Expositor's Greek Testament (Nicoll)

Revelation 1:18

Not “it is I, the first and the last” (which would require ἐγώ εἰμι before μὴ φοβοῦ), but “I am, etc.” The eternal life of the exalted Christ is a comfort both in method and result; ἐγενόμην νεκρός (not ὡς; really dead), his experience assuring men of sympathy and understanding; καὶ ἰδοὺ, κ. τ. λ., his victory and authority over death = an assurance of his power to rescue his own people from the grim prison of the underworld (Hades, cf. 3Ma 5:50, the intermediate abode of the dead, being as usual personified in connexion with death). A background for this conception lies in the primitive idea of Janus, originally an Italian sun-god, as the key-holder (cf. Ovid's Fasti, i. 129, 130, Hor. Carm. Sec. 9, 10) who opens and closes the day (sun = deus clauiger), rather than in Mithraism which only knew keys of heaven, or in Mandæan religion (Cheyne's Bible Problems, 102 106). The key was a natural Oriental symbol for authority and power (cf. in this book, Revelation 3:7; Revelation 9:1; Revelation 20:1). Jewish belief (see Gfrörer, i. 377 378) assigned three keys or four exclusively to God (“quos neque angelo neque seraphino committit”); these included, according to different views, “clauis sepulchorum,” “clavis uitae,” “clauis resurrectionis mortuorum”. To ascribe this divine prerogative to Jesus as the divine Hero who had mastered death is, therefore, another notable feature in the high Christology of this book. For the whole conception see E. B. D. ch. 64. (fifth century B.C.?): “I am Yesterday and To-day and To-morrow … I am the Lord of the men who are raised again; the Lord who cometh forth from out of the darkness.” It is based on the theophany of the Ancient of Days in Daniel 7:9 f. (yet cf. Revelation 10:5-6), who bestows on the ideal Israel (ὡς υἱὸς ἀνθ.) dominion. John changes this into a Christophany, like the later Jewish tradition which saw in υἱὸς ἀ. a personal, divine messiah. When one remembers the actual position of affairs, the confident faith of such passages is seen to have been little short of magnificent. To this Christian prophet, spokesman of a mere ripple upon a single wave of dissent in the broad ocean of paganism, history and experience find unity and meaning nowhere but in the person of a blameless Galilean peasant who had perished as a criminal in Jerusalem. So would such early Christian expectations appear to an outsider. He would be staggered by the extraordinary claims advanced on behalf of its God by this diminutive sect, perhaps more than staggered by the prophecy that imperial authority over the visible and invisible worlds lay ultimately in the hands of this deity, whose power was not limited to his own adherents. Christophanies were commissions either to practical service (Acts 10:19, etc.), or, as here, so composition.

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Expositor's Greek Testament (Nicoll)

Revelation 1:18

Old Testament

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