Revelation 10:11

λέγ. μοι, an oblique, reverential way of describing the divine impulse, due to Aramaic idiom and common in later Biblical Hebrew (cf. Dalman, i., viii. 11). The series of oracles, thus elaborately inaugurated, is concerned increasingly (“again,” in view of Revelation 4:4, Revelation 7:4; Revelation 7:9; Revelation 8:13; Revelation 9:6; Revelation 9:16 f.) with those international movements (“kings” = φυλαί, or those in Revelation 17:10; Revelation 17:12) which a prophet related to the course of the divine kingdom. Strictly speaking, the revelation assimilated in Revelation 10:10-11 opens in 12., but the intervening passage is linked to both (see below). The first part of this passage (Revelation 11:1-13) evidently forms part of the βιβλαρίδιον (cf. Introd. § 2). Its enigmatic contents, interrupting the trumpet-visions with edges which do not fit into the context or the rest of the Apocalypse, point to the incorporation of a special and disparate source. Any analysis is more or less hypothetical, but the writer is evidently not moving with absolute freedom. He has his own end in view, but he reaches it, here as elsewhere (cf. Revelation 7:1 f.) by means of stepping-stones which originally lay in different surroundings. This is widely recognised by critics and editors, who commonly take 1 2 and 3 13 as separate oracles. Each indeed might be the torso of a larger source. But, in spite of the different descriptions of Jerusalem, the hypothesis of their original unity has much in its favour. How could so tiny a scrap of papyrus as that required for 1, 2 be preserved? Besides Revelation 10:3 goes with Revelation 10:2 (the prophetic mission as a counterpart to the punishment), the two periods are alike, the strange δίδωμι -construction occurs in both (here only in Apoc.), and the inversion of object and verb is common to both (Revelation 10:2; Revelation 10:5-6; Revelation 10:9-10). To discover an oracle of the Zealots in 1, 2 (Wellhausen, Bousset, Baljon, J. Weiss) is precarious, for even if we could suppose that these passionate citizens took time to write oracles, they had not a monopoly of belief in the temple's inviolability. The latter belief conflicts with Mark 13:1-2 (Acts 6:14); but, while this makes it extremely unlikely that the passage was adopted, or at least composed, by one of the Twelve, it does not necessarily disprove a Jewish Christian origin for the fly-leaf. Patriotism must have often swayed hope, even in face of authoritative logia. Still, a Jewish origin is more probable (so from Vischer and Sabatier to Baljon, Forbes, von Soden, Wellhausen and J. Weiss), in which case 8 c (ὅπου … ἐσταυρώθη), with possibly 9 a and 12 b, must be Christianising touches by the editor. As 8 c is the only place in the Apocalypse where Jesus is thus designated (contrast 4), and as the unexampled αἱ … ἑστῶτες occurs in 4, the editor may be using a previous translation of the fly-leat. Otherwise, the repeated traces of Hebraistic idiom suggest that he translated it from an Aramaic or Hebrew original (so especially Weyland, Briggs, and Bruston) which was a Jewish (or Jewish Christian) oracle, composed towards the end of the siege in 70 A.D. between May and August (cf. Joseph. Bell, ver 12, 3) by a prophet who anticipated (cf. S. C., 219, 220) that the temple and a nucleus of the God-fearing would be kept inviolate during the last times of the Gentiles, at the end of which anti-Christ or the pseudo-messiah would blasphemously re-assert himself in the temple (hence its preservation, 1, 2), according to one cycle of tradition (2 Thessalonians 2:3, etc., cf. A. C. 160 f.), after murdering the two heralds of messiah. The motives and further career of the beast are omitted, if not in the source, at least by the editor. He resumes the subject afterwards (cf. Revelation 13:6), when the eschatological monster is specially identified with the imperial power. Here his main concern is with the fate of the two witnesses. Probably it was this feature of the oracle which primarily led him to adopt and adapt it, as showing how the beast or anti-christ was foiled in his attack on messiah's forerunners, just as (in 12) the dragon is foiled in his attack on messiah himself. The other details are left standing; in their present setting they have much the same pictorial and dramatic interest as the minutiæ of the parables, and it is perhaps doubtful whether the editor linked any symbolic or allegorical meaning to them, although such can easily be attached in a variety of ways, e.g., to the language of 1, 2 in the light of Barn. iv. 11, Ign. ad Magn. 7, etc. (so Weiss, Simcox, Swete, and others). Even the two witnesses are not to be identified with any historical figures of contemporary life, much less taken as allegorical or as typifying aspects of the church's testimony. “The vision … is of the nature of a superimposed photograph showing traces of many pasts” (Abbott). The original Jewish tradition which lay behind the source expected only Elijah, who should preach repentance to the pagan world, but he was occasionally furnished with a companion in Moses (on the basis of Deuteronomy 18:15; cf. Malachi 4:4-5, the transfiguration-story, and possibly the two radiant saints of Apoc. Pet. 6 f.). The only other serious rival is Enoch, a grand figure in Jewish and early Christian eschatological tradition (for the curious Sir 44:16, cf. E. Bi. 1295). Later tradition, indeed, thinking mainly of Elijah and Enoch (Gfrörer ii. 261 f.; A. C. 203, 211), whom antichrist in wrath slays for their witness against him, and whom God (or Michael and Gabriel) resuscitates, suggests a fairly apposite cycle of belief which may reproduce the earlier Jewish expectation out of which the materials of this fragmentary oracle have been drawn. The unique character of this expectation is illustrated, not so much by Anu and Nudimmut, Marduk's predecessors in the fight against Tiamât, as by the Zoroastrian belief that the temporary triumph of the evil spirit would be followed by the appearance of two reformers or prophets, Hushêdar and Hushêdaarmâh (S. B. E. xxiii. 195; cf. Hübschmann, 227), who would act each for a millenium on earth as the precursors and heralds of their Lord, the Persian messiah. This belief is much older than the sources in which it occurs, and like several other Zoroastrian traits, it may have fused with the Jewish expectation in question, though the Zoroastrian heralds do not appear simultaneously (cf. Encycl. Relig. and Ethics, i. 207). Here at any rate the appearance of the two anonymous and mysterious witnesses precedes the final outburst of evil (Revelation 11:7; Revelation 11:12 f.) and the manifestation of messiah (Revelation 11:15 f., Revelation 14:14 f.) an idea for which no exact basis can be found in the strictly Jewish eschatology of the period. It may have grown up under the influence of this kindred trait in the adjoining province of Zoroastrian belief, unless the doubling of the witnesses was simply due to the side-influence of the Zechariah-trait (in Revelation 10:4). Wellhausen argues from the singular πτῶμα (Revelation 10:8-9) that the two witnesses were a duplication of the original single witness, i.e., Elijah; but the singular is collective, and there is no trace of any conflation with Jonah.