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"WHAT THOU SEEST, WRITE IN A BOOK."-Rev. i. 11.

FROM THE THORWALDSEN MARBLES.

CHAPTER IX.

THE APOCALYPSE: ITS DATE AND DESIGN.

I. DATE. FROM INTERNAL EVIDENCE. PECULIAR IDIOM.-SEVEN CHURCHES

AS YET ONLY IN ASIA.-JUDAIZING HERETICS ACTIVE.-THE JEWS STILL OCCUPYING AS A DISTINCT PEOPLE THEIR LAND.-JERUSALEM NOT YET DESTROYED. THE SIXTH ROMAN EMPEROR ON THE THRONE.-NO INTERNAL EVIDENCE FAVOURING LATER DATE. THE EXTERNAL EVIDENCE ESTI

MATED. II. DESIGN.-THEME, COMING OF CHRIST. HIS COMING PARTLY VISIBLE, PARTLY INVISIBLE.-BOOK WITH SEVEN SEALS, SYMBOL OF THE ENTIRE PROPHECY.-OVERTHROW OF THE JEWISH AND PAGAN PERSECUTING POWERS. OF THE LATER OPPOSING POWERS.-MILLENNIAL AND HEAVENLY GLORY.

I. DATE DETERMINED FROM INTERNAL EVIDENCE.1 THE question whether the Apocalypse was written at an early or in the very closing period of the apostolic ministration has importance as bearing on the interpretation of the book. A true exposition depends, in no small degree, upon a knowledge of the existing condition of things at the time it was written; i.e., of the true point in history occupied by the writer, and those whom he originally addressed. The same is manifestly true of the prophecies in general; eminently so of those of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Daniel. If the book were an epistle, like that to the Romans or to the Hebrews, it might be of comparatively little importance, in ascertaining its meaning, to be able to determine

The question whether John was the author of the Apocalypse is not considered in this book. There is an exhaustive discussion of this question in the first volume of Stuart's Commentary on the Apocalypse, filling nearly 200 pages, in which the author appears to give the fairest consideration and the fullest weight to the objections made to the Johannean authorship, but is compelled to believe, in the end, that the book was written by the apostle John. [The latest work on this subject, Luthardt's "St. John the Author of the Fourth Gospel," had not come to hand when the former part of this note was written. In it the gifted professor is said to discuss this question with learning, thoroughness, and the most admirable spirit; and on a more careful examination one comes to estimate still more highly the reverential spirit, together with the candour and research and mastery of his materials with which he has examined the evidence and vindicated the apostolic authorship of this Gospel. A translation by Caspar René Gregory has been published by T. & T. Clark, Edinburgh; and Scribner, Welford & Armstrong, New York.]

whether it was written at the commencement of the apostolic era or at its very close.

It is obvious that if the book itself throws any distinct light on this subject, this internal evidence, especially in the absence of reliable historical testimony, ought to be decisive. Instead of appealing to tradition or to some doubtful passage in an ancient father, we interrogate the book itself, or we listen to what the Spirit saith that was in him who testified of these things. It will be found that no book of the New Testament more abounds in passages which clearly have respect to the time when it was written.

It is necessary only to premise that the question in regard to the authorship of the Apocalypse will be considered as settled; that is, it will be taken for granted that it was written by the apostle John, the same who wrote the fourth Gospel and the Epistles that bear his

name.

1. Evidence from Peculiar Idiom.

The peculiar idiom, so thoroughly Hebraistic, in which it is written, proves that it was the first of the books written by John, and one of the earliest of the New Testament.

The entire New Testament, it is true, is written in this Greek of the synagogue, or Hebrew Greek. It records doctrines and precepts originally delivered in Hebrew, or in a dialect of that language, and events many of which had been predicted in the Hebrew Scriptures. Moreover, the Hebrew, or this dialect, was the vernacular of the principal actors and speakers mentioned in the narrative parts. It was unavoidable that the writers of the New Testament, themselves Hebrews, in expressing these new and peculiar ideas in a foreign language, should attach new shades of meaning to many words, coin new ones, and imitate Hebrew phrases and constructions. This language or idiom had already been prepared for them, as to a considerable portion of the terms, by the Septuagint translation of the Scriptures. Some of the words in this Hellenistic Greek are used in senses which, as remarked by Dr. Campbell,1 can be learned only from the extent of signification given to some Hebrew or Chaldaic word, corresponding to the Greek in its primitive and most ordinary sense," as found in classic authors.

Now what is true of the Greek of the entire New Testament and of the Septuagint is very especially true of that of the Apocalypse. We find here far more numerous instances of these changes or this extension in the meaning of words, imitations of whole phrases, analogous forma

1 Preliminary Dissertation, p. 23.

tions of new words, and examples of the combination of Hebrew inflections and constructions, and a predilection for the preposition where the Greeks use only the cases. It is especially deserving of notice how the writer of the Apocalypse, when expressing in Greek a Hebrew epithet, for which no proper representative is found in the Greek language, puts it in the nominative case where the syntax would require a genitive or a dative or an accusative, thus conforming to the Hebrew nouns he is representing, which do not admit of inflection in the oblique cases. The following are examples: chap. i. 4; áñò ô ŵv kai ó ηv kai ó épxóuevos. These words are a rendering in Greek of the word "Jehovah," which is indeclinable. The drò requires the genitive; but the writer, governed by the Hebrew, recognises no oblique cases. He sees no room for flexion in translating that name which expresses attributes belonging only to Him who is the same present, past, and future. In the original it is literally "from who is, and who was, and who comes." And so in the next verse, áñò 'Iŋσoû Xpiσroû, ó μάρτυς, κ.τ.λ. We learn from chap. iii. 14 that these words define the meaning of the indeclinable Hebrew noun "Amen "; hence the casus rectus again.

We sometimes have in a single word an example of the manner in which John weds the Hebrew and the Greek. Thus in chap. i. 15, in the description of the appearance of the Son of man, it is said His feet were "like unto fine brass,” xaλkodɩßávw, a word which has greatly perplexed students. It is found only in this book, and was probably a word of John's own composition. The explanation which commends itself above any other is as follows: it is composed of a Greek word and a Hebrew, xalkós, brass, and 12?, to make white; so xaλkoλißavov means brass brought to a white heat, in an incandescent state, of a glittering whiteness. This explanation was first proposed by Bochart. It has been adopted by Vitringa, Hengstenberg, and Trench. Hengstenberg says: "in the formation of this word we are presented with a small image of the innermost nature of the Apocalypse, the singular manner in which the Hebrew and the Hellenic are fused together in it." 2 We have perhaps another somewhat similar example in the word Nikodaïтwv, chap. ii. 6, the best interpretation of which is that it is derived from the Greek words viκâv тòv λaóν, which would express in a name, Nicolaus or Nicolas, what Balaam expresses in Hebrew, "destroyer of the people,” and is therefore equivalent to Balaamites. As the other names in this book are predominantly mystical and symbolic, in all probability this is so as well.s

1 De Animalibus Sacr. Script., ii. 16, p. 883.

2 Comm. on Rev., Edin. Ed., i., p. 101, note.

3 See Archbishop Trench on Epistles to the Seven Churches: Amer. Ed., p. 58.

But so conspicuous is this Hebrew idiom in the Apocalypse that it is unnecessary to multiply examples. While it is Greek in language, it is Hebrew in form and spirit. This lies upon the very surface, and is patent to the most cursory examination. It is admitted by all who have bestowed any attention on the subject that it is more prominent here than in any other part of the New Testament, not excepting the other writings of John. It causes the book to bear somewhat the aspect of an elementary, initiatory work, as if it might be the fontal source of those further idiomatic changes required in the Greek of the synagogue, to adapt it to the expression of the truths of the gospel of Christ. Now what are we authorized to infer from this? Clearly that it was one of the earliest written books of the New Testament. Beyond all question, as the New Testament contains other books written by John, this Hebrew complexion, so marked in the style of the Apocalypse, proves that the writer of it was but recently arrived among a Greek population, and that this was his first attempt at composition in Greek. At this result we have certainly arrived, that the Apocalypse, in its verbal language, bears evidence of having been written long before the Gospel and Epistles of John. Tholuck says: "when we compare it [the style of the Gospel of John] with the style of the Apocalypse, the Gospel, to all appearance, must have been written at a considerably later period." He thinks that the interval of twenty or twenty-five years would not be too great to require to account for the great diversity in their language. Of all the arguments adduced by Sir Isaac Newton, none appears more cogent to Michaelis than that which is drawn from the Hebrew style of the Revelation, from which Sir Isaac had drawn the conclusion that John must have written the book shortly after his departure from Palestine, and before the destruction of Jerusalem.2

2. Seven Churches only in Asia at the time it was written.

There appear to have been but seven churches in Asia, that is to say, in Proconsular Asia, or that part of Asia Minor lying along the western seaboard, when this book was written. It is dedicated to these seven alone, by the careful mention of them one by one by name, as if there were no others (i. 4, 11); ταῖς ἑπτὰ ἐκκλησίαις ταῖς ἐν τῇ 'Ασίᾳ, “ to the seven churches in Asia." The expression 66 the seven churches" seems to imply that this constituted the whole number, and hence affords one of the most striking incidental proofs in favour of an early date. "There were but seven churches," says Dr. Tilloch, "in Asia when the Revela

1 Comm. on Gospel, Introd., § 3. Also Olshausen's Introd. to John, § 4. * Introductory Lecture, Marsh's Translation, 1793. Vol. iv.

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