Abstract
To turn from the gospels to Revelation is always a shock. We feel we are entering a different world, full of frightening spectacle, bizarre imagery and wholesale violence. Revelation, says D. H. Lawrence, is the Judas Iscariot of the New Testament,1 and he is echoed by C. G. Jung, who sees it as an eruption into consciousness of pent-up negative feelings denied or repressed by Christians attempting to live according to the conviction that perfect love casts out fear.2 Like Jung, commentators have often felt uneasy about the frightening excess of John’s visions: Amos Wilder points to their ‘archaic and acultural character;3 John Sweet is concerned about the ‘lethal concentration’ of negative elements found only ‘in small deposits’ elsewhere in the New Testament, and he worries lest Revelation should propagate vengefulness.4
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Notes
D. H. Lawrence, zz Apocalypse: and the Writings on Revelation, ed. Mara Kalnis (Cambridge University Press, 1980) p. 67.
C. G. Jung, Answer to Job, trans. R. F. C Hull (New York: Meridian Books, 1960) pp. 142–3.
Amos N. Wilder, ‘The Rhetoric of Ancient and Modern Apocalyptic’, Interpretation 25 (1971) pp. 441–2.
John Sweet, Revelation (London: SCM Press, 1979) p. 50. See also Anthony Tyrrell Hanson, The Wrath of the Lamb (London: SPCK, 1957),
and Martin Hengel, Victory Over Violence, trans. David E. Green (London: SPCK, 1975).
Austin Farrer, A Rebirth of Images: the Making of St. John’s Apocalypse (Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1970) p. 17.
Norman Perrin and Dennis C. Duling, The New Testament: an Introduction (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 2nd edn 1982) p. 73: ‘The Christian church began as an apocalyptic sectarian movement within ancient Judaism.’ See also pp. 81, 89.
See also Christopher Rowland, The Open Heaven. A Study of Apocalyptic in Judaism and Early Christianity (London: SPCK, 1982) esp. pp. 349ff.,
and W. A. Beardslee, ‘New Testament Apocalyptic in Recent Interpretation’, Interpretation 25 (1971) pp. 419ff.
J. Christiaan Beker, Paul the Apostle: the Triumph of God in Life and Thought (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1980) pp. 135–7.
Beker summarises the schemes of Philip Vielhauer, ‘Introduction to Apocalypses and Related Subjects’, in E. Hennecke, New Testament Apocrypha, ed. W. Schneemelcher, 2 vols (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1963–65) vol. 2, pp. 581–607,
and Klaus Koch, The Rediscovery of Apocalyptic: a Polemical Work on a Neglected Area of Biblical Studies and Its Damaging Effects on Theology and Philosophy, trans. Margaret Kohl (London: SCM, 1972) pp. 18–35. For other recent discussions, see Christopher Rowland, The Open Heaven, esp. pp. 7ff., ‘What is Apocalyptic?’ and J. J. Collins (ed.), Apocalypse: the Morphology of a Genre, Semeia 14 (1979).
Commentaries are the best guide. Besides Peake’s Commentary on the Bible and The Jerome Biblical Commentary, see for instance John Sweet, Revelation; J. Massynberde Ford, The Anchor Bible: Revelation (New York: Doubleday, 1975);
G. R. Beasley-Murray, The Book of Revelation, The New Century Bible Commentary (London: Marshall, Morgan & Scott, 1974);
L. Morris, Revelation (London: Tyndale Press, 1969);
G. B. Caird, The Revelation of St. John the Divine, New Testament Commentaries (London: A. & C. Black, 1966).
M.-E. Boismard, L’Apocalypse (Paris: Cert, 1956).
André Feuillet, The Apocalypse, trans. Thomas E. Crane (New York: Alba House, 1965) pp. 54–62.
C. E. Douglas, The Mystery of the Kingdom: an Attempt to Interpret the Revelation of S. John the Divine by the Method of Literary Criticism (London: The Faith Press, 1915) pp. 7ff.
In the section now following, I am indebted to a number of sources in some rather broad ways which defy detailed documentation. Austin Farrer’s theories of ‘interpolated visions’ and cancelled conclusions are carefully worked through his text, and seem to me to describe John’s technique very well, though I do not follow Farrer all the way. William A. Beardslee, Literary Criticism of the New Testament (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1970) p. 59ff., sees Revelation as combining ‘a cyclic sense of repetition with a powerful thrust forward’, punctuated by ‘interludes’, or anticipations of the perfection to come;
Ibon T. Beckwith, The Apocalypse of John (Michigan: Baker Book House, 1979) pp. 216ff. et passim, notices the deliberate interruptions of orderly sequences and insertions of passages anticipating the end; John Sweet, Revelation, stresses the warnings against complacency, and detects various rhetorical devices for reminding us of its dangers. My notes acknowledge specific indebtedness to these authors, among others, but their general picture of how Revelation keeps us guessing by strategies of disruption and anticipation pervades my own account.
On the ‘little scroll’ and the prophetic call, see Ibon T. Beckwith, The Apocalypse of John (Michigan: Baker Book House, 1979, first published 1919) p. 575;
George Eldon Ladd, A Commentary on the Revelation of St. John (Michigan: William B. Eerdmans, 1972) p. 146, says that eating the little scroll is assimilating the prophetic message. On the metaphoric eating and measuring, see Farrer, A Rebirth of Images, pp. 43–4.
The mysterious two witnesses suggest Moses and Elijah, who were to return as forerunners of the Messiah (Dt. 18:15; Mal. 3:22–4); also, at least two witnesses were necessary for valid testimony (Dt. 19:15), as the Gospel of John reminds us (8:17). See T. F. Glasson, The Revelation of John (Cambridge University Press, 1965) p. 66. For theories associating the two witnesses with the two lampstands, the church and the martyrs, see the summary in G. R. Beasley-Murray, The Book of Revelation, pp. 177ff.
See Edward Schillebeeckx, Christ. The Experience of Jesus as Lord, trans. John Bowden (New York: Crossroad, 1983) p. 455ff., for allusions to Psalm 90:4, where 1000 years is a day of creation, and to two early Jewish messianic conceptions of the final time of salvation, summarised below.
A. C. Charity, Events and their Afterlife: the Dialectics of Christian Typology in the Bible and Dante (Cambridge University Press, 1966). Page numbers are cited in the text.
The celestial woman’s connections to Roman, Greek, Egyptian and Babylonian mythology are summarised by G. R. Beasley-Murray, Revelation, pp. 191–7. See also T. F. Glasson, The Revelation of John (Cambridge University Press, 1965) pp. 72ff., especially on the myth of Apollo and Leto;
André Feuillet, The Apocalypse, trans. Thomas E. Crane (New York: Alba House, 1965) pp. 109ff.
See Anthony Tyrrell Hanson, The Wrath of the Lamb (London: SPCK, 1957) esp. pp. 159ff.;
Martin Hengel, Victory Over Violence, trans. David E. Green (London: SPCK, 1975).
Thomas F. Torrance, The Apocalypse Today (London: James Clarke, 1960) p. 130.
Adela Yarbro Collins, Crisis and Catharsis: the Power of the Apocalypse (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1984). Page numbers are cited in the text.
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© 1989 Patrick Grant
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Grant, P. (1989). Revelation: the Two-Edged Sword. In: Reading the New Testament. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-09310-6_8
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