ri >V',- ¦- r,/* ca^ vife;^:v. i5^:^L ,^9^' . ^w'*^-:. - V, • i^^i^;^^ 1 ' ^-^(S ^*ii. :>;v^~ 'V? ' f^a ^J'-j' ">,' ->iis ,fe. r^^* .t%^* C L A -R K ' S FOREIGN THEOLOGICAL LIBRARY. VOLUME XXIL il^ngsiteniiers on tf)e Hciielatton of &t SFoi&n. VOL. I. EDINBURGH : T. & T. CLARK, 38 GEORGE STREET; LONDON : SEBLEY AND CO. ; WAKD AND CO. ; AND JACKSON AND WALFOKD. DUBLIN : JOHN KOBEKTSON. NEW YORK : WILEY AND PUTNAM. PHILAUELPUIA : J. A. MOORE. MDCCCLI. PKISTED BY M'COSH, PARK, AND DEWARS, DnNDEE. THE EEVELATION OF ST JOHN EXPOUNDED FOE THOSE WHO SEARCH THE SCRIPTURES. E. W. HENGSTENBERG, nOOTOn AND PR0FE3S0H or THEOLOGY IN BEBLIN, TRANSLATED FROM THE OEIGINAL, BY THE ^ EEV. PATRICK FAIRBAIRN, AUTHOn OF " TYPOLOGY OF SORTPTOBE," " EZEKIEL, AN EXPOSITION," "JONAH," &C. VOLUME FIRST. EDINBURGH' T. & T. CLARK, 38 GEORGE STREET. LONDON : UAMILTON, ADAMS, & CO. ; SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, & CO. SEELEY & CO. ; WARD & CO. ; JACKSON & WALFORD, ETC. DUBLIN : JOHN ROBERTSON. MDCCCLI. PREFACE. The Eevelation of St John was for a long time a shut book to me. That it was necessary here to lay open a new path ; that .neither the course pursued in the older ecclesiastical, nor that of the modern Rationalistic exposition was to be followed, I never entertained a doubt. The constantly renewed attempts at fresh investigations resulted only in a better understanding of particu lar points, but accomplished nothing as to the main theme. I ¦was not the less persuaded, however,' that the blame of this ob scurity lay not in the' book itself, with the divine character of which I was deeply impressed, but in its exposition ; and I did not cease to long for the time when an insight might be granted me into its wonderful depths. Several years ago, I was visited with what was, in other respects, a heavy season of affliction, which obliged me to discontinue for some months my official duties. I looked ^bout for a rod and staff that might comfort nie, and soon lighted on the Revelation. Day and night I pon dered on it, and one difficulty vanished after another. At the period of my recovery, there was scarcely a point of any moment respecting which I did not think I had obtained light. I had still, however, after becoming well, to finish my Commentary on the Psalms. Then I went to my task with the greatest eager ness. The sad times of March 1848 did not interrupt, but rather expedited my labours. It was my purpose to have issued the two volumes of the work simultaneously. But I have now resolved to bring out the first volume alone — because the Revelation has a very close relation to the wants of the present time, and I reckoned it my duty to endeavour, according to the best of my ability, that the rich trea sury of counsel and comfort, which the Lord has provided for us in this book, should as soon as possible be made accessible to those who desire to possess it. Such as wish to obtain a glimpse VI PREFACE. of the whole of the exposition, may find what they desire in the two treatises : The beast in the Apocalypse, Evang. Kirche- Zeitung, 1847, and : The thousand years' reign. Do. 1848. The title shows that this work is intended for all who search the Scriptures. The remarks contain little of a grammatical nature. The text will present no difficulties to cultivated readers, even though not theologians, if they are only animated by an earnest desire to become thoroughly acquainted with the contents of the book. Of the investigations which are usually brought into Introduc tions to the Apocalyse, that alone is presented here which respects the historical starting-point of the book, as being the only one which really has its proper place before the, exposition. All be sides is reserved for concluding treatises to be contained in the second volume. Many readers will think there are too frequent quotations from, the older Expositors, especially from Bengel. Such persons, however, should remember that their wants are not the only ones that require to be met. The experience I have already had in connection with my Commentary on the Psalms, has specially induced me not to be sparing in these quotations. Certainly the greater number of readers will be more pleased with this than if I had gone into greater length in stating and commenting on the views of others, which would have been of less service in regard to this book than almost any other in the Bible. The present times, too, urgently demand that we should disburden the exposition of sacred Scripture from all unprofitable matter, and instead of that should present what properly accords with its design, as declared in 2 Tim. iii. 16, and may constantly bring it to mind. That the ascetical element should create no prejudice against the necessity of scientific inquiries is taken for granted ; and I hope that no reproach will in this respect be cast on me. I am perfectly aware that this work is destined to meet with much disfavour from many who are united with me in faith. The persons whose concurrence I should have most highly prized, are precisely those in whom the exposition of Bengel, to which also I owe more than to any other for the explanation of particular parts, has taken deepest root ; insomuch that an attack on it, which has made the Revelation dear gjid precious to them, will PREFACE. vn scarcely be regarded by them in any other light than as an attack on the Revelation itself. . But I am still not without confidence, that the method of exposition attempted here will by and bye make way, especially among those who are disposed to look more profoundly into the Old Testament, and in particular into its prophetical writings. For this is absolutely indispensable to a proper understanding of the Revelation. My confidence rests on the conviction, that I have not striven to foist in any thing, but to the best of my ability have sought merely to expound and en force what is written. In conclusion, I commend this work, the deficiencies of which I deeply feel, to Him who has given me strength to execute it thus far, and who has rendered it to myself a source of edification and comfort. EEKATA. Page 7, lin.e 11, for to the, read and the. 22, first note, /or juber read juhet. — , line 4, fourth note, delete seu potius relucebat. 31, line 1, note, /or remoramar, read remoramar 32, line 3, note 2,/o)' coel, read coelo. 48, line 11, /o»" Hos. read Hag. . 50, line 9, for meditating, read mediating. 91, line i, note, for anti, read antu. — , line 5, do., for praesunta, read praesnmta. 96, line Tl, /or God's, *-eod good. 165, line 11, for good, read food 337. line 33,/or before, read upon. THE REVELATION OE SAINT JOHN. ON THE TIME OF THE COMPOSITION OF THE BOOK. The older theologians proceeded almost uniformly on the sup position, that the Book of Revelation was composed in the closing period of Domitian's reign — an opinion that finds, in Vitringa especially, an excellent though brief defence. On the whole, however, little comparatively was done to establish this opinion on solid and satisfactory grounds ; even Bengel did not go deeply into the matter. The feeling for the genuine historical interpre tation of the Apocalypse was still not awakened, so that but little weight could as yet be attached to this most important inquiry, and it was passed hurriedly over. The interest felt in it was less on account of the exposition, than for the defence of the authority of the old ecclesiastical tradition, which had declared in favour of the composition under Domitian. But there being no right feel ing awakened for the true historical interpretation, the power failed, in connection with that interest, to give a lucid exhibition of the proof. This can only be found when one understands how to obtain from many scattered indications a living image of the existing condition of the Seer, which forms the proper starting- point for the announcement of the future. Vitringa has some excellent observations in this respect, but they are confined to the seven epistles. In regard to the remainder of the Book, the question as to the historical starting-point can scarcely be said to be so much as mooted. With him, as with Bengel, and so many unfortunately even to our own day, the prophecy swims, as it were, in the air ; and nothing, consequently, could be derived a 2 INTRODUCTION. from it for determining the period of its composition. In more recent times the position advanced originally by Grotius, Ham mond, Lightfoot, for the purpose of understanding certain passages of the fate of Judaism, that the Book was composed before the destruction of Jerusalem, has been pretty generally acquiesced in. And on the authority especially of Ewald and Liicke the precise opinion, that the Apocalypse was composed under Galba, has ob tained very general consent. By many it is uttered with a sort of naive confidence, and most of all by those who have brought almost nothing of an independent investigation to bear upon the subject. We shall, first of all, examine the external testimonies that re late to the point at issue. From these we shall gather the result that, what Lampe has said in his Comm. on John i. p. 62, " all antiquity agrees in the opinion of Domitian's being the author of John's banishment," is no paradox, but the simple truth. For, the deviations from this result are on the part only of such as do not deserve to be heard and considered. The series of testimonies for the composition under Domitian is opened by Irenseus. He says, B. V. c. 30, " For if it were necessary at present to declare plainly his name {i.e. the name of the person indicated by the number 666 in the Apocalypse xiii. 18), it might be done through him, who also saw the Apocalypse. For it was seen not long ago, but almost in our generation, to ward the close of Domitian's reign. "i Irenaeus was in a position for knowing the truth. According to the beginning of the chap ter, the numbers 666 (in opposition to the other reading 616) bear testimony to having seen John in the face.^ He speaks not by way of conjecture or on constructive reasons, but as of a matter established beyond any possibility of doubt. He neither ex pressly refers, nor alludes to the passage, ch. i. 9, from which the opponents of the composition under Domitian might so naturally attempt to account for the testimonies of antiquity to that era. Nor does he announce it, as if communicating something that had hitherto been unknown, but with another design altogether, he 1 Ei yip eJei di/aipaiiSdu tw vvv Kaipw Kij|OuTT£oyTjv. 6 INTRODUCTION. which as to its substance is undoubtedly genuine, for it bears too exactly the character of the style which Jerome ascribes to Vic torinus (see the collection of his expressions in the Bibl. Patr., and other reasons for its substantial genuineness, may be seen in Liicke, p. 494) . But in this work the composition of the Apoca lypse under Domitian, during the exile in Patmos, is spoken of as a matter of undoubted certainty.' These are all the testimonies on the time of the composition of the Apocalypse belonging to the age of living tradition. They declare with perfect unanimity that John was banished by Domi tian to Patmos, and there wrote the Apocalypse. Variations be gin only to appear in the age of theology and learning. Epipha nius is the first, who puts forth another view. But even there the tradition still has such sway, that all persons of any critical acu men, all who know how to distinguish between historically accre dited facts and conjectures and combinations, declare themselves on its side. At the head of these is Jerome, who did not reckon it worth while even to notice the existence of a different account, which must therefore be held to be every way improbable.^ The matter stands precisely similar with the question regarding the genuineness. For the more correct appreciation of the other and differing accounts we submit the following remarks. 1. It is only in writers of inferior rank that these accounts are to be found. Epiphanius, who is the first in point of time, is also by far the most important. But the judgment which Vi tringa expressed regarding him, " that he was an extremely in credulous person, and in the mention of traditions or sayings of the ancients much less exact than he seems to be," is now gene- 1 The main passage is at p. 419 : Oportet te iterum prophetare, inquit, populia et Un guis: hoc est, quoniam quando hoc vidit Johannes, erat in insula Patmos, in metallum damnatus a Domitiano Caesare. Ibi ergo vidit Apooalypsin: et cum senior jam putaret, se per passionem accepturuni receptionem, interfecto Domitiano omnia judicia ejus so- luta aunt, et Joannes de metallo dimissus sic postea tradidit hanc eandem quam ac- ceperat a Domino Apooalypsin, hoc est, oportet te iterum prophetare. See also p. 420. 2 E. ff. de viris illust. 9 ; Johannes quarto decimo anno secundam post Neronem per- secutionem movente Domitiano in Patmos insulam relegatus scripsit Apooalypsin. Also ad J'ovin ii. U, and in the Chronicon. The ancient and right account is fouud also in Sophorinus (about 629), in the life of Johu, aud in Theophylact's Commentary on the four Gospels : TEaaapE : Aid ToD iSiov EvayyEXiov, S Kal crvviypa^EV kv Jldrfua t^ vfiam il^opia- Toi SiaTEXav, /lETa TpiaKovTaSiio et») Tije tou XpiaTov oj/aXni/fEios. The deviation from the tradition here attaches merely to the number. Is this to be regarded as quite certain? 8 INTRODUCTION. that they have no firm ground beneath their feet. Pseudodoro theus, after he has placed the banishment of John to Patmos under Trajan, adds, " But others say, he was banished to Patmos, not under Trajan, but under Domitian, the son of Vespasian."' Are- thas, who at ch. vii. 1 — 8 places the composition of the Apocalypse before the Jewish war, at ch. i. 6, makes it to have been written under Domitian. 6. We can with tolerable certainty discover the extraneous grounds, which have given rise to these departures from the his torical tradition, and through which they lose all their importance. They have no higher origin than the opinions of our modern critics, who on the ground of the first plausible conjecture and discovery on the internal field, disregard and tread under foot the weightiest and most solid testimonies. Epiphanias ranks in the same line with Ziillig. It cannot but appear strange, that all those who depart fi-om the tradition, amid their other diversities agree in this, that they place the composition of the Eevelation before th"e era of Jerusalem's overthrow. That what impelled them to this was the belief of cer tain passages in Revelation having respect to the Jewish catas trophe, seems probable alone from the analogy of later critics and expositors, who from Grotius downwards have been chiefly influ enced by this consideration to disallow the composition of the Apocalypse under Domitian. But it is raised to certainty by expressions of Andreas and Arethas, who in reference to certain passages expressly affirm that they were understood by some of the Jewish war, who consequently could not do otherwise than transfer the composition of the book to a time previous to that war.^ But in proportion as the exposition of the Apocalypse was then in a state of infancy, the less consideration can justly be at tributed to what has sprung from such a ground. Why the Emperor Claudius should have been fixed on may be 1 Before Theophylact on John: 'T-Trd Sk Tpaiavoij PacriXiait E^MpiVetj iv tj kijo-m niT^m Sid TOV Xoyov TOU Kvpiov. . . Eio-1 Sk ol Xiyovai, jui; eVJ Tpalavov aMv k^iopitrQtjvtii kv IldTjuw, &XXd kirl AofiETiavov, viov OvEtnraffiavou. 2 Andreas says on oh. vi. 12: Kai eT^ok ote 5i/ot£E Tijv atppayXSa tijw EKTrjv, Kal o-EJo-^os piyat kyivETo, Kal b JiXios kyivETo /ilXai lis (tcSkkos k. t. X. Kal toDt^ Tivtt • Is t!iv Eirl OuEo-jni(riai»oD iroXiopKiav k^iXapov flTrai/TO riSv Elptjukvuiv EKatrrov Tpo- TroXoyrfo-awTEs. Also on ch, vii. 1 : Kai TauTo Tiaiv iiiri Pm/jiaiav wdXai Tott 'lovSltioK yEyEvi^a-Qai E^EiX-tjirTat. TIME OF WRITING THE REVELATION. 9 gathered from those who have latterly contended for the compo sition under his reign. Grotius, Hammond, and others derive their chief argument in favour of Claudius from Acts xviii. 2, and the well-known passage of Suetonius (Claud, c. 25), which speak of the expulsion of the Jews, and this is supposed to have involved also John's banishment to Patmos. Another argument may still be found in the original passage Matt. xxiv. 7, " And there shall be famines and pestilences in various places," on which Rev. vi. 5 — 8 rests ; for this has often been referred to the times of Claudius, in whose reign a famine four - times broke out and a pestilence twice — comp. Acts xi. 28, the comm. on Sueton. c. 18, Schott Comment, in Sermones de reditu, p. 27. It was the more natural to think of Nero, when one once aban doned the ground of testimony and gave way to conjectures, since, having been the first to begin the work of persecution against Christians, and the person under whom the most distinguished of the apostles, Peter and Paul, suffered martyrdom, he was regarded in ancient times as distinctively the persecutor. Tertullian already makes John, not indeed banished by Nero to Patmos, yet put by him into a barrel of boiling oil.^ We are not, however, to suppose that with the result we have now attained, the inquiry respecting the composition of the Apo calypse is to be regarded as closed. External testimonies alone cannot decide the matter. It is conceivable, that what was origi nally conjecture, may have clothed itself in the garb of tradition, and under this form deceived even the most honest inquirers. But we must put the matter in its fair and correct position — that we have no longer to speak of two equally accredited views of anti quity ; that we must recognise upon the one side a well-supported tradition, and on the other an uncertain conjecture ; that we must proceed to the investigation of the internal grounds with the consciousness of having already at the outset won a firm position, from which we should not suffer ourselves to be driven by any uncer tain conjectures, but only by the most conclusive arguments. But the more careful examination of the internal grounds, far from invalidating the external testimonies, rather yields the result, 1 So at least Jerome already, adv. Jovin. o. 1. c. 14, understood hie exprcBsion, d e prseser. c. 86. Comp. Lampe on John Prolog, i. c. 4, 5 8. 3 10 INTRODUCTION. that the Book could have been composed at no other time than during the reign of Domitian. I. Let us first bring into view the condition of the churches in Lesser Asia, as that appears in the seven epistles. Dr Liicke himself is obliged to admit, p. 243, that the Reve lation supposes a condition of the churches, which, in contradis tinction from the earlier one of Paul's time, may be designated the age of John. First of all, the seven epistles presuppose a time, when that word of the Lord, " But when the bridegroom tarried, they all slumbered and slept," and that word, "Because ini quity sTiall abound, the love of many shall wax cold," had already passed into fulfilment. The blessed period of the first love is past, even there too, where it still relatively stood fast ; zeal has relaxed and corrupiion make great inroads ; we feel ourselves everywhere transferred to the later times, " in which a grievous corruption, that not suddenly but by gradual advances had sprung up, and acquired new strength as it proceeded, had already be fallen those churches." In Ephesus the lore which Paul, in ch. iii. 18 of his epistle, had besought for the Ephesians, has become cooled. " But I have somewhat against thee, that thou hast left thy first love," (Rev. ii. 4.) Already it is a time, when that which still remained is in danger of perishing. " Remember from whence thou hast fallen (it is said in ver. 5), and repent and do the first works ; else I will come unto thee quickly, and remove thy candlestick out of its place, except thou repent." Paul, in his farewell discourse to the church at Ephesus, Acts xx., still makes no mention of any blemishes among them, but only warns them against the snares of the threatening foe. The Epistle to the Ephesians, written by Paul (according to Wieseler in his Chronol. of the Apost. age, p. 455) during the period of his first two years' imprisonment at Rome, or in the year 61 or 62 (according to Harlcss about the year 62), everywhere conveys the impression of fresh life, of a first love. The apostle begins at the very outset with an expres sion of thanksgiving to God for all the rich spiritual gifts which he had conferred on that church. He lauds in particular the love of the Ephesians, their brotherly love, which has its source and foundation in the love of God, ch. i. 15, 16, " Wherefore I also, after I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus, and love unto all TIME OF WRITING THE REVELATION. 11 the saints, cease not to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers." * The church of Sardis appears in a still sadder condition. " I know thy works, that thou hast a name that thou livest, and art dead" — is the word to her, iii. 1— your light has already well- nigh become extinct. Laodicea had become lukewarm ; wretched and miserable, poor, and blind, and naked. The condition of the Laodicean church in Paul's time is partly to be estimated by that of the Ephesian, according to Col. iv. 16, partly and more particularly by that of the church of Colosse ; comp. Col. ii. 1, iv. 13, 15, 16. The Epistle to the Colossians was written about the same time with that to the Ephesians (see Wieseler), and not long before the close of Paul's life, when suflering imprisonment at Rome. There, just as in the Epistle to the Ephesians, he gives thanks for what he had heard of their faith and love : " We give thanks to God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, praying always for you, since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus, and your love to all the saints," (Col. i. 3, 4.) According to ch. ii. 5, the apostle is with them in spirit rejoicing and beholding their order and their faith in Christ. Dr Liicke thinks, p. 413, that the change in question can be ex plained, though a period of only ten years had intervened. But even this short space is not secured. The date of the Apocalypse is supposed by him to have been separated from that of the Epistles to Ephesus and Colosse b'y a period of somewhere about six years. And then it is clear as day, that even a space of ten years could not account for so radical a change. It bespeaks a change of persons, the arrival of a new generation : comp. Judg. ii. 7, according to which the people serv'ed the Lord so long as Joshua and the elders lived, who had seen the mighty works of the Lord, which he had done for Israel. In regard, especially, to what concerns the Laodiceans it will not do merely to say : Tem pora mutantur et nos mutamur in illis. It were indeed a source of despair, if such a change on the part of established Christians could be explained from a change of times, and, God be thanked, is without an example in the history of the Christian church. The world can certainly become demoralized in a short time, but Christians retain their anointing. And then in the decennium 12 INTRODUCTON. immediately following the composition of the Epistles to the Ephesians and Colossians, no change of times can be pointed out, which should have brought such perils with it, endangering even the elect. It came only at the period, to which the church tradi-- tion assigns the composition of the Apocalypse, under the reign of Domitian. There all the premises are to be found, which are required to explain the facts. We have, in that case, an inter val of more than thirty years. During that period the apostles had all, with the exception of John, gone to their rest, and so the boundary set by the apostle Paul in 2 Thess. ii. 6 had been crossed ; gone, too, were the Christian fathers, who had seen the great deeds of the Lord, while a storm of persecution, such as the Christian church had not yet seen, passed over the less firmly established new generation. Hence, the Seer writes, according to ch. i. 9, to his companions in tribulation and in the patience of Jesus Christ. Then did the word of the Lord in Matth. xiii. 20, 21, find a mournful fulfilment : " But he that received the seed into stony places, the same is he who heareth the word, and anon with joy receiveth it ; yet hath he not root in himself, but dureth for a while ; for when tribulation or persecution ariseth because of the word, by and bye he is offended." Farther, we find in the churches to which John wrote, the errors of those, whom he designates by the symbolical names of the Nicolaitans or Balaamites, deeply rooted and wide-spread. According to ch. ii. 21, the Lord had already given ample time to their operations : " And I gave her space to repent of her forni cation ; and she repented not." How strong the pressure of the Nicolaitans was upon the church at Ephesus, is manifest from its being mentioned as a matter of high desert, that they hated the deeds of these Nicolaitans. They must there have been already excluded from the church. For in apostolic times this was the form in which hatred manifested itself— comp. 1 Cor. v. — and it could not otherwise have been a fact of a public character, as it appears to have been. In the church at.Pergamos the matter had not been brought to such an exclusion, a proof how strong the party there was. So also in the church at Thyatira. It must there have found its way to the directorship ; as may be inferred from the Jesabel, the wife of the angel, the weaker half of the party in office. TIME OF WRITING THE REVELATION. 13 The rise of the importance of this sect can only be explained. in connection with the influence which heathenism had preserved in men's minds, by reason of persecntion, as a similar temptation and inclination to apostacy to Judaism in consequence of Jewish persecution meets us in the epistle to the Hebrews. And among Israel also the heathenish tendencies were never stronger than in the times of severe oppression on the part of the world, before the conquest of Jerusalem by the Chaldeans, and under Antiochus Epiphanes. Pergamos, which was a chief seat of this heresy, is described as the throne of Satan, the main centre of the heathen ish persecution. Antipas, the faithful witness, had there suffered martyrdom. The community had under the persecution main tained their faith, but they were not to come out of the conflict without wounds. In Thyatira, the second seat of the heresy, the promise given shews that the temptati-on to false doctrine sprung from a terrible pressure on the part of heathenism. " He that overcometh and keepeth my words to the end, to him will I give power over the nations . . . and I will give him the morning star (a glorious supremacy).' If the church internally resists the pressure of heathenism, does not allow itself to be drawn aside to heathenish errors, it shall also gain externally the victory over it. Therefore, the temptation had come in from " the power of the heathen." Whosoever withstands it, receives in turn " the power of the heathen." Then, for the rise of this heresy out of the heathen persecutions, there is the analogy of ch. xi. In conse quence of the overflowing of the heathen the fore-court of the temple is there given up, such, namely, as had no deep root, they are overcome through the heathen persecutions, and are drawn over to the fellowship of those, who in their minds were heathenish. Accordingly, the getting the victory over this error implies what could not have existed before the times of Domitian, when for the first time a severe persecution, and one that threatened the annihilation of the Christians, swept over the church, and especially did not exist in the reign of Galba, during which there was no proper persecution of the Christians. In the epistles of Paul there still occurs no trace of such a gross and wide-spread falling away into the region of heathenism. The errors, with which Paul contends, were chiefly of Jewish 14 INTRODUCTION. origin, as were also the troubles which then pressed upon the Christians. Hymeneus and Philetus, according to the second epistle of Paul to Timothy, written at the very close of the apos tle's life, succeeded with their refined philosophical error in turn ing only a few from the faith— avarpiTrovai, tvv tw'wi; ^icttiv. The farther spread of such errors was expected only in the coming future ; v. 17, comp. Acts xx. 29, 30. The proper kernel of our heresy meets us, for the first time, in the second epistle of Peter, which the apostle wrote, according to ch. i. 13, 14, when he had death in immediate prospect. To the name of the Nicolaitans here corresponds there the comparison with Balaam, in ch. ii. 15, 16. The errors appear there chiefly to belong to the future ; although the liveliness of the descrip tion, and the circumstance that the errors are sometimes spoken of as present, show that the apostle had the first beginnings of the evil already before his eyes. The occasion of its rise is indi cated in ch. iii. 4. Where, say the opposing party, is the promise of his coming ? The desire for this must have been awakened by the violence of the persecution and the tribulations of the world. What the Christians had latterly to suffer under Nero was well fitted, particularly at Rome, to call forth the first work ings of the evil, and especially to open the eyes of the apostle in respect to the magnitude in the future, when the persecntion should increase and widen, of the danger that should thence threaten the church. We are conducted a step farther by the epistle of Jude. The errors, which in the second epistle of Peter appeared as still chiefly lying in the future, are here represented as already present. " The errors (says Heydenrich in his defence of the genuineness of the second epistle of Peter), which Petet had announced as ready to appear, were now in actual being, and strove to gain a footing in the church, with which Jude was more immediately connected. How appropriate that he should repeat, and call up to the recollection of his readers, what at an earlier period Peter had so impressively and profoundly uttered for their warning !" That what was future in Peter had now become present, was the proper motive to Jude for writing his epistle.i 1 Decisive for the priority of the second epistle of Peter, as compared with that of Jude, is Jude v. 17, 18, comp. with 2 Pet. iii. 3. We have here also au important testi mony for the genuineness of the second epistle of Peter. But see Heydenrich p 97 also 103. ' ¦ ' TIME OF WRITING THE REVELATION. 15 But even in Jude the error is still by no means so far advanced and so fully disclosed to view, as in the Revelation. There also it is said only, that " certain men had crept in unawares." We see ourselves here, therefore, brought into a quite isolated region, the path to which only began to be indicated in the latest epistles of the New Testament. II. Of great importance for determining the time of composi tion is the passage ch. i. 9, " I John, your brother and companion in tribulation, and in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ, was in the isle that is called Patmos, for the word of God, and for the testimony of Jesus Christ." From this passage various proofs may be derived in confirmation of the view that the Book must first have been composed under Domitian. First, the pro phet designates himself as the companion of Christians in Lesser Asia, to whom he primarily wrote, in their tribulation, and indeed in such a tribulation as kindled the desire after the kingdom of Jesus Christ, the kingdom of glory. For, as the world then sought to lay the church at its feet, the church needed to have her faith quickened in regard to the coming glory, that she might be able to bring fully into exercise the patience of faith. The discourse here, therefore, must be of a Christian persecution in the proper sense, and one that was of a general nature. But such a persecution first happened under Domitian. That which took place in Nero's time was confined to Rome. Then the Seer presents himself here to our view as one who had suffered exile on account of his fidelity to the Christian testi mony. Such local deportations, beside punishments of a capital nature, there is good evidence for believing were inflicted during the persecution of Domitian. On the other hand, under Nero, history knows only of capital executions at Rome, and never once mentions anything like deportations from one place to another. Finally, the Seer, John, was on the isle Patmos when he re ceived the Apocalypse. But it was under Domitian that tradition affirms John to have been banished thither. Now, every thing has been brought into requisition to dispose especially of the second and third of these points. Lucke, in his Introduction, p. 244, would fain have us to make no account of the passage in determining the period of the composition. For the exposition is doubtful regarding the exile to Patmos, and the 16 INTRODUCTION. tradition of such an exile of John is not harmonious-problema tical. We do not need to enter on the latter point here ; as the subject has already been discussed in the preceding investigations To remove the exile to Patmos from our text in an exegetical way, Liicke has certainly bestowed great pains in the treatise on the Revelation of John i. 1, 2, and 9, in the Studien und Kritiken for the year 36, p. 654, ss. But we cannot avoid feehng our suspi cions awakened as to the results there obtained, when we see how the main object in view comes out in the inquiry, for example in the words p. 661 : " If we have rightly interpreted the passage, ch. i. 9, the exegetical reason, at least, disappears for the tradition, that John was ever banished to Patmos as a martyr ;" and a more careful examination only serves to prove this suspicion to be well grounded. Liicke reasons thus : What may hinder us from determining thus the phraseology of the Apocalypse, that " the testimony of Jesus Christ," with " the word of God," may be understood partly, as in ch. xx. 4, and xii. 17, of the gospel generally, so far as it refers to the testimony of Jesus, partly in a more special sense, if a particular prophetical word of God is meant, which was to be given or communicated through Jesus 1 Ch. i. 9 stands too near to ch. i. 2, not to be interpreted pre-eminently by it. If there the special revelation of the future is meant, so also here. Patmos is the place selected by God himself, where John must receive that revelation. Dr Bleek confesses that he has arrived at the same view, in the Evangelienkritik, p. 192 : " The nearness of the passage (ch, i. 2) renders it at least probable that we should explain in a corresponding manner ch. i. 9, as indicative of the design, on account of which the Seer had withdrawn himself to the isle of Patmos, viz. that he might there receive the divine re velation which he unfolds in his Book." From the first we feel compelled to think unfavourably of this interpretation. The air of martyrdom swims all around us in the Book of Revelation. Just as it can be rightly understood and appreciated only by those who have experience of tribulations,^ so 1 Bengel says in his Gnomon on ch. i. 9 : In tribulatione maxime hie liber fidelibua sapit. Asiatica ecolesia, praesertim a floridissimo Constantini tempore, minus magni aestimavit hunc Ubrum. Vix vestigium reperias Apacalypseos a Constantinopolitanis dontoribua allegntae : ubi in Chrysostomi operibus citatur, hoc ipsum alieni trao- TIME OF WRITING THE REVELATION. 17 it could only have beenwritten by one who had himself drunk of the bitter cup of martyrdom, had himself felt the force of its temptations, and in experience had known the sweetness of that consolation which he stretches forth to others. The persecution on the part of the worldly power of heathendom is the starting- point of the whole ; and that the author was himself affected by it is evident from the prevailing tone of sadness, and the wrestling character of faith : — comp. the " I wept much" in ch. v. 4, which pervades the whole Book. The Book becomes a riddle, whenever we lose sight of the truth that it was written by a martyr (as such John is already designated by Polycrates of Ephesus, in Euseb. V. 24) ; and we must proceed on this ground, even though ch. i. 9 did not exist. Such passages as ch. vii. 9' — 17 indispen sably require this key. So only would a partaker of the tribula tion of Jesus Christ administer consolation. We, therefore, cannot feel disposed to abandon a mode of explanation which is in such perfect harmony with the whole spirit of the Book, unless constrained to do so by the most urgent necessity. But so far from this being the case, the interpretation which understands the passage of martyrdom is the only tenable one. For, never and nowhere do the expressions " the word of God," and " the testimony of Jesus Christ," of themselves mark a pro phetical announcement. In ch. i. 2 they certainly have that import, but only in connection with what precedes, and without prejudice to their more general signification : " The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him, to shew unto his servants things which must, shortly come to pass ; and he sent and signified it by his angel unto his servant John, who (here also, as formerly in the gospel and the epistles^), testified of the word of God, and talus indicium est. Afrioana eeclesia, cruci magis obnoxia, semper hunc librum plurimi fecit. 1 It is true, certainly, that ver. 2 does not directly refer to the Gospel of John, as many held formerly, but to the matter of the Revelation itself. But, on the othei hand, one cannot deny the connection with John's gospel, in i. 14, xix. 35, and especially the conclusion, xxi. 24, as also with the flrst epistle of John ch. i. 1, ss., and iv. IJ, without doing violence to that exegetical feeling, to which we must mal(e our appeal, as there are no conclusive reasons here for establishing what will not be frankly conceded. This connection of the beginning of the Revelation, especially with the close of the gospel and the beginning of the epistle, presents itself clearly before us with the construction -. Who also here, as in the gospel and the epistle testified of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ, and that in the form of an immediate vision. We have thus ' b 18 INTRODUCTION. the testimony of Jesus Christ that he saw." In the passage be fore us, however, no such restrictive clauses have P^^^^^^^^";^ is there to be found any such reason for the -"'^^ f "^^^^ ^^^^^ of expression, as occurs above, in the allusion to the gospel and the epistles; here, therefore, the discourse can only be of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus m general. But were the phrase, « for the word of God and the testimony of Jesus" doubtful in themselves, they would still receive from the connection in two ways a more precise and definite import. First by the preceding context : your companion m the tribula tion and the patience of Jesus Christ ; the words, " I was in the isle that is called Patmos," etc, representing more defimtely the part which the Seer had in the tribulation and patience of Jesus Christ. Then, by the sojourn on the island. This was fitted for no other purpose than as a place of banishment. Not for the preaching of the gospel, to which several in earlier times referred the expression, " on account of the word of God," etc. For, the island, which, according to Pliny, H. N. iv. 12, was thirty thou sand paces in circuit, was too insignificant to draw toward it the regard and labours of an apostle, or of any one occupying so high a place as to have intrusted to him the oversight of the churches in Asia. Nor had it any peculiar fitness as a place where the ^Revelation was to be received. This might as well have been imparted to the Seer in his own dwelling. The only circumstance, which, with any appearance of probability, might be alleged as a reason for the apostle undertaking a visit to Patmos, in order to receive the Revelation there, is the nearness of the sea — a circumstance which has actually been adduced by Ziillig, in his Revelation of John Th. i. p. 233. One might point with that view to ch. xiii. 1, " And I stood upon the sand of the also an explanation of the otherwise strange generalness of expression, the want of any direct reference to the prophetical matter. We must the less, too, think of refusing to acknowledge this connection of the Eevelation with the gospel and epistle, as it goes hand in hand with other references in the Eevelation to the gospel. Comp. for example ch. iii. 20, with the expression of the Lord in John xiv. 21, 23 ; ch. v. 5 with John xvi. 33 ; ch. V. 6 with John i. 29, 36; ch. vii. 16, with John vi. 35; ch. xi. 7 with John vii. 6, viii. 30 ; ch. xii. 9 with John xii. 31, 32 ; xix. 13, with the introduction to the gospel. The facts now mentioned are also in so far of importance as they evince the priority of the Gospel and the Epistle to the Eevelation, and so forbid us trausferring the composition of the Apocalypse to an early period. But as this argument is not of a palpable kind, we satisfy ourselves with merely indicating it. TIME OF WRITING THE REVELATION. 19 sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea." But it were to overlook the power of the Spirit, if we should suppose, that the prophet must, or even could make a voyage, in order to have the sea within view. Daniel, when far in the interior of the solid land, saw the four winds striving on the great sea. It was also in the Spirit only that Daniel found himself on the river Ulai, in ch. viii. 2. In the Revelation we can the less think of any thing else, as the Seer had before him constant examples of the use of the sea as a symbol by the older men of God. Nor is there to be found a single case, in which a i)rophet undertook a journey to a distant place, that he might there receive a vision. The argument from the manner of expression and the connec tion is still farther strengthened by a comparison of the passage, ch. xiii. 10, which implies, that at the time when the Book was composed, beside capital executions there were also banishments to different places on account of the faith of Christ — a passage, which entirely accords with the one before us in the sense we put on it. In regard also to the particular expressions, see the pas sages ch. vi. 9, " I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God and for the testimony which they held ;" xi. 11, " And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony ;" xx. 4, " Those that were beheaded for the testimony of Jesus and for the word of God;" — in all which unquestionably it is faithfulness in con fessing Christ in the midst of sufferings, which is denoted by these expressions. Finally, the reference of our passage to the martyrdom of John is still farther confirmed by comparing it with Matth. xx. 22, 23, Mark x. 38. There the Lord announced to James and John that they should drink of his cup and be bap*tized with his baptism. A literal fulfilment of this declaration is what, both from its own nature and from the example of James, as well as the analogous case of Peter, we naturally expect to find. At the same time, we are not to overlook the circumstance, that in respect to John it was tempered by another announcement in John xxi. 20 — 22, according to which a martyrdom in the proper sense, as involving the loss of life for the word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ, does not come into view. The exile to Patmos is the only event in which the fulfilment can be sought. This was recog- 6 2 20 INTRODUCTION. nized already by Origen in Matth. Opp. iii- P- 719. To the like effect Jerome, in his commentary ou the passage in Matthew; who, besides, refers to the report of John having been put into a barrel of boiling oil,— a report which had its rise in the feeling, as if the banishment to Patmos did not seem sufficient to fulfil the word of Christ. For the same reason, Victorinus of Petabio ag gravates the exile in Patmos, by describing it as a banishment to the works in the mountains, and Theophylact (on the same passage) still makes John, after the exile, be sent back to Patmos by Trajan. Exception has been taken against the reference of the passage to the exile of John, because only the greater culprits were doomed to this punishment ; criminals of an ordinary kind were appointed instead to work in the mountains. But it is easy to shew, that the fact on which this argument is based does not rest on a solid foundation. ^ There is at any rate no want of proof that this punishment was especially suspended over those who were accused of misdemeanour against the state religion of Rome.^ III. The persecution of the Christians, which proceeded from the supreme magistrate hiuiself, from the Roman state and its rulers as such — this forms the historical starting-point of the Re velation. Such a persecution, being intended to repel the invasion which the new religion made upon the state's sovereignty, its pre tended divinity, implied that the conflict between the deified world-power, and the worship of the true God and his Son, had already begun. The beast, the world-power, has, according to 1 That tbe punishment was applied even to common criminals is certain alone from Juvenal i. 73 : Aude aliquid brevibus Gyaris et carcei-p diguum, si vis vKE Kal tous d,E6- yovTa, Ka-r^yayE. The dcTE'^Eta, impietas, is the crimen mnjestatis, quia imperatores paene pro diis colebantur, et Domitianus tantos gerebat spiritus, nt divino fastigio parem se putaret. Reimarus. monBiu 3 loi^nrdXai XE'^wva,^6Xi, -^apayay^v rHv -rroXXHv krrl Ao^ETiavov Siwyi^Zv. TIME OF WRITING TIIE REVELATION. 29 to the credible report of Tacitus,i were not punished primarily as Christians, but on the ground of having been the first to begin the burning of the city,^ so also Eusebius in his Church History, ii. 25. The first person, who positively says, that the perse cution of Nero spread beyond Rome, is Orosius, a late author, and one who is the less to be regarded, as Tertullian knows only of Rome.^ In other things he merely copies Suetonius, and introduces but this one circumstance from his own hand.* If the reasons for and against the extension beyond the limits of Rome were otherwise equal, we should still feel constrained to decide for the latter, on the simple ground, thai from Nero being the first persecutor of the Christians, it was quite na tural in process of time to attribute to him more in this respect than originally and properly belonged to him. Against this view of the Neronian persecution as a merely passing and local one, an argument might certainly be raised from the first epistle of Peter, if it were indeed the case, first that this epistle was written immediately after the outbreak of that perse cution, and then that it proceeds on the supposition of a general persecution of the Christians. But both assumptions are unten able. That the epistle was written not after, but before the persecution of Nero, in which Peter won the crown of martyrdom, has been proved by Wieseler (p. 564, ss.). And the persecutions, which are discoursed of in the first epistle of Peter, and to exhort to stedfastness under which is one object of the epistle, are es sentially difterent from those in the Revelation. What in the first epistle of Peter is only a subordinate aim, in the Apocalypse is all-predominant : the persecutions referred to in the former are only such as are inseparable from the existence of Chris tianity itself No indication exists of a threatening martyrdom, 1 Annal. XV. 44: Ergo abolendo rumori Nero subdidit reos, et quaesitissimis poenis atfecit quos per flagitia invisos vulgus Christianos appellabat. 2 See on the connection of the burning and the Chi-istian persecution, Wieseler Chronol. des Apost. Zeitalters, p. 643, ss. 3 Adv. Gnost. c. 15 : Vitas Caesarum legimus; orientem fidem Romae primus Nero cruentavit, Apol. i;. 5 : Consulite commontarios vestros : illio repcrietis primum Neronem in hanc sectam cum maxime Romae orientem, Csesariano gladio ferocisse. 4 Sueton. in Nero. u. J6, says : Afiiicti suppliois Christiani, genus hominum supersti- tiouis novae et maleficae. Orosius, B. vii. o. 7, following him so far, that he derives the persecution irom the burning, primus Bomae Christianos supplicio et mortibus affecit, ac per omnes provincias pari perseevtione excruciari imperavit. 30 INTRODUCTION. none of persecution by the world-power as such, nor even any certain marks of occasional judicial persecutions. Christians are represented as suffering reproach among the heathen, being re viled as evil-doers, ch. ii. 12 ; they have much to suffer, especially in the way of calumny, ii. 23, iii. 9, 16, iv. 14. The strongest passage is ch. v. 8, 9, " Be sober, be vigilant, because your ad versary the Devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour : whom resist, stedfast in the faith, knowing that the same afflictions are accomplished in your brethren that are in the world." But this passage simply indicates, that the heathen mind was then beginning to become fully conscious of the an tagonism that existed between it and Christianity, and the dan ger which thence threatened its views and feelings ; it implies nothing in regard to persecutions of blood in the proper sense, nor to any interference on the part of the magistrate, nor to the supposed fact, that the heathen state had already taken the mat ter into its own hand. V. The Revelation was written in the midst of persecutions, during which not only executions, but also banishments, took place. This is clear from ch. xiii. 10, " He that leadeth into captivity shall go into captivity ; he that killeth with the sword must be killed with the sword. Here is the patience and the faith of the saints." In this passage, as the comparison with Luke xxi. 24, Amos i. 6, Ps. Ixviii. 19, &c., shews, it is not merely imprisonment, but also deportations and exiles that are meant, which is also confirmed by ch. i. 9, where the Seer des cribes himself as being in the isle Patmos " for the word of God and the testimony of Jesus." Nothing of this sort is reported concerning the Neronian persecution. All the sources, Tacitus and Suetonius at their head, make mention only of capital punish ments, which were also the only appropriate ones for such a charge. On the other hand, in the persecution under Domitian, banishment, especially to desert islands, is often and expressly referred to. According to Dio Cassius the wife of Flavius Cle mens was exiled to Pandatereia. According to him also, Nerva recalled those who had been banished.^ And according to Euse- 1 See Zonaras, p. 583, B. : ToTs utt' kKEivov k^EXadEia-i SoyfiaTi k'TravEXdEiv kipvKt Kal Tas ovarian dlroXa^Eiv. TIME OF WRITING 'THE REVELATION. 31 bins, both in his history and his Chronicon, the sister's daughter of Flavius, Domatilla, was for her Christian confession banished to the island Pontia. VI. Domitian, above almost every other, was a fit representa tive of the terrible bloody beast, full of names of blasphei^iy, and of the horrible woman drunk with the blood of saints and of the witnesses of Jesus — comp. ch. xiii. 17. What Pliny says of Do mitian in his Panegyr. c. 18, not unfrequently reminds one of the Revelation, and suggests the thought, that to the author of the latter Domitian sat for the picture of the beast. He describes him as the '• most savage monster," that sometimes gulped the blood of relatives, sometimes employed himself in slaughtering the most distinguished citizens, before whose gates fear and terror watched. He was himself of frightful aspect, pride on his fore head, fury in his eye, constantly seeking darkness and secrecy, and never coming out of his solitude, excepting to make solitude.^ A similar description is given also by Tacitus in his Agricola. In ch. xliv. he mentions it as a great consolation in respect to Agricola's early death, that " he thus escaped that last period, in which Domitian no longer at intervals and during vacant periods, but constantly, and as with one stroke, made havoc of the state." How little the insipid Nero can in this respect be compared with Domitian, is manifest from what is said of both by Philostratus, B. vii. c. 4. Nero, says he, led the life of a player on the harp and flute, and for such a life little vigour was required. Quite otherwise with Domitian ; " he was a man of great bodily strength, and despised the pleasures which music yields, and which tend to soften the mind ; he found his enjoyment in the pains and la mentations of others, and thought that the king by night should put an end to all other works, but give a beginning to deeds of murder." " He that leadeth into captivity shall go into captivity ; he that killeth with the sword must be killed with the sword. Here is the patience and the faith of the saints" (ch. xiii. 10). The view 1 Nee salutationes tuas fuga et vastitas sequitur, remoramai", resistimus ut in com muni domo, quam nuper immanissima bellua plurimo terrore munierat. Cum velut quodam specu inclusa nunc propinquorum sanguinem lamberet, nunc se ad clarissi- morum civium strages caedesque profen'et. Observabantur foribus horror et minae et par metus admissis et exclusis. Ad hoc, ipse occursu quoque visuque terribilis, superbia in fronte, etc. 32 INTRODUCTION. given in this passage pervades the Apocalypse. We see in it under the altar the souls of those who were slain for the word of God and for the testimony of Jesus ; we hear them crying with one voice, and saying, " How long, 0 Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth V And as this cry is heard, we see how God does judge the blood of his servants that had been shed. It is worthy of re mark, that even the antichristian heathen world had a suspicion of the greatness of the guilt which Domitian had incurred by his persecution of the Christians, and of the retribution to which he had in consequence exposed himself. A proof how vigorously the feeling had then been awakened respecting the retributive righte ousness of God in Christendom ! For only as a reverberation of the powerful movement that had arisen there can we account for what was then felt in the heathen world. It could not wholly withstand the strong impression that flowed in upon it, but against its own will and principles was drawn within the sweep of the movement. " The gods," says Philostratus, viii. 25, " drove Do mitian from his dominion over men ; for he had killed the consul Clemens, to whom he had given his own sister (?)"^ " Especially through this deed," says Suetonius, " he hastened his own down fal ;" and then proceeds to give a long series of pre-intimations that announced beforehand the coming catastrophe.^ Having thus obtained the result, that the Revelation was writ ten under Domitian, it will not be difficult to determine more exactly the period to which it should be referred within this circle, even apart from the tradition, which, according to Irenseus, ascribes it to the closing period of Domitian's reign. Heathen writers (see, besides those already quoted, Juvenal Sut. iv. v. 153) agree in this, that the bloody persecution of the Christians, in the midst of which the Revelation was written, was soon followed by the death of Domitian. Accordingly, and iu conformity also with the statement of Brutius in Eusebius, and in the Chronicon 1 Eiudouf Sk QeoI AopETiavov tt/s TtJjy uvBpuiTrwv -TrpoESpia^' etu^^e fjikv ydp KXri- pEVTa d-TTEKTOvdj^, &vSpa VTraTov (5 Tr;i/ dSEX THE PROLOGUE. there the eagles are constantly gathered together ; and where the distress is the greatest, there the help is also nearest. God be praised that we are never pointed to the far-distant future ; but that the retributive justice of God against sin, and his pity and compassion toward the wretched, tread closely on each other's heels It is nothing but a shift to say, as numbers do here, that the measure of time we are to think of is not the human, but the divine, with which a thousand years are as one day (Ps. xc. 4, 2 Pet. iii. 8). The remarks made respecting this in my Chris tology on Hos. ii. 6, " Yet once it is a little while, and I shake the heavens and the earth, and the sea and the dry land," are equally applicable here : " Whoever speaks to men, must speak according to the human mode of viewing things, or give notice if he does otherwise. It is for the purpose of consoling us, that the prophet declares the shortness of the time. But for such a pur pose, that only was suitable which might appear short in the eyes of men. Only in mockery or by deception could the prophet have substituted that, which was short in the reckoning of God." We have there shewn, that the shaking spoken of began to take effect in the immediate future. The axe was already laid to the root of the Persian kingdom (as in the time of John to that of the Roman), and its subsequent visible fall was only the manifesta tion of a much earlier latent one. De Wette's remark, that the shortness must not be taken too stringently, that it was used to encourage the suffering and warn the impenitent, represents the Seer's God and the Lord himself, who in Luke xviii. 8 likewise promises a speedy deliverance to his faithful people, as acting like the worthless physician who feeds his patients with false hopes. That Luke xviii. 7 can only be quoted in support of such a view on a wrong interpretation, is manifest. And in refuta tion of it, as also against the notion of its being the divine mea surement of time that is to be understood, there is the circum stance that in the fundamental passage, Ezekiel xii., to which the expression in ver. 3, " the time is near," refers, the declara tion, " the days are near," in ver. 23, corresponds to " in your days, ye rebellious house, will I do it," in ver. 25.^ On the I The iv TdxEi, it appears, was felt to be difficult so early as the time of Dionysius of Alexandria. For, that in Eusebius, vii. 25, he should have omitted d SeX yEviodai, can REV. I. 1—3. 49 " what must shortly come to pass," comp. iv. 1, xxii 6. The best commentary is to be found in Isa. xiv. 27, " For the Lord of Hosts hath purposed it, who will disannul it 1 and his hand is stretched out, who will turn it back ?" So also the must in Matth. xxiv. 6 is to be understood of the necessity, which has its foundation in the divine purpose. On the other hand, in Matth. xxvi. 54, the necessity rests primarily on the prophecies : it must fall out so, because it has been so predicted. But the prophecies are of weight only in so far as they manifest the divine purpose, so that the matter still returns back to this. Here a reference to the prophecies, as the more remote one, would have been more definitely marked. And he signified (it) by his angel, whom he sent, to his ser vant John. We must not explain in this manner : he signified it, the revelation ; but rather : he signified it, viz., what must shortly come to pass. For the expression, " he signified," re sumes the former, "to show" again. The Revelation is given to Jesus Christ by God, that he may show to his servants what must shortly be done, and he has accordingly signified it to his servant John.! Instead of : by his angel, whom he sent, several explain improperly : in that he sent a message by his angel.^ It is said scarcely have been accidental, but was done for tbe purpose of connecting the kv tu'x" with fiEiJat. This way of dealing with the subject was quite accordant with the whole character of the man, who in his artful way would set aside that which was not agreeable to his own feelings. 1 The arjpaivEiv occurs also iu three passages of John's Gospel, and, as here, of the discovery of future things, xii. 33, xviii. 32, xxi. 19. It is found besides only in the Acts xi 28, xxv. 27. It means simply to signify, or inform of, and corresponds to si-iin in Ex. xviii. 20, and to T^in in Esth. ii. 22. The exposition of Bengel: "The Lord has indicated to you things, through various marks and images, which shall be understood when they have been fully considered, and when one has been compared with another," is without any support from the usage. Acts xxv. 27 is against it. That the word in New Testament Scripture is used predominantly of the announcement beforehand of future things, is to be explained from this, that it belongs to the higher and more ele- vated style ; on which account it is also found chiefly among tbe Poets in classical Greek. Still more objectionable is the lendering of Ziillig : and which he made to be understood. The word does not bear this meaning, nor would it be suitable here. The angel must be a member of the chain, which begins with God, and ends with the hearer, and it is not the explanation, but only the communication through the angel, which comes into notice, 2 These persons refer to some passages of the Old Testament, in which after verbs of sending the accusative, the message, is to be supplied ; Ex. vi. 13, " Send by whose hand thou wilt send ;' 1 Kings ii. 25, 1 Sam. xvi. 20. Bnt in the New Testament tliroo-TsX- XtiK is never so used, and -n-ipL-wEiv only in a more than doubtful reading of Lachmann's d 50 THE PROLOGUE. here, as also at the close in ch. xxii. 6—16, that Christ through the mediation of his angel communicated to his servant John the knowledge of the future. We might with propriety explain : through his angel, to whom he committed this business ; so that the expression : by his angel, would virtually be the same as : by one of his angels. But as in the Old Testament, and especi ally in those prophets, with whom John has the closest affinity, a particular angel is brought into notice, who stands beside the angel of the Lord as the meditating agent of his revelations, we are naturally led to think of such being understood here. Even so early as at Ex xxxii. 34 we find along with the highest revealer of God, the angel of the Lord or the Logos, an angel placed in a subordinate relation to him as his inseparable attendant. In Daniel the angel of the Lord appears under the symbolical name of Michael. But as he commonly manifests himself in overwhelm ing majesty, the angel Gabriel acts as mediator between him and the prophet, comp. viii. 16, ix. 21. In Zechariah " the angel who speaks with him" is a standing figure. It is this angelic minister who conducts him from the common state to one of ec stacy, awakens in him the spiritual sense to apprehend what was presented in the vision, and explains it to him, so as to enable him to break through the shell into the kernel. It is remarkable that while here in the Prologue the agency of the angel in the bu siness of the revelation is set forth in a quite general way, nothing is said in regard to the manner in which his agency more parti cularly displayed itself till we come to the two last groups, the vision of the judgment on the three enemies of God's kingdom, where he is introduced at the very commencement (ch. xvii. 1, comp. V. 7—15, xix. 9), and the vision of the New Jerusalem. There are two ways in which this difficulty may be solved. Several suppose that the main subject of the book is concentrated in the text m Matth. xi. 2. iripiffa^ Std toiu paQtjTwv aijTov, f. Svo tSiv padtjTStv aitTov. More to the purpose is the application of another aud more common Old Testament usage, the omission of the person after verbs of sending. Comp. for example Gen. xxxi. 4: "And Jacob sent and called Leah ;" xii. 8 : " And he sent and called the Chartummin of Egypt, Kat d'TrocrTEiXa^ k^yjyriTdt 'AtyuTTTou ; Jos. ii. 3 ; I Sam. IV. 4 ; Job i. 5. With a-n-oo-TtiXets of the New Testament, where it is joined to a verb, tbe accusative of the person is always to be supplied, comp. Matth. ii. 16 ; Mark vi. 17; Acts vii. 14. The only diflerence in regard to our passage is, that here the Airoo-- TEi'Xas follows ; but this arises from the kcr^fiavt resuming the ieifai, and hence pro perly opening the sentence. REV, I. 1 — 3. 51 two last groups, to which the others served only as preparatory visions, and that the mediation of the angel is here ascribed to the whole from being so specially connected with the most important part. One might also conceive that the prologue was added by John after he had finished the whole, while the action of the angel was still fresh in his mind. But we can hardly feel satisfied with this, as the angel even at first seems to form a necessary link in the chain ; and we may rather suppose that the agency which belongs to the angel throughout the whole was employed so as in the first instance to raise John from the common to an ecstatic condition, and then at ch. xvii. to put forth another and more special operation. If the spiritual sense in John was first opened by the angel and kept awake, then he was the mediating agent of the message for him. A revelation is of no use for one whose mind is not prepared to receive it ; the indispensable condition is, that the seer be in the Spirit, i. 10, iv. 2. It is in favour of this supposition that the mediating angel in the two prophets, whom John more especially followed, Daniel and Zechariah, is a pervad ing one, and that a leading characteristic intimation in each of them is their announcing, that it was thus they were raised into the ecstatic condition. In Dan. x. 16 Gabriel touches Daniel's lips, and thereby inspires him with the powers of a higher life, comp. ver. 10, viii. 17. On Zech. i. 9 I have already remarked in my Christology, " that the words, I will make you see what these are, refer to the opening of the spiritual eye and ear of the prophet. Only when this had been done by the angelus interpres, could the prophet apprehend the declaration of the an gel of the Lord, and the report of the ministering angels." On ch. iv. 1, where the angel is spoken of as awaking the prophet, like a man out of sleep, it was also said, " Between this vision and the preceding one we must suppose a pause to have taken place. The angel had withdrawn for a little from the prophet, and the latter had returned from his ecstacy into the state of common life. The common and the ecstatic condition stand related to each other as sleeping and being awake." It is not as an apostle that John is named here the servant of Christ, but as a prophet. This is evident from the relation in which " to his servant John" stands here to the preceding expression " to his servants." We are cer tainly, however, conducted indirectly to the apostleship ; since re- d2 52 THE PEOLOGUE. velations of such high importance as those contained here, were not, as formerly stated, given beyond the limits of the apostle ship, and could not have been given without shaking the founda tion of the apostolic dignity. Then, only such a person as John could be meant, as one whom all would naturally think of, and who held a pre eminent place in the churches, for which the book was primarily intended. Otherwise the special designation, which is always designed in the prophetic writings to convey through the authority of the instrument a pledge for the truth of the contents, would have failed of its object. And history knows of no other but the apostle John. — In his Gospel John has only in a gentle way indicated his name by describing himself, with reference to the import of his name (John, he to whom the Lord is gracious) as the disciple whom Jesus loved. But here he gives his name expressly. We find the same difference in the Old Testament also between the historical and' the prophetical writings of the prophets. The history had its security in the joint knowledge of contemporaries ; but in prophecy personality is of the greatest moment, and the anonymous is excluded. Nameless prophecies have no place in Old Testament Scripture. In ver. 2, " Who has testified of the word of God and the tes timony of Jesus Christ, what he saw," there is the same tendency apparent as in ver. 1, to render manifest the high importance of the book, and signalize it as deriving its matter through Christ • from the Supreme God. Hence everything of an independent nature in the author is thrown into the shade, and he presents himself throughout as merely occupying the place of a servant, who faithfully announces his master's charges. John does not speak from himself; he merely testifies of the word of God, as it had been certified to him through the testimony of Jesus Christ. Therefore in the threatenings, promises, and exhortations of the book we are not to look at the person of the writer, but constantly to remember, that it is the Most High God who speaks here. The blessedness pronounced in ver. 3 on those who read and hear, thus becomes most appropriate. The expression: who has testified, not : who testifies, which has given rise to much misunderstand ing, was first placed by Bengel in its tme light : " It is the man ner of the ancients in their books and writings, that they often frame their words not in respect to the time when they wrote, but REV. I. 1—3. 53 to that when their writings should be read. " I Paul write it with my hand," might have been said at Philem. ver. 19, when Paul wrote at Rome ; but as Philemon was to read the epistle in Asia, he put instead ; " I have written it" (comp. also Rom. xvi. 22). In like manner when John wrote in Patmos, it might have been said, he testifies ; but in respect to the book being read in Asia, he preferred saying, he has testified. And in ver. 3 it is not said, what is written, but what has been written." Compare also what has been remarked at ver. 9 on the expression, " I was on the isle Patmos." By the word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ is never of itself denoted the prophetic communication. Here it is used of this only on account of the connection with what precedes, though without implying anything as to its general import, and in reference to the earlier and different record borne to the testi mony of Jesus Christ in the Gospel and Epistles of John. (See the Introduction p. 17.) Bengel remarks : " In this book the things that concern God and the things that concern Jesus Christ, are often conjoined together. Immediately before it was said, God had given the revelation to Jesus Christ, and now John bears record to the word of God, and along with that to the testimony of Jesus Christ." In this connection, then, the tes timony of Jesus Christ can only be the testimony which Jesus Christ delivers. For thus only could the object be gained, of tracing up to the Most High God the subject-matter of the book. Jesus Christ gives testimony to the word of God, and John again gives testimony to the word of Christ, and so far to the word of God. To the same result we are also led by the connection of the testimony of .Jesus Christ with the word of God. As the word of God is the word which God utters, so the testimony of Jesus Christ must be the testimony which Jesus Christ delivers. Besides, more careful investigation shcAVS that the testimony of Jesus, who in ver. 5 is called the faithful witness, and who manifests himself near the close, at ch. xxii. 20, as the person who attests the contents of the book, is uniformly in this book, not the testimony of Jesus, but the testi mony which Jesus delivers. It has this meaning also where the testimony of Jesus stands alone, and is not coupled with the word of God ; comp. ch. xii. 17. In the Gospel of John, likewise, ch. 54 THE PROLOGUE. iii. 32, 33, the testimony of Jesus Christ is the testimony which he delivers. The testifying, moreover, is a word of which John is particularly fond, and is of frequent occurrence in all his writings. Christ testifies of what he has heard and seen, and so also do his disciples. John xv. 27 is in perfect unison with the " who has testified" in the passage before us. The words : what (comp. the oaa in John xxi. 25) he saw, determine more precisely the word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ. They shew that the subject here is of those higher communications which were received in vision by the internal eye. Seeing is used thus of the prophetic vision in an entire series of passages of this book, for example, i. 11, 12, 17, 19, 20, v. 1. By the expression : what he saw, the feeling of his own mind, the intermingling play of a luxuriant fancy, is quite excluded. '¦' Inasmuch as ' he saw,' " says Bengel, " we have the strongest assurance of the divine origin of this book. To see and to tes tify bear reference one to another. The matters successively presented to him were partly seen and partly heard. But to see is the more excellent. Hence, the prophets were anciently called seers, and this book itself has the name of a revelation." Till Bengel's time it was customary to refer the verse before us to the composition of the Gospel by John. But Bengel deprived this interpretation of its only support by the proper explanation of the words : " who has testified," and understood the verse of the apostle's " obedience, diligence, and faithfulness in describing this revelation." It is a matter of surprise that the reference to the Gospel should still have found its defenders in the present century. One does not see for what purpose John could here refer to his Gospel. The relation in which he stood to those to whom the book was more immediately sent, leaves no room to doubt that he wished to make himself known, and so as that he might be distinguished from others of the same name. His first rea,ders and hearers must have known what it was they were directed to. But if John had really pointed to the Gospel, he would certainly have expressed himself more plainly. He would in that case assuredly not have omitted, '« also formerly." But the reference to the Gospel is absolutely excluded by the phrase, " what he saw." This does not serve, according to the supposi tion in question, as an explanatory clause added to the " word of REV. 1. 1—3. 55 God and the testimony of Jesus Christ." This latter must refer to the words of Christ, and the other, "what he saw," to his deeds. An and would then have been indispensable, coupling the two together.^ As an additional explanatory clause, the words " what he saw" are only such discourses as have been seen or received in vision. Then there is the circumstance to which Hoffmann has drawn attention, that the explanation would set aside a link in the chain that cannot easily be dispensed with. At the close of ver. 1 , the word of God is first represented as coming into contact with John. But we expect, before a transi tion is made to the hearers and readers, to have some account of his own agency in reference to the matter. " What Jesus had shewn to John must be written down and published, before any one can read what the prophet saw." In fine, the reference to the Gospel would destroy the unity of the prologue, interrupt its regular progression, and rob ver. 3 of its foundation, for which it would need to look back to ver. 1. The third verse pronounces him blessed, " who reads, and those who hear the words of the prophecy, and keep what is written therein." Blessed, it is said in xxii. 14, are they who keep his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and enter in by the gates into the city. Blessed, according to ch. xix. 9, are those who are called to the marriage^supper of the Lamb. Blessed, it is once more said, ch. xx. 6, and holy is he who has part in the first resurrection. Accordingly, the benediction here refers mainly to what is to be found in another state of being, to the participation first in the bliss of heaven, and afterwards in the kingdom of glory upon earth. Still, we must not limit it to these. In this book also another recompense of fidelity is often discoursed of, which must not be excluded here, since the word employed is comprehensive of all the good, which is obtained as the reward of fidelity — the secret and wonderful preservation of true believers from the plagues which fall upon the world ; ch. vii. 1 — 8, iii. 10. In the conclusion, which corresponds to the beginning here, ch. xxii. 18, 19, a twofold threatening is held out against those who, after the original parsages in Deut. iv. 2, xii. 1 The apprehension of this difficulty has given rise to the reading ba-a te in some cri tical helps, against which it is enough to say, that the light and airy te is never found in thc Eovelation. 56 THE PROLOGUE. 32, add to or take away from the book with the view of getting rid of the obligations of duty, viz. a participation in the plagues which are described in the book ; and exclusion from the tree of life and the holy city. The contrast in regard to those who keep what is written, requires that the blessing pronounced on them should also have a double reference— preservation in the midst of plagues and eternal blessedness. — The description, " He who reads and they who hear," points, as the distinction of the sin gular and the plural shews, not to the two classes of such as couldj and such as could not read, but the reading meant is like that mentioned in Luke iv. 16, the reading aloud in churches ; so that the meaning is, he who reads in public and they who hear what is read. In ch. xxii. 17, 18, it is implied that hearing is the usual way of coming to the knowledge of the book. — The book contains a word of prophecy ; whence we conclude that it is not made up of mere citations from the Old Testament. These are suitably found in calm argumentative discourses, but not in such as are of a divinely raised and excited character, which carry their own guarantee along with them. In the latter the refer ences to the earlier portions of God's word must be of a more de licate nature, by allusion merely, or immediate appropriation.^ Such also is the relation of the prophecies of the Old Testament to the books of Moses ; all pervaded and saturated with refer ences to them, but without any formal citations. The expression of keeping the word, the command, the faith, etc. (in contrast to the thoughtless forgetting of it in James i. 25), is one much liked by the faithful and conservative John ; comp. iii. 8, xiv. 12. That the keeping is the thing principally in view, to which the blessing belongs, and that the reading and hearing is only the preliminary condition to this, is clear from ch. xxii. 7, where the keeping alone is mentioned, " Blessed is he who keeps the words of the prophecy of this book." The person who has got to the close of the book has already fulfilled the condition. Comp. Rom.ii. 13, Jas. i. 22,23, 1 Bengel : " Prophecies certify themselves by their own, and so by divine authority, in particular the Apocalypse, which therefore does not mention the ancient prophecies, except in the slump, and that only once,' ch. x. 7. In other books of the New Testament, ancient prophecies are quoted, for the purpose of shewing their fulfilment ; but not so in the Apocalypse. Hence, while Surenhusius could produce examples of quotations from the Old Testament in each of the evangelists, the Acts of the Apostles, and the episUes, he had none to produce from the Apocalypse." THE SALUTATION, 1.4 — 6. 57 25. That every thing is placed in the keeping points to the practical character, which continually attaches to Scripture pro phecy, never being intended to serve for the gratification of a fri volous and prying curiosity, but always for promoting the divine life. The true prophet is a counseller, comp. Numb. xxiv. 14 (where see my Balaam), Isa. xii. 28. Bengel : " According to the diversity of the things, which are written in it, to the keep ing belongs repentance, faith, patience, obedience, prayer, watch ing, stedfastness." The hearing and reading of the book, how ever, though only as conditional to the keeping, must be held to be a matter of high importance, especially for the times, in which there is a return of the circumstances that called it forth. "But wh'ence comes it," says Bengel, " that the book now-a-days is so seldom read in the churches ? Throughout the whole ecclesias tical year we have not a single Sunday or festival day, for which a text has been choseh out of Revelation. A wise householder will consider how he may in some other way compensate for this omission." The words, for the time is near, provide a reason for the call to keep, indirectly contained in the preceding ; the time of the fulfilment is near, and consequently the time for rewarding the faithful and punishing the slothful ; comp. 1 Pet iv. 7, " But the end of all things is at hand, be ye therefore sober and watch unto prayer," etc., Luke xxi. 34, Rom. xiii. 11. THE SEVEN EPISTLES. (Ch i. 4— iii. 22.) Here we have first the salutation, ver. 4 — 6. According to the common view this does not belong to the series of epistles merely, but to the whole book. So Bengel : " The inscription of this book is in ver. 4 — 6, which gives to the whole book the na ture of an epistle, with which also the conclusion agrees." But the following reason decides against this view. Both on the one side and the other of ch. i. 4 — 6, and ch. xxii., we find our selves on the wide territory of the whole Christian church. Ch. i. 3 pronounces all without distinction blessed, who hear the book read and keep what is written in it. The conclusion is just as general as the beginning. According to ch. xxii. 6, God had 58 THE SEVEN EPISTLES. sent his angel to show to his servants what must shortly come to pass. In ver. 7 all are called blessed who keep the words of the prophecy of this book. The book closes in ver. 21 with the words : The grace of Jesus Christ be with all saints. In the middle portion also we everywhere meet with the entire body of the church, and not the slightest trace occurs of a special respect to the seven churches of Asia. In ch. vii. it is not the elect in Ephesus and the other Asiatic churches, but the servants of God at large, who are sealed. The twelve tribes of the children of Israel, and the 144,000 sealed ones, obviously represent the whole church. So likewise do the multitudes, whom no one could num ber, ofevery people, and tribe, and nation, and tongue, in ver. 9. In ch. xi. 1, the temple of God is a symbol of the church in its mili tant, as the New Jerusalem is of the same in its triumphant state . The sure result from these particulars is, that the inscription does not belong to the book in general, but exdlusively to the series of the seven epistles. Had it been otherwise, there could not have failed to be some reference to them in the title and prologue of the book, as also in the portions subsequent to ch. iii. It is only the conclusion of the whole, -indeedjWhich resembles an epistle, that gives any countenance to the supposition, that the inscription and the epistolary character extend to the entire contents. But the words : with all the saints, not with you all (as in Paul's epistles), shews that here we have only an imitation of the con clusion of an epistle. How certain it is, that the seven churches in Asia were representative in their different states of the church in general, it cannot be less certain, that what is written in the epistles is only primarily addres.sed to them. This is clear from the circumstance, that it has not the form of an accompaniment to the book, but is an integral part of the book itself, "a book that is destined to the use of all God's servants. The special reason for the individualizing here is to be found in the subject-matter. The relation of this first series to the six following ones is gene rally this, that in the one is unfolded in detail the call, " Repent," " Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a high-way for our God," and in the other, "The glory of the Lord shall be revealed" " The kingdom of heaven is at hand " When great manifestations of the Lord for the deliverance of his church, and for the execution of judgment on the world, are ready THE SALUTATION, I. 4 — 6. 59 to appear, there comes at the same time an urgent call on the Lord's people to prepare themselves aright for such manifestations, by purging out from among them the worldly elements, and hav ing all in readiness for the Lord's work. Throughout the whole of this first series, the predominating element is the hortatory, or the pressing of such practical exhortations as fitly arose out of the near approach of the Lord. But in order that this might be effectively done, it must necessarily go into the special circum stances of the churches. The more pointed and particular it was, the more fully would it reach the general aim. The ample variety of the circumstances and the foundation of the general applica bility of what was written, was indicated by the sevenfold num ber of the churches to which the epistles were addressed. But if thus a special reference becomes necessary in a part of the book to the churches of Asia, none could be more suitable than that actually chosen. The example of Paul already pointed in that direction, and it was due from John to his diocese as a compensa tion for his personal absence. Ver. 4. John to the seven churches in Asia. Grace be to you and peace from Him, who is, and who was, and who comes ; and from, the seven spirits, who are before his throne. 5. And from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, the first born of the dead, and the prince of the kings of the earth. To Him that loved us, and washed us from our sins by his blood ; 6, and made us a kingdom, priests to God and his Father : to Him be honour and power for ever and ever. Amen. The author of the epistles no farther indicates his person than by the simple name of John. This alone marks it to be the apostle of that name. It designates a John, who held such a high pre eminence among those who bore the name, that he would readily occur to every one, for whom the epistles and the book generally were more immediately destined. One, who stood merely in " certain relations" to the churches in question, could not have remained satisfied with so general a designation, and would cer tainly have added something more specific as his reason for ad dressing them. Let only the salutation be compared in the Epistle to the Romans. There we find an extended description of what constituted the apostle's right and obligation to write the epistle. " The Salutation," remarks Philippi, " is more lengthened 60 THE SEVEN EPISTLES. than in the other epistles of Paul. For the apostle had first to introduce himself to the church of the capital of the world, which was neither founded nor had yet been visited by him." So and still more would a certain John have found it necessary to introduce himself. The bare John must have been received with a sort of smile. We are also led to think of the apostle John by the seven churches of Asia. It admits of no doubt, that the Asia meant here is Proconsular Asia, and that the limitation, which some have sought to establish in favour of a narrower territory, is arbitrary. But in this region there were other churches besides the seven, which are mentioned by name in this book. There was, for ex ample, the church at Colosse, that at Hierapolis (Col. iv. 13), that at Tralles, which Cicero calls Gravis, locuples, ornata civitas, and that at Magnesia, which was in a flourishing state when the Ig- natian epistles were written, and must certainly have existed at the date of the Apocalypse. Neither can we say that the more important churches, those which belonged to the greater cities, are the ones mentioned. For there is nothing in the description to indicate this ; the cities named were not all of primary rank, especially Thyatira and Philadelphia ; and others, which are not named, especially Tralles and Miletus, which last is called by Strabo next to Ephesus " the noblest and most distinguished city in Ionia," and by Pliny " the chief of Ionia," and where without doubt a church already existed. It is carefully to be noted that John does not write to seven churches in Asia specified by name ; had he done so, we should have been obliged to cast about with Liicke for the reasons, on account of which these should have been chosen out of a greater number. But he writes simply to the churches of Asia. We have manifestly but one of two alternatives here — either there were in Asia only seven churches, or the address to precisely seven churches had its limi tation from the person of the writer, virtually importing to his seven churches. In this case it would just be as if the presi dent of certain affiliated churches in Prussia should write to the churches there ; it would at once be understood, that those only were to be thought of, which belonged to that number. As the first of those alternatives is against the history, we are shut up to the latter. But this again obliges us to think only of the apostle THE SALUTATION, I. 4 — 6. 61 John as the author. History testifies respecting him, that he had a district in that particular part of Asia, which embraced quite a circle of churches, named by Tertullian " John's nurs lings."^ Eusebius reports from Origen, in B. III. c. 1, that when the apostles were scattered into different countries, John received for his share Asia, and continued there till he died at Ephesus. Clement of Alexandria relates, in Eusebius, B. III. c. 23, " When after the death of the tyrant he returned to Ephesus from the isle Patmos, he went also, when requested, to the neighbouring regions of the heathen ; in some to appoint bishops, in some to institute entirely new churches, in others to appoint to the minis try some one of those that were pointed out by the Holy Ghost." In the same chapter of Eusebius Irenseus says, that the church of Ephesus had been founded by Paul, but that John continued to abide there till the times of Trajan. He elsewhere refers to " all the elders who in Asia had conferred with John the disciple of the Lord." Eusebius himself says, " he ruled the churches there." Not only is such a relation testified of John respecting those particular churches, testified of him alone, but from the very nature of things such a relation toward a circle of churches could only have subsisted with an apostle. It is not necessary, how ever, to suppose that the other churches in Asia besides those seven had rejected the apostolical authority of John, comp. 3 John V. 9, He may not have been able to extend his agency to them ; though Clement expressly states, that after his return from Pat mos he organised new churches, and consequently brought them within the field of his active operations. — The result which we have thus obtained from the address : " John to the seven churches," or from the fact that John here writes to the seven churches under his superintendence, is confirmed by the way and manner in which he writes to them. Liicke, p. 198, admits that 1 Adv. Marcion. iv. 5 : Hahemus et Joannis alumnas ecolesias. Nam etsi Apooalypsin ejus Marcion respuit, ordo tamen Episcoporum ad originem recensns in Joannem stabit auctorem. " The meaning is : We too have such churches as are nurslings of John, and which must be recognized as such by Marcion himself— those, namely, to whom he sent the seven epistles in the Apocalypse. For though Marcion will not admit the fact of these apocalyptic epistles being any proof of the connection between the churches and John, because he will not own the Apocalypse to have been written by John, yet if we trace the series of bishops in these churches up to its origin, we necessarily amve at John as the founder of them," Eothe. 62 THE SEVEN EPISTLES. " the author could not have ventured, without some official posi tion in the region of those churches, to address them as he did." It was such, indeed, as to require the whole fulness of the apos- tolico-prophetical authority. Without this he could never, for example, have written to Sardis, " I know thy works, that thou hast a name, that thou livest and art dead ;" and to Laodicea, " Because thou art lukewarm, and art neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth." And the commendations, not less than the sharpness of the reproofs, must have been hurtful, if the epistles had not proceeded from an ascertained servant of Jesus Christ. It cannot justly be objected, that it is not John who speaks in the seven epistles, but Christ. Unless the conviction had been deeply rooted in the churches, that the John, who held such communications with them, was the organ of Jesus Christ, the authority of Christ would not have covered the author. The question was sure to be asked, whether Christ had really author ized such messages to be sent, and the affirmative reply to this question could not have been expected from the churches, if they did not recognise the John, who was the medium of communica tion, to be the apostle. For such charges are not imparted by the Lord simply to the person, who is abstractly the first or b'-st. They always rest upon an official basis. But the apostle John, according to the testimony of history, stood entirely toward those churches in that relation of unconditional authority, which these epistles evidently imply. Of special importance in this respect is Clement's account of the youth, quis dives T. II. p. 958, and in Eusebius B. III. c. 23. John was called in by the churches when matters of moment were to be decided, for which the bishop was not sufficient. As here to the angels of the seven churches, so there to the bi.shop he gives instructions and reproofs, and shows him, for his own justification, that the authority which he claimed is an unconditional one ; he speaks as a person who has abso lute power and authority, and who judges by the most rigid standard. When he gives up the young man to the bishop, he says : " This person I commend to thee with all earnestness, and call Christ and the church to witness respecting it." On his latter return he again says to the bishop, " Bestow what I and Christ confided to thee in the presence of thy church." The bishop had done everything, as it appeared, to the youth, which could have THE SALUTATION, CH. I. 4—6. 63 been expected of him. " He took him into his house, instructed him, kept him in order, and shewed the greatest regard to him." But before the judgment seat of Christ and his servant John he does not stand the test : John, when he understood what had happened, " tore his garment, struck his head with loud lamen tations, and exclaimed, I have given up the soul of a brother to a fine watchman." The narrative there also coincides with the epistles here, in that the bishop in the one place, as the angel in the other, is made responsible for all that was proceeding in the church. Finally, it serves also to confirm the result, which we have obtained from the words : John to the seven churches, that the series of the seven epistles begins precisely with that to the church at Ephesus, the place where John usually resided accord ing to the uniform and well-established tradition. This address of John, however, to the seven churches of Asia, is not more important for the author of the Revelation, than for the time of its composition. It does not square with the suppo sition of that being in the reign of Galba. Before the martyr dom of Paul John had certainly not come to reside in Asia Mi nor j-"^ but in all probability did so on the occasion of the Jewish war, and the interruption thereby given to the operations of John in his native region. The Jewish war first began in the year 66. If the Apocalypse had been written under Galba, it would fall into the year 68. But this would not have afforded sufficient time to form the relation we find existing here. For the authority of John appears as one firmly established throughout an extensive district of churches, with the circumstances of which he was most minutely acquainted. He must previously have adapted himself to the Grecian culture, he must have visited the particular churches, some of which stood pretty far apart from one another (Ephesus, for example, being distant three days' journey from Sardis, ac cording to Herodotus and Xenophon), he must have resided for a 1 Lampe, in bis (Jomm on John Proleg. B. i. u. 8, ^ 12, says : " It is admitted that before the synod at Jerusalem he continued with the other apostles in Judea and its con fines. Nor after this could he have lived there till the period of Paul's first imprisonment under Nero. The history of Paul's journeys, and the pains which he took in planting the chm-ch at Ephesus, where he remained tliree years, evince the contrary. Nor after the liberation of Paul (?) even to his death could John have been found at Ephesus, as he could not have omitted sending a salutation to him in his two epistles to Timothy. During the whole time that Paul traversed Asia no mention is made of Johu, and it is certain that Paul appointed Timothy as pastor of tbe church at Ephesus." 64 THE SEVEN EPISTLES. considerable time at each place in order to establish his author ity, and must also have frequently returned to confirm it. No easy accomplishment, as appears from 3 John ver. 9, and one that as a whole could not have been pressed through in a very short time without something of constraint. A series of years must ne cessarily have elapsed before .John could have named the seven churches in Asia his, and written to them in the way he does here. — Bengel remarks, " From the circumstance alone of theRevelation being sent, not to Judea, but to Asia, there is good ground for drawing the conclusion, that Jerusalem must already have been destroyed, as it does not appear that John removed before that period from Judea to Asia, to say nothing of his having been sent to Patmos." But this conclusion is rather hasty. It would only have been quite tenable if, as is still certainly supposed by Ziillig, the fact of John's addressing the seven churches in Asia affords proof of the pre-eminent place belonging to these, is a de claration that they formed the then' centre of the church. But if John wrote to them, because they constituted that portion of the general church committed to his direction, which is confirmed by the fact, that in the New Testament the limitations to a definite circle of readers always have their ground in the personal relation of the writer to that circle, taken along with the additional fact, that according to the testimony of history, John stood in a special relation to these very churches — then the conclusion falls to the ground. For such being the case, John might have written to the seven churches in Asia, even though the church at Jerusalem had still been in a flourishing condition. But it is another ques tion, whether he might have left the church at Jerusalem before that catastrophe, and entered into a new relation to the churches in Asia. And it is certainly not probable that John would have left the theatre, to which his active energies had so long been de voted, without some call arising- out of external circumstances. Had he been inclined to do so, he would have done it long before. Considering also the individual temperament of John, we shall scarcely deem it probable, that after the death of Paul he should have transferred the seat of his agency to Ephesus on a mere so licitation, as Dr Neander supposes (Apost. Zeitalter IT. p. 615). The faithful retentive element is a fundamental feature in the character of John. Profound ardent minds are firmly rooted in THE SALUTATION, I. 4 — 6. 65 their Fatherland, and with difficulty adjust themselves to new re lations. Grace be to you and peace, etc. Peace is always the opposite to strife and war, to hostile pressure, whether the hostility pro ceed from God (Rom. v. 10, 11), or from the creatures. The great stress that is laid on peace in Scripture arises from this, that the life of believers is threatened by so many and diverse hostile powers. Here it is the less admissible to abandon the only certain special signification for a general one, as a violent outbreak of hostility against the church forms the starting-point, and all else in the salutation itself has some reference to it. For the same reason we must not think here of peace with God, but only of a safe position in regard to tbe world. Emphasis must be laid on the peace. For it was this that then drew around it all the thoughts of believers, who lived in the midst of strife. The grace, which in the Mosaic blessing also precedes peace, is the source of all the benefits belonging to believers, but peace that after which they then more especially sighed — comp. Ps. xxix. 11, " The Lord will bless his people with peace." There can be no doubt, that Paul's usual form of salutation is the foundation of that employed here by John. It was quite natural that John, when writing to churches, respecting which he had entered into the place of Paul, should have connected himself closely with that apostle by adopting his well-known and precious salutation-for mula. Compare only the introduction of the epistle to the Ro mans, " Paul — to all that be at Rome, beloved of God — grace be to you and peace from God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ." With this the salutation before us entirely coincides in its leading features. The salutations of James and Jude are quite different. Peter's salutation in his first epistle comes the nearest to Paul's : " Peter to the elect strangers of the dispersion in Pontus, etc., grace and peace shall be multiplied unto you." This approach in Peter to Paul's form of salutation is in unison with the other resemblances to Paul, which occur elsewhere in Peter, as Peter also in writing that first epistle entered into the proper field of Paul's operations. Still, he wants wha,t is uni formly found in Paul : from God, etc. The conclusion of the Apocalypse has also the greatest similarity to the epistles of Paul. There it is : The grace of Jesus Ghrist be with you, e 66 THE SEVEN EPISTLES. here : The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with all saints. The deviation was required by the general purport of the book. It cannot be objected, that Paul never, lik:e John here, prefixes his mere name, but always, even in his epistles to Timothy and Titus, sets forth his dignity. For that has already been done in ver. 1. And now a simple salutation, after the manner of Paul, appears here, but somewhat amplified according to the demands of the higher prophetic style, and in conformity with the necessi ties of the time, which were such as to call for a powerful conso lation. From the depths of the nature of God and Christ there is brought forth what might strengthen an endangered faith, and raise a bulwark against the entrance of despair. From Him, who is, and who was, and who comes. These words are a description, of the name of Jehovah. I have showed in my Beitr. II. p 230, ss., that this name, properly Jahveh (for the vowels belong to Adonai, which the Jews pronounce instead of it) has the meaning of the Being, absolute existence.^ The idea of pure, absolute, unchangeable existence, it was there re marked, as expressed of Jehovah, is a quite practical one ; that which God is comes into consideration only as conditioning what he is for his people. This appears at once from Ex. iii. 13 — 16. The people, in asking for his name, were to find in that a pledge and security for what was to be performed by God, for his won derful help in the most distressing circumstances, not what should satisfy their metaphysical curiosity. The name Jehovah com prises in itself the fulness of all consolation, and the treasures thereof are here brought up from their depths and placed before the eyes of believers, the prophet's companions in tribulation. On the rock of the pure, unchangeable, absolute Being of God dash all the despairing thoughts of those who can call this God their own, as also all the proud thoughts of the world which has him for its enemy. " I am a worm and no man" can be said in 1 According to Delitzsch, in his Bibl. Proph. Theologie, p. 120, the name signifies the becoming, or going to be (der Werdende.) But this view is at once disprsed of by the passage before us, aa it would cut off " the who is and who was," and leave only " the who comes." So also by the original passage, Ex. iii. 8 — 16, since it cannot ex plain the Ehjeh asclier Ehjeli and point out its essential identity with the mere Ehjeh. The name by this explanation is merely evacuated. The becoming swims in the air, if it does not rest for its basis on tbe leing. The becoming of God, too, is a thought quite foreign to the whole of Scripture, and has passed over into theology from the modern philosophy. God comes, indeed, but he does not become. THE SALUTATION, I. 4 — 6. 67 calm repose by such as can only look with an untroubled soul into this unfathomable mystery. As pure, and absolute, and unchangeable Being, God is ; he exists in the fulness of that om nipotence which he makes subservient to the good of the church at the present time ; he works, though in the depths of conceal ment, for her welfare, however circumstances may seem to indi cate the contrary, and the world may triumph over the church lying in apparent helplessness on the ground, and bleeding with a thousand wounds He was ; for he has given evidence of his being in the past by deeds of omnipotent love, as when he led the children of Israel out of the Egyptian house of bondage. He comes; for he will appear for the judgment of the world and for the salvation of his church, when the two shall be made to change places, — those ascending the throne who lay in the dust, and those who formerly occupied the throne thrust down to the ground. The stress should here be put upon the last clause, " he who comes. "^ In ch. iv. 8 the four living creatures constantly cry out, " Holy, holy, holy, is God, the Lord, the Almighty, who was, and who is, and who comes ;" as much as to say, who, as by giving matter-of-fact demonstration of his Being in the past and present, he has proved himself to be the was and is, so will he also come to establish his kingdom over the whole earth. The inversion there (who was and is, instead of, who is and was here) shews that the expression " who is" here does not indicate the whole nature of God, — does not express, like the name Jehovah, his eternal, absolute Being, but is limited to the living efficacious tokens of his Being at the present time, for which the manifesta tions of his Being during the past afford a pledge. To the same result, also, we are led by the simple fact that along with the " who is" we have here on either side the two expressions " who was" and " who comes." In the original it is literally : from who is, and was, and comes. There was no room for flexion, be cause thereby the unconditional application of the three designa- 1 The proof that the o kpxdpEvoi is not synonymous with o E