutha in Revelation is that copyists have been prone to ‘correcting’ the text and this makes identifying anacolutha a challenge. My general inclination, where there have been variant read- ings, has been to assume the more difficult reading. Many complications arise on this subject that cannot be investigated here, but I have generally accepted Aune’s14 textual critical assessment of the text. There is a tendency when trying to explain anacolutha to focus purely on the problematic sentence without accounting for wider issues like Black, Discourse Analysis, 97. 11 G. Brown and G. Yule, Discourse Analysis (Cambridge 1983) 1. 12 P. Newmark, A Text of Translation (Essex 2003) 16. 13 D. E. Aune, Revelation (Texas 1997). 14