Building an argument for John's Apocalypse as the data source

Today I made more progress on the introduction and submitted what I've done to my dissertation chair for comments

I've spent a good deal of time setting the conceptual ground work for the choice of John's Apocalypse as the data source. I wrote a little over two pages on this - which I will not post. Here's the central proposition:

Like John and the first century Christians, our ordinary lives are full of contingencies. Some are locally chaotic and threaten global chaos. There are so many potential disasters on our horizon that finding “meaning,” if it exists, may seem pointless. As John spoke meaning into the chaotic and nihilistic context of the first century through his Apocalypse, his words as we experience them in the 21^st century context speak to our time – our chaos, our nihilism, and our contingencies.