some of the %'isions in 4 Ezra (2 Esdras), more in th« first three visions (chs. 3'-9") and less in the last three (11-14).
4. Bci: as an Apocalypse. — AVe may now notice certain points of likeness and of uuliKeness which a general comparison of Rev. with the Jewish apocalypse suggests, and certain points of un- certainty which form the main problems in the follow ing discussion.
('0 Likeness of Eev. to Jewish apornbjpses. — The Bk. of liev. is written to encourage faith and en- durance amid trials and persecution. These trials are at least chiutly due to the rule of Rome, though within the Christian communities directly addressed there are false as well as true members. The message of the book is one of repentance only in the case of indifferent or wavering believers (OS. 16 33. 14 [and Jews, ll'" ?]). It is not a message of repentance for those whose sin is chiefly denounced (;,M.2i 169. u 22"), but of deliverance and reward for those who endure a little longer ; and of judg- ment and destruction for the evil power and its adherents. The situation and message are those of apocalypse, and not those of prophecy.
Apocal3'ptical, al.so, is the contrast betiveen the present and the coming age ; the conviction that evil must increase, and that its violence is a sign of the nearness of the end ; the belief that evil has its source and strength in the world of spirits, and that angelic conflicts and triiunphs precede or accompany those among men.
Rev. contains an abundance of that striking and higlily wrought imagery which characterizes an apocalypse. These images are in part borrowed from ^ech. and Daniel and other OT writers; in part, presumably, from the storehouse of apoca- lyptical traditions. That they are not used simply as poetical ornament, but have for the writer in ])art a mysterious value, is at all events a natural first impression. The facts that the book is so largely made up of such imagery, and that it is put in the form of Wsion, and is interpreted to the seer by angels, make up the most obvious resemblance between this book and tlie Jewish apocalypses. Tlie literary materials and form are largely apocalyptical. Ihat this resemblance is not merely formal but deep-going, is suggested by the extraordinary claims with which tlie book is sent out (!'■' 22"*- ''). In its supernaturalistic con- ception of inspiration the book is apocalyptical rather than proplietic (l'"*- 4'*- etc.).
In its scheme of the future, the contents of its prediction, the book has an obvious likeness to the Jewish books of this class : the coming of the day of the Lord Christ, when evil is at its height ; the overthrow of the world - kingdom, Rome ; the sifting of the Christian people ; the earthly Messianic age, in which the saints (Chris- tian martyrs) \\iW possess the kingdom and reign with Christ ; the final assault and overthrow of the powers of evil, the Gog of Ezekiel's predic- tion; the general resurrection and judgment, and the new heaven and earth with individual and eternal awards : this is simply the Jewish scheme in its Messianic and chiliastic form, with Jesus as the Messiah, and His servants as the saints and heirs. Over against such likenesses in form and substance no difference can be sufficient to sever the relationship between our book and other apocalypses. Liicke was the first fully to estab- lish the relationship. Zahn (Einleitung in d. NT, ii. 1899) is the last — one is tempted to say, will be the last — real scholar to deny it. He may at least teach us to be on our guard against false infer- ences from this undeniable literary relationship.
(A) Unlikencss of Eev. and Jewish apucal ijpset. — Rev. is a Christian apocalypse. What and how great unlikenesses does this involve i Two genera]
EEVELATION, BOOK OF
EEVELATI02f, BOOK OF 249
eonsiderations would lead us in opposite directions «ith reference to this question. Tlie Christian religion as tlie Baptist prepared the way for it, as Christ founded it, and as St. Paul preached it, was undoubtedly in essential respects a return to pro- phecy, not only from the law, but also from the national and sensuous liopes of Judaism. The Baptist and Jesus announced not the fall of Rome, but the fall of Jerusalem, just as Amos and Hosea announced the approaching fall of Samaria, and Micah and Jeremiah that of Jerusalem ; and for the same reason, in the same way, with the same motive, the call to repentance and righteousness. Jesus was a prophet in His belief in this world as God's world, and in good as already the ruling power in it, and also in the directness and personal authority of His words, the immediateness and inwardness of His relation to God, His eye for the supernatural in spiritual and not in magical mani- festations. We should certainly hope that the new Cliristian prophecy would be truly piophetic in character, and not apocal3'ptical. But, on the other hand, we know th-at the early Christian Church found itself fully at homo in Jewish apocal3-pscs. It was the Jews who threw away their apocalypses. Christians who preserved them almost witliout change, applying to the second coining of the Messiah what Jews had imagined of His first coming. How early this happened the NT and even the Gospels give evidence. We can- not, therefore, assume that the Christian apoca- lypse is esseulially unlike the Jewish. The Chris- tian element may be an entirely superficial one, the mere identilication of the coming ilessiah with Jesus, aud of the redeemed with the Christian Church.