Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 20.djvu/515

Rh REVELATION 497 heightened colours on an ampler canvas. " The imagery is alive with the burning breath of the East ; a luxuriant fancy sacrifices beauty to boldness and sets proportion at defiance ; all that is sweet and human yields to all that is monstrous and repulsive. A flow of metaphors, an inter- minable personification of abstractions, animates these strange creations with the weird and awful life of some fantastic resurrection scene. At the same time none of the descriptions are clear and intelligible ; the outlines of the pictures melt and fade away in tremulous lines despite the coarseness of the material on which they are drawn." As Jesus Christ had promised to come again, the Jewish expectations of a Messiah who should be revealed continued unabated among many of His disciples; that which as Jews they had hoped from the first and only advent they now deferred till the second. True, the kingdom of God which He had promised did not tally with the materialistic hopes of the people, but on the other hand He had not infrequently Himself employed the figurative language of the prophets and apocalyptic writers; and, after He had left the earth, many sayings borrowed from the Jewish apocalypses were put in His mouth by a vitiated tradition. 1 In the expectations of Christians of the 1st century spiritual and material elements were strangely blent. Hence not only were the Jewish apocalypses, the genuineness of which no one doubted, read in the Christian communities and transmitted to the Gentile converts, but soon there appeared new apocalypses written by Christians. We cannot wonder at this, for all conditions favourable to the production of such writings were to be found in the churches also ; above all, men were conscious of possessing the spirit of prophecy in a far fuller measure than ever before, and this spirit necessarily manifested itself not only in signs and wonders but also in revelations and predictions. Of the Christian apocalypses written between 70 and 170 A.D. only a very small portion is known to us ; for the later church viewed them as dangerous and got rid of them. Even of the apocalypse of Peter, written in the 1st century and regarded as canonical in some provinces as late as the 3d, only a very few fragments have come down to us. 2 But the great Apocalypse which bears the name of John has been preserved. It is to its reception into the canon that we owe the preservation of this precious, indeed unique, monument of the earliest Christian times. Form, Contents, and Purpose. -If we leave out of view chapters i. to iii. the Apocalypse of John does not differ very materially in form from the Jewish apocalypses; but undoubtedly its arrangement is better, and its execution simpler and grander, and therefore more tasteful. 3 In its contents, however, the distinction between this Christian apocalypse and its Jewish fellows is marked ; for, while the latter have not and could not have any actual know- ledge of the Messiah whom they promise, the Apocalypse of John centres round the crucified and risen Jesus, the Lamb that was slain. The author knows whom he and the Christian community have to expect ; to him Jesus Christ is the alpha and the omega, the first and the last ; he is the Lord of the world and of history. And this faith 1 E.g., the saying of Jesus handed down by Papias in Iren, v. 38 ; compare with it Apoc. Baruch, 29. In the eschatological speeches of Jesus reported by the synoptical writers there is no doubt that sayings are introduced which are derived not from Jesus but from the Jewish apocalyptic writers. See the discussions in Weiffenbach, Der Wiederkunftsgedanke Jesu, 1873. 2 See Hilgenfeld, Nov. Test, extra Can. recept., fasc. iv. 3 The literary value of the Apocalypse of John is much higher than that of any of the Jewish apocalypses. The author possessed the art of keeping Lis readers enthralled and excited from first to last ; by a suitable arrangement he has really reduced 'his motley material to order, and by skilful description he has contrived to make even the repulsive endurable. gives to the Apocalypse of John a tone of assured con- fidence and hope such as is not to be found in the Jewish apocalypses. On the other hand, however firm and sure the Christian faith of the author appears, he was still com- pletely hide-bound in the old forms ; it is really a case of new wine in old bottles. But this very circumstance gives to the book its peculiar charm, for in no other early Christian writing are new and old to be found so com- pletely mingled as in this. The author's attitude towards the world and the state is still entirely the Jewish attitude of surly hate this disciple of the gospel has not yet learned that we are bound to love our enemies ; but his attitude towards God and his view of the value of a man's own works show no longer the Jewish but the new Christian belief, for he sees God in Christ, he has accepted the doctrine of the forgiveness of sins through the blood of the Lamb, and regards himself as a priest and king before God. Hence too he lives and moves no longer in the law but in the prophets and the psalms. From them, especially from the prophets Ezekiel, Zechariah, and Daniel, he borrowed most of his imagery and symbols. What he has done in his book is to create a great apoca- lyptic painting or rather a drama worked out in different acts. Impatient longing for the end, a deep abhorrence of the heathen state, a firm faith in Christ and His second coming, a minute and painstaking study of the old prophecies these are the sources from which the descrip- tion of the future are drawn. The purpose is the same as that of all apocalypses to confirm and strengthen the little family of believers in their patience, their courage, and their confidence, by pointing out that the sufferings of the time will last but a brief span and that the present troubles are already the beginning of that end when sorrow and suffering will in a moment be transformed into glory unspeakable. 4 The revelation proper begins with iv. 1, the first three chapters forming an introduction (the seven letters to the seven churches of Asia Minor, which are prefixed, are marked by poeti- cal beauty and power of language). The future is written in a book with seven seals, which the Lamb opens one after the other (iv., v.). The opening of each seal brings a plague upon the earth (vi. ). Before the seventh seal is opened, the church of the latter days is itself sealed that it may be preserved harmless from the assaults of the powers of hell (vii.). At the opening of the seventh seal seven angels with trumpets appear on the scene, each of whom blows a trumpet- blast as a prelude to new horrors on the earth (viii., ix. ). With the sixth trumpet the preliminary judg- ments are at an end (hence the episode, ch. x.). The judgment proper begins with the fall of Jerusalem (xi. ). Then the seventh trumpet sounds as the signal for the last dread horrors and for the final judgment of the world and of all wickedness. This is preceded, however, by a description of the preservation of the church of the latter days (xii. ), forming one of those pauses in the narrative which give the reader breathing time and relieve the horror of the description by the introduction of scenes of peace and words of comfort. The power of the world that opposes Christ (the Roman empire) is described along with all its devilish accomplices (xiii.), and (xiv.) its destruction is by anticipation set forth in figures. The seven angels follow with the seven vials of wrath, which are poured forth and represent the beginning of the final catastrophe (xv., xyi. ). This final catastrophe, involving the imperial citv, the antichristian emperor, his governors, and, last of all, the devil himself, is described in xvii.-xx. 3, xix. 11 sq. forming the climax, when Christ himself appears on a white horse and vanquishes all his foes. The devil is chained in the bottom- less pit for a thousand years ; during this time the saints of the latter days not all believers reign with Christ. 5 After the devil 4 The way in which the author has given expression to this practical purpose by means of scenes and images reveals the great artist. 5 This idea, germs of which are to be found in the Jewish apo- calypses, is easily explained when we remember that two different views of the resurrection and of the future kingdom prevailed amongst the Jews. According to the one view only favoured persons, accord- ing to the other every one would rise from the dead ; according to the one view the future kingdom would have only a limited duration, according to the other it would be eternal. In the Revelation of John the two suppositions are combined. XX. 63