Revelation 12 - Introduction

The procedure of the writer here is very much the same as in ch. 11. (see above). The oracle of 12. is not an allegorising version of history, nor an exegetical construction of O.T. texts, nor a free composition of the author, but the Christianised reproduction of a Jewish source (possibly from the same period as the basis of Revelation 11:1-13, or at least from the same βιβλαρίδιον), or at any rate a tradition, which described the birth of messiah in terms borrowed from such cosmological myths as that of the conflict between the sun-god and the dragon of darkness and the deep. The psychological origin of such a Jewish adaptation would be explained if we presupposed a tradition similar to that of the later Talmud (Jer. Berach. fol. 5, 1) which described the messiah as born at Bethlehem and swept away from his mother by a storm-wind, just after the fall of Jerusalem. But this messiah is merely removed, not raised to heaven. And as we have no clear evidence that the stress of 68 70 A.D. excited such a messianic hope among the Pharisees, it is hazardous to use this (as e.g., Jülicher and Wellhausen still do) to prove that the date of the source is the same as that of Revelation 11:1 f. The structure of the passage is equally ambiguous. 4 a presupposes something equivalent to Revelation 11:7-9, while 13 16 is an expansion or variant of 6; and yet 13 is the natural sequel to 9 (12). These features have led to a variety of literary reconstructions. Spitta, e.g., takes Revelation 11:6 as the Christian editorial anticipation of 13 f., and finds another Christian touch in Revelation 11:11 (Weyland in 11 and 17 c). J. Weiss puts 1 6 and 13 17 together, regarding 7 12 as an independent continuation of the third woe (editorial notes in 3, 11, and 17). Wellhausen (Analyse, 18 f) bisects the oracle into two parallel but incomplete variants ([915] = 1 6, [916] = 7 9, 13, 14), with 15 17 as an editorial conclusion. Others (e.g., Schon and Calmes) find a Christian editor only in 10 12 (with 17 c of course)' while Weizsäcker regards 13 18 as the expansion of 1 12 (a Jewish-Christian fragment of 64 66 A.D.). Some of the incoherencies of the description are due, however, to the alterations necessitated by messianic belief in the circle of such ethnic traditions. The latter made the mother's flight precede the child's birth (as in 4, 5). But, on the messianic scheme, it was the child's birth which roused the full fury of the enemy and turned it into an outburst of baffled revenge upon the mother (Revelation 11:6; Revelation 11:13 f.), after the child's escape. Furthermore, this activity of the devil on earth had to be accounted for by his dislodgement from heaven, as a result of the messianic child's elevation to heaven (7 f.). Hence the apparent inconsistencies, the shifting standpoint, and the amount of repetition and confusion are due to the presence of a messianic conception employing terms of earlier and inadequate mythology for its own purposes, rather than to any literary rearrangement such as the transposition of part of the trumpet-visions to 7 12 (Simcox, J. Weiss). The interest of the prophet in this source or tradition, as in that of Revelation 11:1-13, centres in the outburst of the evil power which shows that the end is imminent. There the beast's attack on messiah's heralds is ultimately foiled. Here the dragon's attack on messiah himself is not only defeated but turned into a rout which obliges him to shift the scene of his campaign to a field where his deputies are presently to be annihilated.

[915] Codex Alexandrinus (sæc. v.), at the British Museum, published in photographic facsimile by Sir E. M. Thompson (1879).

[916] Codex Vaticanus (sæc. iv.), published in photographic facsimile in 1889 under the care of the Abbate Cozza-Luzi.