Revelation 11:19

introduces Revelation 12:1-17; all that the prophet can speak of, from his own experience (cf. Revelation 13:1; Revelation 13:11, εἶδον), are the two θηρία on earth, but their activity in these latter days is not intelligible except as the result of mysterious movements in heaven. The latter he now outlines (cf. ὤφθη Revelation 11:19; Revelation 12:1; Revelation 12:3. By whom?) in order to comfort Christians by the assurance that the divine conqueror of these θηρία was in readiness to intervene. The celestial (contrast Revelation 11:1) ναός, presupposed in the scenery of 4 6, is now mentioned for the first time; its opening reveals the long lost κιβωτὸς τῆς διαθήκης, and is accompanied by the usual storm-theophany, marking a decisive moment. Jewish tradition had for long cherished the belief (cf. on Revelation 2:17) that the restoration of the people (gathered by God, cf. Revelation 14:1 f.) in the last days would be accompanied by the disclosure of the sacred box or ark (in a cloud; cf. here the lightning and thunder) which, together with the tabernacle and the altar of incense, had been safely concealed in Mount Nebo. So, e.g., Abarbanel (on 1 Samuel 4:4 : haec est area quam abscondit ante uastationem templi nostri et haec area futuro termpore adueniente messia nostro manifestabitur). Epiphanius repeats the same rabbinical tradition (καὶ ἐν ἀναστὰσει πρῶτου ἡ κιβωτὸς ἀναστήσεται). The underlying idea was that the disappearance of the ark from the holy of holies (Jeremiah 3:16; Jeremiah 4; Ezra 10:22; Jos. Bell.ver 5. 5) was a temporary drawback which had to be righted before the final bliss could be consummated. This legend explains the symbolism of the Jewish Christian prophet. The messianic crisis is really at handl The dawn may be cold and stormy, but it is the dawn of the last day! The spirit and content of the passage are transcendental; it is prosaic to delete ἐν τ. ὀ. (Spitta, and Cheyne in E. Bi. i. 309) and refer the vision to the earthly temple in Jerusalem. Like the author of Hebrews, this writer views heaven under the old ritual categories; besides, the originals of the sacred things were supposed to exist in the heaven of God (Hebrews 8:5).

This overture leads up to two sagas (12 and 13) which explain that the present trouble of Christians was simply a final phase of the long antagonism which had begun in heaven and was soon to be ended on earth. It is the writer's task “not only to announce the future but also (Revelation 1:19) to convey a right understanding of that present on which the future depends” (Weiss). Hence the digression or retrospect in Revelation 12:1 f. is only apparent. Hitherto only hints of persecution have been given; now the course, methods, and issues of the campaign are unfolded. The messianic position of Jesus is really the clue to the position of affairs, and it is of the utmost (μέγα, Revelation 11:1 = weighty and decisive) moment to have all events focussed in the light of the new situation which that position has created. So much is plain. But that the source (or tradition) with its goddess-mother, persecuting dragon, celestial conflict, and menaced child, did not emanate from the prophet himself is evident alike from its style and contents; these show that while it could be domiciled on Jewish Christian soil it was not autochthonous (cf. Vischer, 19 f.; Gunkel, S. C. 173 f.). The imagery is not native to messianism. It bears traces of adaptation from mythology. Thus, where it would have been apposite to bring in the messiah (Revelation 11:7), Michael's rôle is retained, even by the Christian editor, while the general oriental features of the mother's divine connexion and her flight, the dragon's hostility and temporary rout, and the water-flood, are visible through the Jewish transformation of the myth into a sort of allegory of messiah, persecuted by the evil power which he was destined to conquer. “In reality it is the old story of the conflict between light and darkness, order and disorder, transferred to the latter days, and adapted by spiritualisation … to the wants of faithful Jews” (Cheyne, Bible Problems, 80). While the vision represents the messianic adaptation of a sun-myth, it is uncertain what the particular myth was, and whether the vision represents a Jewish source worked over by the prophet. In the latter case, the Christian redactor's hand is visible perhaps in 4 a and 5 (πρὸς τ. θ. αὐτοῦ, cf. Revelation 5:6), certainly in 11 (which, even apart from the Lamb, interrupts the sequence) and 17 c, if not also in the whole of 10 12. If, in addition to this, the source was originally written in Hebrew, traces of the translator are to be found (so Gunkel, Kohler, and Wellhausen, after Ewald, Bruston, Briggs, and Schmidt) in 2 (βας. τεκεῖν, cf. 1 Samuel 4:19 חרה ללדת), 5 (υἱὸν ἄ. = בן זכר), 6 (ὅπου … ἐκεῖ = אשׁר שׁם), 8 (κ. οὐκ ἴ. = וְלא ̇ יכל cf. 14 and on Revelation 3:8), 9 (the old serpent = הקרמוני or הכחשׁ הראשׁון), possibly 10 (κατήγωρ = קטיגור), and 12 (κατέβη, cf. ἐβλήθη of 10 = ירד). But whether the source was written or not, whether (if written) it was in Greek or not, and whether it was Jewish or Jewish-Christian, the clue to the vision lies in the sphere of comparative religion rather than of literary criticism. Its atmosphere has been tinged by the international myth of a new god challenging and deposing an older, or rather of a divine hero or child menaced at birth a myth which at once reflected the dangers run by the seed sown in the dark earth and also the victory of light (or the god of light) over darkness, or of light in the springtide over the dead winter. The Babylonian myth of Marduk, which lacks any analogous tale of Marduk's birth, does not correspond so aptly to this vision (cf. Introd. § 4 b), as does the well-known crude Egyptian myth (Bousset); Isis is a closer parallel than Ishtar, and still closer perhaps at one point is the κουροτρόφος of Hellenic mythology, who was often represented as uirgo coelestis. But, if any local phase of the myth is to be assumed as having coloured the messianic tradition used by John, that of Leto would be particularly intelligible to Asiatic readers (cf., e.g., Pfleiderer, Early Christ. Conception of Christ, 56 f., after Dieterich's Abraxas, 117 f.; Maas, Orpheus, 251 f.). The dragon Python vainly persecuted her before the birth of Apollo; but she was caught away to a place of refuge, and her divine child, three days later, returned to slay the monster at Parnassus. This myth of the pregnant and threatened goddess-mother was familiar not only in Delos but throughout the districts, e.g., of Miletus and Magnesia, where the fugitive goddess was honoured on the local coinage. Coins of Hadrian's reign associate the myth with Ephesus (ΦΕϹΙΩΝ ΛΗΤΩ). At Hierapolis, “the story of the life of these divine personages formed the ritual of the Phrygian religion” (C. B. P. i. 91 f.); the birth of a god is associated with Laodicea, one coin representing an infant god in the arms of a woman (Persephone); while in the legend of Rhea, as Ramsay points out (C. B. P. i. 34), Crete and Phrygia are closely allied (cf. also Sib. Orac. ver. 130 f.). All this points decisively to the Hellenic form of the myth as the immediate source of the symbolic tradition (so, e.g., J. Weiss, Abbott, 99), though here as elsewhere in the Apocalypse the obscurity which surrounds the relations between Jewish or early Christian eschatology and the ethnic environment renders it difficult to determine the process of the latter's undoubted influence on the former. Fortunately, this is a matter of subordinate importance. The essential thing is to ascertain not the soil on which such messianic conceptions grew, but the practical religious object to which the Christian prophet, as editor, has freely and naively applied them. His design is to show that the power of Satan on earth is doomed. Experience indeed witnesses (Revelation 11:12-17) to his malice and mischief, but the present outburst of persecution is only the last campaign of a foe whose efforts have been already baffled and are soon to be crushed in the inexorable providence of God. The prophet dramatically uses his source or tradition to introduce Satan as a baffled opponent of the messiah (cf. on Revelation 11:7), who is simply making the most of his time (Revelation 11:12). Moriturus mordet. Once this cardinal aim of the piece is grasped and the proofs of it are overflowing the accessory details fall into their proper place, just as in the interpretation of the parables. In all such products of the poetical and religious imagination, picturesque items, which were necessary to the completeness and impressiveness of the sketch, are not to be invested with primary significance. Besides, in the case of an old story or tradition which had passed through successive phases, it was inevitable that certain traits should lose much if not all of their meaning. “These ancient traits, fragments of an earlier whole, which lack their proper connexion in the present account, and indeed are scarcely intelligible, as they have been wrested from the thought-sequence of the original writer, reveal to the expert the presence of an earlier form of the story” (S. C. p. 6.)