Read The Jewish Annotated New Testament Online
Authors: Amy-Jill Levine
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Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of the prophecy, and blessed are those who hear and who keep what is written in it; for the time is near.
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John to the seven churches that are in Asia:
Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the seven spirits who are before his throne,
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and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth.
ORAL AND WRITTEN PROPHECY
By designating his work as a prophecy, not just a revelation, that recipients should hear (1.3), John situates this text in a social world that held prophets in high regard—not only such legendary authors as Ezekiel and Isaiah but also living embodiments of the divine word. John is, of course, a scribe of God’s heavenly revelations much like Enoch and Ezekiel (10.3–4; 21.5; see “John, a New Ezekiel,” p.
473
), and the prophecies he offers his audience are supposed to originate in heavenly writing (10.1–11; 22.7,10). Yet in its anxious divine utterances (16.15; 22.7,10,12–13,16,20) Revelation clearly means to be a prophecy, a vehicle of the divine voice itself.
There is much evidence for a resurgence of prophet figures in first- and second-century Judaism and its Christian offshoots (Acts 5.36–37; 13.6; 21.38; Josephus,
J.W
. 2.58–63;
Ant
. 20.167–72; Origen,
Cels
. 7.9; Eusebius,
Hist. eccl
. 5.16–17), and John’s negative appraisal of certain rival prophets in his own milieu (2.20; cf. 13.11–15) suggests his active involvement in a world in which congregations depended on such charismatic figures for direction and interpretation of the times. He has also prefaced his revelation with an epistolary introduction (1.4–6) and seven letters, all bearing the authority of God himself and the risen Christ (1.8,17–19). He or a subsequent editor also shows particular concern at the end of the book for the exact and inerrant transmission of his prophecy, with a curse on anyone who might change specific passages (22.18–19). Revelation thus oscillates between text and prophetic voice, alternately claiming the distinctive authority of each.
Do these features of Revelation reflect a historical situation in which letters had gained a certain religious cachet and in which authors and speakers both might justly be concerned for the accuracy of their messages’ transmission? Could the increasing authority of Paul’s letters have stimulated John’s composition (or a subsequent edition of it)? Paul, after all, wrote on human authority but in grandiose terms (Gal 1.1; 1 Cor 1.1) and promoted dilutions of Jewish purity laws that John seems to have adamantly rejected (2.14,20; see “The Letters to the Seven Congregations,” p.
468
).
To him who loves us and freed
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us from our sins by his blood,
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and made
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us to be a kingdom, priests serving
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his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.
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Look! He is coming with the clouds;
every eye will see him,
even those who pierced him;
and on his account all the tribes of the
earth will wail.
So it is to be. Amen.
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“I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.
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I, John, your brother who share with you in Jesus the persecution and the kingdom and the patient endurance, was on the island called Patmos because of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus.
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I was in the spirit
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on the Lord’s day, and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet
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saying, “Write in a book what you see and send it to the seven churches, to Ephesus, to Smyrna, to Pergamum, to Thyatira, to Sardis, to Philadelphia, and to Laodicea.”
CHRIST AS MANIFESTATION OF GOD
John expresses his principal devotion to the Jewish Lord, God of heaven and earth (e.g., 1.8; 15.3–4; 19.5–6), whose wrath will cause eschatological destruction. But the book also reveals various heavenly roles for the risen Christ: as God’s own spirit of prophecy (19.10), as the seven-eyed Lamb that will reign with God in the eschatological Jerusalem (5.6; 21.22–22.5), and perhaps most importantly as the “Son of Man” in the beginning, whose unearthly voice dictates the letters to the seven congregations. How can we understand Christ as fitting into John’s Jewish cosmology?
Most apocalypses since Ezekiel had revealed simultaneously God’s inconceivability and at least one chief angelic mediator through whose visible or embodied appearance one might contemplate divine agency and understand biblical references to God’s human-like appearance (e.g., Ps 18; Isa 6.1). This figure was often called “the human-like one” in Semitic phraseology, “one like a son of man” (Dan 7.13–14;
1 En
. 46,48,62,69–70) or as enthroned bearer of God’s holy name, the tetragrammaton YHWH, called “Lord” (
4 Ezra
[2 Esd 3–14] 13.51; 14.19) or even “Jao-El” (
Apoc. Abr
. 10.9). In the later Jewish visionary traditions called
hekhalot
(“palaces,” presenting a vision of heaven as a mansion with many rooms), these angelic representatives were described in frighteningly monstrous guises. Some texts even proposed that the most righteous among humans, like Enoch or Jacob, had become assimilated to this heavenly mediator angel (
1 En
. 71;
Pr. Jos
.). It is in this sense that we might understand the “Son of Man” in ch 1, who is an explicit composite of the two heavenly figure in Dan 7 but who is also identified as a form of the risen Christ (1.18). This figure bears the cosmic and vengeful aspects and titles of God, but in visible and communicative form.
Revelation, of course, displays other heavenly hypostases (manifestations of divine functions): God’s
vengeance
, in the form of a rider (19.11–16), and the prophetic voice of imminent judgment, in the form of a rainbow-headed angel descending on the shore (ch 10), with neither of whom is Christ assimilated. As an apocalyptic visionary John is particular about those hypostases or heavenly attributes with which Christ has merged. Indeed, the initial “Son of Man” figure further subdivides into a series of seven discrete epithets that address the seven congregations in chs 2–3. Then, after the opening “Son of Man” figure, we are especially directed to the slaughtered and triumphant Lamb (ch 5). Incorporating both risen Christ and God’s messianic agent, indeed, God’s throne-mate (5.13; 22.1), the seven-eyed, scroll-wielding Lamb is meant to serve as the true heavenly form of God’s regent.
Apocalyptic visions of the heavenly world involved an awesome, even terrifying sequence of unearthly sounds, polymorphic beings, and shifting appearances; in this document John departs utterly from traditions of the earthly Jesus and his resurrection to reveal the beings with which Christ came to be incorporated in heaven, and in which form he would imminently return.
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Then I turned to see whose voice it was that spoke to me, and on turning I saw seven golden lampstands,
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and in the midst of the lampstands I saw one like the Son of Man, clothed with a long robe and with a golden sash across his chest.
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His head and his hair were white as white wool, white as snow; his eyes were like a flame of fire,
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his feet were like burnished bronze, refined as in a furnace, and his voice was like the sound of many waters.
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In his right hand he held seven stars, and from his mouth came a sharp, two-edged sword, and his face was like the sun shining with full force.
THE LETTERS TO THE SEVEN CONGREGATIONS
Each letter in chs 2–3 is addressed in standard epistolary form, from one of the divine epithets of the “Son of Man” figure John has just encountered, to a congregation or group of Christ-devotees in a city in Asia Minor (
ekklēsia
in this era is best not translated “church”). Each letter consists of historically obscure prophetic allusions, and cryptic threats and promises, from none of which it is possible to reconstruct a convincing background scenario. Nor is it possible to know John’s precise relationship to, or authority in, the congregations he addresses. What is apparent, however, is a general crisis of authority over the strict observance of Jewish purity, with the prophet John vilifying those who would dilute
halakhah
as he sees it (2.9,14; 3.9). What evidence we have of Jewish life in first-century Asia Minor shows much intermingling with Greco-Roman culture, even as the communities for which we have evidence seem to have maintained basic Jewish institutions like Sabbath, prayer, and some meal-purity practices. John stands well to the right of this fluid Jewish world, as a kind of reformer, seeking a rigorous
priestly
purity for the congregations of the end-times.
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When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. But he placed his right hand on me, saying, “Do not be afraid; I am the first and the last,
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and the living one. I was dead, and see, I am alive forever and ever; and I have the keys of Death and of Hades.
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Now write what you have seen, what is, and what is to take place after this.
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As for the mystery of the seven stars that you saw in my right hand, and the seven golden lampstands: the seven stars are the angels of the seven churches, and the seven lampstands are the seven churches.
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“To the angel of the church in Ephesus write: These are the words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand, who walks among the seven golden lampstands:
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“I know your works, your toil and your patient endurance. I know that you cannot tolerate evildoers; you have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not, and have found them to be false.
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I also know that you are enduring patiently and bearing up for the sake of my name, and that you have not grown weary.
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But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first.
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Remember then from what you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent.
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Yet this is to your credit: you hate the works of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate.
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Let anyone who has an ear listen to what the Spirit is saying to the churches. To everyone who conquers, I will give permission to eat from the tree of life that is in the paradise of God.
SO-CALLED JEWS AND THEIR SYNAGOGUES OF SATAN
Who are “those who say that they are Jews and are not,” who are rather a “synagogue of Satan” (2.9; 3.9)? Interpreters have customarily assumed that John, a “Christian,” would have viewed true Judaism as Christ-devoted, and thus that these so-called Jews must be Jews who ignored or denied Christ. John would then, in effect, be pitting himself against the (non-Christ-devoted) Jewish community as radically as against the Roman Empire (chs 17–18). Some Christian exegetes have proposed, in fact, collusion between Roman authorities and Jews in persecuting Jesus-believers, for which there is no reliable evidence.
It is important to recognize that nowhere in this text does John juxtapose himself to Judaism or Jewish traditions. Indeed, his specific opponents in this part of the book appear to espouse not Jewish teachings but rather the diluted interpretations of meal and sexual purity laws we associate with Paul of Tarsus (2.14,20; cf. 1 Cor 7–8), and even the mega-enemy, Rome, is described in terms of female sexual pollution (17.4–6). Elsewhere John adheres to the strictest concepts of Jewish purity, those associated with the Temple priesthood and comparable to the laws of the Qumran Essene community (12.17; 14.4; 21.27; 22.14). As we consider John’s profound commitment to Jewish purity in combination with the increasing popularity of Pauline teachings among Gentile God-fearers in Asia Minor over the later first century, it begins to make more sense to take John’s polemic against so-called Jews in plain terms. Thus, he declares that those Gentile God-fearers claiming an affiliation with Judaism as a basis for Christ’s salvation (cf. Rom 2.17–24,28–29) are in fact not Jews at all. “Synagogue of Satan” in this case refers generally to an assembly (Heb
edah
) rather than a building or institution, and was often used to denote a collective opponent, as at Qumran (1QS 5.1–2, 10–20; CD 1.12; 1QM 1.1). Thus, notwithstanding the phrase’s anti-Semitic history as a condemnation of Judaism, John means “synagogue of Satan” only as a rejection of those pretending to be Jews. The real Jews are the ones who, like John and his confederates, cleave to a strict, priestly interpretation of purity laws.