The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
General Editor: J. J. S. PEROWNE, D.D., Bishop of Worcester
THE REVELATION
of
S. JOHN THE DIVINE
WITH NOTES AND INTRODUCTION
by the late
REV. WILLIAM HENRY SIMCOX, M.A.
rector of harlaxton
Edited For The Syndics Of The University Press
CAMBRIDGE:
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS
1894
[All Rights reserved.
PREFACE
BY THE GENERAL EDITOR
The General Editor of The Cambridge Bible for Schoolsthinks it right to say that he does not hold himself responsible either for the interpretation of particular passages which the Editors of the several Books have adopted, or for any opinion on points of doctrine that they may have expressed. In the New Testament more especially questions arise of the deepest theological import, on which the ablest and most conscientious interpreters have differed and always will differ. His aim has been in all such cases to leave each Contributor to the unfettered exercise of his own judgment, only taking care that mere controversy should as far as possible be avoided. He has contented himself chiefly with a careful revision of the notes, with pointing out omissions, with suggesting occasionally a reconsideration of some question, or a fuller treatment of difficult passages, and the like.
Beyond this he has not attempted to interfere, feeling it better that each Commentary should have its own individual character, and being convinced that freshness and variety of treatment are more than a compensation for any lack of uniformity in the Series.
PREFACE
THE MS. of the Commentary as well as a Transcript of the Text for the Cambridge Greek Testament were substantially completed in 1883, so that in the first draught of his work my brother could not make use of the Revised Version; and though the MS. was subsequently carefully revised as to substance he did not insert systematic references. These have now been generally supplied. The third Appendix is from a paper read by request before a society of theological students at Oxford, which accounts for a somewhat personal tone. The substance would probably have been embodied in the Introduction if the writer had lived. I am responsible for the summary of Völter's Analysis, which was not required by the audience, and for some additions to the First Excursus, of which I failed to discover a completed MS.
G. A. SIMCOX.
In the secondedition a few details have been restated more precisely and a few corrections have been made.
CONTENTS
I. Introduction
Chapter I.Authorship and Canonicity of the Revelation
Chapter II.Date and Place of Composition
Chapter III.Principles of Interpretation
Chapter IV.Analysis
II. Text and Notes
III. Appendix
ExcursusI.The Angels of the Churches: Elemental Angels: the living creatures
ExcursusII.On the Heresies controverted in the Revelation
ExcursusIII.On the supposed Jewish origin of the Revelation of St John
* ** The Text adopted in this Edition is that of Dr Scrivener's Cambridge Paragraph Bible. A few variations from the ordinary Text, chiefly in the spelling of certain words, and in the use of italics, will be noticed. For the principles adopted by Dr Scrivener as regards the printing of the Text see his Introduction to the Paragraph Bible, published by the Cambridge University Press.
Much he ask'd in loving wonder,
On Thy bosom leaning, Lord!
In that secret place of thunder,
Answer kind didst thou accord,
Wisdom for Thy Church to ponder
Till the day of dread award.
Lo! Heaven's doors lift up, revealing
How Thy judgments earthward move;
Scrolls unfolded, trumpets pealing,
Wine-cups from the wrath above,
Yet o'er all a soft Voice stealing
" Little children, trust and love!"
Keble.
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER I
Authorship and Canonicity of the Revelation
In the case of some of the books of Scripture, the questions of their authorship and of their canonical authority are quite independent of one another. Many books [1] are anonymous, many have their authors known only by a post-canonical tradition [2]; and the rejection, in any case where it may be called for, of this tradition need not and ought not to involve a denial of the divine authority of the book. Even in cases where the supposed author is named or unmistakeably indicated in the book itself, it does not always follow that the book must either be written by him, or can owe none of its inspiration to the Spirit of truth: the person of the professed author may be assumed dramatically without any mala fides[3]. On the other hand, there are books which plainly exclude any such hypothesis, and must either be forgeries, more or less excusable but hardly consistent with divine direction, or else must be accepted as genuine and inspired works of their professed authors.
[1] e.g. Judges, Kings, and Chronicles; and in the N.T., Hebrews.
[2] e.g. the Synoptical Gospels.
[3] As is certainly the case with the apocryphal Wisdom of Solomon, and almost certainly with Ecclesiastes. It is conceivable that the case of the Pastoral Epistles of St Paul might be similar.
The case of the Revelation may be regarded as intermediate between the two last-named classes. The author gives his name as "John," but gives no unmistakeabletoken, in this book itself, to identify him with St John the Apostle: and hence the opinion is rationally tenable, that the Revelation is the work of a person named John, writing what he bonâ fideregarded as a supernatural vision, but not having more claim on the reverence of the Church than his work can command on its own merits. On the other hand, we shall find that the book was so early and so widely received as the work of the Apostle, that it may well be suspected that, if not really his, it was falsely put forward as his, and intended by the real author to be received as his: so that the hypothesis of fraudulent forgery, if not necessary, can hardly be considered gratuitous.
It thus will be convenient to discuss the two questions of authorshipand of canonical authorityin connexion with one another, though remembering that the determination of one does not (except in one case) necessarily involve that of the other. The book may be either (1) the genuine and inspired work of St John the Apostle; or (2) a forgery in the name of St John the Apostle; or (3) it may be the genuine and inspired work of another John; or (4) a bonâ fidebut uninspired work of another John. We may fairly set aside the logically conceivable cases, of the Apostle writing notunder divine inspiration, or of a person writing indeed fraudulently, but not intending to personate the Apostle. Let us examine the evidence, external and internal, for each of these views:
I. The external attestation of St John's authorship is extremely strong: it happens to be quoted, with the author's name, earlier than any other book of the New Testament, with the one exception of St Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians. Justin Martyr, in his Dialogue with Trypho the Jew, says expressly, "There was with us a man named John, one of the Apostles of Christ, who in the Revelation made to him" says, in substance, what is said in Revelation 20:3-6. The date of this Dialogueis variously fixed from a.d. 135 to 148: the scene is laid at Ephesus, where surely, if anywhere, the true authorship of the Revelation must have been known. The same writer in his First Apology, which was written not later than a.d. 160, refers unmistakeably to Revelation 12 or Revelation 20:2: but this is only evidence to the authority, not to the authorship.
We may regard as practically contemporary with this the evidence afforded by Papias, bishop of Hierapolis, near Laodicea, who acknowledged the Apocalypse, as is stated by Andrew, bishop (in the fifth century?) of Caesarea, in Cappadocia, in the prologue to his Commentary on the book. Papias's evidence, if we had it at first hand, would be even more convincing than Justin's: for not only did he belong to the district where the Revelation was first circulated, [4] but he is said to have been a hearer of St John himself he certainly was a zealous collector of traditions relating to him. But Papias's own works are lost, and though Andrew was doubtless acquainted with them, his testimony is not quite decisive. Eusebius professes (H. E.III. iii. 2), in his account of early divines, to state whenever they quote as Scripture books of which the canonicity was disputed: and he does thus note the passage of Justin already cited. In his account of Papias (ib.xxxix. 13), he tells us that he quoted the First Epistle of St Peter, and that of St John, though, as the canonicity of these books was notdisputed, he was not bound to note the fact. If then Papias had quoted the book about which there was the keenest dispute of all, Eusebius would surely have told us so; especially as he actually founded a conjecture as to its authorship (see p. xxii) on a passage in Papias. Thus the argument from the silence of Eusebius, which is worth very little as evidence that Papias did not know St John's Gospel, is, as regards the Revelation, as strong as an argument from silence can be.
[4] It has been observed that, while the Churches of Laodicea and Sardis must have known the facts about the origin of the Apocalypse, they had every interest in discrediting its authority, if they honestly could.
Moreover, he enables us to account for Andrew's assuming that Papias knew the book, without his having expressly cited it. Papias certainly held the doctrine of a Millennium, which is not, even apparently, taught in any canonical book but the Apocalypse. Andrew may therefore have taken for granted that he derived the doctrine from it, while in reality he may have had no authority but the general belief of the Church. The only passage in the extant fragments of Papias bearing on the subject seems to be derived by tradition from the Book of Enoch. If he had read the passage of that book, which he seems to be reproducing, he could not have put the rather silly description of the ideal bliss which it contains into the mouth of our Lord.
But, even if Papias did not expressly quote the Revelation, it does not follow that he was not acquainted with it: and in fact we find it unhesitatingly received by the Churches of Asia during the second century. Of the many Christian writers of that age and country, almost all the works are lost: but we have catalogues of those of Melito, bishop of Sardis, the ablest, most learned, and most critical among them, who flourished in the reign of M. Aurelius, a.d. 161 180. He not only acknowledged "the Revelation of John," but wrote a commentary upon it.
A colony from the Churches of Asia appears to have been established about this time, or earlier, at Lyons, in Gaul. In a.d. 177, they and their neighbours of Vienne were exposed to a savage persecution, of which a detailed account, addressed to their Asiatic kinsmen, was written by a surviving brother: and considerable fragments of this are preserved by Eusebius (H. E.v. i iv). In this, the Revelation (Revelation 22:11) is expressly quoted as "the Scripture." Besides this, we have constant evidence of the writer's familiarity with the thoughts, images, and phrases of this book: he speaks of Christ as "the faithful and true Witness" (Revelation 3:14), and of "the heavenly fountain of the water of life" (Revelation 7:17; Revelation 22:1). The Church is personified as a Virgin Mother (c. 12): the Martyrs in their spiritual beauty and exultation are compared to a "bride adorned in embroidered robes of gold" (2 RRevelation 1:2): and throughout we have constant references, not only to the expected persecution of Antichrist, but to the imagery of the Dragon and the Beast.
Pothinus, the aged bishop of Lyons, who died in this persecution, was succeeded by Irenaeus. The latter was certainly a native of Asia, probably of Smyrna: and, though his works belong to a later date than Justin's or the other writers we have named, he is not practically more remote from the source of authentic tradition. For in his boyhood he had known and heard St Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna, and remembered the account he gave of his personal intercourse with St John (Ep. ad Flor., ap.Eus. H. E.v. xx. 8, 9). Now St Polycarp was burnt a.d. 155, and had then been a Christian 86 years: his conversion therefore, or birth in a Christian family, must have taken place a.d. 69 or 70. And St Irenaeus states (Adv. Haer.III. iii. 3) that both his conversion and his appointment as bishop, was the act of "Apostles," the latter can hardly have been the act of any other Apostle than St John, who (according to Irenaeus) "lived till the time of Trajan," i.e. at least to a.d. 98. At that time Polycarp may have been from 30 to 40 years old; thus it appears that he had been the personal disciple of St John from early childhood to full maturity. His traditions therefore about the Apostle must have been absolutely authentic, and they must have served as a check on the circulation in Asia of spurious ones, at least among those who knew Polycarp personally. It thus appears that Irenaeus received authentic traditions about St John, passing through but one intermediate step; now Irenaeus" testimony to the authorship of the Apocalypse is even more definite than any that we have yet met with. He not only everywhere ascribes it to the Apostle, but states (Adv. Haer.V. xxx. 1) that "it was seen not long ago, but almost in our own generation, near the end of the reign of Domitian" (i.e. a.d. 95 6). And he tells us that this statement rests on the authority of persons who had seen St John possibly therefore of Polycarp, or at least of Papias.
Shortly before the date of the martyrdoms of Lyons arose the fanatical heresy of the Montanists, on the borders of Mysia and Phrygia. Their wild beliefs on the subject of the New Jerusalem would tend rather to discredit than to support the authority of the book they appealed to as teaching the like: but the fact that their opponents in Asia accepted it as a common ground for discussion proves how unanimous was the tradition respecting it. The Martyrs of Lyons themselves wrote on the controversy, which in their days had not amounted to an actual schism: one of their own number was a rather prominent member of the Montanist party. On the other hand, Apollonius, who is said to have been an Ephesian, wrote after the controversy had grown very bitter: but we are told that he quoted the Revelation as authoritative, and apparently as the work of St John.
Tertullian, who wrote in Africa at the very end of the second century and in the early part of the third, constantly quotes the book as St John's, and seems to know nothing of any doubts about it, except on the part of heretics. His testimony is however the less valuable, as he admitted the Book of Enoch: he became a Montanist in later life, and his quotations from the Revelation seem all to be in works written after his fall into heresy. Still it is probable that this is due to a change of temper, rather than to a change of opinion: for everything indicates that the orthodox Church of Africa accepted the book without hesitation. It certainly did so in the next generation, as we know from St Cyprian's works.
Approximately contemporary with Tertullian perhaps rather earlier was Clement of Alexandria, who quotes the Revelation [5] as St John's work, and refers historically to his exile in Patmos.
[5] This is not noticed by Eusebius, though he mentions the fact of his quoting other "disputed" books. This makes his silence as to Papias less decisive against his having quoted the book.
Of about the same age, probably, is the anonymous work on the Canon, known as the Muratorian Fragment, and supposed to be an African version of a Greek original written at Rome. In this "the Apocalypse of John" is recognised: so, if our text be right, is an "Apocalypse of Peter"; but we are told that some do not like to hear the latter read in the Church. This proves that the former was so read, and read as canonical Scripture.
About this same period there appears another kind of evidence, shewing still more plainly the belief, not of individual divines alone, but of large provincial Churches the versions of the New Testament made for ecclesiastical use in Churches where Greek was not generally spoken. The old Latin version was probably in use by Tertullian's time, and if so must certainly have included the Apocalypse. The versions, however, in the different Egyptian dialects do not seem to have contained it till a later date. As to the Syriac, perhaps the oldest version of all, the evidence is more doubtful. The Peschitto, or vulgate Syrian version in use from the fourth century onwards, does not contain the book: but according to the view now taken by what seem to be the highest authorities, this is only a revision of the oldest version, that being one which has not been recovered, except (in part) for the Gospels. As the Apocalypse is quoted, and its authority recognised, by St Ephraim of Edessa, the great poet and divine of the Syrian Church, it cannot be thought an arbitrary opinion, that the Syriac canon did originally include the book: but neither can it be directly proved.
If we are now past the time when living tradition can be appealed to as decisive evidence, we have reached the time when scientific principles of criticism began to be applied to the traditional beliefs of Christendom. Justin, Irenaeus, Clement, Tertullian, were all well-educated men: the first and third ranked as "philosophers," in the sense in which that term was used in their age: Tertullian was a man of real original power of thought. Origen, the pupil and successor of Clement, was not only a learned student, but an able critic. He discusses ably and sensibly the question, admitted to be doubtful, of the authorship of the Epistle to the Hebrews: he notices the doubts, though without doing much to solve them, that existed as to that of the Second Epistle of St Peter: but as to the Apocalypse, he seems to know of no doubts at all, or none worth heeding.
A man of almost equal learning, of about the same date, was Hippolytus, bishop of Portus, near Rome, or perhaps a claimant of the Roman see. In his extant works he constantly and unhesitatingly ascribes the Revelation to the Apostle John: but from a catalogue of his whole works it seems that he thought it necessary to defend its authenticity.
The last witness who need be quoted at this stage of the enquiry is St Victorinus, a bishop and martyr in the Diocletian persecution. His notes upon the Revelation are only known through an edition of St Jerome, to whom they were sent for revision by Anatolius. This edition which, according to Haussleiter (Luthardt's Zeitschrift, May, 1886), was much enlarged by excerpts from Ticenius, a learned and thoughtful Donatist, whom St Jerome thought it indiscreet to name, has hardly reached us unaltered. Still enough is left to shew that St Victorinus is an independent witness to St John's authorship.
Later fathers are witnesses, not to the belief of antiquity, but to the judgement of the Church of their own day. After Constantine that judgement was divided: the book was still received in Egypt and the West; in the interval between Eusebius and St Jerome it was rejected in Asia Minor and the East. St Cyril, who forbade all reading of apocryphal books, contrasts the -apocryphal" Revelation with the canonical book of Daniel. St Gregory Nazianzen omits it from an exclusive list of genuine works, yet quotes it elsewhere, probably like St Gregory of Nyssa as an apocryphal work of the Evangelist. -Apocryphal" was an ambiguous term: a book might be withdrawn from public use either as falsely ascribed to an inspired author, or as containing mysteries too high for ordinary believers. St Epiphanius, when the tide had turned, hints at the second sense. The ambiguity made the final judgement of the Church in favour of the book less difficult: but before it was reached the Church of the furtherEast, speaking Syriac, was separated from Catholic Christendom by controversies with which this question had nothing to do. The Nestorian Canon is therefore still defective; the Jacobites under Egyptian influence soon came to receive the Apocalypse.
II. The earliest people we hear of as denying the authenticity of the Revelation are an Asiatic sect, extreme opponents of Montanism, who thought it necessary to discredit the writings of St John, because their Montanist countrymen appealed to his authority in support of their own views. These heretics were nicknamed by their orthodox opponents Alogior Unreasonable, on account of their denial of the Logos, the Word or Reason of God proclaimed by St John. The fact that they rejected allthe Johannine writings is evidence rather for than against the strength of the tradition in favour of the genuineness of this: for it proves that tradition was consistent and homogeneous in favour of all alike. It is plain that neither the ancient hypothesis, that the Gospel and Epistles were genuine but the Apocalypse not, nor the modern one that the Apocalypse was genuine but the Gospel and Epistles not, had occurred to anyone in Asia in the second century. Their objections seem to have been altogether à priori, or at any rate based on internal evidence: they said they found the book unprofitable very likely theydid. A better argument was, that they alleged that no Church existed in Thyatira: but on this point the evidence of the Apocalypse itself is sufficient, whatever view be taken of the character of the book. Clearly these people do nothing to shake the credit of the book they attack.
A more respectable and sober opponent of the authenticity of the Apocalypse was Gaius, a learned presbyter of the Church of Rome in the early part of the third century a contemporary, approximately, of Tertullian and Hippolytus. He wrote against the Montanists, and in a work called an "Inquiry," probably one concerned in this controversy, he speaks of "Cerinthus, who by revelations professedly written by a great Apostle passes off upon us false marvels, professedly shewn to him by angels; and says that after the Resurrection the kingdom of Christ will be earthly; and that the flesh will again be domiciled in Jerusalem, serving lusts and pleasures. And, being an enemy to the Scriptures of God, desiring to deceive, he says that the number is made up of 1000 years in a festive wedding" (ap.Eus. H. E.III. xxviii. 1). There is no reasonable doubt, that in this he alludes to the now canonical Revelation of St John that he decidedly denies its genuineness and authority, ascribing it, not to St John but to St John's opponent, Cerinthus. Gaius was, so far as we know, at least as consistently orthodox as Hippolytus, so that the testimony of the latter does not appear to prove that the book was received, at least unhesitatingly, in the Church of Rome: though this wouldbe proved, if it were certain, as it is probable, that the Muratorian Fragmentproceeded from the Church of Rome, and gives the canon there recognised at the end of the second century. It certainly seems strange to our notions, that an orthodox Church should include opposite opinions on a question so important as that of the canonicity or heresy of a book of the New Testament: but the works of Hippolytus prove that there were, in the Roman Church of the third century, very bitter disputes, if not an actual schism: and that both parties were headed by bishops, of repute as divines in their own day, and recognised as saints and martyrs by the later Church.
III. St Dionysius of Alexandria (bishop a.d. 249 265), the most famous of the famous and holy men who proceeded from the school of Origen, had, it is plain, received the Apocalypse [6], without question, like his master, as one of the New Testament Scriptures recognised by the Church. But, in what seems to have been a later work [7], he had occasion to discuss the question critically. He recapitulates the arguments of those who rejected the book, with special reference, no doubt, to Gaius, and probably to the so-called Alogi. The argument sounds a little like theirs as quoted by St Epiphanius, "that the title is false: for, they say, it is not John's, nor yet is it a Revelation, being completely veiled by the thick curtain of ignorance."
[6] Ep. ad Hermamm. ap. Eus. H. E.VII. x. 1.
[7] On the Promises, ap. Eus. H.E.VII. xxv.
But Dionysius himself treats the question in exactly the spirit, at once devout and critical, in which such questions ought to be treated: and the result is, that he sweeps away the bad arguments against St John's authorship, and states the good ones in a form that really has never been improved upon between his day and ours. Those who denied the canonicity and orthodoxy of the book had only two grounds to go upon its obscurity, and its alleged description of the Kingdom of Christ as earthly. Now on the latter point St Dionysius thoroughly sympathised with the objectors: he had engaged in a controversy with Nepos, an Egyptian bishop who maintained millenarian views, and succeeded in convincing him and his followers that they were wrong. But Dionysius saw that it was neither reverent nor critical, to make the authority of the book stand or fall with a particular interpretation of a particular passage in it. To the charge of obscurity, he replies, "Even if I do not understand, I yet conceive some deeper sense to lie in the words. Not measuring and judging these things by private reasoning, but giving the chief weight to faith, I have supposed it too high to be comprehended by me: and do not reject these things which I have not seen, but admire them the more, because I have not." He then expresses his own opinion, and the grounds for it, as follows:
"That he was called John, and that this writing is [St] John's, I will not dispute: for I agree that it is the work of a holy and inspired man. Still, I would not readily admit that this John is the Apostle, the son of Zebedee, the brother of James, the author of the Gospel that bears the title according to John, and of the Catholic Epistle. I argue from the temper of the two, from the style of the language, and from what is called the purport of the book, that they are not the same. For the Evangelist never introduces his own name, nor proclaims himself, either in the Gospel or in the Epistle. St John nowhere [speaks of the Apostle by name?] either as being himself or as another: but the writer of the Revelation puts himself forward at the very beginning, -The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which He gave to Him, to shew unto His Servants shortly. And He sent and signified it by His Angel to His Servant John, who bare witness of the Word of God and His testimony, whatsoever he saw." Then he also writes an Epistle, -John to the seven Churches which are in Asia, grace be to you and peace." But the Evangelist has not written his name even at the beginning of the Catholic Epistle, but begins without preamble with the mystery of the divine revelation itself, -That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes." For on account of thisrevelation the Lord also called Peter blessed, saying, -Blessed art thou, Simon bar-Jona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but My heavenly Father." But neither in the second and third Epistles current as John's, short as they are, is the name of John put forward, but -the Elder" is written without name. But this writer has not even thought it enough, when he has named himself once for all, but takes it up again, -I John, your brother, and partaker with you in the tribulation and kingdom and in the patience of Christ, was in the isle that is called Patmos, for the Word of God and the testimony of Jesus." And again, near the end, he says this, -Blessed is he that keepeth the words of the prophecy of this book, and I John who see and hear these things." Now that it is a John who writes this, we ought to believe on his own word, but what John is uncertain. For he has not said, as in many places of the Gospel, that he is the Disciple beloved of Jesus, nor who leaned upon His breast, nor the brother of James, nor that he was eye and ear witness of the Lord: for he would have said some of these things which I have mentioned, if he wished to indicate himself clearly. But, instead of any of these, he calls himself our brother and partaker with us, and a witness (or martyr) of Jesus, and blessed as seeing and hearing the revelations. But I suppose there were many of the same name as John the Apostle, who for their love for him, admiration, and desire to imitate him and to be beloved like him of the Lord, were glad to assume the same name, as Paul and Peter are frequent names among the children of the faithful [8]. There is in fact another John in the Acts of the Apostles, who was surnamed Mark [9] : whom Barnabas and Paul took with them, of whom it says again, -And they had also John to their minister." But whether he is the writer, I would not say: for it is written that he did not come with them into Asia, but -Paul and his company set sail from Paphos, and came to Perga in Pamphylia; and John departed from them and returned to Jerusalem." But I think that there was some other of those who lived in Asia: for in fact they say that there are two tombs at Ephesus, each called that of John. And further, from their thoughts, language, and composition, this may reasonably be considered a different person from the others. For the Gospel and the Epistle harmonise with one another, and begin alike, the one -In the beginning was the Word," the other, -That which was from the beginning." The one says, -And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, glory as of the Only-begotten from the Father:" the other the same a little varied, -That which we have heard, that which we have seen with our eyes, that which we beheld, and our hands handled, concerning the Word of life: and the life was manifested." For this is his prelude to his main contention, as he makes plain in what follows, against those who said that the Lord had not come in the flesh: wherefore he continues carefully, -And we bear witness of that which we have seen, and declare unto you the life, the eternal [life], which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us: that which we have seen and heard declare we unto you." He keeps close to himself, and does not withdraw from his announcement, and sets forth all by means of the same headings and names, of which we will briefly mention some. He who studies the books carefully will find in each frequently life, light, repulse of darkness, constantly truth, grace, joy, the flesh and bloodof the Lord, the judgement, the forgiveness of sins, the love of Godtowards us, the commandment for us to love one another, the duty of keeping all the commandments, the condemnation of the world, the Devil, the Antichrist:the promise of the Holy Spirit, the adoption on the part of God, the constant demand of faithon our part, the Father and the Son everywhere: altogether, by every possible mark, we are allowed to see the same colouring in the Gospel and the Epistle. But compared with these the Revelation is utterly different and strange, neither touching nor approaching (one may almost say) any of these, nor having a syllable in common with them. Nor again has either the Epistle (I pass over the Gospel) any recollection or thought of the Revelation, nor the Revelation of the Epistle: whereas Paul in his Epistles has given some hint of his revelations, which he did not write separately. Further, one may also argue from the difference of language of the Gospel and Epistle compared with the Revelation. For they are written, not only without error in the Greek language, but with the greatest literary skill in the words, the reasonings, the arrangements of the exposition: far from there being any barbarous word, ungrammatical phrase, or in fact vulgarisms of any sort found there. For he had, as it seems, both forms of the Word, the Lord having granted him both, the word of knowledge and that of expression. But to this author I will not deny that he had seen a revelation, and received knowledge and prophecy; but I can see that his dialect and language are not correct Greek, but that he uses barbaric constructions, sometimes ungrammatical. These it is not necessary now to recount: for I do not say this for ridicule let no one suppose it but only defining the unlikeness of the writings."
[8] Of course this is an anachronism. John was a common Jewish name, and no doubt many Jewish Johns became Christians: but it had not had time to become a common Christian name, used for love of the Apostle, till long after the date of the Revelation.
[9] We may fairly gather from the way that this Mark is spoken of that St Dionysius did not identify him with the evangelist, the founder of his own Church. If he had, he could hardly have failed to notice the unlikeness of style between thatGospel and the Revelation.
No ancient or modern critic has really added anything to this forcible argument against the unity of authorship of the Revelation and Gospel, with the exception of Eusebius. He calls attention to a passage of Papias, where he distinguishes, apparently, from the Apostle St John another "Disciple of the Lord," whom he calls "John the Elder" or "Presbyter"; thus giving direct evidence of what, in St Dionysius, is not much more than a conjecture the existence at Ephesus, or at least in proconsular Asia, of twoleaders of the Christian Church, both named John.
IV. No one in ancient times seems to have cared to question the inspiration, or reject the authority, of the Revelation, except those who, in the anti-millenarian controversy, thought it necessary to deny its orthodoxy. Thus the view that it is indeed a genuine work, belonging to the main stream of Christian thought, but that it can claim no higher inspiration than that of a subjective enthusiasm, does not present itself till modern times, and mostly on the part of rationalists: it involves matter of controversy which turns on à priorigrounds, and cannot be discussed here: except so far as the question of interpretation involves the further question, "Have the Seer's predictions been fulfilled, or have Christians reason to expect that they will be?" By this test, no doubt, we are justified in judging the claims of what professes to be an inspired prophecy (Deuteronomy 18:22): but we must ascertain whatit is that is foretold, before we can judge whether it has "followed or come to pass," or is in the way to do so. For the present, it will be enough to say, that practically the whole Church has agreed to recognise the authority of the book, and that this ought to compel us to recognise it: though its authority does not, perhaps, stand so high as that of those books "of whose authority was never any doubt in the Church." Indeed, both in ancient and modern times, there has been a disposition to treat it with greater reserve, if not greater distrust, than the other canonical books. Everyone now past boyhood will remember, that in the English Church till 1872, while the rest of the New Testament was "read over orderly every year thrice, beside the Epistles and Gospels," out of the Apocalypse there were "only certain Proper Lessons appointed upon divers feasts." And something similar seems to have been the case in earlier times, from the fact that, while the theologians of Alexandria even St Dionysius acknowledged the canonical authority of the book, it was not translated till a comparatively late date into either of the vernacular dialects of Egypt. In the Greek-speaking Churches also it never came into general ecclesiastical use, and for this reason, probably, ancient copies of it are rare as compared with the other books of Scripture.
Conceding then the inspiration and canonicity of the book we approach without prejudice the question of its authorship. Its antiquity is undoubted, and the only person besides the Apostle suggested as its author was a personal "disciple of the Lord," so that we can readily conceive his writing by divine inspiration. We have only to judge, whether the internal evidence against its being by the author of the Gospel and Epistles is so strong, as to set aside the great body of external evidence, whereby all alike are ascribed to St John the Apostle.
V. The theory has been advanced in modern times, that the Revelation may be the work of the Apostle, but that if so the Gospel and Epistles cannot be that they may at most be written by John the Presbyter, or some one else at Ephesus who inherited a genuine apostolic tradition. But to this the total absence of ancient support is an enormous objection. The question of the authorship of the Johannine writings was discussed, from the second century onwards, both from a theological and a critical point of view. Every theory was suggested but this: this could not fail to have been suggested, if there had been the smallest thread of tradition that could be alleged in its favour. No doubt the Revelation is rather more like than the Gospel to what we might have expected to be the work of the Galilean Apostle, the Son of Thunder: but the notion that, within 50 years of the Apostle's death probably within 18 [10] the Gospel was accepted as his, when it was not his, becomes all the more incredible, if there was a genuine work of his current in the same Churches where the other was first circulated.
[10] The Epistle of St Polycarp to the Philippians dates, if entirely genuine, from a.d. 116. In this the First Epistle of St John is quoted, though without the author's name.
The internal evidence, moreover, for the apostolic authorship of the Gospel, though not obvious, is on the whole preponderating: on this question see the Prolegomena to the Gospel. If therefore the unity of authorship of the two be denied, it must be the Revelation that is non-apostolic.
We return therefore to the decisive question, Do St Dionysius" arguments prove diversity of authorship, in the face of the strong external evidence of unity? And on the whole, strong as they are, they seem hardly sufficient for this. It is a very extreme measure, to set aside contemporary evidence to the authorship of a book; especially of a book ascribed to an author who had been prominent and universally known among the community who received the book as his. No doubt there would be a real tendency to be over-hasty in assigning to a venerable name a work that claimed, and that deserved, high authority: a really inspired book, written by a namesake of an Apostle, might easily be ascribed to the Apostle by future generations:but hardly by the generation that had known the Apostle himself, and received from him his genuine writings.
Moreover, strong as is the internal evidence againstthe unity of authorship, it is not altogether so strong as it seems at first sight: while internal evidence forthe unity is by no means wanting. The arguments of St Dionysius, and of other critics who have maintained his view, may be divided under two heads, the unlikeness of style and grammar, and the unlikeness of the theological terms and ideas, between the Revelation and the other Johannine writings.
Indeed, a third element of unlikeness is sometimes alleged, between the moral tone and temper of the two writers. But this is too delicate a consideration, too much a matter of subjective feeling, for much weight to be given to it: and as a matter of fact, it is not put forward by those who have the best right to be heard. The character of a saint, at least of the greatest saints, is a complex and many-sided one: those who know most of the mind of the Spirit, and the saintly character which is His work, do not find much difficulty in forming a harmonious conception of the character of St John [11], which takes in, as one element, his authorship of the Revelation. And in fact, it is quite a mistake to think that the Apostle of love was incapable of severe condemnation. Not to mention the imperfectly disciplined temper shewn in Luke 9:54 [12], in the Gospel itself, in the Epistles, and in the best authenticated traditions of his later life [13], we see that his zeal could be stern, even fierce, upon occasion. See in the Gospel John 1:10-11; John 2:24-25; John 3:18-19; John 4:20; John 5:14; John 5:38-47; John 6:70; John 7:7; John 8:15; John 8:21-24; John 8:38-47; John 9:39-41; John 10:26; John 12:37-43; John 12:48: in the First Epistle 1 John 2:15-19; 1 John 2:22; 1 John 3:1 fin., 1 John 3:8; 1 John 3:13-15; 1 John 4:3; 1 John 4:5; 1 John 5:16 fin.: in the Second, 2 John 1:10, and in the 3 John 1:9-10, as evidence that the Evangelist sees nothing inconsistent with the "spirit he is of" in the stern condemnation of sin and unbelief or misbelief, either by the Saviour or by himself in His name. On the other hand, the tender charity of the Evangelist is not absent from the Apocalypse, though it may be admitted that the latter is, in its primary character, a vision of judgement: see Revelation 1:5 fin., Revelation 1:9; Revelation 7:14-17; Revelation 21:3-4, besides many other passages where the tenderness, if less unmixed, is perceptible.
[11] See Keble's stanzas on page viii of this book, and the whole hymn containing it.
[12] It is a mistake to see a sign of the same temper ib.ver. 49. What that shews is, not that St John was more zealous than the other Apostles in silencing the unknown man, but that he was quicker in inferring that the Lord was not certain to approve of their silencing him.
[13] The story of his fleeing from Cerinthus in the bath, ap.S. Iren. III. iii. 4.
The differences of theological conceptions characteristic of the Revelation and the other Johannine writings respectively are to a certain extent real, though not more than superficial: and it is important to remember, that a reverent Christian temper will lead us to ascribe more importance, not less, to superficial differences than a rationalist might. For if all the writers of the New Testament had the same Spirit in them, it follows of course that the essentials of their doctrine must be the same: it can only be in superficial points in their different manner of stating the same doctrine, or at most in the proportion in which special doctrines are insisted on that their varying individuality can shew itself. If we thought that the doctrine of the Person of the Lord Jesus taught in St John's Gospel was not held by the other Apostles, or by the primitive Church generally, it might be an argument for the Apocalypse being the work of the Evangelist, that the same doctrine is taught there. But if the doctrine is true if it formed part of the faith once for all delivered to the Saints there is nothing incredible in the view that two Saints received it alike and taught it alike. We can only conclude that we have the teaching of the same Saint, if he teaches, not only the same doctrine, but in the same manner.
Now there is one great and important point, wherein the manner or method of stating this doctrine is the same in the Gospel and the Revelation. It is in these books only, that the name "The Word" is ascribed to the Lord Jesus. It is true, that the coincidence is not entire: in the Revelation (Revelation 19:13) He is called "the Word of God," in the Epistle (1 John 1:1) "the Word of life" (if there the term be used personally), and in the Gospel "the Word" absolutely: but there the context suggests that if the ellipsis be filled up, it can only be in the same manner as in the Revelation.
The case is similar as regards the description of the Son of God as a Lamb. Isaiah 53:7 is quoted in Acts 8:32, and He is likenedto a lamb in 1 Peter 1:19: but He is not calleda Lamb except in St John 1:29; John 1:36 and in the Apocalypse passim. But different Greek words are used for "Lamb" in the two books. That used in the Apocalypse occurs in the Gospel, 21:15, but is not there used of Christ.
Of the 18 or 19 characteristic Johannine phrases enumerated by Dionysius, we certainly meet with few in the Revelation in exactly the same form or with the same frequency: but, in some form, we meet with nearly all. (1) We never have the phrase "eternal life," but we constantly hear of "life" as an attribute of heavenly gifts the Book of Life (cf. Philippians 4:3), the Crown of Life (cf. James 1:12), the Tree of Life, and the Water of Life; which last only differs in construction, not in sense, from St John's Gospel John 4:10-14; John 7:38. (2) The word "light" occurs rarely, and hardly ever in a directly spiritual sense: yet John 21:11; John 21:14 shew that the image was one that seemed to the seer natural and appropriate. (3) "Darkness" does not occur as a substantive, and the cognate verbs in John 8:12; John 9:2; John 16:10 are images of punishment rather than of sin. (4) The substantive "Truth" does not occur, nor does the commoner of the Greek adjectives rendered "true." But the rarer word, whose special sense, so far as it has one, is "real," "genuine," is characteristic of both groups of the Johannine writings. As an epithet of God or His Son, we meet it in the Gospel John 7:28; John 17:3, and virtually John 1:9; John 6:32, in the 1 John 5:20 (three times), and in the Revelation 3:7; Revelation 3:14; Revelation 6:10; Revelation 19:11: nowhere else but 1 Thessalonians 1:9. And the use of the word in the Gospel 19:35 is very like that in Revelation 19:9; Revelation 21:5; Revelation 22:6. (5) Graceis not really a frequent word in St John. Except in the salutation at the head of the second Epistle, which is paralleled by Revelation 1:4; Revelation 22:21, we have it only in the Gospel John 1:14-17. Hence it proves nothing that (except in the two places cited), it does not occur in the Revelation. (6) "Joy," and especially the phrase "joy fulfilled" is, on the contrary, a phrase characteristic of the Gospel and Epistles, and absent in the Revelation. Even the verb "rejoice" is rare; it occurs only twice (Revelation 11:10; Revelation 19:7), and only once of holyjoy. Here then is a real diversity. (7) "The flesh and blood of the Lord" are mentioned in the Gospel John 1:14; John 6:51 sqq., John 19:34, in the Epistles 1 John 1:7; 1 John 4:2; 1 John 5:6-8; 1 John 2:7. For the most part, these relate to the doctrines of the Incarnation and what is closely connected with this of the Sacraments: the latter subject is not mentioned in the Revelation, and the word "flesh" is not used in connexion with the former. But in 1 John 1:7 we have a closer parallel in thought and imagery to Revelation 7:14; Revelation 22:14 (true text) than anywhere else in the N. T.: see also 1:5 (whatever be the true reading) and v. 9. (8) The word"judgement" is as frequent in the Revelation as in the Gospel, more so than in the Epistle: and the thoughtof the Divine Judgement is, of course, all-pervading. It is a question of interpretation, not a self-evident point of style, whether the natureof the Divine Judgement is conceived in quite the same way in the different books. (9) The "forgiveness of sins" as a phrase does not occur in the Revelation nor in the Gospel or Epistles: in the Gospel however we have the cognate verbal phrase in John 20:23, and in the First Epistle in 1 John 1:9; 1 John 2:12: and it is these, doubtless, that St Dionysius is thinking of. The ideaof course is frequent throughout the N. T. certainly not absent in the Revelation. (10) The love of God, as distinct from that of Christ, see 1:5, 3:9 and (with a verbal variation found also in the Gospel), 3:19 is only spoken of once, and that indirectly, in the Revelation (20:9). Here then is a real difference of manner and language notof temper nor of theological thought, for God's electing love, as the first source of man's salvation, is as plainly set forth in Revelation 13:8 &c. as anywhere in Scripture. (11) The command to love one anotheris probably, though not certainly, on the same footing. The "love" of 2:4, 19 maybe mutual brotherly love, but probably is special love to Christ. If so, here is a very great difference indeed from St John's acknowledged writings Christian love or charity being absolutely unnamed. (12) The phrase "keeping His Commandments," on the contrary, is as emphatic if not as frequent in the Revelation as in the Gospel and Epistle: see Revelation 12:17; Revelation 14:12 (notRevelation 22:14; even if the received text were right, the phrase in it is varied). (Revelation 22:13-15) The worldis never used in the Revelation in an ethical sense, only in a physical (Revelation 13:8; Revelation 17:8: Revelation 11:15 is not really an exception): and the Deviland Antichristare usually designated, not by those names (see however Revelation 12:9; Revelation 20:2), but as "the Dragon" and "the Beast." As however the whole subject of the book is, God's judgement on the sinful world, on the Devil, and on Antichrist, this difference is no evidence at all against unity of authorship. Of course the two books differ in kind and method, and allowing for this, we find a unity not a diversity between their thoughts. (16) "The promise of the Spirit," spoken of in the Gospel cc. 14 16 &c. is not mentioned in similar terms in the Revelation: and "the seven Spirits of God" of Revelation 1:4; Revelation 3:1; Revelation 4:5; Revelation 5:6 are decidedly unlike the Gospel in language, whatever be the relation between the two theologically. "The Spirit" of the Epistles to the Churches (Revelation 2:7, &c.) and of Revelation 14:13; Revelation 22:17 is indeed spoken of in a way like enough to that of the Gospel and Epistles: but the likeness is not greater than the common belief of the whole Church would necessitate. On the other hand, there is a likeness perhaps rather more individual between 1 John 4:1-6, and Revelation 16:13-14. (17) The word"adoption" is nowhere used in the Johannine writings, being, in the N. T. peculiar to St Paul. We have the thoughtin Revelation 21:7, but not only is it less prominent than in the Gospel and Epistle it seems there to be spoken of as a present blessing, here as a future. Here then the discrepancy, though not very great, is real. (18) The word "Faith" occurs four times in the Revelation (Revelation 2:13; Revelation 2:19; Revelation 13:10; Revelation 14:12), oncein the first Epistle (5:4), and nowherein the Gospel. But what St Dionysius is thinking of is, the constant occurrence in the Gospels and Epistles of the various phrases "to believe God" or Christ, "to believe in Christ" or "in His Name." And it is certainly remarkable, that the word "believe" does not occur in the Revelation: but hardly more so, than that the word "faith" does not occur in the Gospel. The one can hardly be more than accidental, and so the other need not be. (19) The names of "the Father" and "the Son" are never coupled as correlative, or used absolutely, in the Revelation, as they are constantly in the Gospel and Epistles, and even in our Lord's saying reported in Matthew 11:27; Luke 10:22. The nearest approach Isaiah 14:1 (true text). Christ is called "the Son of God" in Revelation 2:18, and speaks of "My Father," as in the Gospels, in Revelation 2:27; Revelation 3:5; Revelation 3:21: but such expressions as these, and 1:6, belong to Christian theology, not Johannine phraseology.
On the whole then it appears that the difference of ideas is much less extensive than it seems. In the points numbered (3), (6), (10), (11), and perhaps (9), (16), (17) there is a real difference in the thoughts, but otherwise the matter resolves itself mainly into a difference of language sometimes so merely a matter of style and grammar as that one book has an abstract word and the other the cognate concrete. Thus we pass to the other branch of the argument the unlikeness in style and language of the Revelation to the other Johannine writings.
Now this unlikeness is undeniable, though it has been overstated, and some people, by refuting over-statements, have seemed to minimise it. It may perhaps be said that St Dionysius overstates it, not by exaggerating (as some modern critics have done) the peculiarities and harshnesses of the Revelation, but by over-estimating the literary power shewn in the Gospel and Epistles. It is quite true, that the author of these has a sufficient mastery of language for the adequate expression of his sublime and profound thoughts. Moreover, he writes in correct grammatical Greek, with less trace of Hebrew idiom than most of the N. T. writers: and he is rather fond of refining a point, sometimes of some theological importance, by the use of some delicate distinction of the Greek language, often quite untranslateable: e.g. the two nearly synonymous words rendered "ask" in ch. 16, and those rendered "feed" and "love" in ch. 21. And yet he does not write like a master of the Greek language. He does not write in the literary dialect of his time, echoing the language of the classical period, as St Luke does when he chooses: he does not, like the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, write under the influence of the Alexandrine school of Hellenising Jewish literature: if his theology has something in common with Philo's, his language is unaffected by him. He says what he has to say in short, weighty, simple and rather unconnected sentences: his Greek is correct, because he never ventures on constructions complicated enough to risk a blunder.
The language of the Apocalypse, on the other hand, is fairly characterised by Dionysius. Indeed, the Greek is not soungrammatical as it seems, nor are all its offences against the laws of grammar to be ascribed to ignorance or inability to write correctly: see 1:4 (true text) for a solecism obviously conscious and intentional. Moreover the language has laws of its own, e.g. as to the apposition of nouns, the connexion of participles with finite verbs, which, though they are not the laws recognised by classical or even by Hellenistic Greek, still are laws of language, and are observed with fair consistency. Still the fact remains that the Apocalypse is written in a language which, however well adapted to its subject and purpose, cannot be called good Greek, nor even good ecclesiastical Greek. It seems the work of a man who thinks in Hebrew, and turns the Hebrew sentences embodying his thoughts into Greek, not according to the traditional rules by which, since the composition of the Septuagint, a compromise had been made between the genius of the two languages, but quite independently, by rules of his own making.
Some of the grammatical peculiarities of the book will be pointed out in the Notes: it is impossible to discuss them fully here. With a few exceptions (see on 12:7) they do not affect translation. But it must suffice here to say, that primâ faciethe style of the Revelation is so utterly unlike that of St John's Gospel and Epistles, as to make it all but incredible that they are the work of the same author. We say all butincredible: for it is just conceivable that a man may change his style entirely, so that his writings of different periods shall seem like the writings of different men.
Is it then possible to assign the Apocalypse and the other Johannine writings to quite different periods in the Apostle's life? If so, it may be possible to reconcile the conflict between external and internal evidence. If we suppose (see the next chapter) that the Revelation was written by St John the Apostle between a.d. 68 70, and the Gospel and Epistles a.d. 80 100, we get a credible view of the history of the Apostle's mind, or at least of his style. A Jew of Palestine, habitually familiar with both the biblical Hebrew and the Aramaic vernacular, he was perhaps altogether ignorant of Greek till the age of 50 or 60. Then, being called on to take the pastoral charge of Greek-speaking Churches, he addressed them in their own language, which he had learnt as far as he could: but he refused to let his imperfect knowledge of the language hamper or even modify his expression of the message entrusted to him: he would say what he had to say somehow, even if he did not know how to say it in grammatical Greek. But, when he had lived from ten to thirty years in the midst of these Greek-speaking Churches, he learnt their language thoroughly, and became able to compose in it with vigour and correctness, if not with the mastery of a native. It is quite true that "the Greek of the Gospel and Epistle is not the Greek of the Apocalypse in a maturer state" (Alford), but it is conceivable that the man who had the one to unlearn might learn the other.
On the whole then the question of authorship must be made to depend on that of date. The internal evidence forbids us to believe that this and the other Johannine writings were composed by the same author at the same timestill more, perhaps, that the Apocalypse was composed after the Gospel. But if it appear that the Apocalypse is some years earlier than the other books, it becomes credible, though hardly à prioriprobable, that they may be by the same author: and we have such strong external evidence that they are so, as to justify a confident belief that they are.
CHAPTER II
Date and Place of Composition
The book itself tells us (1:9) where the vision recorded in it was seen: it does not follow that the record was written in the same place. Such is, however, the probable conclusion. The English reader might indeed understand from the words "I wasin the isle" that the writer was no longer there: and tradition, such as it is, seems to regard the book as written after the Seer's release. But the indications of the book itself are decidedly in favour of the composition in Patmos. The words just cited really mean, "I had come to bein the island," and do not in the least imply that he had left it: just as Daniel might equally have written "I becamedumb" (Daniel 10:15) if, like Ezekiel and Zacharias, he had continued so for a long time, and had written in that state. And in Revelation 1:11; Revelation 1:19; Revelation 14:13; Revelation 19:9; Revelation 21:5, and still more Revelation 10:4, it seems almost implied that the successive visions were written down as fast as they were seen; see however note on Revelation 10:4. But the command to write and send to the Seven Churches seems inconsistent with the Seer being, at the time of writing, resident at one of them, and free to visit the rest personally: and the style of the book, so far as any argument can be built on it, suggests that it was writtenin the same ecstatic state of mind in which the vision was unquestionably seen. Altogether, it seems likeliest that the book was written at Patmos, but the point is one of no great importance.
This cannot be said of the question of the date; which is much disputed, with strong arguments on both sides. We have already seen (p. xiii) that there is very strong evidence for ascribing it to the last three or four years of the Apostle's life, a.d. 95 98. "It was seen," says St Irenaeus, "… at the end of the reign of Domitian;" if it was not written till his return from exile, this was probably in the reign of Nerva. It is needless to quote later writers who say the same, for it is probable that most if not all of them derived their belief from this passage of Irenaeus. But it is certain, that his testimony was generally accepted by the Church at large, and that there is no trace of controversy as to the date of the work, independent of the controversy as to its authorship.
Nevertheless, there are statements in early Christian writers which seem to shew that the tradition on this point was not absolutely unanimous. Several of the earliest who refer to St John's exile avoid naming the emperor who condemned him, while the earliest of all who refer to the book do not, as it happens, mention the fact of the exile. Thus there is no evidence earlier than St Irenaeus either opposed to his or merely negative.
The evidence nearest in time to his is negative, but on the whole harmonises with the date under Domitian. St Clement of Alexandria, in his treatise "Who is the rich man that can be saved," tells the beautiful and often-repeated story (which, he is very careful to assure us, is historical not legendary) of St John reclaiming a young convert who had become a robber chief. He dates the beginning of the story "when, after the death of the tyrant, he had returned from the isle of Patmos to Ephesus." Now we know that Domitian sentenced many Christians to banishment, and that they were released after his death by his successor Nerva: moreover, Domitian's character, and that of his government, was far more likely to make a Greek writer describe him as a "tyrant [14] " than that of any other early emperor. The only other emperor whose victims we can suppose to have been, as a matter of course, released on his death was Nero: he certainly did persecute the Christians, but we do not hear of banishment as ever inflicted by him, as it certainly was by Domitian.
[14] Under the later Empire the word "tyrant" came to be used as modern historians use "usurper." In this sense, neither Nero nor Domitian can be so called.
Yet Clement's story that follows seems far more consistent with a date under (we may say) Vespasian than under Nerva or Trajan. At the later date, St John must have been at least ninety years old, and it is most improbable that his bodily vigour can have been unimpaired. In fact, a still better known legend (though not resting on equally early authority [15]) describes him as being, for some time before his death, entirely decrepit, though fully retaining his mental faculties. But St Clement (and here all tradition agrees with him) describes the Apostle after his exile as making Ephesus indeed his head-quarters, but travelling thence in all directions, "in some places to establish bishops, in some to arrange whole churches, and in some to ordain to the clergy one or more of those indicated by the Spirit" Some months, at least, are implied to have been thus spent: some years seem to be required for the instruction of the young man, his gradual fall into vice, and the time when he is recognised by the Church as "dead to God." But at the end of this time, we find that the local Church "when some occasion arose, again summoned John:" and not only does he readily make the journey when summoned, but, as soon as he hears of the fall of his disciple, he rides off on horseback to the mountains to seek for him. When the robbers have seized him and (presumably) taken his horse, their captain recognises him and, from shame, takes to flight: then no doubt it is thought remarkable that the Apostle "pursued him at full speed, forgetting his old age:" but this, which would be remarkable in a man of 70, is all but incredible in a man of 97 [16]. And finally, it is implied that the robber had to pass through a long course of penance before he was restored to the Church, through which the Apostle was able to guide and assist him.
[15] The legend of "Little children, love one another" is told by no extant author before St Jerome.
[16] If we consider, not St John's appearance in modern pictures, but the nature of the work to which our Lord called him, a year before the Crucifixion, then, as the latter probably took place in a.d. 29, we can hardly date the Apostle's birth later than a.d. 5.
Tertullian, in a work apparently orthodox and therefore early (Praescr. Haer. 36), says that at Rome "the Apostle John, after he had been plunged in burning oil without suffering anything, was banished to an island." He mentions this in close connexion with the martyrdoms of SS. Peter and Paul, which certainly took place under Nero: still it cannot be said that he implies that it was at the same time. But St Jerome (adv. Jov.i. 26) quotes Tertullian as saying that "being put by Nerointo a jar of boiling oil, he came out cleaner and more vigorous than he went in." Now St Jerome was quite capable of lax quotation, of improving upon his authorities, and of confusing what he inferred from them with what they said. But on the other hand, we know that he used works of Tertullian now lost; and that, unless Nero was really mentioned by Tertullian (or someone else who repeated the same tradition), it would have been far easier to infer from the mention of St John's banishment that his intended martyrdom took place under Domitian than from the mention of the other Apostles that it took place under Nero. And the banishment, it is quite plain from the extant passage, followed immediately on the miraculous escape from death.
Origen, in his commentary on St Matthew 20:22 sqq., speaks of "tradition" as teaching that "the Emperor of the Romans condemned John, being a witness" (or "martyr") "for the word of truth, to the isle of Patmos. John," he continues, "teaches us about his own martyrdom, not telling who condemned him, saying -I John … was in the isle that is called Patmos for the word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ" (Revelation 1:9). And he seemsto have seen the Revelation in the island." Here it is implied that there was a tradition about St John's banishment, independent of the book itself: perhaps also, that this tradition stated the name of the Emperor who condemned the Saint. But, if Origen knew a tradition on this subject, he does not give it: and, in default of evidence to the contrary, it is presumable that the tradition was the usual or Irenaean one that if it named anybody it named Domitian.
St Epiphanius twice (Haer. LI. 12, 33) ascribes St John's banishment to Claudius, dating his return also in the same reign. In the former place, he says that, "in his advanced old age, after 90 years of his life, after his return from Patmos which took place under Claudius Caesar," he wrote the Gospel. This singular statement is probably taken from some Gnostic acts at least as old as St Irenæus. It is just possible that it may contain a distorted echo of a genuine tradition that some of the visions were seen in the days of Claudius. As it stands it is quite incredible. If it means anything it must mean that St John wrote the Gospel when aged 90, some40 years after his exile, which took place when he was hardly 50. Moreover in the reign of Claudius Christianity had not begun to attract the notice or hostility of the Roman Government except perhaps as the occasion of Jewish riots at Rome, which only led to the banishment of the riotous Jews. The only judicialpersecutor we know of then was Herod, who had no power to banish to Patmos. Possibly the writer of the Acts fancied that when Claudius banished the Jews from Rome he banished St John from Ephesus. If so the Acts are a romance. Possibly as Eusebius through a mistake in reading or quoting the title of the Apology of Aristides confounded Antoninus Pius with Hadrian, the writer of the Acts may have confounded Claudius Nero with Nero Claudius his successor and adopted son. All an emperor's names were often recited in his life, afterwards he was spoken of by one: so such a mistake would imply the misuse of almost contemporary evidence.
Traces are found in later writers, of about the sixth century, of a tradition ascribing the Apostle's banishment to Nero: but they, like the fifth century Acts ascribed to Prochorus (Acts 6:5), associate with his banishment the composition, not of the Apocalypse but of the Gospel; the latter must be almost certainly of the age of Domitian. These stories seem therefore to have their roots, not in any real tradition reaching back to the time when the facts were known, but to an unreal conventional treatment of sacred history, whereby it was attempted to supply the missing links between the age of the New Testament and that of the fully constituted Church.
It is otherwise with the evidence of St Victorinus, if we could be sure what his evidence was. In the present state of his Commentary, the Revelation is distinctly ascribed to the reign of Domitian. On the other hand, we are told very positively, that "he wrote the Gospel afterwards:" now if the Revelation was a work of the close of Domitian's reign, the Gospel could not be written very longafterwards. For no one supposes the Apostle to have lived later than the early years of Trajan, cir. a.d. 100; now it is scarcely credible that tradition it is impossible that internal evidence should have defined the exact order of two works so nearly contemporaneous as these would then be. Who imagines that a writer of the fourth century knew confidently whether St Paul wrote to the Galatians before or after the Corinthians? to the Philippians before or after the Ephesians and Colossians? On the other hand, if the two works belonged to quite different periods of the Apostle's life, there would be no more difficulty in remembering the distinction between them than in noting that between the Pastoral Epistles and those written before St Paul's imprisonment.
And further, the passage where the date under Domitian is most definitely affirmed is one which it is scarcely possible to suppose to be in its original form. In the Commentary on 17:10, the "seven kings" are identified as Galba, Otho, Vitellius, Vespasian, Titus ("five are fallen"): "one is," Domitian, "the other is not yet come, and when he cometh, he must continue a little space," i.e. Nerva, who only reigned two years. Now we ask, on what earthly principle the enumeration of the Emperors of Rome (if these be meant by the "kings") should begin with the ephemeral princes of disputed title who struggled with one another through the eighteen months after Nero's death? In popular apprehension, among the provincials at least, the first Roman Emperor was Julius Caesar: in strict constitutional law, the first who held the Empire as an established form of government was Augustus. The series of Emperors might legitimately begin with either of these, but with no one later. If the principle of interpretation here adopted be right if the "seven kings" be individual Roman Emperors it can hardly be doubted that they stand for the firstseven, and that the Apocalypse was seen in the days of the sixth though there is room for differences of calculation as to who the sixth is.
Further, the above interpretation of the series would, if consistently followed, lead to an utter and scandalous absurdity. Who is "the Beast that was and is not," who "is both himself the eighth, and is of the seven"? If the seventh king is the shortlived Nerva, the eighth must be the noble, upright, conscientious Trajan, the best ruler that the Empire ever had! It is almost blasphemous to suppose that St John or even that a general Christian tradition, accepted by a holy Christian Bishop like Victorinus can have taken such an unworthy view of Trajan's character and historical position. It is true, that Trajan gave a partial sanction to the persecution of the Christians in Bithynia: we may perhaps accept the tradition, that he was personally responsible for the condemnation of St Ignatius of Antioch. But though Trajan was a thorough Pagan, ignorant of the Gospel and contemptuous towards it, it is absurd, or worse than absurd, to suppose that he can be described as the great enemy of God and of righteousness.
Almost certainly, then, either Victorinus or the editor who has reduced his commentary to its present form is here distorting the traditional interpretation he means to give, in order to reconcile it with the common story, that the Revelation was seen under Domitian. Assume that the Apostle is writing under Nero or Nero's successor, and all becomes clear. The five fallen kings are the first five Emperors (whether beginning with Julius or Augustus): the character of the sixth is not defined, but he must have been more or less of a persecutor. The seventh will have a short but (apparently) not a merely ephemeral reign: the eighth will be an Antichristian revival of one of his predecessors.
Now it is possible to point out several schemes, according to which this prediction was more or less accurately fulfilled. Perhaps the most satisfactory is, to take the five fallen kings to be those from Augustus to Nero inclusive, and to suppose the three claimants of empire, Galba, Otho, and Vitellius, not to be counted as actual emperors. Then the sixth will be Vespasian, the seventh the shortlived Titus, and the eighth Domitian, a tyrant and a persecutor, who was recognised both by Christians and Pagans as a revival of Nero. It is probable that this was the interpretation really given, if not by St Victorinus, at all events by the authorities he used and ought to have followed.
It harmonises with this, that in ch. 11. Jerusalem and the Temple there are apparently spoken of as still existing. It is true, we cannot be sure how far we are to understand such passages literally, how far "the Holy City" and "the Temple of God" are to be understood spiritually of their evangelical antitypes. But on the whole it appears simplest to take the literal sense, which appears to be the traditional one. There is even a respectable amount of traditional evidence for referring to the fall of Jerusalem the vision of the seven seals in ch. 6: and this interpretation is supported by the close resemblance between the imagery there, and that in our Lord's prophecy, St Matthew 24 &c.
Thus on the question of date, as of authorship, we seem to find external evidence in conflict with internal. On the former question, we found the possibility of reconciliation between the two to be conditional on our decision on this point: on the other hand, it is a consideration in deciding this, what view will best harmonise all the evidence on all the questions affecting the book. And on the whole, the most probable view seems to be, that the Revelation was written by the Apostle John, at some time between the death of Nero in June a.d. 68, and the capture of Jerusalem in August a.d. 70: the Gospel and Epistles being much later works of the same author. Thus we accept all the mass of well-attested evidence which, as we have seen, we have to the authorship of the book: while its peculiarities, and the difficulties in the way of referring it to the Evangelist, if not entirely explained or accounted for, cease to be insuperable objections. There is only one well-attested statement that we are obliged to reject that of St Irenaeus about the date. And it is possible to account for this, without supposing it a mere blunder. If the story in Tertullian be true, it is likely enough to have happened, as St Jerome understood, under Nero. Savage punishments like those mentioned were inflicted by him on the Christians, and turned the popular hatred against them into pity; and it is credible that, when one of the victims was saved by a miracle or what looked like one, public opinion should have enforced a commutation of his sentence to simple exile. But, as exile was not a penalty often inflicted in Nero's persecution, but was in Domitian's, Irenaeus may have assumed that St John's exile took place at the same time as that of other confessors. Or it is possible, that the Apostle was condemned by Domitian, or at least in his name, in the beginning of a.d. 70, when he, after the victory of Vespasian's army, was the only member of the new imperial family at Rome, and enjoyed the titular office of city praetor. It would then be a comparatively slight error if St Irenaeus, knowing that St John was sent into exile by Domitian, assumed that he was sent at the same time as other -witnesses", i.e. at the end of Domitian's own reign, instead of the beginning of his father's.
Most recent critics are disposed to admit both St John's authorship of the Revelation and its early date. In England, indeed, many, perhaps most, orthodox commentators still adhere to the Irenaean or traditional date. But it is utterly unfair to suppose that there is any necessary connexion between the interpretation mentioned above of ch. 17 and the rationalistic views of some of its advocates: as we have seen, believers in the divine truth of the prophecy need be at no loss for seeing how, on this view, it received at least a partial and typical fulfilment. How far that fulfilment was adequate in what sense this or other predictions of the book have yet been fulfilled, or to what extent they yet remain to be fulfilled these are questions of interpretation. If the date and circumstances of the vision can be determined on critical grounds, they will throw some light on the interpretation, when we come to attempt it: but the critical question may be, and ought to be, treated without prejudice from the supposed necessities of exegesis.
CHAPTER III
Principles of Interpretation
Every student of the Apocalypse must be aware, that the interpretation of its visions has been a matter of controversy, almost ever since the age when it was written: and in view of this fact, it would clearly be presumptuous to propose any detailed scheme of interpretation with any approach to confidence. Still more obviously, it would be beyond the scope of an elementary sketch like the present Introduction, to enter into the controversy, or even to put forward the arguments by which the various schools have maintained their respective causes. And it would be beyond our limits to trace, in more than the barest outline, the history of opinion on the subject of the interpretation of the book: though that history may serve for a patient student, at once to suggest true principles and to warn him of the need of caution in applying them.
The presumptuous confidence with which, a generation or two ago, definite and detailed predictions of the future history of the world were grounded upon the visions of this book, and supposed to enjoy its authority, has now provoked a reaction. Many orthodox readers are content to leave at least the bulk of the book absolutely uninterpreted. The letters to the Seven Churches, it is obvious, are full of moral and spiritual instruction to the Church of all ages: the imagery of the first, fourth, and fifth Chapter s, perhaps of the twelfth, and certainly of the two last, is so transparent that no believer can fail to see the foundation of our salvation figured in the former, and its consummation in the latter. But the rest of the book is commonly left unread, or read only with a literary interest, as a phantasmagoria of sublime images: if people are too reverent to regard the book as a riddle without an answer, they treat it as one which they can never hope to guess, but must wait till the answer shall be told.
It is however scarcely credible that this can be the right spirit in which to regard any part of God's Word: it is quite certain, that it is not the spirit in which the author of the Apocalypse expected or intended his own work to be regarded. Plainly, he throughout considers that he is conveying valuable information to his readers: this appears from the very title of the book, and the explanation which follows it in the opening words: see also Revelation 1:3; Revelation 13:9-10; Revelation 19:9-10; Revelation 20:6; Revelation 22:6-7. It is true, that we are told that certain things contained in the vision are intentionally concealed (Revelation 10:4), and that certain others can only be interpreted by a rare gift of discernment (Revelation 13:18): but the general purport of the prophecy is expected to be intelligible, and most of its details to be instructive, to the Church at large.
If then the visions contained in the book were expected and intended by the author to be intelligible, it is only reasonable to suppose that we shall find them so, if we will read them without prejudice, and from a point of view as near as possible to that of the readers who were addressed in the first instance. For, while it is likely that the book (assuming it to be a truly inspired prophecy) will be of greater value to the generation that sees its complete fulfilment than to any before, it is plain that it was expected to edify its first and immediate recipients: it can scarcely then be unintelligible or useless to the many generations that lie between.
I. This may then be taken as the first of the principles to direct us in the attempt to understand the book: its first readers must have had a clue to it. Such a clue may have been furnished in any of three ways (1) by the Old Testament prophecies which the Seer repeats and makes his own, ifwe can ascertain the sense in which Jews or Christians of St John's day understood them; (2) by the oral teaching of St John and other Apostles, or by the earlier writings of the New Testament; (3) by the events of past or contemporary history.
(1) The Revelation of St John is full of reminiscences of what may almost be called imitations of the prophecies of the Old Testament. In some cases it may sufficiently account for these, that the Seer uses an image or a phrase familiar to his own mind and his readers", though not using it exactly in its original sense. But there are other cases more important if not more numerous where it is plainly implied that the new prophecy has a meaning analogous to, if not identical with, that of the old: e.g. in Revelation 2:27 the promise of Psalms 2:9 is applied to the faithful and courageous Christian: but the last words of the verse shew that St John understood the original promise as made not to the Christian but to Christ. On the other hand, it is quite certain that the Beast described in Revelation 13:1-2 is either identical with one, or is an embodiment of all, of the beasts described in Daniel 7. Again, the "time, times, and half a time" of Revelation 12:14, and the apparently coincident 42 months or 1260 days (Revelation 11:2-3; Revelation 12:6; Revelation 13:5) plainly stand in a close relation with the identical or similar periods in Daniel 7:25; Daniel 12:7; Daniel 12:11-12: though here it may be said that the earlier prophecy is at least as obscure as the later. In fact, familiarity with Daniel's prophecy, and the generally received interpretation of it, must have made St John's readers readily understand his prophecy as directed against Rome, and against a person wielding the power of Rome (though the power in his hands was separable from Rome locally), who was to be such an oppressor to the new People of God as Antiochus Epiphanes had been to the old.
(2) And such an oppressor or at least such a blasphemous enemy to God had been foretold by the Apostles from very early times: more plainly, perhaps, in their oral teaching than in their writings. For the only place where he is clearly foretold in an apostolic writing earlier than the Revelation is 2 Thessalonians 2: and there St Paul seems to use a certain reserve, and certainly refers to his oral teaching as serving to supplement what he writes. In this subject, therefore, it seems that the tradition of the early Church is entitled to more than usual authority, as to the interpretation of the designedly obscure predictions of the Apostle's written words. And here the earliest tradition agrees approximately with the doctrine of the Apocalypse, while it is manifestly independent of it. The Beast in the Apocalypse is a support and ally of Rome, yet becomes in the end the enemy of Rome, and his most daring defiance of God is after her fall. The Man of Sin in 2 Thess. is only to be revealed in his full self-deifying lawlessness, when "that which withholdeth" (variously described as a person or as a power) is taken out of the way: that is, if tradition be trusted, when the Roman Emperor or Empire has been put down.
At the same time, the dominion of the Man of Sin is connected, not with Rome only but with Jerusalem. This power will be at least as much spiritual as temporal, and thus it affiliates itself as well to the divinely chosen Sanctuary as to the divinely appointed seat of Empire. But in the one case, even more than in the other, his enmity to the divine purpose is as distinctly marked as his desire to serve himself heir to it. "He sitteth in the Temple of God, setting himself forth as God," says St Paul. St John describes how the dead bodies of his victims shall lie "in the street of the great City … where also their Lord was crucified." And both Apostles tell us, how his power would be supported by the quasi-spiritual evidence of miracles miracles as striking as those of our Lord Himself, or any of the Prophets before Him, and only distinguished from theirs by the absence of the spirit of charity and of holiness.
Looking on to the tradition of the post-apostolic ages, we find that, though the detailsof apocalyptic interpretation were as obscure, and opinions about them varied as much, as in modern times, yet as to the outline of future events revealed in this Book and elsewhere, there was an agreement complete except in one point (that of the Millennium). From the time of Tertullian and St Hippolytus not to say of SS. Justin and Irenæus we have a consistent expectation of the course of events that will precede the Last Judgement. Their views are not indeed derived from the Apocalypse exclusively, but they almost always give a meaning, and always give the same meaning, to its predictions. The Roman Empire was to be broken up into ten kingdoms, bearing (we must understand from Daniel) the same relation to it that the Hellenised kingdoms of the East bore to the Empire of Alexander. Among these kingdoms will arise a new Empire, reviving the old pretensions of Rome to world-wide instead of merely local dominion; but instead of resting on law, patriotism, and submission to the will of Providence, this new Empire will have no other basis than the self-will, the self-assertion, at least the self-deification, of its Ruler. He will come (if one may apply to the kingdom of evil the analogies of language used of the Kingdom of God) "in the spiritual power" of Epiphanes and of Nero: he may be called Nero in the sense in which our Lord is in prophecy called David, or His forerunner Elias. He will be a man free from coarse vices, such as hinder the consistent pursuit of any aim, but equally free from any restraint imposed by the fear of God, or by regard for human opinion. Claiming for himself the honour due to God and the supreme obedience due to His Law, he will persecute the Christian Church: his persecution being so relentless, so systematic and well-directed, that the Church would be exterminated did not God supernaturally interpose to "shorten the days." But, while persecuting Christianity, he will extend a more or less hearty patronage to Judaism, being possibly himself of Israelitish birth. Having in some sense revived the Roman Empire, he will yet shew himself an enemy to the City of Rome, which will be finally destroyed, either by his armies or by the direct act of God: and he will, perhaps on occasion of this destruction, choose Jerusalem for his seat of empire. To this end he will restore the Jews to their own land: he will perhaps be recognised by them as their Christ: he will restore their Temple, but will make it serve rather to his own glory than to that of the Lord God of Israel.
So far, his career has apparently been unchecked. Now God sends against him two Prophets probably Moses and Elijah, or Enoch and Elijah who, by their words and miracles, to some extent counteract his. But they will be put to death in his persecution, and then his power will appear finally established: but only for a few days. God will raise them from the dead, and call them up into Heaven: and by this miracle, together with the preaching that preceded their death, the Jews will be converted. Elijah will have fulfilled his destined work, of "turning the hearts of the fathers to the children," i.e. of God's old People to His new.
Still Antichrist's universal empire appears scarcely shaken by the secession of the one little nation of Israel: he will assemble the armies of the world for its reconquest, and it will seem far easier for him to reduce his second capital than his first. But when in the Land of Israel, he and his army will be met and destroyed, not in a carnal battle with the forces of Israel after the flesh, but by the power of God in the hand of His Son.
Here, according to what seems to be the oldest form of the tradition, and certainly that standing in closest relation to the Apocalypse, follows what is popularly called the Millennium. The whole reign of Antichrist lasted, apparently, but three years and a half: the divine triumph after his overthrow will last for a thousand years. This will begin, perhaps, with the appearance of the Lord Jesus on earth, certainly with the resurrection of the Martyrs, Prophets, and other chief Saints. Whether these remain on earth or no, the condition of the earth is made such that it shall not be an unworthy abode for them. Moral evil, if not annihilated, at least has its power broken. Jerusalem remains what Antichrist had made it the spiritual and temporal metropolis of the world: but this world-wide power is now in the hands, not of God's enemy, but of God Himself: and the world under the rule of Jerusalem realises the most glorious prophetic descriptions of the Kingdom of God.
Yet this Kingdom of God is not the final and eternal one: indeed some in all ages have been disposed to doubt whether such an earthly Kingdom of God will be established at all. From the time of SS. Jerome and Augustine (the latter distinctly changedthe older opinion for this), the general opinion of the Church has been that such a measure of liberty and pre-dominance as has been hers since the conversion of Constantine is the only earthly Kingdom of God to be looked for. And if feeling the inadequacy of this fulfilment to the language of St John and other Prophets we incline to recur to the earlier view, we must confess that even so Pauca tamen suberunt priscae vestigia fraudis.
Not only does the natural order of the world go on with deaths and (what shocked fourth century feeling most) marriages and births occurring; but there must be some root of moral evil remaining, to account for the end of this age of peace. The Devil will at last for a short time recover his power: while the central regions of the world remain faithful to God, the outlying ones are stirred up to revolt against Him, and press in to crush His Kingdom by the brute force of numbers. They are on the point of success nearer to it, perhaps, than their predecessor Antichrist had been when they are, like Antichrist, overpowered by the direct interposition of God. Then, all God's enemies being subdued, comes the end of all things the General Resurrection of the Dead, the final Judgement, and the Eternal Kingdom of God.
(3) If we heartily believe that Daniel, St Paul, St John, and the other Prophets from whom the foregoing anticipations are derived, had received from the all-knowing God genuine revelations of the future, there is really no difficulty in accepting this as, in the main, the true interpretation of the Apocalypse. It is not of course a complete interpretation of all its details, but it gives a framework, in which every detail may find its place: and for the explanation of details we may be content to wait, till the time shall come when they are manifest to those whose faith sees the consistent fulfilment of the prophecy as a whole. Yet those who have faith to expect the entire fulfilment cannot help asking indeed they are bound to ask what special predictions are already fulfilled or fulfilling, what signs of the coming end are already visible: and so they are led to go over the same ground as unbelievers, who, not recognizing the Prophets as recipients of a supernatural revelation of the future, are obliged to ask how their predictions were suggested by the circumstances of the present.
And if the view be accepted that the Apocalypse was written within a year or two after the death of Nero, circumstances that might have suggested such forecasts are certainly not wanting. Nero himself realises the character of Antichrist in almost every feature. He was a cruel persecutor of Christianity: he was indifferent or even hostile to the national sentiments and national religion of Rome. Though the nearest approach he had to ruling principle was derived from the aesthetic culture of Greece, what religious feeling he had was oriental, perhaps even Jewish: his mistress and empress Poppaea seems to have been a Jewish proselyte. When his loss of the empire was imminent, he spoke of destroying Rome and transferring his throne to Jerusalem; and it was held that his motives for this plan were as much superstitious as political But in truth Nero was too self-willed to "regard any god:" even the "Syrian goddess," to whom he had shewn some of the devotion which he denied to "the gods of his fathers," was discarded before his death: if he did not openly deify himself, like his predecessor Gaius, he shewed himself incapable of hearty worship for any other god but self.
One feature only is wanting to complete the resemblance of the two characters. Antichrist (if we accept the application to him of the latter part of Daniel 11) "shall not regard the desire of women [17]," he shall be free from the sensual vices to which Nero was enslaved from boyhood to the end of his life. And, while with this one exception the charactersof the two coincide so closely, their careersdo not. Nero was a legitimate Roman Emperor, acknowledged as such by the Apostles themselves: it was in the early days of his reign, that the benefits of the Empire to mankind were most fully realised. And atheist, tyrant, and persecutor as Nero was, he certainly did not accomplish half of what the Revelation ascribes to Antichrist. He did not destroy Rome, nor reign and claim divine honours in Jerusalem: at most, it may be believed that he for a moment partially effected the first, and contemplated the second. Neither was he overthrown in the same way as Antichrist While his generals were engaged in a successful war with the unbelieving Jews, he himself was overthrown by a revolt, or series of revolts, on the part of the army and the Senate by a course of events in which there was the same mixture of good and evil as in ordinary human action, and in which it is impossible to see any direct or miraculous intervention of God.
[17] In the natural sense of these words they are as little appropriate to Antiochus Epiphanes as to Nero. It is usual, though hardly natural, to understand them of that "Syrian goddess," whose temple Antiochus vainly attempted to profane. Even so, Nero's apostasy from her worship seems a suggestive parallel.
This admits, however, of a more or less satisfactory reply. The career of Antichrist is the career, not of Nero as known to us, as a personage of ancient history, nor as known to the Seer, as a personage of recent history, but of Nero as, the Seer thought, he was to be of Nero risen from the dead, or restored after a period of seeming death. Although there appears to have been no room for reasonable doubt of the fact of Nero's suicide, there was a widely spread popular belief that he was alive, perhaps in the far east, and that his return from thence might be looked for. During his own generation, this belief gave occasion for pretenders to appear: we hear distinctly of two if not three, one as late as the reign of Domitian, who nearly succeeded in engaging the armies of Parthia in his cause. When it had become manifestly impossible that Nero could, in a merely natural way, be alive and in hiding, still the expectation of his reappearance by no means died out: only it assumed the form of a superstition. Both among heathens and Christians, the expectation continued down to the age of the Barbarian inroads: and among the Christians, it connected itself more or less closely with the expectation of the Antichrist foretold in the Apocalypse. Was this connexion recognised by the Seer of the Apocalypse himself?
We have already had occasion to notice an opinion according to which it was. If the Beast's seven heads, in Revelation 13:1-2; Revelation 17:10-11 are rightly understood of individual Emperors of Rome, there can hardly be a doubt that Nero is one of them, and that he is, in some sense, identified with the predicted Antichrist. In all probability, the head "smitten unto death" symbolises the death (not denied to have been real) of Nero: he is reckoned (together with Augustus, Tiberius, Gaius, and Claudius) among the five kings that are fallen. But his reappearance as Antichrist is anticipated: after the reign of the contemporary Emperor and the short one of his immediate successor, will appear "the Beast which was, and is not," who "both himself is the eighth, and is of the seven, and goeth into perdition." That is, the eighth Roman Emperor will be the revival of one of his predecessors (viz. the fifth), only in his revival he will be animated by the spirit of devilish, instead of merely human wickedness, as he will be possessed of devilish instead of merely human power.
Of course, it is certain that the Roman Empire was not terminated, or the visible kingdom of God established by a miraculous interposition cutting short the reign of the eighth Emperor of Rome. If the Seer of the Apocalypse commits himself to the assertion that this was destined to happen, it is certain that his prediction failed. This will present, of course, no difficulty either to unbelievers in the communication to the Prophets of supernatural knowledge of the future, or to those who deny the claims of the Apocalypse to the character of a true supernatural prophecy: on either of these principles it is easy to say, "This is what the Seer expected to happen, but it did not." Does it follow that, if we accept the divine authority of the Revelation made to St John, we must reject this interpretation of his visions, as one not borne out by the events? The analogy of other prophecies will suggest another course. The resemblances between the Nero of history and the Antichrist of prophecy are too close to be accidental: so are the resemblances, it may be added, between several other historical characters and Antichrist. On the other hand, Nero and each of these other Antichristian figures differs from the Antichrist of prophecy in some more or less essential features: and none of them has done the acts, or achieved the career, or met with the end, foretold for him. The inference seems to be, that in these "many antichrists" there have been partialand typicalfulfilments of the prophecies of theAntichrist, in whom they will find their final and exact fulfilment: just as the various Messianic prophecies of the Old Testament have found or will find their final and exact fulfilment in Christ, while many of them were partially fulfilled some of them even suggested by events which the Prophets who foretold them lived to see.
In particular, there is absolutely no room for doubt that this explanation must be applied to the prophecies of the Old Testament which most closely resemble the Apocalypse those in the seventh, eighth, and eleventh Chapter s of Daniel. The eighth chapter, and at least part of the eleventh, undeniably describe the reign, the persecution, and the overthrow of Antiochus Epiphanes: but, if these be regarded as having no further reference, the latter at least must be condemned as wanting that perfect truth which appears essential to a divinely inspired prophecy. If however we regard Antiochus as a type of Antichrist, it becomes credible one may even say probable that those parts of the prediction which have not been fulfilled by the one will be by the other. Thus understood, the three separate visions throw light upon one another. In c. 7 the reference is, apparently, to the final Enemy only the imagery is almost [18] exactly that afterwards used by St John in the Apocalypse, and the meaning presumably the same. In c. 8, on the other hand, while the imagery is not indeed identical, but closely parallel with that of the preceding chapter, it seems plain that the Enemy described is Antiochus, and his history forms an adequate fulfilment of the prediction. Lastly, in c. 11 we have the historical antecedents of Antiochus described, in even more unmistakeable detail than in c. 8: we hear of Antiochus himself, and of the conflict between him and Israel: then suddenly the historical Antiochus, with his ridiculous follies and miserable human vices, seems to vanish, and make way for a figure of demoniac grandeur, defying God on what, except to faith, seem equal terms. When thisEnemy of God and His People has arisen, and developed his full power, the remedy is no longer to be looked for in the sword of the Maccabees: the champion Israel needs is the Archangel Michael, or indeed the Almighty Himself: the general Resurrection follows, and the general Judgement.
[18] Only it seems that Daniel's beast had one head, not seven (ver. 20).
If the Book of Daniel be accepted as a really inspired prophecy, this series of visions admits of but one explanation. The oppression of Antiochus is foretold, in part for its own sake, as an important episode in the temporal and religious history of God's People: in part also as a type of a greater and still more important oppression. And it seems probable, that Nero is treated by the New Testament Seer exactly as Antiochus was by his predecessor that the historical Nero is treated as the type of Antichrist, that the descriptions of the one pass insensibly into descriptions of the other. We may, consistently with our reverence for the prophecy, say, "So much of this prediction was realised in the Seer's age: the rest has not yet been fulfilled:" for we shall hold that the partial fulfilment was a foretaste and a type of a fulfilment which, when it comes, will be complete.
The partial fulfilment of the prophecy concerning the Empire has been already mentioned (p. xlix). We may say that Nero's real successor in the Empire was Vespasian the 18 months between his accession and Nero's death being really a time of anarchy. The pretenders or claimants of empire who arose in almost every province may or may not be indicated by the "ten kings that have received no kingdom as yet," but it is arbitrary to select from among them, and recognise as de factoemperors, the three who were, for a few months, successively recognised at Rome. If we accept Nero then as the fifth of the "five fallen" emperors, Vespasian, the destroyer of Jerusalem, is the sixth, under whom, it is on this view probable, the vision was seen. His successor Titus was "not yet come, and when he came was to continue a little space" i.e.not to have a merely ephemeral reign like those of Galba, Otho, and Vitellius, but yet a short one about two years. And hissuccessor his brother Domitian was to be a Nero: and so he was.
This is, however, an imperfect and inadequate fulfilment of the prophecies of Antichrist in this book. Domitian was, it is true, a revival of Nero in his cruelty; he was like Nero, a persecutor of the Church: he was also like Nero and unlike the predicted Antichrist foully unclean in life. But he differed from Nero in possessing talents and principles which, while to some extent they bring him nearer to the type of spiritual wickedness, may also be regarded as giving him the dignity of that power which "withholdeth" the manifestation of the Lawless One. Domitian was no blasphemous atheist, but was, as a Pagan, sincerely and even fanatically religious: and his gross personal vices did not prevent his having a zeal for virtue, which seems to have been sincere. And, for good or evil, he was a Roman not like Antiochus, Nero, or Antichrist, a denationalised cosmopolitan. It may be doubtful to what extent the Empire suffered dishonour in Domitian's days: but at worst he must be acquitted of having wilfully betrayed its honour.
Thus it seems necessary to look for a completer fulfilment of the prophecy than any that has yet been seen, while yet it is possible to point to afulfilment that, to some extent, corresponds with the prediction even in the minutest details. We may thus recognise an element of truth in the two rival schemes of interpretation commonly called the "preterist" and the "futurist" that which sees in the Revelation only a prediction or forecast of events near the Seer's own time, and now past, and that which sees a prediction of events wholly or almost wholly future, and only to be fulfilled in the few last years of the world's existence. Just as the 72nd Psalm is recognised as setting forth the greatness of Solomon's, "in type, and in truth of Christ's Kingdom," so the Revelation may be regarded as a picture of the persecution of the Church, "in type" by such Emperors as Nero and Domitian, "in truth" by the Antichrist of the last days, and as a prophecy of Christ's victory over both enemies, the type and the antitype.
II. With the "Preterist" and "Futurist" schemes of interpretation is usually coordinated a third, called the "Continuous Historical." According to this scheme what is foretold in the Book is not only a series of events contemporary with the Seer, or at least within his natural range of anticipation, nor only the series of events which will immediately precede the Lord's final coming to Judgement, but the wholeseries of events, from the first to the last, beginning at the date (whenever we suppose that to be) of the vision, and ending with (or rather after) the end of the world, but embracing the whole course of history in between.
The strong point of this view is, that it enables us to give a meaning, not merely to every vision, every image, in the Apocalypse, but to the order and connexion in which the visions and images are arranged. It is quite certain, that that order is not arbitrary nor accidental, that the arrangement is (if we may apply the terms of human criticism) as elaborate, as artistic, and as symmetrical as any of the descriptions: and consequently it may fairly be held, that the arrangement forms an essential part of the Seer's teaching, and that no interpretation can be adequate which does not give a reason and a meaning for the arrangement. And the most obvious and natural view of the meaning is, that the arrangement is chronological that every successive vision is a description, more or less figurative, of events successive to one another in the same order.
Yet no one has attempted to carry out this view quite consistently, and to interpret every vision as describing an event later than the vision before it. It is quite true that, as a rule, the visions are not only described in successive order, but are felt by the Seer to be successive in the later ones he refers to the earlier (e.g. Revelation 14:1 (true text), Revelation 20:2; Revelation 17:1; Revelation 21:9). But not only do some of the visions remain in view while later ones have risen which seem to take their place (see Revelation 11:16; Revelation 11:19; Revelation 15:5-8; Revelation 16:7; Revelation 19:4): there are cases (e.g. Revelation 11:7; Revelation 13:1-10; Revelation 17:3) where we seem to have unmistakeably the same figures or events described twice over, with only a difference in the point of view. Hence, some have gone so far as to analyse the whole book into a series of groups of visions, each oneof which covers the whole range of human history, from the Seer's time (or even earlier) to the end of the world.
And certainly, it is difficult to understand Revelation 6:12-17 of anything except the time immediately before the Last Judgement, or Revelation 14:14-20 of anything but the Last Judgement itself. Yet, when we find the latter passage immediately followed, not by the "beginning of the eternal rest [19]," but by a fresh series of plagues, which are, we are told, "the last, for in them is fulfilled the wrath of God," it is hard to avoid reconsidering the obvious and natural interpretation: and in no other casedo we find anything resembling a description of the final Judgement, till it is described, quite unmistakeably in Revelation 20:11-15: often as the Judgement has been prepared for and worked up to.
[19] See note on Revelation 8:1.
In fact, the method and plan of the book seems to be, that we have again and again a series most frequently a group of seven of pictures that plainly symbolise the approach of the Judgement. Up to the penultimate stage, everything would lead us to think the Judgement was immediately to follow: but the penultimate stage itself is prolonged and expanded: and when at last it ends, and the series is complete, it is found to usher in, notthe end of all things, but the beginning of a new series of events, still preparatory for the final Judgement.
Now whatever predictions of the Apocalypse have been or have not been fulfilled, there is no doubt that this feature of it has been realised conspicuously. In the first century in the third in the fifth in the ninth in the sixteenth in the age of the French Revolution perhaps in our own time the signs of the coming Judgement have multiplied. The faithful have seen them beginning to come to pass, and have looked up and lifted up their heads, as though their redemption were drawing nigh: while those who were notfaithful, or at least whose faith was without love, have sought to hide from the face of Him that sitteth upon the Throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb. And yet, after a generation or two, the signs have passed away: the Judge has not come, the whole world has not been judged; rather, it has taken a new lease of life, and become a battlefield between new forms of good and evil, a court for new judgements of God between them. We cannot say indeed that those were wrong who expected the Judge to appear. They were bidden to expect Him they were bidden to expect Him all the more, when they saw such signs as they did see: and so how could they do otherwise than they did? Indeed, dare we say that their expectation was disappointed? The world has not been judged, but the nation, the polity, the generation has been: the Kingdom of God's eternal rest has not been set up, but they that have believed do enter rest. The Vision of Judgement has been fulfilled in part and in type: the partial fulfilment serves to stay and support, without satisfying, faith's hunger for the final fulfilment.
Thus it seems possible to recognise an element of truth in both the "continuous" and what may be called the "resumptive" methods of interpretation, as we did in both the "preterist" and the "futurist" theories. We may believe, that the chief object of the book is, to teach the Church how to prepare for the Lord's coming to Judgement. With that object, we are told, not only in general terms what signs will mark His approach, but, in some detail, what events will immediately precede it. But in the providence of God, the signs of His approach, and events more or less resembling those immediately preceding it, have occurred repeatedly: and this Book accordingly intimates, that they will occur repeatedly. To Christians who had seen an almost perfect image of Antichrist in Nero, it was foretold that a new Nero, a perfect Antichrist, was to come: it was, not improbably, intimated that there would be in some sense a new Nero in the next generation, which was fulfilled in Domitian. Yet the "wars and rumours of wars" of the year 69 70 did not usher in the Second Advent: they passed off, and left the Empire in peace and prosperity. Jerusalem had fallen, and Rome had tottered: but the whole earth sat still and was quiet: and Rome, at least, had recovered from the shock. Again, in the conquests of the Teutonic barbarians, of the Arabs, of the Turks; or in the paganising apostasies of Julian, of the Renaissance, of the great Revolution, and of our own day, we may see likenesses, more or less close, of the things foretold in this Book: He Who inspired the Book doubtless intends that we should. Only, while the Book was written for the Church of all ages, it was written speciallyfor the Church of the Apostles" own age, and for the Church of the last age of all: we need not therefore expect to find any intermediate age of affliction, or any intermediate enemy of the truth, indicated with such individualising detail as Nero and his persecution on the one hand, or Antichrist and his on the other.
Certainly, there is this objection to the various forms of the "continuous historical" theory, which have attempted to identify special visions in the Apocalypse with special events in mediaeval or modern history that no just view of the history of any polity or system will support such a series of identifications. Indeed, there is this element of truth, or at least of plausibility, in such schemes, that the one national or local feature indicated by the Seer coincides with what men have learnt, more and more as time has gone on, to be the centre and heart of the continuous life of the world's history The City on the Seven Mountains. The Revelation, it is plain, tells us what the history of Rome is in God's sight: and the history of Rome is the one thread that runs unbroken through the history of the world. But it is only by the most arbitrary treatment passing without warning from the figurative to the literal, and from the literal to the figurative that any appearance can be maintained of a resemblance between the history of Rome, or of the world gathered round Rome, and the successive visions of the Apocalypse: nor is it possible, in honesty or in charity, to ascribe to the Rome of past history a uniform character such as is ascribed to the Babylon of the Apocalypse. No doubt, there have been times, (much later than those of Nero and Domitian,) when a Roman Emperor or a Roman Pope has presented a figure which, to the eyes of faith and righteousness, looks terribly like that of Antichrist. Godless profligacy like that of Frederic II., cultivated, heathenish indifference to righteousness like that of the age of Leo X., was certainly felt was, we cannot doubt, rightly felt to be the antichristian power of their time, by the moral reformers of the Middle Ages and of the Renaissance: but it is unjust and unreasonable to hold the Empire in all ages, or the Papacy in all ages, responsible for the sins of the Empire or the Papacy in those ages. We who in our own age have seen the rival powers of the Empire and the Papacy represented by honourable Christian men like William I. and Leo XIII., ought to be able to do justice alike to Pagan Emperors like Trajan and Diocletian, to Christian Emperors like Henry III. and Barbarossa, and to Popes like Gregory I., Gregory VII., Innocent III., and Pius V. To treat either of these groups of men as the champions and representatives of Antichrist is hardly less than blasphemy against the work of God.
And in fact, the identification of the Papacy with Antichrist admits of direct refutation. "He is the Antichrist," says St John, (1 John 2:22) "who denieth the Father and the Son:" he defines "the spirit of Antichrist" as the "spirit which confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh" (1 John 4:3). Now, whatever the errors of the Papacy and of the Roman Church, it is certain that no Pope has ever denied the truth on the doctrines of the Trinity and Incarnation. The most questionable of Roman doctrines in particular those relating to the person of the Blessed Virgin Mary so far from contradicting the true doctrine of "Jesus Christ come in the flesh," presuppose it and are deduced (however unwarrantably) from it It is likely enough that the Papacy has in many ages incurred "the Babylonian woe," not in respect of theological opinions, but in proportion as "the mitre and the crosier" were, in Bishop Coxe's words,
"Sullied with the tinsel of the Caesar's diadems:"
but, when the Caesars themselves were the bar against Antichrist, their successors or their apes can hardly be identified with him. One thing is plain about the Apocalypse that it describes a clearly defined moral conflict between good and evil, between Christ and His enemies: not a controversy in which good men, and men who love Christ in sincerity, are to be found on different sides. It is an idle latitudinarianism which assumes that in such controversies truth is unimportant, or that compromise is the only guide to it: but it is something worse to waste on such controversies the zeal that should be reserved for the true war with the real Antichrist.
CHAPTER IV
ANALYSIS
Revelation 1:1-3. Title and description of the Book.
Revelation 1:4 to Revelation 3:22. Prologue and Dedication, shewing how St John received from Christ the command to write the vision, and send it to the Seven Churches.
Revelation 1:4-20. The vision of the Son of Man.
Revelation 2:1 to Revelation 3:22. The Epistles to the Seven Churches.
Revelation 5:1 to Revelation 22:7. The Vision or Revelation itself.
A. Revelation 4:1 to Revelation 5:14. Vision remaining visible through all the rest; shewing (ch. 4) the Divine glory (see Ezekiel 1; Isaiah 6), and (ch. 5) the Lamb that was slain sharing it.
(a) Revelation 5:1-14. The book of the seven seals and the Glory of the Lamb who is worthy to open it.
B. Revelation 6:1 to Revelation 8:1. The opening of the seven seals, and the judgements attending thereon. Before the last seal, there appear
(a) Revelation 7:1-8. The sealing of the 144,000, and
(b) Revelation 7:9-17. The assembly of the multitude of the justified.
C. Revelation 8:2 to Revelation 11:19. The sounding of the seven trumpets, and the judgements attending thereon. Before the first trumpet appear
(a) Revelation 8:3-5. The Angel censing the prayers of the Saints. The last three trumpets are proclaimed (Revelation 8:13) as Woes. Before the last of them appears
(b) Revelation 10:1-11. A mighty Angel having a little Book, which the Seer is commanded to eat: and
(c) Revelation 11:1-2. The measuring of the Temple.
(d) Revelation 11:3-14. The prophesying of the two Witnesses (Moses and Elijah?), their martyrdom and resurrection.
D. Revelation 12:1 to Revelation 14:13. The signs in Heaven and in Earth: the heads of the Kingdoms of God and Satan, or of Christ and Antichrist.
(a) Revelation 12:1-13. The Woman giving birth to the Man, persecuted by the Serpent (see Genesis 3:15), and the War in Heaven.
(b) Revelation 13:1-10. The Beast to whom the Serpent or Dragon (the Devil) gives his authority (see Daniel 7; Daniel 11:36 sqq.; 2 Thessalonians 2:3-10).
(c) Revelation 13:11-18. The second Beast (the False Prophet) who secures the deification of the first Beast, and persecutes those who refuse him worship.
(d) Revelation 14:1-5. The Lamb with the 144,000 of the redeemed.
(e) Revelation 14:6-12. Three Angels proclaim God's Judgements, and (v.13) a voice from Heaven His mercy.
E. Revelation 14:14-20. A symbolic vision of the Judgement of the earth (see Joel 3:13).
F. Revelation 15:1 to Revelation 16:21. The outpouring of the seven vials, and the judgements attending thereon. Before the first vial there appears
(a) Revelation 15:2-4. The triumph-song of the victors in the war with the Beast.
Before the last vial,
(b) Revelation 16:13-16. The spirits of devils gather the armies of Christ's enemies.
G. Revelation 17:1 to Revelation 18:24. The fall of Babylon.
H. Revelation 19:1-21. The campaign of the Word of God against the Beast.
(a) Revelation 19:1-8. The triumph-song inspired by the fall of Babylon: the Lamb, the Victor and the Bridegroom (see Psalms 45).
(b) Revelation 19:9-10. The revealing Angel proclaims himself not divine.
(c) Revelation 19:11-21. The martial procession, and the victory.
I. Rev 20:1-6. The Millennial Peace.
K. Revelation 20:7-10. The last campaign of the Devil.
L. Revelation 20:11-15. The universal Judgement.
M. Revelation 21:1 to Revelation 22:7. The glorious reign of God and His saints in the New Jerusalem.
(8, 9. The revealing Angel again refuses divine honours.)
Revelation 22:10-21. Conclusion.
APPENDIX
EXCURSUS I
The Angels of the Churches: Elemental Angels: the Living Creatures
There are two views of the angels of the Churches. According to one they are simply the bishops of the Churches; according to the other they are superhuman beings standing in some intimate relation to the Churches: more intimate than the relation to Nature of the angels who hold the four winds, 7:1, the angel who hath power over the fire, 14:18, and presumably the angel of the waters, 16:5. The first view, which at present is perhaps the most widely received, rests upon the following considerations. In Haggai 1:13 the prophet, in Malachi 2:7 the priest is -the angel of "the Lord," " and it is generally agreed (see note in Cambridge Bible for Schools, ad loc.) that -the angel," Ecclesiastes 5:6, means simply the priest. Hence as in St Ignatius the bishop is always the chief minister of the Christian Sacrifice it might seem that he is a priest and mystically an -angel." Again, as Westcott and Hort, ad loc.Greek Testament, 2:137, point out, there is an analogy between what we may call the -style and title" of the -angels" and the style and title of the pagan high-priests of Asia. Moreover, if Jezebel be the wife of the -angel" in Thyatira he must be a man, as she is a woman. No inference can be drawn from the name, which in Greek would be the same as -angel," of an officer in the synagogue who may have been established in St John's time: for he was in no sense a ruler; in the Christian hierarchy he corresponded to an acolyte, not to a bishop.
The great difficulty in the way of this view is that the -angels" seem to be more completely identified with the Churches than human bishops can be: take for instance the messages to Sardis or Laodicea, can we suppose that the Church had all the faults of the bishop or the bishop all the faults of the Church? Take even the message to Ephesus: can we suppose that the fervour of the Church and the bishop has been declining pari passufor exactly the same time? Nor can we infer from the way in which Old Testament saints from Jeremiah to Nehemiah confess the sins of their people as if they were their own, nor even from Isaiah 53:6 that the Lord lays the iniquity of the Church upon the bishop as a matter of course. Again, the seven candlesticks are the seven Churches, the seven stars are the -angels." One would expect an impenitent bishop to perish with his Church, yet the threat to the -angel" at Ephesus is -except thou repent I will take away thy candlestick," not -I will cast thee out of My hand." This cannot be pressed: both the threat and the counsel to the -angel" at Laodicea suggest a human rather than a superhuman recipient, though the former at least must be metaphorical. It is rather an evasion than a solution to regard the -angels" as mere personifications of the prevailing spirit of the Churches: such a view would be at bottom unreal and unmeaning, but on the surface it has fewer difficulties than either the view that the -angels" are human bishops, or that they are perfect, blessed, faultless spirits charged with the oversight of communities which may be imperfect, faulty, miserable. This view indeed depends entirely upon a doctrine of angels which perhaps would only be found in Holy Scripture by readers who bring it there with them. Those who were praying in the house of Mary the mother of John, whose surname was Mark, clearly believed that Peter's angel would speak with Peter's voice: did they believe that he was, so to speak, a heavenly double of Peter who came into the world with him? It is important to remember that they were familiar with the whole body of thought at which we have to guess mainly from the incidental notices and hints of sacred writers who appear in some measure to share, and therefore to sanction, the beliefs of their own day. While the -little ones" keep their innocency their -angels" see the Father's face. When they seek out many inventions it may be that their -angels" are charged -with folly" because they too have failed to keep -the first estate." Again in Ezekiel 28:11-19, we seem to have a prophecy against the superhuman -king of Tyrus," parallel to the prophecy in Ezekiel 28:1-10 against the human prince who thinks himself God. If so, the -king of Tyrus," who for all his superhuman attributes is to perish with the city with which he has been created, must be something like the -spiritual form" of the city, a spirit with a personality of his own, yet wise with its wisdom, rich with its wealth, proud with its pride. The book of Daniel gives us no reason to think that the -princes" of Persia and of Grecia belong to a higher order. If there be such spirits of nations, certainly it is simplest to think that the -angels" stand in the same relation to -Churches," in the eternal order of grace and glory, as that in which -princes" stand to nations, in the temporal order of secular providence. But since the time of St Victorinus no interpreter has ventured to maintain that elect angels can have real need of repentance as the -angels" of the churches certainly have.
In the Old Testament angels seem to be identified in some sense with stars, e.g. Job 4:18; Job 25:3; Job 25:5; and with fire and wind, Psalms 104:4; and Longfellow's lines:
-The angels of wind and of fire
Breathe each but one song and expire."
are true to one aspect of Rabbinical speculation in which angels seem to forestall the -metaphysical" conception of -forces." There is no trace that either line of thought influenced the seer of Patmos. The elemental angels, so to call them, are apparently pure spirits, who neither impart their characters to what they act upon nor are influenced in their own character by the sphere of their action. The angel of the waters no more suffers loss when they who are worthy have blood given them to drink than the angels who withhold the four winds from blowing. Still the energy of the material universe seems like the giving of the law to be committed to the disposition of angels. So far as this goes we might suppose that even the Angel of the Bottomless Pit was like the evil angels of Psalms 78:49, a not unwilling minister of God's anger, but unless he is the same as the fallen star he is himself a prisoner in the Pit with those over whom he rules; in this he is like the four angels bound in the river Euphrates, who also are held ready to execute a work of vengeance at a time appointed. It may be added that though the writer of the Ascent of Isaiah 10:8, who seems to imitate this passage, distinguishes the -angel who is in hell" from -Destruction," i.e. -Abaddon," he clearly assumes that hell is the permanent dwelling of the angel.
The four living creatures certainly correspond to the cherubim in Ezekiel. The resemblances outweigh the differences, and it is to be supposed that St John, like Ezekiel, could only see the -appearance" of spiritual forms. The throne in his vision is immoveable: it reminds us not of Him Who bowed the heavens and came down, but of the Father of Lights without variableness or shadow of turning. Instead of wheels full of eyes the living creatures are full of eyes themselves. If the eyes are stars, we might say that if the cherubim in Ezekiel are spirits in a sense, of the storm, the living creatures are spirits of constellations, the true power behind the starry shapes that men have traced in the sky. The two do not exclude each other. Heavenly princes of the east, of the west, of the north, of the south, might be manifested in vision under either shape.
The four riders who appear one by one as each of the first four seals is opened recall not only sword, famine and pestilence among the four sore judgements in Ezekiel, but the four chariots in Zechariah, which seem expressly identified with the four winds. This makes it more remarkable that the four living creatures cry -Come," one by one, before the riders appear. The riders come (? from the four ends of heaven) in answer to this cry, even if we suppose that in its deepest meaning the cry is for the coming of the Judge Himself, Whose heralds all judgements are.
In Daniel the four beasts who symbolise the four kingdoms are raised up by the strife of the four winds upon the great deep, as if the first thing shewed to the prophet was four world-wide kingdoms, each arising from one of the four ends of the earth. As all four are in rebellion against the Ancient of Days, Who allows no dominion but the fifth monarchy of one like unto the Son of Man, we cannot follow the Jewish speculation which finds an anticipation of Daniel in Ezekiel, and identifies his living creatures with the four empires, the Persian having the face of a man because it dealt favourably with Israel. Both in Ezekiel and in the Revelation we must assume that the living creatures are perfectly pure and holy.
Assuming the living creatures to be personal creatures and servants of God, the highest of His creatures, the most honoured of His servants, it becomes less important to determine what is meant by their several forms, though it be admitted that they are symbolical. We need frame no exclusive theory of what suggested them or of what they were intended to suggest. Certainly the view that they represent creation will not bear pressing, even in the sense that they are manifested in forms borrowed from all creation, to shew that they act not only for themselves, but for all living creatures upon earth. It is not convincing in itself: the classification of creatures into men, wild beasts, tame beasts and birds, looks arbitrary not to say false, whether judged logically, zoologically, or in reference to the Biblical account of creation: if it were certain that the Jewish explanation of Ezekiel represented a settled tradition older than St John, it would of course tell in favour of applying it with most modern critics to the Revelation, but it does not seem to be older than the conjecture (quite inapplicable to the Revelation) that the four living creatures correspond to the standards of the fourfold host of Israel in the wilderness.
On the other hand there is no doubt that the view which regards the living creatures as symbolical of the Gospels is traditional in the best sense. It is at least as old as St Irenaeus, and it has been handed down ever since. It is true that there is no traditional agreement as to which living creature represents which Gospel. The tradition which ruled medieval and modern art does not go back beyond St Victorinus. According to him St Mark who begins with the voice crying in the wilderness is the roaring lion, St Matthew who begins with the descent of the Lord after the flesh is the man, St Luke who begins with the sacrifice of Zacharias is the ox, St John is the high flying eagle. St Augustin (who does not seem to know the view of St Victorinus), without committing himself to either thinks those more likely to be right who make Matthew the lion, Mark the man, Luke the calf, John the eagle, than those who make Matthew the man, Mark the eagle, and John the lion. This last is the arrangement of St Irenaeus, who like St Victorinus argues from the opening words (instead of as St Augustin thought better from the whole idea of the Gospel [20]); but instead of finding the lion's voice in the opening of St Mark he finds the wings of prophecy, in St John he finds the royalty of the only Begotten of the Father. No one seems to have questioned that the sacrificial calf is the symbol of St Luke (though guessing a priorithe third of the living creatures seems to symbolise the third evangelist at least as well), and this suggests that the identification rests on a real tradition. The assignment of the eagle to St John is certainly appropriate [21], if we could be sure that his gospel was written when he saw his vision; and that, if it were, the Four Gospels were as familiar to him as the Twelve Apostles of the Lamb. It might be safer to say that the four forms represent four elements of the highest excellence, which are embodied in Christ's Kingdom, and His Sacrifice, His Humanity and His Union with the Father: if we will we may see in their number a hint at the reason why God's Providence caused His Gospel to be transmitted to us just in four forms respectively devoted to the setting forth of each of these doctrines. As St Irenaeus says, Adn. Haer. III. xii., -the faces of the Cherubim are images of the operation of the Son of God: for the first living creature is like a lion signifying His energy and rule and royalty, the second like a calf manifesting His sacrificial and priestly ministry, the third having a face of a man most clearly describing His coming as Man, the fourth like a flying eagle declaring the gift of the Spirit lighting upon the Church." The next words are ambiguous; it is not clear whether it is the living creatures or the Gospels, whose voice accords with their nature, that are the throne of Christ. St Jerome is clearer. In his letter to Paullinus he calls the Gospels the chariot of the Lord and the true cherubim. He cannot be said to go too far. Before the Father was revealed in the Son, He made darkness His secret place and shewed Himself to prophets and psalmists wrapt in clouds and riding upon the wings of the wind: it is given to Christians to behold with open face in the fourfold Gospel the Throne of God and the Lamb, Who rides through the world, as St Augustin says, to subdue the nations to His easy yoke and His light burden.
[20] Hence St Matthew is the lion, because his is the Gospel of the Kingdom of the Lion of the tribe of Judah.
[21] See Keble's -Hymn for St John's Day," in Salisbury Hymnal, reprinted in Poems:Word supreme before creation,Born of God eternally,Who didst will for our salvationTo be born on earth, and die;Well Thy saints have kept their station,Watching till Thine hour drew nigh.Now "tis come, and faith espies Thee,Like an eaglet in the morn,One in steadfast worship eyes Thee,Thy belov'd, Thy latest born:In Thy glory he descries TheeReigning from the tree of scorn.
EXCURSUS II
On the Heresies controverted in the Revelation
The traditions about St John's life in Asia Minor are unanimous, and the oldest and best authenticated traditions are not least clear or detailed, in the statement that the Apostle was engaged, not only in ordering the Church peaceably, in its internal constitution, but in controversy with heretics, who divided the Church's unity and denied the faith which is its foundation. And in fact, in all St John's Epistles (1 John 2:18-24; 1 John 4:1-6; 1 John 2:7; 1 John 2:10; 1 John 3:9-10) we have direct allusions to heretical or schismatical teachers, and St John's own doctrine stated in a more or less controversial form: while large portions of the First Epistle, and some even of the Gospel (e. g. the introduction), become more intelligible if we see in them a tacit reference to the heresies which either denied or perverted the doctrines there stated.
Tradition and internal probability alike lead us to understand these controversies to be particularly concerned with the heresy of the Judaising Gnostic Cerinthus; which, in all probability, did not arise till near the close of St John's life. Not the least of the arguments for referring the Revelation to an earlier date is this, that, while the controversial element in it is at least as large, the doctrines controverted are of a different and, apparently, of an earlier type.
The only sect mentioned by name is the Nicolaitan: and for the characteristics of this, the Apocalypse itself is our only quiteunimpeachable authority. The Nicolaitans are indeed mentioned by St Irenaeus, and by later writers against heretics who used his works, apparently as still existing: but there is always some uncertainty in statements about the doctrines and practices of these secret and discreditable societies, and we cannot be sure how far St Irenaeus" statements rest on independent evidence, how far on mere inference or conjecture from what is said of them in this Book.
In fact, he says little more than this Book does make plain that they were one of the Antinomian sects that arose in or beside the early Church, who claimed licence for sensual sin. There are two conceivable grounds on which they may have done so, neither directly supported by the evidence of the Apocalypse, but both intelligible historically, and traceable to causes that were really at work. They may, like the so-called Antinomians of modern times, have pressed St Paul's doctrine of the freedom of Christians from the Law into an assertion of the indifference, to the spiritual, of all outward actions: or they may have argued from the false spiritualism which regarded the flesh as essentially evil, and rejected the attempt to sanctify it.
What traditional evidence we have supports rather the latter view. St Clement of Alexandria a writer somewhat later than St Irenaeus, and less directly acquainted with the main stream of Johannine tradition in Asia Minor, but early enough to have received genuine traditions, and educated enough to know the difference between tradition and conjecture describes the sect as deriving their name from Nicolaus or Nicolas the Deacon (Acts 6:5). He adds, that Nicolas was not really responsible for their excesses, but that they abused in a sensual sense language which he used in an ascetic. Moreover he tells stories of Nicolas" personal life, which do not sound like inventions, but rather like features of a real human character a man of strong passions and strong principles, willing, in his own words, "to do violence to the flesh", but unable to conceive the higher ideal of "the flesh being subdued to the Spirit."
In fact, there seems no doubt that this representation of the relation of Nicolas and the Nicolaitans is at least ideally true. There were in the later apostolic age at least as early as the Epistle to the Colossians ascetic teachers, who preached bodily mortification as the one and the indispensable condition of holiness and spiritual progress, and regarded the indulgence of any bodily appetite as almost necessarily sinful. The characters of such men are often as austere as their theories, and command a half-reluctant respect, which not infrequently commends the theories to aspirants after purity, better than a more willing assent might do. On the other hand, not infrequently even the leaders and teachers, however sincere in their theories and professions, break down in the attempt
"to wind themselves too high
For sinful man beneath the sky,"
and fall into the very carnal sins, for fear of which they have condemned the most innocent carnal indulgences. And if this is not the case with the leaders, it is almost always with their followers, sooner or later. Either their austere theories and practice provoke a reaction, and men boldly assert everything, and do everything, that is most opposed to what they have taught and done: or their followers deduce from their principles (as it is said happened with Nicolas) an indifference to all moral rules. It is said that it is necessarily sinful to indulge the flesh: now human life cannot be sustained without someindulgence of the flesh, at least in food and drink. It follows, that fleshly sin is inevitable: if then spiritual perfection is attainable, it must be because fleshly sin is no obstacle to it. Consequently, it ceases to be worth while to minimise fleshly sin, as the ascetics did: the true conclusion (certainly the most agreeable to corrupt human nature) will be, to let the flesh go its own sinful way, while the spirit pursues its own path to what is regarded as perfection.
It thus seems likely enough that the traditions describing the Nicolaitans as teaching the moral indifference of carnal acts are to be trusted; and that the sect grew up without any direct connexion with the controversy about the obligation of the Law upon the consciences of Christians. No doubt, as the Epistle to the Colossians shews, the mystical and ascetic theory of life had an affinity to one side of Judaism, and there were Jewish sects or schools that held it: but it does not appear that St John's controversy with the Nicolaitans was directly connected with the controversies which we hear of in the life of St Paul. It must be remembered that Nicolas the Deacon, if he were in any sense the founder of the sect, was not a Jew by birth. But we seem, in the early Chapter s of the Apocalypse, to find traces of another controversy, perhaps less vital in its issues, perhaps one of which the danger was over at the date of the vision, which may more probably be identified with that between St Paul and the Judaizers. At Ephesus we hear of them "who say that they are Apostles and are not," and at Smyrna and Philadelphia of "them who say that they are Jews, and are not:" and these designations certainly suggest to our minds men like St Paul's Jewish opponents, "false Apostles", in his own words, "transforming themselves into the Apostles of Christ." And the developement of this party, or some party like them, in the district round Ephesus is foretold by St Paul in Acts 20:29, and mentioned historically in 2 Timothy 1:15: now if the Apocalypse was written only five or six years after the last, it is likely enough that in the Church of Ephesus, particularly, their memory would be fresh, yet the immediate danger from them be over, in the way implied in the Apocalypse.
And no doubt, what is said of the false Jews at Philadelphia, and perhaps at Smyrna, does suggest that the contrast is between the true Jews who saw the Law fulfilled in the Gospel, and owned all believers in the Gospel as brethren, and those who lost their right to the name of Jews by insisting on the exclusive rights of the old Judaism. So far, St John (or He Whose words he reports) condemns the same spirit as St Paul, though it is doubful how far the controversy is with Judaism as something external to Christianity, how far with Jewish pretensions within the Christian Church. But while the false Apostles at Ephesus were plainly professing Christians, we learn nothing as to the nature of their false teaching or the ground of their false claims. They mayjust as well have been antinomians as Judaizers: and, as they seem plainly distinguished from the Nicolaitans, their antinomianism mayhave rested on ultra-Pauline rather than on dualistic reasoning.
This possibility is the utmost that can reasonably be conceded towards the view propounded by Baur and his school, and retained and popularized by Renan, that most of the controversy in the Apocalypse is directed against St Paul himself. Not only is he himself the false Apostle whom the Church at Ephesus is praised for rejecting, but his followers are identified at once with the false Jews and with the Nicolaitans, and he or his doctrine or his school with the Jezebel of Thyatira. Arbitrary as this theory is, no less than shocking to our feelings of Christian reverence, it seems necessary to refute what has been advocated with such confidence, and by writers of such reputation. The one point common to St Paul with "Jezebel" and the Nicolaitans is, that while they "taught and seduced Christ's servants to eat things offered to idols, and to commit fornication," St Paul did not teach that it was absolutely and in all cases unlawful to eat meat that might possibly have formed part of an idol sacrifice: and that he regarded marriages between a Christian and a heathen as lawful, at least in some cases. Now it is quite possible, that some Christian teachers in St Paul's day might (on the former point at least) have held more rigorous views than his: in fact, more rigorous views did practically prevail in the Church after the Apostolic age: but it is absurd to imagine that any one could charge him with extreme laxity on either point. On the former, he not only taught that the liberty secured by the knowledge "that an idol is nothing in the world," and "that nothing is unclean in itself," was not to be exercised without regard to the prejudices or scruples of others (1 Corinthians 8:9-13; 1 Corinthians 10:28 sq.; Romans 14:14 &c.); but also, that to "sit at meat in the idol's temple," at the actual sacrificial feast, was a real act of "communion with devils" (1 Corinthians 8:10; 1 Corinthians 10:14-22). It might be superstition to think that an idol was a real devil: but the "weak brother" who thought so was right on the practical point, that idol-worship was devil-worship, and that sharing in a sacrificial feast was an act of worship, whether the feast and the worship were Jewish, Christian, or heathen. Moreover, in his discussion of the question he refers (1 Corinthians 10:8), as St John does, to the sin into which Israel was led by Balaam.
And if on this point it might be thought that some would have desired a more categorical prohibition than St Paul gave, as to fornication no one could desiderate more definite language than his. And it is absurd to suppose that the word is used in different senses. When the thing itself was so common as everyone knows it to have been in that age when it was so hard as St Paul found it to keep the infant Church pure from it it is incredible that St John, or the Church of Jerusalem (Acts 15:20; Acts 15:29), should have wasted their indignation on lawful and honourable marriages, even if not such as they altogether approved. St Paul himself, while recognising marriage with a heathen as valid and sacred, when already contracted before the conversion of one party (1 Corinthians 7:13-14), and as binding on the Christian so long as respected by the other, did not approve of a Christian contracting a fresh one (ib. 39, 2 Corinthians 6:14).
Unlike as the Apocalypse is to St Paul's writings in style and manner, we shall find in it not infrequent occurrence of ideas supposed to be characteristically Pauline, and one or two probable references (see notes on 18:20, 20:4) to St Paul himself. These are worthy of study, not for controversial purposes only. But to the school of critics who suppose St Paul's dispute with St Peter (Galatians 2:11 sqq.) to have been bitter and lifelong, and the former to have been repudiated by the Twelve and by the main body of the Church, it is a sufficient reply to ask, "If Christ were divided against Himself, how did His Kingdom stand?"
EXCURSUS III
On the supposed Jewish Origin of the Revelation of St John
Perhaps it is most candid to begin with the confession, that I approached the study of Vischer's theory of the origin of the Apocalypse with a strong prejudice against it, and a conscious reluctance to admit its truth. Such a prejudice, in fact, is likely to be very general, for two reasons. Professor Harnack confesses, that he himself felt one that, when commentators have laboured over a book for 17 centuries, it is a prioriunlikely that their labours will be superseded, and the whole subject cleared up, by a single hint throwing a new light on the problem: and, to state the same thing from a lower point of view, when a man has himself laboured for years or decades on the subject, he is not willing to suppose all that labour to be superseded by the happy intuition of a young divinity student.
But there is another ground for reluctance to accept the theory, which one may feel more hesitation in sweeping aside as unworthy. The Revelation of St John as it stands is a sublime work, a work of high inspiration, whether its inspiration be understood in the strictly Christian or supernatural sense, or in the lax sense in which we apply the term to works of human genius. On purely literary grounds, we have the same prejudice against supposing that such a work can have grown by progressive additions and interpolations, that we have to the theory that the Iliadwas made "by mere fortuitous concourse of old songs:" and the literary prejudice may very well be reinforced by a theological one, if we believe that the writer was not simply a writer of genius, but was, or at all events believed himself to be, a seer, the recipient of a God-given revelation of Jesus Christ.
And just as Mr Gladstone, or any other "conservative" writer on the Homeric question, is able to put his prejudice into the form of an argument, and shew, more or less convincingly, that the traditional view accounts for phenomena which are incredible on the revolutionary view, so here it would be easy to start from this prejudice as a basis for argument: to shew various characteristics that mark the Revelation as a real vision, not a free composition, or to argue that the differences of tone between various parts of it are due, not to differences in the human temper of the author or authors, but to the divine many-sidedness that comprehends at once all the aspects of everything.
I do not say that such an argument would be worthless: but it would be difficult to appreciate its value. What lies at the base of it is what those who share it will call an instinct, and those who do not a prejudice: the arguments that grow out of this will seem convincing to those who use them, even though they prove unconvincing to those to whom they are addressed. Their main strength lies, not in that which can be put in the shape of a formal argument, but in what cannot: and though there may be clear cases, where the instinct is so plainly sound that the statement of its verdict is convincing, I do not venture to think that the case of the Apocalypse is thus clear.
The real evidence in favour of Vischer's view is this, that there are large sections of the Apocalypse where no distinctively Christian elements appear: that some of these, while in harmony with non-Christian Jewish opinions and hopes, are difficult to adjust with a Christian point of view: that the visions, as they stand in the present form of the book, do not present a continuously progressive story: and that a considerable number, both of the visions and of the isolated expressions which interrupt the narrative, are just the passages (sometimes the only passages in their neighbourhood) which are distinctively Christian. This last argument is one that Vischer seems to press rather too universally and rigorously: but there are at least a remarkable number of coincidences between the passages which the theory is obliged to mark as interpolations because they are Christian, and those which might independently be guessed to be so as out of harmony with their context. I do not, however, give very much weight to this last argument. If we suppose the whole Revelation to be a record of a vision really seen in ecstasy possibly written, in part at least [22], during the ecstasy it is quite credible that the seer should have written a sentence like 16:15 when he heard or seemed to hear the words, though their connexion with what he is describing be remote and subjective: it is really harder to imagine a transcriber or translator interpolating them in the course of his narrative even if he believed them to be a revelation made to him.
[22] This is implied, or at least suggested, in 10:4 as well as 14:13 and other passages ascribed by Vischer to the Christian redactor.
But it will really be best, in judging what weight is to be given to these considerations, or what conclusions are to be drawn from them, to examine the structure of the Revelation itself; not attending to the arguments of Vischer or any other theorist in detail or for their own sake, but using them when they throw any light on the possible source or structure of the work, and accepting or rejecting them if the work in its turn throws a decisive light on their true worth and character.
The first three Chapter s, it is admitted on all hands, are in some sense separable from the rest, though not really independent of them. On the one hand, the work as we have it is the production of one writer: the peculiar style, language never wanting in vigour, subject to laws of its own, but those utterly different from the laws of ordinary Greek grammar, even in its most Hellenistic modification, are decisive proofs of this. But though the book is the work of one person, and forms a more or less harmonious work of art, there are parts of it that can be separated from the rest, and form in a sense wholes apart from the rest: and this is eminently the case with these Chapter s. They, it may be said, form a frame for the picture: the picture and the frame suit each other, and we have to decide, substantially, whether this is because the frame was designed by the original artist for the picture, or because the picture has been retouched to harmonise with the frame. The way to determine this will be, to confine our attention to the picture, and see if it shews signs of retouching.
Thus it will suffice for us to begin our examination of the book with the fourth chapter. From this point onwards, we have a series of visions prima faciesuccessive, and symbolic of a series of events in chronological succession. We shall see whether this prima facieview is tenable: and if not, whether it breaks down in consequence of the various visions being independent of one another, or because they are designed to represent parallel and not successive series of events.
The introduction to this series of visions occupies the fourth and fifth Chapter s: and this introduction, the sublimest part of the whole book, and the most familiar to the Christian mind, seems to me absolutely to resist the disintegrating forces applied to it by Harnack and Vischer. Like Micaiah, Isaiah, Ezekiel, and the author of the seventh chapter of Daniel, the Seer sees the Lord sitting on His Throne: as in Ezekiel's vision, the throne is supported and surrounded [23] by four living creatures, each one having six wings like Isaiah's Seraphim, and like them repeating incessantly the Trisagion in praise of the Everlasting Lord of the Ineffable Name. Of course, this is all Old Testament imagery, and does not go beyond the range of Jewish ideas: but why should it? No Christian before Gnosticism had made some progress ever doubted that the Father of his Lord Jesus Christ was the eternal Lord God of Israel, Who had revealed Himself to Moses and the Prophets.
[23] So I understand ἐ ν μέσ ῳ το ῦ θρόνου κα ὶ κύκλ ῳ το ῦ θρόνου. Their hinder parts are under the throne, reaching to its centre: their faces appear outside and beyond it probably at the four corners. The Lamb, when He appears, is ἐ ν μέσ ῳ το ῦ θρόνου κα ὶ τ ῶ ν τεσσάρων ζ ῴ ων i.e. proceeding from between the feet of Him That sitteth upon the throne, in the midst of the front of it. ἐ ν μέσ ῳ τ ῶ ν πρεσβυτέρων, in the centre of the circle (or semicircle) of the elders, is coordinate with this clause, not with either of its two members.
But in the next chapter we have distinctive Christian doctrine, indicated by imagery from which it is really impossible to eliminate the Christian element. Vischer admits that here (and, he says, here only) it is impossible to strike out a single sentence or paragraph, and leave the remaining passage to stand in continuous integrity when freed from interpolation. I go further, and venture to say that it is as arbitrary to attempt to eliminate the figure of the Lamb as it is impossible to exclude His action in the next chapter. Vischer and Harnack agree that, if this work be Jewish, "a Lamb standing as it had been slain," can have had no original place in it: it can symbolise nothing or no one except "Him that liveth and was dead." But they say it is impossible to do more than guess what stood originally in the Lamb's place: they offer two guesses, but do not pretend that either is convincing. To me it seems absurd that either a lion or a human figure should be introduced with the attributes that the Lamb has here. The seven eyes are of course, like the rest of the imagery, taken from the Old Testament. from the seven "eyes of the Lord" mentioned in Zechariah: and I admit that it would take a skilful artist so to represent them as not to be grotesque. But they can be imagined without a shock to reverence: and I do not think a lion still less a man with seven horns can. Of course the Beast with seven heads and ten horns is grotesque enough, but no reverence is due to him. Our author be he Prophet, visionary, or compiler has too sound instincts, both literary and religious, to set a monster like either of these in the midst of the Throne of God.
A further question that appears worth asking is, what, on the view that we have here a work of Jewish origin, does the Opener of the seals symbolise? Apparently, still the Messiah: but what Messiah? The divinely sent but human Son of David is not yet born: if, therefore, the visions symbolise events in their chronological order (and on this assumption the theory largely rests), He Who opens the seals must be the pre-existentMessiah who thereby comes very near to the Messiah of Christian, even of Johannine or catholic, belief. I do not say that there is no possibility of explaining the figure by some conception within the range of Jewish thought. I am not prepared to say that no non-Christian Jew ever conceived the Messiah as pre-existing before His manifestation on earth. Still less do I know I am not sure if it can be known whether the conception of the Metatron, whose name is readily suggested by the description of "the Lamb in the midst of the Throne" was a conception already formulated in a Jewish school within the first century of the Christian era. We must leave these questions to specialists: only it must be said that these ideas, if they ever were entertained by Jews uninfluenced by Christianity, are ideas common to them with Christians. He Who opens the Book that lay in the hand of God is, substantially, identical with the eternal Son of God of Christian belief: the only Christian doctrine which can be blotted out of the picture without destroying it altogether is, that this eternal Son of God is the slain yet living Redeemer of mankind. And the doctrine of His Redemption is even harder to eliminate than that of His Death. We might cut out the two words ὡ ς ἐ σφαγμένον, though there is no reason that the Lion of the Tribe of Judah should appear as a Lamb, except for the purpose of suffering a sacrificial, perhaps distinctively a paschal, death: but how are we to cut out the hymns that form the climax of the chapter? Before He has done anything that it will be news to the readers of this Apocalypse to hear of, He Who is in the midst of the Throne has already proved Himself "worthy" to do what He now does: He is already adorable, and adored by them that have their tabernacle in heaven. For if not, what?Here we have the climax of this inspired and inspiring work of art (to call it nothing higher): is it credible that the crowning stroke, the central feature, was put to it by the after-thought of an interpolator, in pursuance of a dogmatic purpose? I have tried to avoid treating the matter on mere grounds of taste or feeling: but it is impossible to believe the incredible. I can believe that the Iliadonce ended without the burial of Hector, and once did not end with it: but I cannot believe that the Seer who described the hymn of the Living Creatures and the Elders to the Creator left it for a successor, and found a successor, to describe the hymn wherein the Redeemer and Revealer appears as coequal with Him. At least if it was so, St John's inspiration was indeed miraculous.
Here we have the sublimest moment of the vision, its highest point as a mere work of art: but here we have not, evidently, its designed or even possible end. The exalted Lamb must now proceed to do the work which He has undertaken, "to open the book and the seven seals thereof:" the sixth chapter, and something like or in the place of the seventh, are necessary as a sequel to the fourth and fifth. And the sixth chapter is, as has often been pointed out, closely parallel to the Prophecy ascribed by all the Synoptic Gospels to the Lord Jesus, three days before He suffered. Since Vischer, and apparently Harnack, adopt the theory surely a very paradoxical one that this is itself a Jewish Apocalypse embodied in Christian tradition, the parallelism is no argument against their view: still it is at least as easily explained on the other. We have no need to explain the details of the vision to enquire whether the Rider on the white horse is the same Person as He Who has the same attributes in ch. 19, or what meaning the Seer may have attached to the passage in Zechariah which suggested the imagery to him. Neither need we discuss whether the Martyrs whose souls are poured out under the Altar are Jewish or Christian martyrs; the former view has been held by Christian interpreters, and if this proves that Vischer's arguments are not without force, it also proves that their force may be felt without necessitating his conclusion. But when we come to the sixth seal, we have all admit an image of the state of things expected just before the consummation of all things, and the Advent of the Messiah to judgement. It may be that here we are still within the range of ideas common to Jews and Christians, it may be that the Seer, if called on to interpret his own vision, would have called the things symbolised "the birth-pangs of the Messiah" rather than "the signs of the Coming" or "of the Appearing of the Lord:" all we need say is, that they fit in exactly with Christian belief, and cannot fit moreexactly with Jewish.
But when six seals are opened, we have, on any hypothesis, a break in the progress of the narrative. As each of the first four was opened, something happened, and the Lamb went on to the next: the cry "Come!" was heard, and some one came came forth, apparently, from Heaven, and went out over the earth. With the opening of the next two seals, there follow signs in Heaven, the former anticipating, and the latter producing, certain events on earth: so far, though not closely grouped with the first four seals, the effects of these two are analogous with theirs. But now there is a pause: that is in itself something new.
But the first of the events that fills the pause fits naturally enough into its place. War, scarcity, pestilence, convulsions of nature, have already fallen upon the earth: all men are looking in terror for the revelation of the wrath of God: we are now told, that before it is revealed, the elect remnant of God's own people are to be marked as His, presumably in order to shelter them from that wrath in the day of its revelation. I say presumably, for this object of the sealing is not stated: still it is implied both by the context and by the parallel passage in Ezekiel.
But when the servants of God have been sealed in their foreheads, and we expect the wrath of God to break forth upon the rest of the world, we have instead a vision of God's servants already triumphant: not of "the great tribulation" but of those who come out of it. We need not discuss whether other discrepancies can be reconciled: whether it is possible that "a great multitude which no man could number, out of all nations and kindreds and people and tongues," can be the same as "144,000 sealed of every tribe of the children of Israel," only regarded from another point of view; or whether, as seems more credible, they be coordinate, and there be among the Elect "of the tribes of Israel a certain number, of all other nations an innumerable multitude." The latter view, I think, would hold well enough if the two visions came later on: but as they stand here, one seems so decidedly to come before and one after the end, that the temptation felt by Vischer to regard the second as an interpolation is very strong. On the other hand, it is very difficult to conceive the second vision as not proceeding from the author of the fourth and fifth Chapter s: the picture of the white-robed multitude, the words of their hymn, the paradox of the Lamb Who is the Shepherd, as there He was the Lion all these seem to shew that the thought, as well as the expression, is that of the original author.
But let us pass over these nine verses. They can be omitted altogether as an interpolation: we may, perhaps more plausibly, because a test is harder to apply, regard them not as an interpolation but as themselves interpolated: but in no case are they either more or less than an interruption to the course of the main action. After them, the Lamb who had opened the sixth seal opens the seventh; the main action is resumed just where it had left off and, I would observe, the fact that the nameof the Lamb is not repeated, but that the verb stands without a subject, is some presumption that the parenthesis had not been very long: cf. Revelation 16:17, true text, and contrast Revelation 9:1; Revelation 9:13; Revelation 11:15.
But nowhere have we yet had the winds blowing, as we expected, on the earth, the sea, and the trees: the four angels who appeared at the beginning of ch. 7 are heard of no more. "When He had opened the seventh seal" when eitherthe expected wrath of God should break forth, orthe indignation should have ceased, and His anger, in their destruction, instead of God's anger appearing either before or after the opening, "there was silence in Heaven about the space of half an hour." Everything has worked up to a climax: and nothing comes of it. Can this be the consummation intended by the original author? It is conceivable, no doubt, that the preceding episode, which we felt to be out of place, has displaced what we feel to be wanting that when God's servants had been sealed, the earth and sea were smitten, and that then, and then only, there followed the initium quietis aeternae. But if this be so, still all difficulty does not vanish. The seven seals of the book are now unloosed: why do we not hear of its being opened, perhaps read? Why is not that done, which the Seer "wept much" to think that none could do?
I can think of no answer, if the Apocalypse be regarded as a self-conscious work of art, deliberately conceived: but if we regard it as a bona fidevision, the phenomenon seems natural enough. None of us, probably, have experience of visions which we could by the wildest enthusiasm regard as divine revelations, even in a lower degree than this Book claims to be: but our experience of ordinary dreams, or possibly of delirium, may suggest analogies to the psychological processes at work here, though not to their subject-matter. The seer has much more self-control and self-possession than an ordinary dreamer; he knows as a rule what to look for, and what to look at, and sees what is shewn to him: but every now and then there is a transition: "a change comes o'er the spirit of his dream," and he loses the thread of the story that he has been telling. One point in which there seems a constant uncertainty, is this: is his point of view from earth or heaven? More will depend on this when we come to the twelfth chapter. Here it is enough to say, that the Lamb's opening of the book looks like a magnificent torso, with the limbs perfect, and the head wanting. Under these circumstances it is a prioriunlikely that the shoulders should have undergone restoration. On the other hand, the thread of narrative that is once lost is, always or almost always, resumed again sooner or later. We hear nothing here of the Lamb opening the book of which He has opened the seals: but further on we hear again and again of the Lamb having a book, the Book of Life: and at last in ch. 20 a book isopened, "which is the Book of Life:" and this, I believe, is the book whose seals have been opened in this portion of the vision. I have failed to find authority among commentators for this view, and therefore submit it with all diffidence; but it seems to me less arbitrary, with more support in the Revelation itself, than any of the many theories that have been advanced as to what this book can be.
And again without going into matter so remote or so disputable, though we do not hear of the four angels letting loose the four winds upon the earth before the seventh seal or immediately after it, we do, very soon after it [24], hear of four angels by whose ministry the earth, the sea, and the trees are hurt (viz. those who sound the first four trumpets): and then of a woe on those who have not the seal of God in their foreheads. The vision of the seven seals has, it seems, ended without an end: but if it had received its only adequate ending, how could anything more have followed? As it is, the seven trumpets do follow, and partly, though only partly, supply what seems wanting to the seven seals. The new series is not independent of the former it arises out of it.
[24] We need not pause over the incense-offering angel who is interposed between the seals and the trumpets, nor enquire if "the seven angels who stand before God" have anything to do with "the seven spirits that are before His Throne."
In fact, we have here a characteristic of the book, which has I think been more clearly insisted on by Renan than by most other commentators. We have a series of events which lead us to expect the end of all things: but instead of an end, we find the beginning of a new series. But every series, or nearly every one, refers backward if not forward to another, and proves that it belongs in its actual place. The phenomenon seems to admit of only two explanations. Either those commentators are right who, from St Victorinus to Alford, have held the different series of visions to be successive only in appearance, and events signified to be not successive but parallel: or else we have one point in which the "continuous historical scheme" of interpretation actually holds good. Again and again, from the Apostles" time to our own, the predicted signs of the Lord's coming have multiplied: men have looked, in hope or fear, for the end of the world: but the world has not come to an end, it has taken a fresh lease of life, and gone on just as before, with judgement and salvation as remote or as imperfect as ever.
We need not discuss what happens on the blowing of the first six trumpets, as here we plainly have no break in the sequence of the narrative, no doubt of its original unity. I should only like to point out, that in the 9th chapter we have one of the dream-like inconsequences, closely resembling that already noted in ch. 7. Again we hear of four angels being let loose, apparently for a work of vengeance: but instead of vengeance being executed by four angels, there appears a countless army of terrible horsemen. And just as, after the sixth seal was opened, instead of the dreaded revelation of the great day of God's wrath, there came the pause and the gathering of the Elect, so after the sixth trumpet before even "the second woe is past" there is a pause in which a mighty angel descends, and the Seer receives a new commission.
And here follows the passage whereon Vischer's theory originally rests. "There was given to" the Seer "a reed like unto a staff, saying" who says it? does the reed itself speak? probably the unnamed, perhaps unseen, giver of it says, "Arise, and measure the Temple [Sanctuary] of God, and the Altar, and them that worship therein. And the court that is without the Temple cast outward, and measure it not, because it was given to the Gentiles, and the Holy City they shall trample 42 months." It is assumed that this means, that the Gentiles, who at the time of the vision are besieging the Holy City, will capture it, trample it under foot as far as the outer Court of the Temple, perhaps even as far as the Court of Israel: but the Altar and the Sanctuary, the Temple in the narrowest sense, will remain inviolable, and those worshippers who are found in this sacred refuge will be secure. This, I say, is assumed to be the meaning: I cannot think that it is proved. The Seer is bidden to measure the Temple and Altar, and not to measure the outer court: but by what token does that mean that the one is to be destroyed or at least profaned, and the other not? In one passage of Zechariah, the command not to measure Jerusalem means that she shall grow to immeasurable greatness; in Old Testament imagery generally, to measure may be for destruction as well as for preservation. No doubt, here a contrast is intended between the fate of the Sanctuary and of the outer court: but it is not clear what the contrast is, nor which fate is the better. The outer court was, we are told, given to the Gentiles: when and by whom was it so given? Perhaps by Titus: but it is at least as easy to say, by Herod or Zerubbabel whichever built it: he may, designedly or otherwise, have enlarged Solomon's Temple to be, as Isaiah said it should be, "a house of prayer for all nations." I do not say that this isthe seer's meaning, out it is a quite possible one, that the outer court of the Lord's Temple only realised its destiny when it was occupied by Gentiles, who used it for prayer, not by Jews who regarded "the mountain of the House" as only useful for "a house of merchandise" or even "a den of thieves;" and that when the "line of confusion and the stones of emptiness" shall pass over the site of the Temple, this outer court shall remain a holy place, a world-wide not a national sanctuary. A Christian of the first century might possibly anticipate this; certainly a Christian of the fifth, perhaps a very tolerant theist of the 19th, might say that it has actually been fulfilled.
I do not myself believe this to be certainly hardly probably the true interpretation; I only say that it is one suggested by the words of the text, and that it ascribes no absurdity to the seer's conception. The Judaic meaning ascribed to him is, I venture to think, utterly absurd. It would be credible to a devout Jew, that the Lord would defend His Holy City as in Hezekiah's day that though the Land of Israel might be overrun by the heathen, City and Temple should be safe. It would be credible even, at least to a fanatical Jew, that when the City was taken, when even the outer court of the Temple was stormed, the Lord would at last arise and break forth upon His enemies, or would be a wall of fire round about His Sanctuary. Such was, we are told, the actual hope of the fanatic defenders of the Temple, at the last moment before its fall. But could the craziest fanatic suppose, that the Lord would maintain a purely passive defence in His last Citadel? that He would allow the hitherto victorious enemy to hold, for three and a half years, everything up to the Temple wall, while the Temple-worship should go on undisturbed and unprofaned, in their midst but out of their reach or sight? What the worshippers are to live on how sacrifices are to be provided for the Altar is unexplained. This, if I understand it, is the popular rationalistic view of what the seer meant: the seer was no rationalist, but I do not think he was so irrational as that.
Perhaps the most reasonable view of the meaning of the passage is, that "the Temple" spoken of is not that in the earthly Jerusalem, but its heavenly Archetype, of which we unquestionably read in 11:19, 15:5, &c. What then is meant by the different fortune of the Temple proper and the outer court, what by the measuring of one and non-measuring of the other, seems very obscure. Timidly I would ask, can the earthly Temple be regarded as the outer-court of the heavenly; but, if this will not stand, to give no explanation seems better than to give an absurd one. The purely Judaic interpretation of this passage is, I venture to say, utterly absurd; one is tempted to say that any other will be better than this; but it will be enough to say that this has no right to be assumed as an axiom, whereon the true theory of the book's origin or meaning is to be founded.
To proceed to the prediction, rather than vision, that follows: that the two Witnesses are Moses, or a Prophet like unto Moses, and Elias is, I think, almost certain. Their coming as precursors of the Messiah is no doubt quite in harmony with Jewish doctrine, as represented to us at least by the Fourth Gospel. Only as it has (with or without the substitution of Enoch for Moses) been the ordinary belief of Christendom, we cannot deny that it harmonises with Christian doctrine quite as well. That they smite their enemies with plagues after the manner of the historic Moses and Elias, instead of suffering meekly like those who know that they are of another manner of spirit, is hardly a fatal objection to the Christian origin of the passage. It may give a sort of presumption that the tone of the prophecy is not above that of the Old Testament: but when two Christian Apostles delivered offenders to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, it would need a high spiritual discernment to be sure of it. We are on more certain ground, when we note the inconsequent character of the narrative here. The seer does not, in the first instance, see the two Witnesses: the same voice, whosesoever it be, that bade him measure the Temple, tells him what they will do, during 1260 days, presumably the same period as the 42 months of the Gentiles trampling the Holy City. But by degrees the hearing of the description passes into vision the futures gradually give place, first to presents and then to aorists, just as happens, on a smaller scale, in 20:7 9. Here, from v.11 or 12 onwards, we are back in the ordinary course of vision. At last, the series of the seven trumpets is resumed: we are told that the second woe is past did it include the plagues inflicted by the two Witnesses, as well as that of the terrible horsemen of ch. 10? and the seventh trumpet sounds.
And its sounding is not so purely negative, or at least undefined, in its effect as the opening of the seventh seal. It is declared that the Kingdom of the world has passed into the hands of God and His Anointed: it seems that the promise of the mighty angel is fulfilled, and the mystery of God finished. But its completion is not seen. The divine Kingdom is proclaimed, the Lord Who is and was is no longer spoken of as "to come" (though I doubt if this be significant), and is praised for His assumption of power and execution of judgement: but no judgement is visibly executed. Instead of the consummation of all things, we have again a new beginning, a new series of visions, whose developement extends, with certain interruptions, throughout the remainder of the book.
One commentator has tried to make this series of visions more closely parallel with the others, by representing it as consisting of "seven mystical figures" meaning, I suppose (he did not make it quite clear), the Woman, the Man Child, the Dragon, the two Beasts, the Lamb, and the Son of Man upon the cloud. But when the seer himself says nothing of this enumeration, it is hardly likely that he was conscious of it: and if not, no light is thrown by it upon the genesis of the work. The symmetry would only be important, if we could use it to prove that this series of visions belongs to its place that it is not an originally independent apocalypse, embodied with other elements in the work that we have. We are not yet in a position to discuss whether this is so: we will pursue our examination of the sequence of the visions as we find them.
First of all, there appears another great sign in Heaven: the Daughter of Zion, whom Micah described as in travail, now brings forth her Son: Who is, unquestionably, the Messiah, the Hope of Israel. That here the point of view is Judaic need not be questioned: to concede this does not involve the concession of Vischer's theory. Christians have never felt any difficulty in understanding the description here given as applying to the birth of their Christ; though their anti-Judaic feelings have led them to miss the identification of His ideal Mother. They have, as a rule, conceived her as "the Church;" and then there is a little confusion in the image, when afterwards the Church appears as "the Bride, the Lamb's Wife." Regard the vision as that of a Jewish Christian, or at all events a Christian of the days before Jewish and Christian sentiments were hopelessly embittered against one another, and all is clear. Christ is conceived as the Son of the Church of the Old Covenant, the Bridegroom of the Church of the New: we may add, that the Jewish Christian Seer need not have been surprised, though he would have been disappointed, to learn what became plain in the course of the next century, that the Bridegroom had to forsake His Mother, in order to cleave to His Wife.
But while I admit that the crown of twelve stars, and still more the reminiscences of Micah, mark the travailing Woman as being the Daughter of Zion, I do not deny that in other aspects her figure may have other meanings. It seems by no means arbitrary to parallel this passage with the so-called Protevangelium of Genesis 3 with the legitimacy of which as exegesis, of course, we are not concerned. Here as there, we have the Woman, the Seed of the Woman, and the Serpent "the old Serpent" is a manifest reference to his action in Eden: here the enmity between the Serpent and the Woman and her Seed is seen at work: and the victory of her Seed over him, though not described under the exact figure of bruising the head, is the main subject of the remainder of the book.
The Woman is then conceived quite as much as being a second Eve, as she is as being the Daughter of Zion. Is she also, in any sense, to be identified with the historical Mother of Jesus? I believe that she is: the language of the Martyrs of Lyons about "the Virgin Mother," and some other fragments of what seem to be pure Johannine traditions, appear to suggest, not perhaps an exaltation of the personal Mary to a position such as that of the Woman here, but a recognition of an ideal Mother of Christ, into whose glory the historical Mary was admitted, and in whom her personality was lost sight of. But this is rather a theological question than an exegetical; at any rate, it is one which criticism cannot touch and may safely pass by.
The pictures given us in this twelfth chapter are grander than any that we have met with since the seventh, perhaps even since the fifth: yet there is a certain vagueness about them they seem to shift like a dissolving view. The Woman and the Dragon each appear, in the first instance, "in Heaven;" and there is nothing inconsistent with this in the Child being "caught" it is not said "caught up" "to God and to His Throne," for the Throne of God is only seen in one definite place, in the midst of Heaven. But, even before the Dragon is cast into the earth, "the Woman fled into the wilderness" surely there are no wildernesses in Heaven: and when he is cast down, he finds her on earth within seeming reach of his persecution. She flees, we are again told, into the wilderness, and now at least we cannot doubt an earthly one: the earth itself interposes, to protect her flight. And now we find that she who has brought forth one glorious Son surely, one would think, her First-born has on earth others of her seed, against whom the Dragon can make war. These are they "who keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus." It is utterly arbitrary to excise the last word; even if it were possible to restore the rhythm by substituting a neutral phrase like that in 6:9, we still could hardly make the doctrine of the passage agree as well with Jewish notions as it now does with Christian, and especially Johannine. "The Firstborn among many brethren" "I ascend to My Father and your Father" sayings like these make plain the relations here presupposed: there is nothing inconsistent even with developements like that which St Augustine adopted from Tyconius about the Head and the Members, or even like that of a modern Catholic sermon on "Behold thy Mother."
Vischer's theory seems therefore to pass over the real difficulty of the chapter the transition from heaven to earth as the scene of action while he brings forward another, to which this transition affords some sort of explanation. When we read "The Accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accuseth them before our God day and night: and they overcame him" we surely naturally think of a victory not military (such as was, apparently, gained by Michael and his angels just before), but forensic; and the contradiction between vv.7 and 11 vanishes. We therefore have no need to expunge from the latter the words that tell us how or why the victory was gained. (I say howor why:for one cannot be sure that this writer knew as well as the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews the classical or philosophical distinction between τ ὸ δι ' ο ὗ and τ ὸ δι ὅ.) Still, v.11 does rather break the continuity of the sense; it is difficult to see how the Saints on earth, who suffered even to death in the contest with the Dragon, can be said to have already gained over him, even a forensic victory. But we see that in v.6 we have had a proleptic mention of the flight of the Woman, the detailed explanation of which did not come till v.14: it seems therefore possible that the strife between the Dragon and the Saints on earth mentioned in v.17 is that whose end in the victory of the Saints is celebrated proleptically in v.11.
In fact, the "war" of the Dragon against the Saints on earth, the Seed of the Woman, is not carried on by open force, such as Merodach or perhaps even Michael may have used. The Dragon keeps himself out of sight, and enthrones the Beast, as we are told in ch. 13, as his regent and champion. Of this Beast we have heard already in ch. 11, and we can hardly doubt that the "war" that he then waged against the two Witnesses is identical with this against the remnant of the Seed of the Woman. It lasts for the same period, Daniel's "time, times, and half a time," otherwise defined as 42 months or 1260 days. If these periods be not coincident, the only plausible view is that one immediately succeeds the other that they are the first and the second halves of a week of years. But the mention of the Beast as the chief belligerent in both seems to prove their identity: the Woman is placed in safety for just the time that the oppression of her children is to last.
On the details of the oppression we need not dwell, nor on the second Beast, or the enigmatical number. But immediately after the description of the force and fraud exercised by them follows that of the Lamb with His 144,000 redeemed virgins, reminding us, not more by the details of its imagery than by its beauty, both moral and artistic, of the fifth and seventh Chapter s. How far is it legitimate to regard this passage as out of place where it stands? It certainly interrupts the course of events: but the interruption is of the nature of a relief. From the picture of the triumphant persecuting monster, of the superstitious degradation of the world, we turn away to the spotless holiness and the unapproachable harmony of the Saviour and the saved. The effect is something like that of the doxology in Romans 1:25, as explained by St Chrysostom an expression of the sense that the divine blessedness remains unimpaired by human corruption.
However, the five first verses of ch. 14 are separable from the main narrative: and so, still more, are Revelation 14:12. So, most of all, are Revelation 14:14: if one might venture to wish to discard as an interpolation any part of the attested text of the Apocalypse, it would be this passage. How can it be understood of anything but the final judgement? yet it comes here as anything but final: the last plagues, the completion of the wrath of God, are still to come. The harvest and the vintage of the earth are gathered, but no harvest home is celebrated, and the earth goes on just as before. How is it, that God's wrath is notfinished in the treading of the great wine-press, from which blood comes forth? and what horses are they whose bridles are reached by the blood that comes out of the wine-press?
On the other hand, except their coming after this image of the final judgement, there is nothing to surprise us in the succession of the seven last plagues. Like as their imagery is to that of the earlier trumpets, there is a real ethical difference and progress: what is still more important, they fit into the place where they stand. We have had first the wrath of the Dragon, then the enthronement and tyranny of the Beast; then the angels warn mankind of the judgement coming on his worshippers and on Babylon: and then come these plagues, the last which God will send in the character of disciplinary chastisement, leaving room (which mankind do not avail themselves of) for repentance. Then, when these plagues have been sent in vain, the fall of Babylon and the overthrow of the Beast will follow as predicted.
But before Babylon does fall, she is set before us as she was in her prosperity. And this episode, though when the Book is finished we see that it has a certain propriety, is certainly felt as an interruption to the narrative here. The Harlot sits on a Beast having seven heads and ten horns the fact that such a Beast has been already introduced being ignored. Here he appears as a mere Beast of burden, while before he was enthroned as sovereign of the world. Here he is in scarlet, while there he was like unto a leopard, and presumably the colour of one. I do not wish to speak disrespectfully of the theories of this book that have been built upon one passage in this chapter. As theories of apocalyptic interpretation go, they are at least plausible. But I am afraid that these theories, widely received as they are, may be endangered when we recognise that this chapter is one that can most easily, nay advantageously, be spared, if once we call in question the unity and integrity of the book.
The eighteenth chapter fits on almost equally well with what precedes, whether the seventeenth be retained or no. In either case, there is no description of the fall of Babylon [25], and there is a variation in the tenses, as though the writer were not sure whether it is predicted or commemorated: but we learn, from this and the early part of the next, that the great Harlot City is overthrown, amid the selfish lamentations of earth and the righteous exultations of Heaven. Then "the Son of God goes forth to war," against the Kings of the Earth who, at the outpouring of the sixth vial, had been mustered in the service of the Beast, and who (according to the seventeenth chapter) have dethroned and destroyed the Beast's harlot mistress. The Beast and the False Prophet (who is usually and no doubt rightly identified with the second Beast, or rather perhaps is substituted for him by one of the "dissolving views" of the Book) are overthrown, and the Dragon imprisoned: and the millennial reign of Christ and His Saints follows.
[25] One thing I should like to notice in passing: that whether the predictions of this chapter have been fulfilled or no, its ancient interpreters have been unusually happy in predictions that are in a fair way to be so. St Hippolytus gathered from it, though it is hard to see on what grounds, that the kingdoms of the Diadochi of the Caesars will pass into democracies: and St Benedict, from the absence of any description of the actual fall of Babylon, gathered that it will be effected by natural convulsions, not by human enemies. We know what he did not, that si Albani montes lapides dejecerint, Rome "might easily share the fate of Pompeii."
Then comes a prediction, passing gradually (as in ch. 11) into a description, of the final overthrow of the world. The Dragon, the Devil, repeats in his own person what he had before done through the agency of the Beast: and he, like him, is overthrown, only more by directly divine agency, with even less appearance of a human conqueror. Then follows the final judgement, executed by God in person, Christ not being here named either as His representative or assessor. But the Book of Life is opened, as a kind of check on the other books which contained the record of the good or evil deeds of those who are to be judged: and if we remember how, in other passages, the Book of Life is connected with the Lamb, we have here a hint of almost Pauline doctrine salvation by the grace of Christ apart from works, and condemnation of those who are judged by works only. There is nothing inconsistent with this in the suggestion, that those who are acquitted will have good works standing to their credit in the other books; these serve, as Alford says, as vouchers for the Book of Life. The concluding vision of the New Jerusalem does not need detailed examination. We need not dispute with Vischer, that the distinctively Christian element in it is confined to a few easily separable phrases: on the other hand, the picture is equally in place as the culmination of a Jewish ideal and of a Christian ideal conceived in Jewish forms. That the gates of the City bear the names of the twelve Tribes of Israel is no evidence that salvation, that the highest salvation, is confined to Israelites: on the other hand, the way that "the Nations" are mentioned is real evidence of a Jewish belief in their necessarily and eternally inferior position in the Kingdom of God. But this is not decisive evidence of an exclusively Jewish point of view; for if, on other grounds, we regard the whole book as Christian, we shall be able to regard the privileged citizens of the heavenly metropolis as being St Paul's "Israel of God," the 144,000 of the seventh chapter interpreted by the fourteenth: a divine aristocracy indeed, but elected on spiritual not on carnal principles.
But there is one point where this concluding vision throws light on the question of the integrity of the book. It can hardly be undesigned, that the same angel, or an angel of the same rank and company, is the revealer of the new Babylon and of the New Jerusalem: it marks a suggestive contrast between the two figures of the Bride and the Harlot. While we saw that ch. 17 delays and rather embarrasses the progress of the action, we are thus led to believe that it forms an integral part of the designed form of the work.
No one will quarrel with Vischer for marking off the last 16 verses, or nearly all of them, as a conclusion, more or less separable from the central series of visions. We have therefore completed our examination of the course of events described in the Apocalypse, and have only to sum up and tabulate our analysis of the work, regarded as a continuous story, and setting aside the passages that are certainly or probably interruptions to its course.
Chh. 4 5. Description of the throne of God and of the Lamb, in the midst of the Host of Heaven.
Revelation 6:1 to Revelation 8:1. The Lamb opens the seven seals of the Book (of life). [Between the sixth and seventh, the servants of God are however sealed.]
Revelation 7:9-17. Vision of the Saints in triumph seems out of place at this stage of events. Compare 14:1 5, 15:2 4.
Revelation 8:2-11. Seven trumpets sounded by angels. [Between the sixth and seventh, seven thunders utter what may not be written: and a great angel delivers a new commission to the seer: and (he or another) foretells the prophecy of the two Witnesses, their martyrdom before the Beast, resurrection, and triumph.]
Revelation 8:12. War begun in Heaven, and transferred to earth, between the Dragon and the Woman and her Seed.
[Revelation 12:11 somewhat interrupts the context.]
Revelation 8:13. War between the Beast as the Dragon's vicegerent, and the Saints of God.
[Revelation 13:9-10, though at a natural pause in the narrative resembles passages that interrupt the context.]
Revelation 14:1-5 is episodical, but not necessarily irrelevant.
[Revelation 14:12-13 seem irrelevant, and Revelation 14:14-20 utterly inappropriate to this place.]
Revelation 14:15-16 are episodical, but relevant.
[Revelation 16:15 is at best parenthetical, interrupting a continuous narrative.]
[Revelation 16:17 can be omitted with a gain to clearness.]
Revelation 20:1-6. Partial and temporary establishment of the Kingdom of the Saints.
Revelation 20:7-10. Rebellion of the Dragon.
Revelation 20:11-15. Divine judgement.
Revelation 21:1 to Revelation 22:5. Final and universal establishment of the Kingdom of God and Christ.
I think this analysis, though drawn up with Vischer before me, and with the object of looking for illustrations of his hypothesis, really lends it no support. If it points to any hypothesis at all inconsistent with the unity of the book, it would be one more akin to Völter's.
[He analyses the book as follows:
A
The original Apocalypse written by St John the Apostle, Revelation 1:4-6 [greeting to the seven unnamedChurches of Asia], Revelation 4:1 to Revelation 5:10 [omitting the seven horns and seven eyes of the Lamb, Revelation 4:6, because the seven Spirits of God cannot be represented at the same moment by the seven Lamps before the Throne and by the seven eyes]. Revelation 6:1-17 [omitting the wrath of the Lamb, Revelation 6:16, which comes in strangely before 17, where we read, -the great day of His (i.e. God's) wrath is come."] Revelation 7:1-8; Revelation 8:1-13; Revelation 9:1-21; Revelation 11:14-19 leaving out -and of His Christ" in Revelation 11:15, because in the next clause the best attested reading is - Heshall reign," and [the time] -of the dead to be judged," v.18, as the destroyers of the earth must be destroyed before, not after, the general judgement. Revelation 14:1-3, omitting [His Name and], in Revelation 14:1, as the servants of God, Revelation 7:2, are sealed with His Name. Revelation 14:6-7; Revelation 18:1-24; Revelation 19:1-4; Revelation 14:14-20; Revelation 14:4-10, without the last words -for the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy," which are treated as a later addition, because throughout the original Apocalypse the seer receives his revelations through angels, and the seven Spirits are in no special relation to the Lamb. This work is assigned to 65 or 66 a.d. on the ground that the events of the time more or less suggest what follows in the vision on the opening of the first five seals. A Roman army surrendered to the Parthians in 62. Much of Nero's unpopularity was due to scarcity and high prices. There was a pestilence in the autumn of 65. The wholesale execution of Christians in 64 might suggest the souls crying under the altar.
B
The additions made by the author, Revelation 10:1 to Revelation 11:13. The angel with the little book (who swears that everything shall be accomplished in the day of the sounding of the Seventh Trumpet, and informs the seer that he has to prophesy again) and the Two Witnesses. The section interrupts the connexion. In Revelation 9:21 we have clearly the close of the second woe, and the passing of the second and the coming of the third is announced Revelation 11:14. This passage is assigned to 68 or 69 a.d. on the ground that the seer, after the outbreak of the Jewish War, expects that all Jerusalem except the Temple will be taken and held by the heathen for three years and a half.
If the writer be acquainted with the vision of the Beast out of the Abyss in Revelation 17:1-18 [when the vision of the seven -vials" had been inserted before this chapter, the writer of that vision or another would naturally think that the angel who shews the Woman on the Scarlet Beast is one of the seven who had the -vials"] this vision must be of the same date or earlier. If so Galba, not Vespasian, is meant by the sixth head of the Beast. It is supposed that Revelation 14:8, the second angel who proclaims the fall of Babylon, was added when Revelation 17:1-18 was inserted between Revelation 14:7 and Revelation 18:1.
C
The episode of the Woman and the Dragon, Revelation 12:1-17. [Revelation 12:11 is assigned to the author of Rev 12:18; Revelation 13 sqq. and has the look of an after-thought. A year later Völter was convinced by Weiszacker that Revelation 12:13-17 are not by the writer of Revelation 12:1-12; it is hard to see how 6 and 13 could be written by the same man at the same time.] The sequel Revelation 19:11 to Revelation 21:8 [here -His name is called the Word of God" is omitted as inconsistent with His Name being unknown save to Himself, and again all the mentions of the False Prophet and the mark of the Beast in Revelation 19:20-21; Revelation 22:10, are ascribed to the author of Rev 12:18; Revelation 13. &c.. 12 is not the sequel of the vision of the Seals and Trumpets which carries us further into the future, still less is it the sequel of 11; the 42 months in which the Woman is nourished in the Wilderness, and the 1260 days in which the Witnesses prophesy in sackcloth, are two independent representations of the times in which Jerusalem is trodden under foot of the Gentiles. The sequel of 12 in Revelation 19:11 to Revelation 21:8, in which the Man Child fulfils His Mission of ruling with a rod of iron, is plainly independent both of what goes before and what follows it. The thousand years" reign begins and ends without a word of the Marriage Supper of the Lamb announced, Revelation 19:9. The date of the section is made to depend on the Dragon going to make war with the remnant of the seed of the Woman, which is explained of the systematic persecution of Christianity begun, according to Dr Völter, by Trajan, as no systematic regulations for the punishment of Christians can be traced older than his letter to Pliny. A secondary (and more plausible) sense of these words is found in the insurrection of the Jews of the dispersion. The words -and his Christ", Revelation 11:15, and -time of the dead to be judged", Revelation 11:18, are supposed to have been inserted with this section.
D
The Beast which rises from the sea in 13 appears to be described by someone already familiar with the description of the beast in 17. The ten horns, which in 17 represent ten kings who have received no kingdom as yet, are crowned in 13. The worship of the beast and the false prophet are recurring topics throughout the description of the seven -vials" in 15, 16. The detailed description of the New Jerusalem, Revelation 21:9 to Revelation 22:5, has the appearance of being added quite independently of the short announcement, quite complete in itself, in Revelation 21:5. The original close of this addition is to be found in the parts of Revelation 22:6-21, where the angel is the speaker, not the Lord.
The date of this addition is made to depend partly on that of C, to which it is certainly posterior, partly on the fact that Trajanus Hadrianus, when accurately transliterated into Hebrew, yields both 666 and 616. The Sibylline books give some plausibility to the conjecture that he is meant by the beast out of the sea: he greatly encouraged the worship of the emperors: so did Herodes Atticus when he was acting as imperial commissioner in Asia Minor, when Hadrian paid his second visit there in 129 a.d. No evidence is available to prove that Herodes Atticus used magic for the purposes of his propaganda, or that the worship was enforced by penalties. The writer of this section, which [more certainly than C] was intended to be incorporated with the rest of the revelation, is supposed to have made the following additions, Revelation 5:11-14 (an amplification of the praise of the Lamb), the mention of the wrath of the Lamb in Revelation 6:16; Revelation 7:9-17, (the great multitude of the redeemed), the mention of the Lamb's name in Revelation 14:1; Revelation 14:4-5, which imply that the 144,000 are the firstfruits, not the whole body of the redeemed, Revelation 14:9-12 (the third angel who proclaims judgement on the worshippers of the beast), and the mention of the false prophet in Revelation 19:20-21; Revelation 20:9-10.
E
Lastly, the Seven Epistles to the Churches were added, and at the same time Revelation 1:1-3; Revelation 1:7-8; the mention of the seven spirits in Revelation 5:6; Revelation 14:13, the blessing on the dead that die in the Lord, Revelation 16:15 -behold I come as a thief" &c. Revelation 19:10; Revelation 19:13 (the mention of The Word); and all in Revelation 22:7-21 which is spoken by the Lord.
This section is assigned to 140 a.d. on the grounds that the angels of the Churches are bishops and that bishops cannot have been established long before, and that the Nicolaitans are a name for the followers of Carpocrates.
It will be seen that the analysis is independent of the dates, and that the growth of the book as sketched shews a steady approximation to the doctrines of the Fourth Gospel. It is not surprising that Vischer, by excluding everything distinctly Christian, often arrives at the results which Völter reaches by analysis.
I do not mean that we can, by mere analysis of the story, discover as he claims to have done the exact portions due to different authors, still less that we can assign the date of each. But if the Apocalypse is to be divided into different independent works, I think one of them should be conceived to consist of the Prologue in Heaven, with the series of seven seals, seven trumpets, and seven vials, culminating in the Advent of the Son of Man, the harvest and the vintage: and the other of the vision of the mighty angel, the war between the Dragon and the Seed of the Woman; the victory, first of the Messiah over the Beast, and then of God over the Devil; the Judgement by God in person, and the establishment of the New Jerusalem. In each of these we should have to recognise various episodes, of which some may or may not be interpolations; as well as touches supplied in each to unite them with the other. It would be a little less arbitrary than some of Vischer's excisions, if we suppose the mention of "the Lamb" in the second work to be of this character: and then it might be supposed that this was a Jewish Apocalypse while the other was a Christian.
If I may venture to give an opinion, it is in this form that the hypothesis of the partly Jewish origin of the work is most plausible, and if presented in this form it would require serious attention. But to formulate this hypothesis fairly, and propose it for discussion, would require that one should believe it: and this I cannot say that I do. The unity of style throughout the book seems absolutely fatal to a plurality of authors such as is supposed by Völter. It is more consistent with Vischer's theory, that the Christian redactor and interpolator is the translator of all of which he is not the author: but whether even this would account for the unity of style is very doubtful. The Son of Sirach writes quite differently in his Prologue from his translation: and the presumption would have been that the Son of Zebedee (if it be he) would have written the same fair Hellenistic Greek as other New Testament writers, if it had been only the influence of a Hebrew original that made the grammar of the Apocalypse so peculiar.
On the whole, I think the phenomena are best accounted for by what one may call with Vischer the psychological conditions of the case, which are as he almost admits much more intelligible on the view of unity in the work. The two series of visions are presented, in part successively and in part alternately, to the mind of the seer: he writes down what he sees or hears, in part when he sees or hears it, or at any-rate as he remembers it: when he hears a divine word, he records it either at once, in the midst of his narrative of visions, or at the first convenient pause therein. Possibly, indeed, there is a sort of middle term between unity and plurality of authorship: the Revelation may have been written as the well-known tradition says that the Gospel was. St John had a vision: he records it, and the messages to the Churches, in a work drawn up by him after his return from the exile in which he had seen the main vision, but under inspiration cognate with that in which he saw it: and so, whether by voice or pen, he pours forth the tide of prophecy. But "if anything is revealed to another that sitteth by, the first holds his peace:" and so inspired utterances, similar to and suggested by the main vision, but not forming part of its orderly course, find a place in it.
Since the above was written the controversy started by Völter and Vischer has continued and spread. Veterans of different schools like Düsterdieck, Weiss, and Hilgenfeld, still maintain the unity of the Book; but most who write on it abroad seem increasingly doubtful whether this thesis is tenable. Moderate critics like Weissäcker and moderate theologians like Pfleiderer (who on the Johannine question is an extreme and not very authoritative critic) both maintain large interpolations. In France more than one critic inclines to the view that a Christian writer has incorporated a Jewish Apocalypse. In Germany Spitta, who inherits the pietistic traditions of Halle and places his orthodoxy under the protection of Luther, postulates a Christian Apocalypse, consisting mainly of the Book with the Seven Seals and two Jewish Apocalypses, one of the date of Pompey's intrusion into the Temple, the centre of this being the Vision of the Witnesses, and another dating from Caligula the centre of which is the Visions of the Woman, the Dragon and the Beast. All were combined and enlarged by a Christian editor; the analysis is very suggestive, though the main scheme is less than convincing. As Holtzmann says in the Introduction to his suggestive Manual Commentary the question is not ripe for decision, but it may be hoped that criticism is entering on the right way.