The Book of Revelation, the final book of the Christian biblical canon, is perhaps one of the most complex and multipurpose biblical texts accessible to modern readers, and has been the source of many different and divergent interpretations and readings. This is largely due to the richly detailed language and imagery that the author has placed in the book, as well as the wide range of content. Both of these features work within the text to produce a book that is extremely difficult to describe within traditional literary conceptions of genre and structure, which, as we will see, fuels the complexity and multiple interpretations that can be drawn from it. With all of this in mind, the purpose of this essay will be to explore the Book of Revelation, examining the nature of its structure and content, as well as the generic structure in which the text functions within. Next, we will also look at one of the main ways in which people have read Revelation, namely the scientific/positivist view, and outline some of the strengths and weaknesses of this approach in relation to other models. The examination of the Book of Revelation by those seeking to understand and explain its structure has been one of the most difficult tasks undertaken by biblical literary critics. As a result, there are multiple interpretations of the way the author of Revelation structured the book, focusing on different aspects and particularities within it. While there is no consensus among scholars on the issue of structure in this book, there appear to be two primary schools of thought that, while not unified, revolve around the theories of recapitulation and the "series of seven". Several leading scholars, at various d...... middle of article ...... lark, 1993.Beale, GK "The Book of Revelation". In Commentary on the International Greek New Testament. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans/Carlisle Cumbria: Paternoster, 1999.deSilva, David A. "What Does John Really Want? The Rhetorical Goals of Revelation." In seeing things John's way: the rhetoric of the book of Revelation, 65-91. Louisville, KY: John Knox Press, 2009.Fiorenza, Elisabeth Schussler. "Babylon the Great: a rhetorical-political reading of Revelation 17-18." In The Reality of Revelation: Rhetoric and Politics in the Book of Revelation, edited by David L. Barr, 243-269. Atlanta, GA: SBL, 2006. Linton, Gregory L. “Reading Revelation as Revelation: The Limits of the Genre.” In Society of Biblical Literature Seminar Papers, edited by Eugene Lovering, 161-186. Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1991.Woodman, Simon. The Book of Revelation. London: SCM Press, 2008.