gstafleu

I was wondering how Christian Revelations really is. So I looked up all occurrences of Jesus and/or Christ. There aren't many, depending how you count only 14 Jesus in all of Revelation. Compare that to over 500 references to the OT! (According to A History of the End of the World (or via: amazon.co.uk), by Kirsch). That suggests that Revelations could be a Jewish work that has been "adapted" for Christian use.

So, could some enterprising soul have inserted these Jesuses? Does the story change, or is it even affected, if we cut them out? Let's see.

First, the occurrences of Jesus:

JESUS
=====
This is really the only place where our "editor" gets to show off his prowess. The original was something like "The revelation which God gave to me to show his servants what must soon take place."Or even "The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave to his servants to show what must soon take place."

An easy tack-on of "and the testimony of Jesus Christ." Remove it and nothing changes.

Another easy tack-on (and from Jesus Christ...), be it a bit more extensive. Or perhaps (see my final remark at the end) "Jesus Christ" was just "the messiah" in the original?

Two easy tack-ons in one: "in Jesus" and "and the testimony of Jesus." He could easily have been there just because of the word of God.

An easy tack-on of "and hold to the testimony of Jesus."

You guessed it: "and remain faithful to Jesus." We can lose it without much consequence.

We don't really need "the blood of those who bore testimony to Jesus" do we?

We can scrap "who hold to the testimony of Jesus" and the last sentence without much influence on the story.

Insertion of "for Jesus and". They had been beheaded because of their testomony for the word of God.

"Jesus" has been inserted, so has "and the offspring of David". The interesting thing is that Rev 22 starts talking about "I am coming soon" in verse 7. Jesus is only mentioned in V16, it is not clear who the "I" is before that. Or is it? V13: I am the Alpha and the Omega... C.f. Rev 1:8: "I am the Alpha and the Omega," says the Lord God,... Here it is clearly god who is the Alpha and Omega. Jesus looks like a belated afterthought here.

Tack-on of "Come, Lord Jesus."

The last verse, added for good measure.

Here are the occurrences of Christ:

CHRIST
======
See 1:1 above.

See 1:2 above.

See 1:5 above.

Finally a Christ without Jesus. An easy insertion, though.

Another easy one.

We can do without "with Christ."

Scrap "and of Christ."

A final remark. "Christ" is just Greek for "Messiah," and Judaism was strong on messiahs. It could be that some of these Jesuses were just Christs in the original.

So, what do you think? It looks as if we can cut out all Jesuses without affecting the story in the least. Could this be a Jewish apocalypse that has been adapted for Christianity, or is that just my wild imagination?

Gerard Stafleu

Coleslaw

Two of the books I've read on the subject have described it just that way-one of them used the term "Jewish apocalypse with Christian interpolations". I'll have to wait until I get home to look up titles and authors. I think it's a fairly well-respected view, although I don't know that it's the dominant view. There was a lot of controversy over including Revelations in the NT at all, though, and St. Augustine recommended reading it spiritually, not "carnally".

Coleslaw

Okay, I looked one of the books up. It's a popular treatment of the subject called A History of the End of the World: How the Most Controversial Book in the Bible Changed the Course of Western Civilization (or via: amazon.co.uk) by Jonathan Kirsch. The other book is more scholarly.

Clivedurdle

http://www.geocities.com/b_d_muller/rjohn.html

http://www.geocities.com/athens/forum/5951/ntb519c.html

Coleslaw

The other book I was thinking of is described here:

The Apocalyptic Imagination: An Introduction to Jewish Apocalyptic Literature (The Biblical Resource Series) (or via: amazon.co.uk)

Malachi151

Actually I think that many of the passages make more sense if you cut out Jesus, its not that they aren't affected, IMO they are affected to a more reasonable writing that looks more like something that would have been originally written, but its hard for me to say, I'd like to see commentary on this by a Jewish scholar.

They pretty much all seem like afterthoughts to me, except the reference in 1:5, which as you say could have originally said messiah, however without any further evidence, such as a copy of this without it, or any quotes from that show parts without Jesus where we now see them, its only speculation, though not idle speculation.

gstafleu

Thanks for the reference Coleslaw. I'm actually reading the other one you mentioned (by Kirsch). I haven't gotten to the part where he calls it a Jewish apocalypse with Christian interpolations (if he does that) yet. But you can see where I got the idea!

Gerard

Coleslaw

It was Collins who called it that (the author of the other book I mentioned), not Kirsch.

gstafleu

Thanks for the links Clive. I noticed that the second one ends with the conclusion that "The Book of Revelation is no "mere" apocalypse, for it is the apocalypse of Jesus Christ - the faithful witness (Revelation 1:5)." And "... that the purely future orientation of Jewish apocalyptic is modified in the Book of Revelation by the conviction that eschatological fulfillment has already begun in the historical event of Jesus Christ." A bit heavy burden to carry for these 14 loose Jesuses perhaps?

Gerard

Ben C Smith

I have no opinion as yet on whether the author of Revelation was adapting a Jewish apocalypse.

However, it seems to me that a simple word search is an insufficient measure of how Christian the document is. Consider the slain lamb of Revelation 5; who is this lamb? What ancient mythical or historical figure explains why the lamb would be wrathful in 6.16?

For that matter, who is the lion of the tribe of Judah, the root of David?

The day of the Lord is a frequent OT motif pointing to the end times, but in Christian parlance the phrase could also mean the day of worship. If the phrase in 1.10 does not mean the Christian day of worship, what does it mean? Or is that phrase tagged on as well?

Who was it who died and came to life in, say, 2.8? Who is the messianic figure, called both son of God and son of man, who keeps promising to come?

Who is the male child of 12.5? See also the rest of that chapter.

Who are the twelve apostles of 21.14? There are Christian parallels to the false apostles of 2.2; are there Jewish ones?

Not that one could not come up with solutions to these problems. My point is that the reworking of an originally Jewish apocalypse looks like it would have extended to quite a bit more than the insertion of a few phrases here and there.