REVELATION, BOOK OP

4. Composition. — The prevailing liypotlieses may be grouped in tliree classes.

(1) The currently accepted view that it was written entiTely by the Apostle John. Such a view is, however, open to serious objections, because of the similarities, if not identities, existing between Revelation and other apocalyptic literature of the period, as well as because of the evidences of composite character of the writing, implying sources of different origins and dates, such as the various breaks in the process of the vision (the lack of any single historical point of view is seen by a comparison of 12= 13' IT, in an effort to identify historically the two breaks, or in a comparison of lli-i' with 17").

(2) The view that the work, while essentially a literary unit, is a Christian redaction of a Jewish writing. This view would attribute to the Christian redactor the first three chapters and important sections like 5'-" 7"-" 13ua. 22^-2', in addition to separate verses like 12" 141. c 1213. 15 1615 17" 199. 10. 13b 20i-« 21«'-8. The diffi-culties with this position are not only those which must be urged against any view that overlooks the evidences of the composite authorship of the work, but also the impossibility of showing that ch. 11 is Jewish in character.

(3) Theories of composite origin. — These are of various forms — (a) The theory according to which an original work has been interpolated with apocalyptic material of various dates (7>-8- ^-" 11'-" 12i-"- '2-" 13") and subjected to several revisions. (6) The view that Revelation is a Christian book in which Jewish apoca-lypses have been framed, (c) The theory according to which Revelation is composed of three sources, each of which has subdivisions, all worked together by a Christian redactor, (d) Notwithstanding the difficulty in determining the sources, critics are pretty thoroughly agreed that, as the book now stands, it has a unity which, though not inconsistent with the use of older material by its author, is none the less easily recognized. Some of this older material, it is now held, undoubtedly represents the general stream of apocalyptic that took its rise in Babylonian mythology. The structural unity of the book appears in the repetition of sevenfold groups of episodes, as well as in a general grammatical and linguistic similarity. In achieving this remarkable result, the redactor so combined, recast, and supple-mented his material as to give the book an essentially Christian rather than Jewish character.

6. Analysis. — As it now stands, literary and critical analyses do not altogether coincide, but until criticism has finished its task, literary analysis must be of primary importance. Authorities here differ, but the following analysis does not differ fundamentally from that of other writers.

i. Introduction (ch. 1).

ii. The message of the Spirit to the SevenChurche3{cha.2,3).

iii. The period of struggle and misery (chs, 4-7).

iv. The final Messianic struggle (chs. 8-14).

V. The victory of the Messiah (chs. 15—20).

vi. The vision of the Messianic Kingdom (clis. 21-22^). vii. Epilogue (225-2').

6. Interpretation. — No Biblical writing, with the possible exception of the Book of Daniel, has been so subjected to the vagaries of interpreters as Revelation, (a) On the one extreme are those (' Futurists') who have seen in its pictures a forecast of universal Christian history, as well as all the enemies of Christianity, both within and without the Church. To such interpreters the book has been a thesaurus of that chiliastic doctrine which the Greek as well as the modern scientific attitude of mind has found so repugnant. (6) At the other extreme there are those interpreters who see in Revela-tion simply a reference to the historical conditions of the first century of the Christian era. (c) There is a measure of truth in each of these two methods, but the real method of interpretation must be independent of dogmatic presuppositions. As narrative matter must be interpreted by the general principles applicable to all

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REVELATION, BOOK OF

literature of its class, so must Revelation be interpreted in accordance with the general principles applicable to apocalypses as a form of literary expression. The fundamental principles of such interpretation involve the recognition of the facts — (i.) that apocalypses are the outgrowth of definite historical situations; (ii.) that they attempt to stimulate faith by an exposition in symbolic terms of the deliverance which God will give His suffering people from actually existing sufferings; (iii.) that the message of deliverance gains authority because of its claim to superhuman origin reinforced by pseudonymous authorship; (iv.) that the deliverance which is thus supernaturally portrayed is dependent upon the introduction of a new age whose conditions are set miraculously by God rather than by evolving historical forces, and is not described with the same detail as are the conditions from which God is to deliver His people.

An application of these principles to the interpretation of Revelation demands (1) that an historical interpre-tation be given the pictures describing the miseries of the Church. The conditions of such interpretation are most naturally fulfilled m the persecution under Domitian (81-96), although there may be references to that under the dead Nero. The persecuting force is clearly Rome, as represented both by the Emperor and by Emperor- worship, whatever the origin of the pictures with which the oppression of the Church is set forth. A point of departure for the identification of the historical figures who are to be subjected to the Messianic punishment might be thought to be the number o£ the Beast— 666 — that is to say, the Emperor Nero, who was expected to return from the dead (see Beast [in Apoc.]) . Pseudo-Nero did, in fact, appear in Asia Minor in a.d. 69, and among the Parthians in 79-81 and 88. The identification, however, is not altogether satisfactory, as the Hebrew letters, whose numerical equivalents give by the process of Gematria 666, are not precisely those in Csesar Nero. If the correct reading be 616, the equivalent is Gains Csesar. Another interpretation would make 'the Latin or the Roman Empire.' The best that can be said, however, is that if the interpretation by Gematria is unsatisfactory, the interpreter is forced back upon the general references of 'the hills,' 'the city,' and 'the horns' or kings, as a basis for regarding Rome as the great enemy of the Christian and his Church.

A further difficulty in formulating precisely the his-torical situation, arises from the fact that the author, though producing a book of great literary unity, has em- bodied sources which refer to conditions of different times. Thus 11'-" would naturally infer the existence of the Temple, which was destroyed in 70; ch. 13 may have come from the days of Caligula; 17'" most natu-rally implies some time in the reign of Nero; 17" ap-parently implies Domitian, the eighth emperor; 17' would also argue that the book was written during the period that believed in Nero redivivus. The redactor (or redactors) has, however, so combined these materials as to give a unified picture of the approaching Messianic struggle.

(2) On the other hand, the deliverance of the Church is, like all apocalyptic deliverances, miraculous, and described transcendentally. Besides the martyrs, the only identification possible in this connexion is that of the conquering Lamb with Jesus the Christ. The fall of Rome is foretold definitely in ch. 17, but the seer is true to the general apocalyptic form m that he makes Rome and its religion the agents of Satan. The ultimate victory of the Church is similarly portrayed as the victory of God, and is identified with the return of Jesus to establish His Messianic Kingdom.

Such a method of interpretation, based upon general characteristics of apocalypses, preserves the element of truth in both the futurist and the historical methods of interpretation, the pictures of persecution symboliz-ing actual historical conditions, but the forecast of