Hi,

Pardon me for butting in, but I just wanted to mention there's a very interesting study going on by the Knox Theological Seminary that they call the John-Revelation Project.

http://www.knoxseminary.org/Prospect...ect/index.html

They are looking at the relationship between Revelation and the Gospel of John. Here is one of the interesting comments made:

The following papers from the Faculty Forum represent the ongoing project of Knox Seminary to articulate an understanding of Revelation through a lectionary reading of the Apocalypse and the Fourth Gospel and by an awareness of the overwhelmingly typological character of Johannine literature. We invite the participation of our students and the Christian community at large as we undertake this exciting study!

I hope some of you will find it as interesting as I do.

Originally posted by eschaton

Hi,

Pardon me for butting in, but I just wanted to mention there's a very interesting study going on by the Knox Theological Seminary that they call the John-Revelation Project.

http://www.knoxseminary.org/Prospect...ect/index.html

They are looking at the relationship between Revelation and the Gospel of John. Here is one of the interesting comments made:

The following papers from the Faculty Forum represent the ongoing project of Knox Seminary to articulate an understanding of Revelation through a lectionary reading of the Apocalypse and the Fourth Gospel and by an awareness of the overwhelmingly typological character of Johannine literature. We invite the participation of our students and the Christian community at large as we undertake this exciting study!

I hope some of you will find it as interesting as I do.

Thanks, eschaton.

That is indeed very interesting.

Originally posted by John Reece

Thanks, Jaltus.

I have been pondering your observation further, and re-reading Hort’s commentary.

It should be noted that Hort does not really base his case on a Nero Reborn myth. On the contrary, he wrote that with regard to an expectation of a return of Nero, “It was not till the full three score years and ten or four score years had elapsed from his birth, that the expectation of his reappearance could put on that supernatural character which is implied when the language of the Apocalypse is accounted for in this way.” — that is, in the way of a Nero Redivivus (= ‘come back to life’).

Here is Hort’s comment in full:

But the most striking feature of the times in connexion with this interpretation is the supposed connexion of this language of St John with the popular belief in the return of Nero. This is the most telling element in Renan’s melodramatic picture; but he has to resort to large exaggerations. Still the facts are impressive enough. First, Nero had won a kind of popularity; nay by the court which he had paid to the mob, by the exhibition of games, by his crimes, and his whole wild personality, he had deeply impressed the minds of many by a kind of demoniacal influence. “There were not wanting,” says Suet. 57, “men to adorn his tomb with spring flowers and summer flowers for a long period,” and his name was held in a strange kind of veneration. Presently rumours arose that he not dead, but would soon return to take vengeance on his foes. Several pretenders to the name did actually appear at different times. Dio Chrysostom, who died about 117, says (Or. xxi. p. 271) that “even now all desire him to live.” But, as Weiss shews, the belief was not in a resurrection, but simply in his being hidden away in the East, not really having died. The widely spread modern notion that there was a contemporary expectation of his mysteriously returning from the dead rests on a confusion between the ideas of different times. Nero, we must always remember, died young, not yet 32. If, therefore, the popular notion that he was not dead, but a fugitive in the East, had been true, there would have been nothing unreasonable for the next 40 or 50 years in looking for his return from the East; and that period carries us down later than the latest conceivable date of the Apocalypse. It was not till the full three score years and ten or four score years had elapsed from his birth, that the expectation of his reappearance could put on that supernatural character which is implied when the language of the Apocalypse is accounted for in this way.

I understand your point (and his), yet I cannot help but question the issue in the first place.

Does the myth need to be there in order for the passage to be there, or could we be trying too hard to make a supernatural occurrence look like a natural one by giving an explanation for it?

That has always been my problem with Revelation (and dating the NT in general), that people want to be able to point to solid historical happenstance which they can say gave rise to the narrative/prophecy/or whatever. Since we believe in a real God, we do not need such a crutch, as it were.

Hopefully you understand what I am saying, I do not think I am coming across well.

Quite interesting info, you have here, John

But let me share my own two cents anyway


The wqay I read Revelation, it is written during the reign of Domitian, but as if it was written during the time of Nero. If Domitian is "Nero Reborn", then Revelation probably might be trying to suggest other parallels

It's worth here remembering the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians, and that Babylon herself not long after was surrendered to the Persians. Maybe Revelation by its frequent allusions to the Old Testament tries to play along with such an idea.

The 7 heads of the beast fit well with Roman emperors from Augustus to Titus, when excluding Galba, Otho, and Vitellius, none of which were recognized in the east! Vespasian was in the east from before the death of Nero and until re was proclaimed emperor by the legate of Syria with the acceptance of the prefect of Egypt, the proconsul of Asia, and the Donau legions following soon after.


- FreezBee

Originally posted by Jaltus

I understand your point (and his), yet I cannot help but question the issue in the first place.

Does the myth need to be there in order for the passage to be there, or could we be trying too hard to make a supernatural occurrence look like a natural one by giving an explanation for it?

That has always been my problem with Revelation (and dating the NT in general), that people want to be able to point to solid historical happenstance which they can say gave rise to the narrative/prophecy/or whatever. Since we believe in a real God, we do not need such a crutch, as it were.

Hopefully you understand what I am saying, I do not think I am coming across well.

I do agree with you (if I understand you) that the prophetic inspiration that resulted in the writing of Revelation 17:10 is not to be explained by any popular expectation of a return of Nero — myth or no myth; early date or late date.

Exactly, John.

The problem with scholarship is the atheistic, anti-supernatural assumptions made when doing the work. We need to look past our academic conditioning and remember that God can do whatever He wants, hehe.

Originally posted by Jaltus

Exactly, John.

The problem with scholarship is the atheistic, anti-supernatural assumptions made when doing the work. We need to look past our academic conditioning and remember that God can do whatever He wants, hehe.

I am picking up where I left off in this post.

• 2. Internal Evidence as to identity with author of Fourth Gospel.
  
  This is a vast subject, far too vast for more than a few words. As regards difference of language and ideas, there is little to add to what I said before. The differences are great, so great that if the name John were absent, and if both Apocalypse and Gospel came down to us anonymously, difference of authorship would at least occur to us more naturally than identity of authorship. But this is not the problem. This evidence is only a part of the whole: and the question for us is simply whether it is to be so strong as to overpower the evidence for identity, and whether there is not other evidence of a contrary kind.
  
  As regards language, the only important difference is the number of constructions not truly Greek in the Apocalypse, and their absence from the Gospel. These peculiarities are either crude Hebraisms, or such as may easily be explained as phrases of one accustomed to think and speak in Hebrew rather than in Greek. A large proportion might be described simply as relaxations of the laws of concord in appositional phrases, in which there is a reversion (so to speak) from oblique cases to the nominative as the primary case, or from the feminine to the masculine as the primary gender. The best account is in Ewald’s Latin [i]Comm., 37-46 (de Linguae indole). A good summary also in Credner’s Einl. 731 f.; a diffuse but not minute one in Lücke Offenb. 448 ff. Winer, from his just hatred of finding Hebraisms everywhere, is too little disposed to recognize them in the Apocalypse. Supposing St John to have spent most of his life till then in Palestine (cf. Jos. Ant. xx. 11. 2), the phenomena are natural enough. It is not at all likely that he purposely chose this kind of language, though no doubt the nature of the subject made it easier to adopt. But still the fitness is there, and helps us to understand that we are listening to the last of the Hebrew prophets. It would have been just as unnatural if after 25 years and more of a Greek life he had not learned to write more correct Greek. But it is only the incorrectnesses that vanish. The Gospel of St John (and to a great extent his Epistles), though rarely Hebraistic, is entirely and intensely Hebraic in form as well as in substance. Its sentences have no Greek elaboration; they have the broad Hebrew simplicity. The only other book comparable is St James, and there the Hebrew substratum is hidden by distinct Greek culture. It is also striking that the chief exceptions to this simplicity are made by the naked inclusion of one sentence within another without mutual adaptation. Thus Ev. iv. 1 ff., i. 14-16; x. 12 f.; cf. xiii. 1-4, and Apoc. i. 5 f.; 17 f.; also ii. 2, 9; iii. 8 f.
  
  As regards ideas and words representing them there are again no doubt great differences, but not contradictions, and there are also some striking resemblances. For the two sides see Lücke 662-744, and Gebhardt, Doctrine of the Apoc. (last section), who, however, somewhat exaggerates the resemblance. Everyone notices ο λογος τ. θεου (xix. 13) and ο λογος, conceptions in their contexts by no means identical, but the one leading to the other, the Apocalypse standing between the O.T. and the Gospel. Not the least remarkable point is the selection of this name at all in such a context in the Apocalypse. And again iii. 14 η αρχη τ. κτισεως τ. θεου carries us back in another way to the Prologue. But the Christology of the Apocalypse is too large a subject to take only in passing. On this and other points of the relation between the two books see Wescott St John lxxxiv ff. The two subordinate but far reaching connexions I must mention, the peculiar prominence of the idea of μαρτυρια in both books, and (what is often noticed) νικαω [conquering by seeming defeat]. The relation of Judaism we shall have other opportunities for examining in connexion with passages supposed to be anti-Pauline. Notice at once the double position, devotion to Israel, yet bitter feeling that it was lost (xi. 1 f, esp. 8). In the Gospel both are there again, but the proportion is changed, the doom now being manifest: yet still it is εις τα ιδια and οι ιδιοι; οι Ιουδαιοι have joined the side of evil, but this is just the misery: it what only a Jew could feel completely.
  
  What strikes me, however, most strongly in the way of connexion is the sharp opposition of good and evil in concrete forms in the Apocalypse and in the other writings. No other books of the N.T. have anything like it. The opposition of the Holy City, the New Jerusalem, and Babylon is the most salient exhibition of it in the Apocalypse, but, indeed, it runs all through the book. In the Gospel the form is altered; St John has exchanged the Empire and the woman seated on the seven hills for ο κοσμος. To anyone who recalls the respectful language of St Paul and St Peter towards the heathen rulers, the recognition of them as having an authority from God and a work to be done for God, it is startling to read the language of the Apocalypse. But it is those last days of Nero that explain the contrast, the days when the supreme power seemed to be only the organ of the vilest passions of the most degraded humanity. In the Gospel we have come back to the serener air of the earlier time, and the more permanent view (as it were) of the relations of Christians to other men. But the antithesis, which in the Apocalypse puts on a peculiar and exceptional form, due to the circumstances of the time, is in itself too fundamental to be absent from the Gospel, though now the antagonist is “the world,” for “the world” includes every embodiment of the Babylonian spirit. In the Gospel St John goes back to our Lord’s own words, while he also applies them to his own person. Like the elder prophets he had first been led to see a vision of judgment in a concentrated form as it were, all brought into a single picture near at hand; and then learned by degrees that it had to be worked out by a slow process. The antagonism of powers takes various forms: but both Apocalypse and the other Johannine books are pervaded by it.
  
  Thus on the whole I see no sufficient reason in diversity of language or ideas for assigning the Apocalypse to a different author. Various good critics who have done so have also been so much struck by coincidences of spirit as to say that the author of the Gospel must have been a student of the Apocalypse. When we get thus far, it is merely arbitrary to suppose that our criticism can perform with certainty so delicate a task as that of discriminating the relationship of a Christian writer to a younger yet very mature disciple from that of a Christian writer between Nero and Vespasian to the same writer in the days of Trajan; the are, to speak roughly, only two different cases of the one relation, “the child the father of the man.” If we could find any tolerable evidence for the theory that the author of the Apocalypse was a bigoted Jew, and the author of the Fourth Gospel a subtle philosophizing Greek, it would no doubt be hard to imagine the passage from the one to the other. But these representations are baseless fictions, and the real differences of the books need no such violent transition to bridge them over.
  
  It is however true that without the long lapse of time and the change made by the Fall of Jerusalem the transition cannot be accounted for. Thus date and authorship do hang together. It would be easier to believe that the Apocalypse was written by an unknown John than that both books belong alike to St John’s extreme old age. The supposition of an early date relieves us however from any such necessity, and the early date is, we have seen, much the most probable on independent grounds.
  
  — F. J. A. Hort, The Apocalypse of St John I-III: The Greek Text with Introduction, Commentary, and Additional Notes (London: MacMillan and Co., Limited, 1908), pages xxxvii-xl.

Here is the conclusion of Hort’s Introduction to his commentary on Revelation:

Circumstances

The question whether it was through banishment that St John found himself in Patmos turns on the interpretation of i. 9, the discussion of which may stand over for the present [see on i. 2]. No doubt the exile is a tolerably constant feature of the traditions, but in all probability the source of the belief is that verse itself interpreted, and cannot be safely relied on as independent evidence. Today it is enough to say that the familiar interpretation seems to me much the most probable, though just now another interpretation is very popular.

There were two grades of banishment, deportatio (περιορισμος) and relegatio (εξορια). The word used in the traditions of St John is relego, but in non-legal writers it sometimes denotes vaguely any kind of banishment. (Rein in Pauly vi. I. 429 sub fin.). Deportatio, which succeeded to the aquae et ignis interdictio, was among the capitals poenae, and involved greater loss and degradation than relegatio, which might be for either a limited time (half a year to ten years) or for life. See especially Dig. xlviii. 19, 28 (Callistratus), also xlviii. 22. The power of deportation was reserved for emperors and the city prefect, that of relegation belonged also to the senate, the praetorian prefect, and the governors of provinces. Unless therefore St John was banished from Rome, he must have suffered the milder relegatio. Among the recorded banishments to Aegean islands hardly any are to those on the West coast of Asia Minor, the Cyclades being preferred. This somewhat confirms the supposition that the Proconsul of Asia banished St John. Governors of provinces had the power of relegation to islands belonging to their own province, if it possessed islands: otherwise they could only give sentence in general terms and then write to the emperor to get him to assign an island (Dig. xlviii. 22. 7, Ulpian). But there can be little doubt that Patmos (very obscurely mentioned in ancient writers) would belong to Asia: the separate province of isles is apparently only of much later date.

There is no inherent impossibility of St John’s having accompanied St Peter to Rome, and for some special reason having suffered banishment at the hands of Nero; and this would agree with the language of Tertullian, and apparently Roman tradition. St Peter and St John appear together in John xxi.; Acts iii. 1 ff.; iv. 13 ff.; viii. 14-25. But little as we know about St Peter at Rome, it is not at all likely that if St John had been with him the fact would not have escaped notice. This and the choice of Patmos suggest the probability that the banishment was from Asia (e.g. Ephesus) and by the proconsul.

The only place in N.T. (excluding Apocalypse) where St John appears in person after the early part of Acts is Gal. ii. 9, with reference to St Paul’s visit to Jerusalem about 51, when St James the Lord’s brother, St Peter and St John agreed with St Paul and Barnabas that they should take the Gentiles, themselves the circumcision. We know nothing of the Churches of Judea from Acts after Acts xi. except so far as they are connected with the works of St Paul. Neither the time nor the occasion of either his or St Peter’s leaving Jerusalem can be fixed with certainty. Eus. iii. 5. 2, 3 speaks of the martyrdom of St James, and the rest of the apostles having had innumerable plots against their lives and being driven from Judea and setting out to preach the Gospel among all nations with the power of Christ, in that He had said to them “Go ye, &c.,” and moreover (ου μην αλλα) of the people of the Church at Jerusalem having been bidden to go and dwell in Pella of Peraea by a certain oracle (κατα τινα χρησμον) given by revelation to those held in esteem there (τοις αυτοθι δοκιμοις). Epip. (Naz. 7, p. 123 B) speaks also of the migration to Pella, in which he includes “all the [?disciples of the] apostles [Oehler prints των μαθητων των εν Πελλη ωκηκοτων], but notes in Addenda ‘Pro μαθητων των εν Ven. est αποστολων εν],” and which he ascribes to a command of Christ: in his Mens. et Pond. 15, p. 171 A, he again refers to it but speaks of “all the disciples,” and of a divine warning by an angel. The common source of both is not unlikely to be Hegesippus, whom Eusebius transcribes for the account of St James’s death. That event has an uncertainty of its own. If, as is most probable, the account in Josephus is not an interpolation, and is true, St James’s death must have occurred early in 62. It is true that Hegesippus closely connects it with the siege (Eus. ii. 23. 18), which was in 70: but his language need not be interpreted chronologically. The whole account, however, of the subsequent events is too vague to allow us to use it for determining the particular crisis which led the apostles, or some of them, to leave Palestine.

We are equally ignorant what St John took, and what was his local or ecclesiastical position when he was banished to Patmos. The authority with which he writes is not necessarily official authority: his personal position towards our Lord as one of the Twelve and one of the Three will account for everything. It is conceivable that at this time he had some government of the churches of Asia; but there is no evidence for it, such as we might naturally have expected had this been his position. His voice throughout is not the voice of ruler, but of a prophet.

Although we are obliged to acquiesce in ignorance of much that we should greatly desire to know, it is quite possible to gain a clear view of the position of the Apocalypse to the Apostolic age and the Apostolic literature. Putting aside St Paul’s Epistles, three great Epistles from other hands seem to belong to different stages in the eight to ten years preceding the Fall of Jerusalem, with shadows deepening as the climax approaches. These are James, 1 Peter, Hebrews; and then last of all, out of the very midst of the day the Lord foretold by Christ Himself, we have this trumpet message to the seven churches of Asia. Thus, although the Apocalypse is not the last book of the N.T., it is the last book of that great first period which ends with God’s final judgment on His own holy city. St John’s Gospel and Epistles are spoken out of and into the midst of another world, the world which in a true sense is our own world or at least continuous with it. But a generation earlier, when the Apocalypse was written, St John already stood alone, the last of the great apostles: St James, St Peter, and St Paul had already perished by violent deaths: this book has thus a far more catastrophic and in that sense final character than it could have had in the closing years of the century.

Asia Minor was, there can be no reasonable doubt, the house of his later years; though this has latterly been rashly denied.

The evidence is Polycarp (ob. 155-6) according to Irenaeus (v. 20): Irenaeus writing to Florinus gives a precise account of his early intercourse with Polycarp, and how Polycarp talked of his συναναστροφη with John and with the others who had seen the Lord, &c. (Eus. v. 20).

(Papias of Hierapolis is said by Irenaeus v. 33. 4 to have been a hearer of John and companion of Polycarp. This is less certain evidence because, though it may have come from independent knowledge, it may depend on a misunderstanding of Papias’s words about the presbyter John, as Eusebius himself points out. But the supposed similar confusion in the case of Polycarp is most improbable when we read Irenaeus’s very definite words.)

Polycarp again, according to Irenaeus (Eus. v. 24), had not been persuaded by Anicetus to change the paschal customs of Asia, as he had always kept them “with John the disciple of our Lord and the other apostles with whom he held converse” (συνδιετριψεν).

About the same time Polycrates of Ephesus appeals to the tombs of apostles (Eus. iii. 31. 2; v. 24) in Asia, among them “John, who leaned on the Lord’s breast, who became a priest wearing the πεταλον, και μαρτυς και διδασκαλος, he is said to sleep at Ephesus.” Apollonius (Eus. v. 18) speaks of John having raised a man from the dead at Ephesus. Later evidence abundant enough.

As evidence for an earlier death of St John is urged:

• (1) Apoc. xviii. 20, as if SS. Peter and Paul were not enough.

• (2) Heracleon (ap. Clem. Str. iv. 9, p. 595 Potter) speaks of Matthew, Philip, Thomas, Levi and many others as having made their confession by their voice, i.e. not by suffering, while John is not mentioned. But evidently his exile would count as suffering and μαρτυρεω is in fact several times applied to him in this sense.

• (3) Georgius Hamartolus [quoted in Lightfoot and Harmer, p. 519] seems to say that according to Papias John “was killed by Jews”: — Παπιας γαρ ο Ιεραπολιως επισκοπος αυτοπτης τουτου γενομενος εν τω δευτερω λογω τ. κυριακων λογιων φασκει οτι υπο Ιουδαιων ανηρεθη πληρωσας δηλαδη μετα τ. αδελφοι αυτου την τ. χριστου περι αυτου προρρησιν και τ. εαυτου ομολογιαν, &c. In the condensed extract from Papias lately published by De Boor from and Oxford MS. It stands Παπιας εν τω δευτερω λογω λεγει οτι Ιωαννης ο θεολογος και Ιακωβος ο αδελφος αυτου υπο Ιουδαιων ανηρεθησαν. In any case there must be some confusion or mistake.

Unless St John really was in Asia, it is hopeless to attempt to explain the beliefs about it; above all, those of Polycarp.

— F. J. A. Hort, The Apocalypse of St John I-III: The Greek Text with Introduction, Commentary, and Additional Notes (London: MacMillan and Co., Limited, 1908), pages xl-xliv

Unfortunately Hort died before he got beyond chapter III in his commentary on Revelation.

The last comment I have to transcribe from Hort (except for a pull-quote from the last post) is on Revelation 2:9 (brackets added by me):

9. λεγοντων Ιουδαιους ειναι εαυτους. [= (with context added) ‘those who say that they are Jews and are not’ —ESV] (=iii.9). Again urged as against St Paul, and again paralleled by his own language, Romans 2:28f. The Jews who refuse the hope of Israel and reject their true King have lost their title to the name Jews. After the destruction of Jerusalem and God’s manifest judgment on the nation this form of language lost its meaning. Henceforth Jew and Christian stood opposed to each other, and hence the language of St John’s gospel.

— F. J. A. Hort, The Apocalypse of St John I-III: The Greek Text with Introduction, Commentary, and Additional Notes (London: MacMillan and Co., Limited, 1908), page 25.

Here is a paragraph in the last post above that I think bears repeating:

Although we are obliged to acquiesce in ignorance of much that we should greatly desire to know, it is quite possible to gain a clear view of the position of the Apocalypse to the Apostolic age and the Apostolic literature. Putting aside St Paul’s Epistles, three great Epistles from other hands seem to belong to different stages in the eight to ten years preceding the Fall of Jerusalem, with shadows deepening as the climax approaches. These are James, 1 Peter, Hebrews; and then last of all, out of the very midst of the day the Lord foretold by Christ Himself, we have this trumpet message to the seven churches of Asia. Thus, although the Apocalypse is not the last book of the N.T., it is the last book of that great first period which ends with God’s final judgment on His own holy city. St John’s Gospel and Epistles are spoken out of and into the midst of another world, the world which in a true sense is our own world or at least continuous with it. But a generation earlier, when the Apocalypse was written, St John already stood alone, the last of the great apostles: St James, St Peter, and St Paul had already perished by violent deaths: this book has thus a far more catastrophic and in that sense final character than it could have had in the closing years of the century.

I have found no argument on the date of the Apocalypse convincing, in either direction. But I must comment on Hort’s approach to the Beast. He in essence applies it to Nero, as many modern preterists do. But this completely ignores the essential symbolism of this character.

The beast is presented in Rev 13 and 17 as an amalgam of the four beasts of Daniel 7. This necessarily imports the symbolism of Daniel 7 into the Apocalypse. Those four beasts represented human government from the time of Babylon to the parousia. Thus, the beast as an amalgam cannot represent Nero. He was a bit player for several years in God’s grand design. The symbol greatly exceeds him. As a result, any argument for an early date based on Nero being the beast is sadly mistaken.

Extending on this argument, any argument that suggests that the seven heads of the beast are seven hills of Rome or seven emperors is again far exceeded by the symbolism and is again mistaken.

I agree with Hort on the proper use of gematria. It must be the native Greek application, not a Hebrew transliteration.

Without examining details, I agree with Hort that the Apostle was the author of the Apocalypse. The scholarly opinion seems to tilt fairly strongly in that direction.

Ted

If indeed the Apostle John wrote both the Gospel and the Apocalypse in Greek, there is much merit in this comment by Hort:

Although we are obliged to acquiesce in ignorance of much that we should greatly desire to know, it is quite possible to gain a clear view of the position of the Apocalypse to the Apostolic age and the Apostolic literature. Putting aside St Paul’s Epistles, three great Epistles from other hands seem to belong to different stages in the eight to ten years preceding the Fall of Jerusalem, with shadows deepening as the climax approaches. These are James, 1 Peter, Hebrews; and then last of all, out of the very midst of the day the Lord foretold by Christ Himself, we have this trumpet message to the seven churches of Asia. Thus, although the Apocalypse is not the last book of the N.T., it is the last book of that great first period which ends with God’s final judgment on His own holy city. St John’s Gospel and Epistles are spoken out of and into the midst of another world, the world which in a true sense is our own world or at least continuous with it. But a generation earlier, when the Apocalypse was written, St John already stood alone, the last of the great apostles: St James, St Peter, and St Paul had already perished by violent deaths: this book has thus a far more catastrophic and in that sense final character than it could have had in the closing years of the century.

I have issues with Hort's reasoning in regards to the actual Greek of the text of Revelation. The more Koine documents we get, the less Revelation is understood as a poor form of Greek or a Hebraic form of Greek. Greg Beale's dissertation (and subsequent JSNTSup publications) have put the nail in the coffin on this for me. Beale points out how the "grammatical irrgularities" are in fact intentional allusions to the LXX, done so that the reader would understand that something symbolic is happening at that point in the text. Instead of being poor Greek or Hebraic Greek, it is loaded language.

Originally posted by Jaltus

I have issues with Hort's reasoning in regards to the actual Greek of the text of Revelation. The more Koine documents we get, the less Revelation is understood as a poor form of Greek or a Hebraic form of Greek. Greg Beale's dissertation (and subsequent JSNTSup publications) have put the nail in the coffin on this for me. Beale points out how the "grammatical irrgularities" are in fact intentional allusions to the LXX, done so that the reader would understand that something symbolic is happening at that point in the text. Instead of being poor Greek or Hebraic Greek, it is loaded language.

An aside (and probably stupid) question: Could something similar be part of what is going on in 2 Peter? Bear in mind I understand very little of the issue with the Greek differences in 1 & 2 Peter beyond that there is a controversy and a few of the theories as to why they vary. But I do find it fascinating.


By the way, cool thread! Someday, I hope to understand it!

Originally posted by Jaltus

I have issues with Hort's reasoning in regards to the actual Greek of the text of Revelation. The more Koine documents we get, the less Revelation is understood as a poor form of Greek or a Hebraic form of Greek. Greg Beale's dissertation (and subsequent JSNTSup publications) have put the nail in the coffin on this for me. Beale points out how the "grammatical irregularities" are in fact intentional allusions to the LXX, done so that the reader would understand that something symbolic is happening at that point in the text. Instead of being poor Greek or Hebraic Greek, it is loaded language.

Very interesting.

Can you give me identifying information for Beale’s writings on this subject (so I can order them from a library)?

I wish to find out if there are ‘grammatical irregularities’ in the LXX texts to which the writer of Revelation alludes by means of ‘grammatical irregularities’, rather than by quotes of the LXX . . . and how it is that ‘grammatical irregularities’ indicate something symbolic is happening at that point in the text . . . and how is that something so subtle would be obvious to first century lay readers but too subtle to be seen by the best scholars of the 19^th and 20^th centuries.

John's Use of the Old Testament in Revelation. Journal for the Study of the New Testament Supplement Series 166. Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1999. 400 pages.

It is the last (or second to last, can't remember off the top of my head) chapter in the book.