Revelation 2:20

Women (cf. Acts 21:9; 1 Corinthians 11:5, and the later Ammia in Philadelphia: Eus. H. E. ver 17. 2) occasionally prophesied in the early church, and false prophetesses were as likely to exist as false prophets. This “Jezebel of a woman, alleging herself to be a prophetess,” seems to have been some influential female (as the definite imagery of Revelation 2:21-23 indicates); her lax principles or tendencies made for a connexion with foreign and compromising associations which evidently exerted a dangerous charm upon some weaker Christians in the city. The moral issue corresponds to that produced by the Nikolaitan party at Pergamos (εἰδ. φαγεῖν, πορνεῦσαι), but the serious nature of the heresy at Thyatira appears from the fact that it was not simply propagated within the church but also notorious (Revelation 2:23) and long-continued (τέκνα), thanks to obstinacy among the Ahabs and adherents of this prominent woman (Revelation 2:21). They prided themselves on their enlightened liberalism (Revelation 2:24). The definiteness of her personality, the fact of her situation within a Christian church which had jurisdiction over her, and the association of her practices with those of the Nikolaitans, who were members of the church, render it impossible to identify this libertine influence of Jude with a foreign institution such as the famous shrine of the Chaldean Sibyl at Thyatira (Schürer: Theol. Abhandlungen, pp. 39 f., a theory suggested by Blakesley, in Smith's DB), or with the wife of the local Asiarch (Selwyn, 123). Besides it was not the cults but the trade-guilds that formed the problem at Thyatira. Jastrow points out (p. 267) that for some occult reason female sorcerers were preferred to men among the Babylonians; “the witch appears more frequently than the male sorcerer”. Hillel (Pirke Aboth, ii. 8; see Dr. C. Taylor's note) had already declared, “more women, more witchcraft”. For the connexion of women and sorcery cf. Blau's Altjüd. Zauberwesen 18 f., 23 f. ἡ λέγουσα κ. τ. λ., an irregular nomin. absolute, characteristic of the writer. This LXX peculiarity of a detached participle thrown into relief, which is not confined to the Apocalypse (cf. Philippians 3:16-19, etc.), renders the participle almost a relative (Vit. i., 202); but indeed any word or group of words, thus singled out as characteristic of some preceding noun, tends to become independent and to take its own construction (II. 8f). See Zephaniah 1:12 (LXX).

[903]. Jude