SOURCE: Sweet, J. P. M. Introduction to Revelation, pp. 1-54. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1979.

[In the following excerpt, Sweet examines the imagery of Revelation, discusses its probable date of origin, and supplies some social background for its text.]

3. INTERPRETATION

(A) HEBREW IMAGERY

If the whole book was read aloud at one sitting (which would take about an hour and a half), it would have made its impact on its first hearers as a whole, like a poetic drama or an opera; indeed one should perhaps regard it as more like music than rational discourse. In that case the repetitions, delays and changes of key can be seen to contribute to a total effect which is emotional as much as rational, and the proportions of the whole are more important than the individual scenes. We must notice, then, that the visions of destruction are bracketed by the overarching vision of God the Creator and Redeemer (4, 5), who makes all things new (21, 22); carnage and chaos make way for the fulfilment of all men's dreams. But the fashioning of this new order is not just a divine fiat; it is bound up with the faithfulness of God's people now: the whole drama is itself bracketed by the message of Christ to those people, which is set out in 1-3 and 22⁶-end. The more we can learn of them and their situation, the better our understanding of the apocalyptic drama in its original impact.

If the broad sweep of the composition is what matters, it might be thought that minute attention to details is misplaced. There is some truth in this. The original hearers would not have had time to reflect on the details. The numbers and colours, the scriptural allusions, the heavenly hymns—all these things build up a cumulative impression; ‘the medium is (almost) the message’. But even if the book was in the first instance read aloud as a whole, we can be sure that like Paul's letters it was subsequently pored over in detail, and we find, as in St John's Gospel, a texture of cross-references and allusions which is not accidental and repays close study, such as is attempted in the commentary. On the other hand, when Revelation came to be regarded as scripture, it was studied as a mine of literal information about the heavenly world and future events, which it was never intended to convey; and modern commentators, who are aware of its symbolic nature, may let their ingenuity in elucidating symbols and allusions take them beyond what the writer could have intended and what the hearers could have taken in. As a balance against over-attention to detail we should be sensitive to the general effect Revelation's imagery would have conveyed.

Broadly speaking, Hebrew imagery appealed to the ear rather than to the eye and created a dynamic psychological impression without necessarily evoking a picture in the mind.¹ Indeed much of it, if visualized, is merely bizarre, like the figure with a sword issuing from his mouth (1¹⁶) or the composite beast with seven heads and ten horns (13¹), and the images are often kaleidoscopic, as with the heavenly woman of ch. 12, one meaning merging into another. The jewels in the description of the new Jerusalem (21^11-21) give by their very sound an impression of radiant beauty, in contrast with the abominations (bdelugmata) of the harlot (17^4f.).

The numbers which keep appearing contribute to the overall impression both by repetition and by their symbolic significance. For us such significance is residual; we say ‘third time lucky’ and thirteen means bad luck. But in the ancient world both letters and numbers were sacred—not merely conventional signs but structural elements of the cosmos, with magical power. The use of numbers in Revelation is not directly magical, but against this background it contributes to the general effect, heightened by parody and innuendo.

The meanings conveyed by specific numbers may be indicated as follows:

Two is the number of witness (11³; cf. Deut. 19¹⁵).

Three is the number of God (1^4f.); it is parodied at 16¹³.

Four is the number of the universe (7¹). There are four seasons, winds, corners of the earth.

Five, the fingers of one hand, is a natural round number.

Six is the number of Antichrist, seven minus one, the number of imperfection, penultimacy and evil. Its fundamental inadequacy is expressed in its intensification, six hundred and sixty-six, the number of the beast (13¹⁸).

Seven is four plus three, signifying completeness. There are seven planets, days of the week, colours of the rainbow. It is parodied by Antichrist (12³, 13¹); the beast has seven heads, representing the deified emperoros of Rome, an overwhelmingly impressive appearance of unity, which is mocked by the inadequacy of 666. Antichrist's number is also three and a half (11⁹, 13⁵; cf. Dan. 7²⁵).

Eight is the number of Jesus,² seven plus one, the first of a new series or ‘week’—again parodied by Antichrist (17¹¹).

Ten, the fingers of both hands, is a natural round number, but lacks the symbolic richness of seven and twelve: the ten horns which are ten kings (17^12-14) are an undifferentiated collection rather than an integrated whole like the seven churches or twelve tribes.

Twelve is four times three, like seven signifying wholeness, unity in diversity. There are twelve months, signs of the Zodiac, tribes of Israel, apostles of the Lamb (21^12-14).

Multiplication intensifies—retribution may be sevenfold (Gen. 4^{15, 24}, Lev. 26^18-27; contrast Matt. 18²²). A square is a perfect figure—even more so a cube (21¹⁶). 144,000 (7⁴) is the square of the tribes of Israel, multiplied by a thousand.

These significances are not exhaustive, but may help to give the modern reader the feel.

The geography likewise is symbolical (see on 11⁸).³ Like Guernica and Hiroshima for us, Sodom, Egypt, Babylon and Jerusalem were heavy with meaning. The ‘great city’, in whose street the witnesses lie, cannot any more than Vanity Fair be limited to one place and time. ‘Those who dwell upon the earth’ are all whose horizons are in practice bounded by this earth—the ‘worldly’, as we say—whether outside the church or in it. Likewise ‘heaven-dwellers’ (12¹², 13⁶) are not necessarily angels but those whose centre or treasure is in heaven, that is, with God.

Heaven and earth are in fact correlative terms—with the ‘new earth’ goes a ‘new heaven’ also (21¹). Heaven represents not a different world so much as the inward and spiritual behind the outward and physical, and comprehends paradoxically the abyss (see on 4⁶, 9¹) which we think of as hell: heaven contains the spiritual powers behind all things in our world, both evil and good. Heavenly events are seen sometimes as determining earthly realities (angels expelled from heaven seduce men on earth—see on 8^8-11), sometimes as determined by earthly realities (Christ's victory on the cross and Christian witness lie behind Satan's expulsion from heaven—see on 12^7-12). Angels and demons like wise are the correlates of earthly authorities. People certainly believed in their literal existence, but the realities they represent are what matter.⁴

The Greek style of the book also plays its part: it is idiosyncratic and does frequent violence to grammar and syntax—not out of ignorance but (it seems) deliberately, to create a ‘biblical’ effect on the hearer.

The probability is that the writer, thinking in Hebrew or Aramaic, consciously or unconsciously carried over Semitic idioms into his Greek, and that his ‘howlers’ are deliberate attempts to reproduce the grammar of classical Hebrew at certain points—at other places he uses the same construction correctly and for the most part he keeps the rules; his command of tenses is better than that of other NT writers. The Greek translations of the Hebrew scriptures in the LXX strove for closeness to the original so much that the effect was often bizarre. John perhaps sought a similar effect, to establish the solidarity of his writings with the scriptures, which were regarded as the words of God—cf. the curse at 22^{18, 19}, which perhaps inhibited the normal tendency of later scribes to tidy up the Greek.⁵ Though in places bizarre, his style is usually clear, often powerful, sometimes poetical. Its effect is thus conveyed better by av than by modern translations.

There is a logic, then, but it is more auditory than visual. There are constant echoes and evocations of biblical scenes heavy with theological meaning: the garden of Eden, the serpent and the tree; the plagues of Egypt, the exodus and Mount Sinai; Babel-Babylon; Elijah and Jezebel. What John sees is again and again interpreted by what he hears; for example, the meaning of the lamb standing, as though it had been slain, is given by the new song of the living creatures and elders (5^6-10). The refrain of the letters to the churches is He who has an ear, let him hear. ‘Hearing’ opens up the whole realm of scripture, the words of God which demand man's obedient response. ‘Blessed is he who reads aloud the words of the prophecy, and blessed are those who hear, and who keep what is written therein; for the time is near’ (1³).

(B) DANIEL AND THE LORD'S APOCALYPSE

‘For the time is near’: the theme is taken up in the epilogue (22¹⁰), in clear allusion to Dan. 12. Among the many differences between John's world and ours, one of the sharpest is the conviction that the last chapter of world history, which had been set in motion by Christ's coming, was very soon to be completed by his parousia or return and the resurrection of the dead for final judgment.

To enter into this ‘eschatological’ way of thinking we may start with the book of Daniel,⁶ which from both the literary and the theological point of view is indispensable for understanding Revelation. In the first six chapters the anonymous author uses stories of Jewish exiles in Babylon in the sixth century bc who stood firm under pressure to give up their faith, in order to encourage his compatriots to stand firm at the time of the Maccabean revolt against Antiochus IV Epiphanes, king of Syria (175-164 bc), who was trying to proscribe Judaism and secure the conformity of the Jews to state policy and religion—with the assistance of a considerable party within Israel. These stories are frequently alluded to in Revelation, especially that of the furnace into which were thrown the Jews who refused to worship Nebuchadnezzar's image (Dan. 3).

In ch. 7 the book passes over to the visions of one of these Babylonian heroes, Daniel, who sees rising out of the primeval sea a series of beasts which represent world empires, culminating in that of Alexander the Great; on the head of this fourth beast sprouts ‘a little horn’ with ‘a mouth speaking great things’, which is Antiochus Epiphanes (= ‘God manifest’). Then one who is ‘ancient of days’ holds court; the beasts lose their sovereignty; ‘one like a son of man’ comes with the clouds of heaven and appears before him, to be invested with everlasting sovereignty. He represents ‘the saints’, God's faithful people who on earth are being worn out by the little horn, and signifies their heavenly vindication in and through their earthly sufferings.

The visions continue with symbolic reference to Antiochus' desecration of the temple at Jerusalem by putting in it a statue of Zeus, ‘the abomination of desolation’, i.e., the sacrilege which brings ruin (8¹³, 9²⁷, 11³¹, 12¹¹). The archangel Gabriel comes to instruct and encourage Daniel for the benefit of a future generation; he reveals that the archangel Michael, Israel's heavenly champion or prince, is his ally against the angel or prince of Persia, and will later help him against the prince of Greece (10^13-21). A symbolic account of events from the Persian period up to the writer's own day (c. 164 bc) follows, under the guise of Gabriel showing Daniel what is written in the heavenly ‘book of truth’ (11^1-39); it includes comment on the Maccabean crisis from a loyalist point of view: some will be seduced by flattery; those who know God will stand firm and act; some will fall, to purify the people and make them white (11^30-35).

At 11^40f. this veiled history evidently passes over into genuine (but unsuccessful) prediction, for it describes the fate of Antiochus ‘at the time of the end’ in terms which bear no relation to what actually happened. (It became a regular practice in apocalyptic writing for the author to preface his forecast of the immediate future with a résumé of recent events put into the mouth of some seer or revealer in the past: the correctness of the résumé lent authority to the forecast.) At that time, Daniel is told in the final chapter, there will be unparalleled trouble for the Jews, but those whose names are ‘written in the book’ will be delivered. There will be a resurrection of the dead, some to everlasting life, some to everlasting disgrace. The length of the ordeal is specified in cryptic arithmetic (‘a time, two times, and half a time’—the three and a half days or years of Revelation); fidelity under it will bring the new age.

From this crisis arose the Jewish theology of martyrdom. Those who bear witness (Greek marturia) to God's truth in word and life represent true humanity (the ‘son of man’) against the idolatrous arrogance which ruins the earth (the beasts). Their suffering and death is not pointless folly, or a sign of God's impotence, but is expiatory: it purifies the people and turns away God's wrath; it guarantees far worse punishment for their persecutors in the age to come, and a glorious resurrection for the martyrs. The imminent recrudescence of evil and chastening of God's people are part of his preordained plan; they are the birth-pangs of the new age.

The book of Daniel, reflecting this crisis and this theology, was a powerful influence in the following centuries. Its veiled references to the Greeks and their collaborators and its cryptic chronology allowed it to be reapplied to the Romans in their occupation of Judaea. It gave form and colour to the genre of writing we call ‘apocalyptic’, which gave expression to the contrast felt between the world as men had made it and God's original hidden purpose, and to the ardent expectation of his coming to put it right, along with the conviction that the present generation was the last.

For Christians this expectation of imminent divine intervention, the coming of the kingdom of God, had been partially realized in Jesus' ministry and resurrection, and their belief that it would soon be completed by his return was rooted in his own prophecy, given to his disciples before his arrest, as recorded in the synoptic gospels (Mark 13; Matthew 24; Luke 21; it is often referred to as the Synoptic Apocalypse). It is not clear how much of Mark 13 actually goes back to Jesus himself, but there would have been no doubt of its genuineness and authority when John wrote (probably c. ad 95, but see pp. 21-7), though there may well have been differences of opinion as to how it was to be understood. Matthew and Luke have each reshaped their Marcan model for their own situation, and John's apocalypse can be seen as an updating of his Lord's, an elaboration of its themes for his own time, much as his Lord had updated the themes of Daniel.

The Synoptic Apocalypse begins with warnings against deceivers (elaborated by John in the letters to the churches). Before the end there must be wars and rumours of wars, earthquakes and famines: these are ‘the beginning of birth-pangs’ (they appear in Revelation under the guise of the Four Horsemen, 6^1-8). Christians will be brought before Jewish and pagan courts for his sake, and will bear witness—the gospel must be proclaimed to all the nations before the end. This period of catastrophe, persecution and witness will be brought to a close by ‘the abomination of desolation’ (Mark 13¹⁴), which will inaugurate a time of unparalleled affliction; Daniel's symbol is reapplied to contemporary Judaea where Roman arrogance and Jewish rebelliousness were already colliding, with obvious danger to Jerusalem and the temple, long before the Jewish war of ad 66-70. But the chief danger will be spiritual: ‘false Christs and false prophets’ (we know of several such messianic claimants from Josephus e.g. Ant. XX. 97f., 169-72; cf. Acts 21³⁸) ‘who will do signs and miracles to deceive even the elect’ (Mark 13^21-23).

In Revelation all this is rephrased in terms of the two witnesses and the two beasts, which form the climax of the trumpet plagues. In John's time the danger was not that Christians might see God's presence in a messianic pretender, a ‘false Christ’, and leave their role of faithful witness to Jesus for armed rebellion, but that they might join the world in finding God in Caesar, who is ‘Antichrist’, something much more subtle and dangerous. The danger now was not of Rome desecrating the temple at Jerusalem—it had already been destroyed—but of the Roman world desecrating the spiritual temple, the church, in the person of Christian fellow-travellers.

After this affliction (Mark 13²⁴), sun and moon will be darkened and the stars will fall; then they will see the Son of man coming on the clouds, and he will send the angels to gather his elect. At his trial before the high priest Jesus used the Son of man prophecy to assert his own imminent vindication (Mark 14⁶²); in Mark 13 it is referred to his return in glory to vindicate his followers. His Apocalypse has little to say about this final stage of the drama, and goes on to warnings about preparedness: it will all happen within this generation, but no one except God knows the precise day, so keep awake (Mark 13²⁸-end). In Revelation, however, the gathering of the faithful is richly expanded in terms of the adorning of a bride and the building of a city, images which Isaiah had used in prophesying the return of the exiles from Babylon (49^16-19, 54^11-14), and this reconstitution of God's people the far side of suffering and defeat is balanced against the destruction of the beast's kingdom, the stripping of the harlot, the demolition of the great city: these are the themes of the bowls section (15-22), with the coming of the Son of man at the centre (19^11ff.). John too ends with calls to preparedness—‘Behold I am coming soon’ (22^{7, 12, 20}).

4. DATE

We have assumed so far that the book was written well after the fall of Jerusalem in ad 70, but the evidence is far from conclusive. At first sight Revelation itself tells us at least under which emperor it was written, in the decoding of the seven-headed beast as a series of emperors, of whom five have fallen (17¹⁰). But as we shall see below (pp. 255-8), various solutions are possible, and on our view it was not the author's concern to say which emperor was reigning—he was not writing for posterity but for his contemporaries, and they did not need to be told.

The earliest external evidence, which is accepted by most scholars, is that of Irenaeus (c. ad 180), who came from Asia and had known Polycarp, (c. ad 70-156), the bishop of Smyrna, and others of his generation; he says that the Apocalypse ‘was seen no long time ago, but almost in our own day, towards the end of Domitian's reign’ (Adversus Haer. V. 30.3). Domitian reigned ad 81-96. This is the practically unanimous view of the earliest Christian tradition, and most scholars accept a date c. ad 95, but Irenaeus could have been mistaken, as he seems to have been over the identification of John. There are later but still ancient traditions that it was written under Trajan (ad 98-117), or under Nero (ad 54-68). This latter belief could have arisen from the obvious references to Nero's notorious persecution of Christians, but a date c. ad 68 has been supported by excellent NT scholars and Roman historians, most recently by J. A. T. Robinson in Redating the NT (SCM Press 1976).

Robinson allows that the external evidence on its own points decisively to c. ad 95, but thinks that the internal evidence from the book itself outweighs it. His main arguments for the earlier date are (a) historical: the links in Rev. 11, 17 and 18 with events in Jerusalem and Rome in ad 64-70; (b) psychological: the vindictive intensity of the passages about Babylon drunk with the blood of Jesus' witnesses—only intelligible, he maintains, under the immediate impact of Nero's pogrom. But as we shall see, while both points are consistent with the earlier date, neither in fact requires it.

(A) THE HISTORICAL ARGUMENT

In ad 64 there was a great fire in Rome, which according to rumour Nero had engineered to make room for his architectural plans. Unable to scotch the rumour, he had the blame put on the Christians; the incendiary language of their writings perhaps helped the charge to stick (cf. Luke 12⁴⁹, 3¹⁷, 9⁵⁴). Large numbers were executed, probably in early 65, with tortures which sickened even the Romans. Tacitus' account, written about fifty years later, is worth quoting in full:

But all human efforts, all the lavish gifts of the emperor and propitiations of the gods, did not banish the sinister belief that the conflagration was the result of an order. Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a deadly superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but also in the City, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world meet and become popular. Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who confessed; then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of arson as of hatred of the human race. Mockery of every sort was added to their deaths. Covered with the skins of beasts, they were torn by dogs and perished, or were nailed to crosses, or were doomed to the flames and burnt, to serve as a nightly illumination when daylight had expired. Nero had offered his gardens for the spectacle, and put on a show in the Circus, mingling with the people in the dress of a charioteer or standing up in a chariot. Hence, even for criminals who deserved extreme and exemplary punishment, there arose a feeling of compassion, for it was not, as it seemed, for the public good, but to glut one man's cruelty, that they were being destroyed.⁷

According to later tradition Peter and Paul were among those put to death. This was the first official move against Christians as such, and left an indelible scar on the Christian imagination.

A year later began the Jewish revolt against Rome, with initial successes. Nero gave the command to Flavius Vespasianus, an experienced general, who reduced Galilee in 67, but the final reckoning with Jerusalem was delayed until 70 by the events of the ‘year of four emperors’. In June 68, after revolts in Gaul and Spain, Nero was deposed in favour of Galba and stabbed himself. Early in 69 Galba was killed and succeeded by Otho, who three months later was defeated by Vitellius and committed suicide. In December Vitellius was himself defeated and killed, after rioting and arson in Rome, by the forces of Vespasian, who had been proclaimed emperor by the eastern legions. He took firm control, assisted by his sons Titus and Domitian (the Flavian dynasty), and Jerusalem was destroyed in 70 by Titus after a terrible siege.

These cataclysmic events must, for Jews and Christians, have presaged the end of the world. It is easy to see Rev. 11^1-13 as an oracle from the period 68 to early 70, when Jerusalem was threatened by siege but the temple had not yet fallen, and to see the pictures of ‘Babylon’, the victim of civil war (17^12-17) and destroyed by fire (17¹⁶, 18^8f.), as inspired by the events of 64 and 68-9. The return of the beast with the mortal wound that was healed (13^{3, 12, 14}, 17^8-11) clearly refers to the belief, which was current very soon after Nero's suicide, that he was not dead and would return (Nero redivivus) with armies from the East, where Parthia had been a threat to the Roman imagination since the defeat of Crassus in 53 bc.⁸

But even if these passages were composed in ad 68-70, they could have been re-used later with symbolic reference. Revelation is full of ‘historical’ allusions—to events in the OT, in the story of Jesus and in the contemporary world. There are references which can plausibly be seen as referring to events later than ad 70, e.g. the eruption of Vesuvius in ad 79, when white hot ashes buried Pompeii and Herculaneum and stones fell like hail on the villages around, hiding the sun, and further catastrophes, earthquake, fire and plague, betokened the wrath of the gods and the end of the world (6^12-17; cf. 8, 9 and 17). But such allusions cannot tell us the date of the book, only the date before which it could not have been written—unless there is reason to tie it closely to the events alluded to. This brings us to Robinson's second point, which is at first sight much stronger.

(B) THE PSYCHOLOGICAL ARGUMENT

… The Apocalypse, unless the product of a perfervid and psychotic imagination, was written out of an intense experience of the Christian suffering at the hands of the imperial authorities, represented by the ‘beast of Babylon’—see 6^9-11, 17⁶, 18^{20, 24}, 19², 20⁴—‘… if something quite traumatic had not already occurred in Rome which was psychologically still very vivid, the vindictive reaction, portraying a blood-bath of universal proportions (14²⁰), is scarcely credible. The sole question is what terrible events are here being evoked.

(Robinson, pp. 230f.)

Robinson is clearly right that there was nothing like this under Domitian or any other of the possible emperors. A Domitianic persecution has been widely accepted by NT scholars (not by Roman historians), but the only evidence for it is from Christian writers who, from Melito of Sardis (mid-second century) on, held Domitian to have been the next great persecutor after Nero—he was regarded by the Roman aristocracy as a second Nero (e.g. Juvenal IV. 37ff.) and this may have affected later beliefs.⁹ But to the Asian provincials of his own day he was a popular figure, a good administrator and generous benefactor, like the other Flavians. The Jews hated them as the destroyers of Jerusalem (cf. II Esd. 12^22-28), but the Christians saw its fall as divine punishment of the Jews, and would have appreciated Domitian's efforts to protect the lower classes against the rapacity of provincial governors and local magnates.¹⁰ There is no evidence whatever for large-scale or widespread persecution of Christians.

Another ill-founded idea, which goes hand in hand with that of the ‘Domitianic persecution’, is that Christians were required by Domitian to participate in the emperor cult. In the East rulers had long been regarded as divine and the source of well-being (‘salvation’) for their people; their cult was a focus of patriotism. Gratitude to Augustus for bringing peace after decades of civil war made his cult inevitable. (Technically it was not the emperor who was worshipped, but in his lifetime his ‘genius’ or spirit. At his death he became god, divus; the ruling emperor was ‘son of god’, divi filius, with many other titles like ‘saviour’.) Most of the earlier emperors deprecated divine honours at home (cf. Vespasian's death-bed remark, ‘I rather think I am becoming a god’), but encouraged the cult in association with the local cults in the provinces, as can be seen from inscriptions and the coinage, as a necessity of state. Nero and Domitian did affect divinity; Domitian indeed required to be addressed as ‘Lord and God’. (The titles given to Christ both in Revelation and in other NT writings may be in conscious opposition to such imperial pretensions.) But in actual practice the emperor cult, as opposed to general acceptance of the divinity of Rome and the emperor, was the preserve of the local aristocracy; the average provincial had no direct part.¹¹

The reference in 17⁶ etc. must be to Nero's persecution. But, first, the passages mentioned also owe much to OT fulminations, against Nineveh, Babylon and Tyre (e.g. Nahum 3^1-4, Jer. 51, Ezek. 26, 27), and to Jesus' denunciation of scribes and Pharisees and of Jerusalem which murders the prophets (Matt. 23^29-38). There is a ‘stock’ element in John's most highly coloured writing, as in other apocalyptic books, and ‘Babylon’ is far more than simply Rome (see on 11⁸). Secondly, though Nero's action has certainly added vital colour, it could have been evoked later even by a sane imagination (can we be sure that John's was not vindictive or psychotic, by our standards?), if the situation demanded it. Such a situation might be provided not by general experience of persecution (there was none), but by general avoidance of persecution. The letters to the churches suggest that persecution was occasional and selective, and that the chief dangers were complacency and compromise.¹² On our view Revelation was written at a time when some Christians were disposed to forget what John took to be the true character of the ‘great city’; they needed reminding of her inherent idolatrousness, and of what she had done to God's people, whether under Pharaoh, Jezebel or Antiochus, or in the guise of Sodom, Nineveh, Babylon, Jerusalem or finally Rome. The more magnificent and divinely approved Rome might seem (we must remember there had been a pro-Roman party among the Jews, as there had been a pro-Greek party at the time of Antiochus), the more violent the denunciation required.¹³ If it were established by other means that Revelation was written in ad 68-70, our view would still stand: it would then have been composed to warn complacent Christians in Asia that what had just happened in Rome was their story too. But Domitian's reign, when there was more apparent justification for the imperial titles of Saviour and Benefactor and Roman claims to eternity, provides from this point of view a more plausible setting. The only hard information provided by 17^8-11 is that at the time of writing the beast ‘is not’; i.e., the ‘head’ or emperor now reigning lacks the overt marks of the beast.

The intensity of the language could be due also to the vividness of the author's own experience—he may have been involved in the events of ad 64-70 and himself have suffered under Domitian—as well as to the complacency of the majority of Christians who were prospering under Domitian and forgetting Nero. To invent a modern analogy, if after Hitler's death Germany had pulled through and his Thousand-Year Reich had triumphed, more beneficent but still totalitarian, with Russia but a vague menace to the east, and if in the prosperous 1970s the churches were coming to terms with the régime, forgetting past horrors and coming judgment, then a Polish prophet, imprisoned for his Christian witness, might evoke with similar intensity the horrors of Treblinka, of the Warsaw revolt and of the German débâcle of 1945, and predict coming vengeance under the image of Hitler redivivus. Whether his imagination was to be judged psychotic would depend on the view taken of the régime which imprisoned him, and of the Bible which inspired him.

To sum up, the earlier date may be right, but the internal evidence is not sufficient to outweigh the firm tradition stemming from Irenaeus.

5. SITUATION

If a date at the end of Domitian's reign is accepted, it is important to recognize that Revelation was written at a time of comparative peace for the Christians, when they were coming to terms with the delay of Christ's return, which must have seemed excitingly imminent in the upheavals of ad 66-70, and with the world they had to continue living in. There was persecution, of which Antipas (2¹³) and John himself were probably victims, but it was local and selective rather than systematic,¹⁴ the result of overt witness-bearing and nonconformity, and could be avoided by not attracting attention. The situation was no doubt complex and varied from place to place, but we can isolate two main factors: Jewish-Christian relations, and compromise with pagan society.

(A) CHRISTIANS AND JEWS

In Roman law any religion was ‘illicit’ or unauthorized outside its country of origin, though punitive action was not normally taken unless there was anti-social behaviour.¹⁵ The Jews, who had communities in almost every city of the empire, were the exception: they were allowed to practise their national religion outside Palestine, and for a time Christians were able to shelter under this umbrella, as a Jewish sect. Two things removed this cover: Nero's action after the fire of ad 64, perhaps influenced by his wife's Jewish favourites, action which was directed against the Christians as such and formed a deadly precedent; and the Jewish War of ad 66-70, in which the Christians avoided identification with the Jews. Judaism after the war closed its ranks and took steps to exclude all heretics from the synagogue, especially the Christians, who for their part took the destruction of the temple as God's judgment for the murder of Jesus, and regarded themselves as the true Israel, from which the Jews so-called had cut themselves off.

Outside Palestine the synagogue had long attracted Gentile adherents, but then Christianity began to steal them with the offer of what must have seemed to the Jews cut-price salvation, without the obligation to be circumcised and keep the law of Moses. Their jealousy took the form of ‘slander’ (Rev. 2⁹, 3⁹), in particular legal accusation by informers (as implied by the letter to Smyrna) and theological polemic (as implied by that to Philadelphia).¹⁶ Christians would be tempted to avoid legal harassment by adopting a ‘low profile’, following a Jewish life-style and not being too active in their ‘witness’; at the same time theological attack would undermine the faith by which active witness could alone be sustained. Christians were not sought out by the authorities but they had a bad official reputation. Those accused as Christians by informers (who were notoriously active under Domitian) could be executed if they refused to recant, as appears from Pliny's procedure as governor of Bithynia (the northern part of modern Turkey) c. ad 113, which he described in his letter to the Emperor Trajan.¹⁷

Many of those named by informers denied ever having been Christians; others said they had given up ‘some three years ago, some several years, a few even twenty years ago’ (i.e., c. ad 93)—presumably under pressure. Similar pressures no doubt operated in the province of Asia. Pliny's strategy was to encourage apostasy by letting off those who recanted; at his direction they then ‘recited a prayer to the gods, made supplication with incense and wine to your statue, which I had ordered to be brought into court for the purpose together with the images of the gods, and moreover cursed Christ …’. Trajan confirmed that Christians were not to be ‘sought out’, but that they were to be punished if accused and convicted.

The correspondence shows that there was no existing legislation of Senate or emperor against the Christians, and the main motive for their persecution was probably not legal or political, but religious: the people of the empire resented, and the governors were predisposed to punish, any attack on the established religions, such as was implicit in the Christian ‘witness’. ‘The religious sentiments of the pagan world, if of a different type, were no less real and powerful than those of the Christians’, T. D. Barnes, ‘Legislation against the Christians’, Journal of Roman Studies 58, 1968, p. 49. See also G. E. M. de Ste Croix, ‘Why Were the Early Christians Persecuted?’, Past and Present 26, 1963, pp. 6-38, and his ‘Rejoinder’ to A. N. Sherwin-White's ‘Amendment’, Past and Present 27, 1964, pp. 23-33.

It is in such a context that Jesus is presented as the one who died and came to life and as giver of the crown of life, and the Jews as not Jews (= God's people) at all but a ‘synagogue of Satan’ (2^8-10): as at the death of Jesus they are in league with the Roman power; their attacks would have no cutting edge but for the Roman sword—Pergamum, the provincial capital, is Satan's throne (2¹³). But Jesus is lord of the ‘second death’ in the world to come (2¹¹).

It would be tempting, then, where the Jews were strong, to adopt an outwardly Jewish way of life, and this might in fact be done out of theological persuasion. Many Gentiles were impressed by the antiquity of the Jewish religion and scriptures; those who became Christians were set under these same scriptures as the inspired word of God—there was no ‘New Testament’ yet—and might be led by them towards what we would call an Old Testament ethos (as many Christians have been since), seeing Christ as part of Judaism instead of as sovereign over both Judaism and its scriptures. Ignatius of Antioch, on his way through Asia to martyrdom at Rome, warned the Magnesians and Philadelphians of this (c. ad 115). It is in such a context that Jesus is presented as holder of the key of David in the letter to Philadelphia (3⁷), as Root of David and opener of the sealed book (5⁵, 22¹⁶).

Another factor, working in the opposite direction, was the encouragement under Domitian of informers in connection with the ‘Jewish tax’: the half-shekel paid by all adult male Jews to the temple in Jerusalem (cf. Ex. 30^11-16), which Vespasian directed in ad 70 to the treasury of Jupiter Capitolinus. Under Domitian it was ruthlessly exacted even of Jews who had ceased to practise, and of non-Jews who followed a Jewish way of life (Suetonius, Domitian 12.2; Christians, who claimed to be the true Israel, could be caught on either or both counts), and the activities of informers made such an impression that his successor, Nerva, issued coins with the legend Fisci Judaici Calumnia Sublata (‘false accusation relating to the Jewish tax having been removed’) as a manifesto of the new régime. ‘Domitian may have become a persecutor malgré lui through the arbitary outworking of a policy.’¹⁸ There must have been pressure here on Christians to cut loose from their Jewish heritage, and this would have reinforced the steady intellectual pressure to drop the whole of the OT with its savage God and barbarous law, which came to a head with Marcion in the second century, and to abandon the primitive Jewish-Christian hope of Christ's imminent return. It was difficult, while attacking the Jews, to maintain the church's Jewish roots (as Paul had also found—Rom. 11^13-24), and it is in such a context that we may see Revelation's very Jewish, or rather scriptural, presentation of Jesus, and the repeated ‘I am coming soon’.

(B) COMPROMISE WITH PAGAN SOCIETY

The ordinary provincial, as we have said, had no necessary part in the emperor cult as such, but religion was woven into his political and social life. He lived in an atmosphere permeated by the symbols of the old fertility cults and of the deified state and emperor, which were propagated by the temples and public buildings, by the law courts, by the theatres and gladiatorial games, above all by the coinage. To the ordinary man it may not have meant very much: it was the age-old patriotic idiom, like singing the national anthem in a football stadium or taking the oath on the Bible in court. But to some Christians brought up on the Jewish scriptures it was blasphemy, and connivance was like the idolatry of the Israelites when they reached the promised land; they must take a stand like Elijah before Jezebel.

Such a stand did not endear them to their neighbours who, even if they did not take their religion seriously, resented its being insulted or ignored—and many did take it seriously; cf. Acts 19³⁴. Christian aloofness gave rise to charges of atheism and hatred of the human race: public religion, as opposed to private belief, was part of the fabric of human life and abstention brought danger to society; earthquake, famine, plague—any natural disaster was interpreted as the wrath of the gods, and could be blamed on the ‘atheists’. Some Christians from a Greek background would have rejected Jewish-Christian intransigence, and have wished to take a positive part in the social life of their cities, finding freedom to do so in the interpretation of Christianity from a ‘gnostic’ point of view which I Corinthians shows to have been already current in the fifties.

By ‘gnosticism’,¹⁹ as opposed to the developed gnostic systems of the second century, we mean a climate of thought which was widespread in the first century ad, among Jews as well as Greeks. Its main features were concern for individual salvation through spiritual knowledge (gnōsis), and depreciation of the material world. Man is an immortal soul ‘fallen’ into a material body, from which he will be released at death. ‘Sin’ is estrangement from God not by disobedience in daily life, but by blind involvement in material concerns: ‘salvation’ therefore lies in escape from the domination of matter and in gnōsis, which may be achieved here and now by initiation into philosophical mysteries and sacramental rites. Christianity provided just such an initiation and gnōsis, accompanied by exciting spiritual manifestations, and an ‘existential’ interpretation of the primitive faith soon developed which had little interest in the historical life and death of Jesus, or in his future return and men's bodily resurrection for final judgment. On this view, his importance had been as revealer of divine truth, which continues to be revealed by prophets in the present; the divine Spirit left his body before his death, which was merely a hollow victory for the powers of this world and of no continuing significance; resurrection, judgment and salvation happen now, in turning from worldly darkness to spiritual light; the body is a temporary lodging, and bodily actions are ‘things indifferent’, without importance for eternal life. This attitude could lead to asceticism (‘severity to the body’, Col. 2^20-23), or more often to moral indifference which might issue in licentiousness (I Cor. 6^12-19). Religion is a matter of spiritual experience rather than moral obedience, of seeing rather than hearing and doing.

Such an attitude probably lies behind the ‘teaching of the Nicolaitans’,²⁰ who encouraged Christians to ‘eat food sacrificed to idols and commit fornication’ (2^{6, 14f., 20})—or from their point of view, to share in the social and religious life of their city. One problem was over pagan dinner-parties. These were often held in a temple; even if not, the meat served was likely to have come from animals slaughtered for the temple sacrifices (only part was burnt, and the rest was sold in the market). Could a Christian take part without being involved in idolatry? In Corinth some took the line that ‘an idol is nothing’; Christian ‘knowledge’ set them free from Jewish tabus, which were observed only by the ‘weak in faith’ (I Cor. 8^1-10; cf. Rom. 14^1ff.). Paul in his reply had begun by agreeing with the ‘strong’ as far as he could, before warning them of the dangers in their position (I Cor. 10^14-22), and had ended by saying ‘Eat anything sold in the market without quibbles of conscience’—unless someone else's conscience was at risk (I Cor. 10^25-29). Paul's permission may have become a precedent, without Paul's qualifications.

As for ‘fornication’, it is a regular metaphor for idolatry in the OT, but pagan religion and sexual promiscuity were still linked as in the time of Balaam (see on 2^{14, 20}); prostitution, male and female, was a regular part of the fertility cults. To some Corinthian Christians sexual intercourse was simply a natural function like eating (I Cor. 6¹³). The two issues of meat sacrificed to idols and fornication are treated side by side in I Corinthians and in the apostolic decrees of Acts 15, which sought to regulate Gentile converts in their relations with Jewish Christians. The precise scope and meaning of these decrees is now far from clear, but it looks as if John was recalling Christians to the old apostolic standard of abstention from practices in which some of them saw no harm (see on 2^24-25).

A particular problem would have been posed by trade-guilds, which we know from inscriptions to have been numerous at Thyatira. Membership involved religious ceremonies which were no doubt merely conventional to most members, including ‘strong’ Christians (cf. Freemasonry today). Must Christians opt out? How could they withdraw from all aspects of city life which were touched by pagan religion without committing social and economic suicide, and foregoing all chance of influence and success? Jesus had said, ‘Render to Caesar what is Caesar's’ when shown the Roman coin with which tribute was paid (Mark 12¹⁷). Peter and Paul had regarded the state as ordained by God and had ordered Christians to obey the authorities and pray for them (I Peter 2^13-17, Rom. 13^1ff.; cf. I Tim. 2^1f., Titus 3¹). Was it necessary to take a rigid stand, with all the disqualifications and dangers it involved? What value was there in provoking martyrdom? The issue was not so much actual idolatry or emperor-worship as the relations of church and world, which have been a perennial problem to Christians and admit of no simple universal answer.

(C) JOHN'S VIEW

To John, however, in his time and place, the issue was black and white. The true line lay not with the ‘strong’ who ‘knew’ that an idol has no real existence' (I Cor. 8⁴), but with the spiritual descendants of Elijah and the Hasidim, the loyal Jews who let themselves be tortured and killed rather than compromise under Antiochus; in his eyes, just as Israel, called to be God's witness to the nations in their idolatry, had prostituted herself in commerce with the Phoenician cities, so the church, which was now God's Israel, the sevenfold lamp of witness, was giving herself over to fornication in the Asian cities; behind the idolatry and materialism of pagan society lay the baleful influence of deified Rome, ‘the great harlot’, which the provincials regarded as the eternal source of their blessings and the proper object of grateful worship; through his servant, Christ was seeking to open the churches' eyes and ears, to prepare them for the final crisis, which would herald his coming in judgment. A recent parallel might be the attempts of Bonhoeffer and others to alert the ‘German Christians’ of the 1930s to the true nature of Hitler's Reich, at a time when men were dazzled by his achievements and he was widely regarded as civilization's bulwark against Bolshevism; treason was the truest loyalty.

What then is Revelation's message for such a situation? Practically, it demands separation from the ‘world’, not in physical but in moral terms: the ‘wilderness’ in which the woman is nourished (12¹³) is no Qumran-like monastery but a symbol of the spiritual preservation of the church, while physically Christians are maintaining ‘the testimony of Jesus’ and validating it with their lives in ‘the street of the great city’ (12^13-17, 11⁸). Theologically, it provides the undergirding for such suicidal folly. If Christians were on the one hand being told by Jews that Jesus was no Messiah and they no Israel, and on the other were under pressure to give up their Jewish heritage, in favour of a gnostic understanding of Christianity which found salvation in present spiritual experience, made no moral demands and regarded Jesus as only one revealer among many, then Revelation can be seen as setting out Jesus as the unique and all-sufficient Son of God, who by his death and resurrection had fulfilled the whole Jewish dispensation and set in motion the judgment of the world, which he would soon return to complete. At the same time it showed the churches their crucial role as God's Israel, and the final destiny which men prepared for themselves in taking the mark of the beast or in following the Lamb.

The two poles of the book are the death of the Lamb, and the promise ‘I am coming soon’, the aspects of past and future which gnostic existentialism neglected. Likewise Paul had had to remind the Corinthians that in the eucharist, the sacrament of present salvation, ‘you show forth the Lord's death till he come’ (I Cor. 11²⁶). To those in danger for their faith John revealed the eternal victory of Jesus' death and of theirs (if it should be required); those too sure of their present salvation he warned that the fulness of what they were enjoying was only for the conqueror, who ‘keeps my works until the end’ (2²⁶).

Notes

1. See T. Boman, Hebrew Thought Compared with Greek, ET SCM Press and Westminster Press 1960, ch. 2, and our comment on 1^12-20; also p. 125 below on seeing and hearing.

2. Numbers in both Greek and Hebrew were represented by letters of the alphabet—a = 1, b = 2 etc. (they did not have Arabic numerals)—and so any word or name could be given a numerical value by adding up its letters, a procedure called isopsēphia or gēmatria. Nero Caesar in Hebrew letters gave 666; Jesus in Greek letters gave 888 (see below on 13¹⁸).

   For further discussion of the significance of numbers, see the commentaries of Swete, pp. cxxx-cxxxiii, and Beckwith, pp. 250-55; D. T. Niles [New York: Harper, 1961], As Seeing the Invisible, pp. 29-31; D. H. Lawrence, Apocalypse [London: William Heinemann, 1972], pp. 100-13.

3. See P. S. Minear, ‘The Cosmology of the Apocalypse’, Current Issues in NT Interpretation, ed. W. Klassen and G. F. Snyder, SCM Press and Harper & Row 1962, pp. 23-37.

4. See G. B. Caird, Principalities and Powers, Clarendon Press 1956.

5. See Charles, Revelation I, pp. cxvii-clix, ‘A Short Grammar of the Apocalypse’; C. G. Ozanne, ‘The Language of the Apocalypse’, Tyndale House Bulletin 16, 1965, pp. 3-9; G. Mussies, The Morphology of Koine Greek as used in the Apocalypse (NovT Suppl. 27), 1971—an exhaustive examination of Rev. in comparison with non-literary Koine (‘common’) Greek.

6. See H. H. Rowley, The Relevance of Apocalyptic, ch. I; E. W. Heaton, The Book of Daniel (Torch Commentary), SCM Press and Macmillan, New York, 1956.

7. Tacitus, Annals XV. 44, quoted from Stevenson, A New Eusebius, pp. 2f. (altered).

8. The kingdom of the Parthians covered much of the old Persian empire, whose western domains, now ruled by the Romans, they were eager to recover. Their mounted archers were famous—hence the ‘Parthian shot’.

9. Rev. itself may have helped: since in the second century it was held to have been written under Domitian, its allusions to the murder of prophets and saints may have been assumed to refer to events in his reign. He executed or banished a few aristocrats who may or may not have been Christians, but there was no general move against Christians as such. See Stevenson, pp. 8-10; W. H. C. Frend, Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church, Blackwell and Doubleday 1965, pp. 211-17.

10. See D. Magie, Roman Rule in Asia Minor, Princeton 1950, Oxford University Press 1951, pp. 576-82; his evidence is amplified by H. W. Pleket, ‘Domitian, the Senate and the Provinces’, Mnemosyne 14, 1961, pp. 296-315.

11. For the beginnings of the emperor cult under Augustus, see L. R. Taylor, The Divinity of the Roman Emperor, Middletown, Conn., 1931. On the persecutions see F. Millar, ‘The Imperial Cult and the Persecutions’, Le Culte des Souverains dans l'Empire Romain, Fondation Hardt, Entretiens XIX, 1973, pp. 145-75, and, with particular reference to Domitian, the three articles by P. Prigent, ‘Au Temps de l'Apocalypse’, Revue d'Histoire et de Philosophie Religieuses 54, 55, 1974-75.

12. ‘Christianity was not religio licita [authorized religion] and if it drew attention to itself its members were liable to punishment. Otherwise sleeping dogs would be allowed to lie’ (Frend, p. 220).

13. The enthusiastic propagation of the emperor cult in union with local cults under Domitian branded Rome, for a strict Jewish Christian, as the ‘mother of earth's abominations’ (17⁵); cf. Frend, pp. 103f.

14. See the next section. The beast who ‘makes war on the saints’ is absent (17^8-11).

15. See Frend, ch. 4.

16. Some scholars see here reference not to Jews but to Judaizing Christians—see on 2⁹.

17. Letters, X.96, 97; see A. N. Sherwin-White, The Letters of Pliny, Clarendon Press 1966, pp. 691-712, 772-87; Stevenson, pp. 13-16, gives translation and notes.

18. C. J. Hemer, ‘The Edfu Ostraka and the Jewish Tax’, Palestinian Exploration Quarterly 105, 1973, p. 11; cf. Frend, pp. 212f.

19. See R. Bultman, Primitive Christianity in its Contemporary Setting, ET Thames & Hudson and Longmans, Toronto, 1956, pp. 162-71; E. Lohse, The New Testament Environment, ET Abingdon and SCM Press 1976, pp. 253-77.

20. The later fathers connected them with gnosticism, but we know only what can be deduced from 2^14f. (see commentary).

References, Abbreviations and Technical Terms

The biblical text used is the Revised Standard Version.

The titles of the books of the Bible receive their customary abbreviations. Biblical references are given by chapter and verse, and where necessary also by section of verse; thus Heb. 1.3a means the first half of verse 3 of chapter 1 of the Epistle to the Hebrews.

Articles in periodicals are cited by the abbreviated title of the periodical, followed by the volume number and its date, then the page number. Standard collections of documents are referred to by the editor's name or an abbreviated title, followed by volume and/or page numbers.

Commentaries and books listed in the bibliography are usually referred to by the author's name only (except where there are two by the same author).

Apocrypha: The fourteen books, or parts of books, found in LXX but not the Hebrew Bible. The word means ‘hidden’, and refers to books which are spurious, or of unknown date and origin, or suitable for the initiated only.

AP: R. H. Charles, Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament I-II, Clarendon Press 1913.

c.: circa, about

ECW: Early Christian Writings, translated by M. Staniforth, Penguin Books, 1968

ET: English translation

ExpT: Expository Times, Edinburgh

Gk.: Greek

gloss: explanatory comment

Heb.: Hebrew

Ibid.: In the same work

JBL: Journal of Biblical Literature, Philadelphia

JTS: Journal of Theological Studies, Oxford

LXX: The Greek version of the Old Testament, the Septuagint, so called because it was believed to be the work of seventy-two translators working independently, and by a miracle producing an identical version in seventy-two days. It differs considerably from the Hebrew text on which our English translations are based.

MS (S): manuscript(s)—the NT books, like all early writings, were copied by hand. This could lead to mistakes of eye or ear, and to conscious or unconscious alterations by copyists to improve style or sense. But in addition to the Greek MSS, we have the ‘versions’ (translations into other ancient languages like Latin and Syriac) and citations from early Christian writers (the ‘Fathers’): all these, referred to as ‘ancient authorities’ by RSV in its footnotes, enable us to establish the original text with considerable confidence. When MSS differ we talk of ‘variant readings’; the few cases where it is not easy to be sure which of the ‘variants’ is the ‘true reading’ are discussed in the commentary.

NEB: New English Bible (1970)

NovT (Suppl.): Novum Testamentum (Supplements), Leiden

NT: New Testament

NTS: New Testament Studies, Cambridge

op. cit.: work already cited

OT: Old Testament

par.: parallel—in a reference to the synoptic gospels; e.g. ‘Matt. 24 par.’ indicates reference to the parallel passages in Mark and Luke as well

RSV: Revised Standard Version of the Bible (1952)

RV: Revised Version of the Bible (1885)

S-B: H. P. Strack and P. Billerbeck, Kommentar zum Neuen Testament aus Talmud und Midrasch, Munich, 1922-28.

Stevenson: J. Stevenson (ed.), A New Eusebius, SPCK and Macmillan, New York, 1957.

variant: see under MS(S)

Vermes: G. Vermes, The Dead Sea Scrolls in English, Penguin Books, 1962

ZNW: Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft, Berlin

Bibliography

Commentaries

Detailed and scholarly:

Swete, H. B., The Apocalypse of St. John, Macmillan, 1906.

Beckwith, I., The Apocalypse of John, Macmillan, New York, 1919.

Charles, R. H., Revelation I-II (International Critical Commentary), T. & T. Clark and Scribner's, 1920.

Lohmeyer, E., Die Offenbarung des Johannes (Handbuch zum Neuen Testament 16), 2nd ed., ed. G. Bornkamm, J. C. B. Mohr, Tübingen, 1953.

Kraft, H., Die Offenbarung des Johannes (Handbuch zum Neuen Testament 16a), J. C. B. Mohr, Tübingen, 1974. This has the most complete and up-to-date bibliography.

For the reader without ancient languages:

Preston, R. H. and Hanson, A. T., The Revelation of St John the Divine (Torch Bible Commentaries), SCM Press and Macmillan, New York, 1949.

Farrer, A. M., The Revelation of St John the Divine, Clarendon Press, 1964.

Caird, G. B., The Revelation of St John the Divine (New Testament Commentaries), A. & C. Black and Harper & Row, 1966.

Morris, L., Revelation, Tyndale Press and Eerdmans, 1969.

Beasley-Murray, G. R., The Book of Revelation (New Century Bible), Oliphants, 1974.

Studies

Ramsay, Sir William, The Letters to the Seven Churches of Asia, Hodder & Stoughton and Armstrong, 1904.

Carrington, P., The Meaning of Revelation, SPCK, 1931.

Scott, E. F., The Book of Revelation, SCM Press, 1939, Scribner's, 1940.

Stauffer, E., Christ and the Caesars, ET SCM Press, 1952, Westminster Press, 1955, ch. XI.

Niles, D. T., As Seeing the Invisible, Harper & Row, 1961, SCM Press, 1962.

Daniélou, J., Primitive Christian Symbols, ET Helicon Press (Compass Books) and Burns & Oates, 1964.

Prigent, P., Apocalypse et Liturgie, Delachaux et Niestlé, 1964.

Feuillet, A., The Apocalypse, ET Alba House, New York, 1965.

Rissi, M., Time and History, ET John Knox Press, Richmond, Va, 1966.

———The Future of the World, ET (Studies in Biblical Theology, 2.23), SCM Press and Allenson, 1972.

Minear, P. S., I Saw a New Earth, Corpus Books, Washington, 1968.

Wilcox, M., I saw Heaven Opened, Inter-Varsity Press, 1975.

On apocalyptic

Charles, R. H., The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament I-II, Clarendon Press, 1913 (cited as AP).

Rowley, H. H., The Relevance of Apocalyptic (1944), 3rd ed., Lutterworth Press, 1963, Association Press, 1964.

Russell, D. S., Between the Testaments, SCM Press and Muhlenberg Press, 1960.

———The Method and Message of Jewish Apocalyptic, SCM Press and West- minster Press, 1964.

Hennecke, E., New Testament Apocrypha II, ET Lutterworth Press, 1965, Westminster Press, 1966, reissued SCM Press, 1974, pp. 579ff.

Morris, L., Apocalyptic, Inter-Varsity Press, 1973.

To all these and many more the present commentary is indebted, particularly to Farrer, Caird and Minear, and to C. J. Hemer, whose Ph.D. dissertation on ‘The Letters to the Seven Churches of Asia’ Manchester University, 1969, awaits publication.