Cataphora and Lack of Clarity in the Book of Revelation 77 the seven lampstands in Revelation are the related to the menorah of the Jewish tradition and one reason is that the lampstand in Revelation is anarthrous, suggesting that is was not well known. Although it is true that the noun is anarthrous, yet the surrounding temple motif makes it inevitable that the menorah is being referred to. This leads to the ques- tion regarding what the anarthrous nature of λυχνίας signifies. One has to distinguish at this stage between authorial intention and the readers’ understanding. It is probable that the reader would initially deduce that John is saying, ‘I saw seven of something qualitatively equivalent to the lampstand found in the temple.’ While the reader sees the qualitative aspect of the lampstand, John is working up to associate the seven lamp- stands with the seven churches (verse 20). Therefore, one reason that John chose to use an anarthrous λυχνίας is because he was being unclear in 1:12. An anarthrous noun in Revelation can mean that there is one obvi- ous referent and that another referent is being hidden from the reader until the author feels ready to remove ambiguity. (iv) Cataphora In a discourse, most concepts bear anaphoric significance, that is, they refer back to some previous entity. Cataphora is inevitably ambiguous because the reader is unable to fully grasp the referential significance of a lexeme until later in the discourse. The issue of cataphora in Revelation has barely been touched in scholarship because scholars have been unable to identify it. Due to the lack of a clear inductive framework to interpret the text, commentators tend to impose a reading on the lexical stock without entertaining the thought that a specific text is actually unclear. Interpreters struggle to differentiate between texts they do not under- stand because Revelation is referentially difficult and texts they do not understand because John is being deliberately ambiguous. Cataphora is relatively simple to identify because of two reasons: First, the initial men- tion of an entity is unclear and second, the later clarification tends to be overtly clear. At times, John’s later overt clarification does not suggest a development of a previously known idea, rather it implies a clarification of an idea that was deliberately hidden. Commentators have a tendency of exporting this later clarification into the earlier text, leading to chrono- logical difficulties in the discourse. There results an inability to identify rhetorical force because the reader is never led to ask questions about the significance of the initial reference. The following section will supply an explanation of some of the cataphoric relations in the book of Revelation.