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Preface
If ‘apocalyptic was the mother of all Christian theology’,
then the Book of Revelation should be put at the centre of New Testament
study. In The Revelation of Jesus Christ I have done this,
showing that the Book of Revelation is not a late text from Asia Minor
but the earliest material in the New Testament.
The book is unique among New Testament texts insofar as a date and place
of origin are recorded in tradition. The book itself claims to have been
written on Patmos, and Irenaeus, writing about 180 CE,
says it was seen by John at the end of the reign of Domitian. The
internal evidence of the book, however, seems incompatible with both of
these. Although few have questioned that it came from Patmos and was
sent to Asia Minor, scholars long ago recognized that the cryptic
allusions to contemporary events pointed not to the reign of Domitian
but to 68–70 CE and that the ‘John’
of the Book of Revelation wrote a very different Greek from the ‘John’
of the Fourth Gospel. At the end of the nineteenth century, the great
New Testament scholars such as Westcott, Lightfoot and Hort gave weight
to the internal evidence and favoured the earlier date. In the twentieth
century, although there was no new evidence, there was a new fashion and
so Charles, who published his great commentary in 1920, favoured the
external tradition and accepted the later date.
At the end of the twentieth century there is new material to bring to
the study of the Book of Revelation. There has never been evidence for
the persecution of Christians in Asia Minor in the first century CE
apart from the Book of Revelation itself, but the Dead Sea texts now
offer ample evidence of the situation in Palestine in the years
preceding the war against Rome. It was a time of religious and
nationalist fervour fuelled by the visions of priestly mystics, and the
Book of Revelation belongs with these texts which depict the crimes of
the wicked priest and the war of the sons of light against the sons of
darkness. Jesus was described in the Letter to the Hebrews as the great
high priest, the new Melchizedek, and the Book of Revelation presents
itself as his teaching: ‘The revelation of Jesus Christ which God
gave him to show to his servants what must soon take place’.
The Book of Revelation is oracles and visions collected and preserved by
John the beloved disciple and his brethren the prophets, the greatest of
whom had been Jesus himself. Jesus spoke of what he had seen and heard
in heaven (John 3.32), but people did not believe his marturion,
his testimony. This testimony, defined in Revelation 1.2 as ‘all
that he saw’, is preserved in the Book of Revelation. As the
years passed, the prophets interpreted contemporary events in the light
of these visions and oracles. These were the people whom Josephus
dismissed as the ‘pretended messengers of the deity who led the
wretched people astray’ (War 6.286) and inspired the war
against Rome with their conviction that the LORD
would return to his city. There is a remarkable similarity between the
portents and oracles reported by Josephus and those in the Book of
Revelation.
In order to understand the Book of Revelation, it must be recognized
that the problems at the end of the second temple period originated when
the exiles returned from Babylon in the sixth century BCE.
Accusations followed: the priests had lost their spiritual sight, the
new temple was impure, and the new city was no longer a holy city. There
were many who distanced themselves from the new Jerusalem and longed for
divine judgement on the faithful city who had become a harlot (Isa.
1.21). They kept alive the memory of the first temple which had been
heaven on earth, and of the anointed priest-king, who had been the
presence of the LORD with his
people. In their writings, the rituals of the old temple became their
descriptions of heaven, and they remembered how the priest-king had
entered the holy of holies as a man but returned as the LORD
to establish his kingdom and judge his enemies. These priestly writings
are now known as apocalypses, and have been preserved by Christian
scribes.
The court scenes in the Book of Revelation are not modelled on those of
the Roman imperial cult; how could a Christian prophet have seen such
things? The imperial cult may have been identified as the dark antitype
of true worship, but the detail was drawn from priestly memories of the
temple ritual. This must have been the first temple with its cherub
throne, since the holy of holies in the second temple was empty. The
harlot of the Book of Revelation was not Rome; she had been Jerusalem
since the time of Ezekiel, even though later interpreters of the
prophecy identified Rome as the harlot of their own time. Nor is there
any evidence that Patmos was used as a penal settlement in the first
century CE: it is quite possible
that ‘the word of God and the testimony of Jesus’ that
brought John to Patmos were the very visions and prophecies which had
fuelled the troubles in Jerusalem from which he had been able to escape.
The seven letters were given by the LORD
in visions to his prophets in Jerusalem, and sent by the pillars of the
church to the communities in Asia Minor. They were warnings about Paul
whom they described as Balaam, the false prophet. Since the language of
the Jerusalem Christians was Aramaic and their Scriptures were in
Hebrew, it is unlikely that Greek was the original language of the Book
of Revelation. The Book of Revelation was translated into Greek, which
explains why its style is not that of the Fourth Gospel.
Just before the final disaster overtook Jerusalem, John received his own
personal experience of the return of the LORD,
recorded in the Book of Revelation as a vision of the Mighty Angel
coming in a cloud from heaven (10.1). He gave John new teaching, some of
it to be kept secret, and from that time, John began to reinterpret the
teaching of Jesus and to present the new understanding of his return.
The study of apocalyptic texts has been an area of rapid growth,
especially since the non-biblical materials have become available in
English. The key question must be: Why is all this material ‘outside’
the Old Testament when it was clearly so central to the Dead Sea texts
and the New Testament? If, as some suggest, apocalyptic was imported
into Judaism during the second temple period, and is evidence for the
hellenization and syncretism with oriental cults, this could explain why
is was not accepted into the canon. If, however, the apocalypses were
the priestly writings of the second temple period which preserved the
theology and imagery of the ancient royal cult and inspired the writers
of the Dead Sea texts, there must have been a compelling reason to
exclude this most ‘orthodox’ of literature when the canon
of Hebrew Scriptures was being defined after the fall of Jerusalem. The
apocalypses must have been excluded because of the part they had played
in that disaster, and the Christians who preserved the apocalyptic texts
must have had good reason to do this.
The Revelation of Jesus Christ is the culmination of many years’
work; all my publications have been leading in this direction, and their
conclusions form the foundation of this book. I have summarized these
points in the first three chapters. Ideally, I should like to have
written a much longer work, engaging in debate with others who work in
this field, but the realities of time and publishing make this
impossible. What I offer is my reading of the Book of Revelation.
There have been two significant moments in the development of ideas; the
first was when I bought a copy of the New Testament in (modern) Hebrew
and read the Book of Revelation; and the second was when I first read J.
M. Ford’s Anchor Bible Commentary on Revelation (1975),
the most exciting contribution to this field in recent years. She had
the courage to suggest a new approach, but her book was not given the
recognition it deserved. Although there are many points on which I would
disagree with her, she sowed ideas in my mind, the sure sign of a good
book.
Margaret Barker
Epiphany 1999
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