Though it is not at all probable that by Jezebel this Sibyl could be aimed at, seeing that the ob- noxious teacher was within the Thyatiran Churchj yet it is not improbable that a Chaldsean prophet- ess outside might stimulate a Christian prophetess inside the Church. It is of course always possible that Jezebel is not a personal name at all, but a scornful designation of a Gnostic group inside the Christian community at Thyatira, whose action and doctrine the author regarded as being like those of the OT Jezebel-religion, in that it tended to seduce its followers from the ' form of sound words.'
One characteristic of the civic life of Thyatira was to be found in the gilds into which the bakers, potters, Aveavers, and artificers in general were grouped. As one inscription (CIG 349) speaks of ' the priest of the Divine Father Tyrimnus,' and as all heathen religions celebrated periodically religious banquets, there is little doubt that from time to time Christian members of these gilds were faced by the question whether it was lawful for them to partake of these banquets as coming under the head of things offered to idols. Rigorists would hold that to eat at such banquets was to communicate with idols and so to commit spiritual fornication. Jezebel, whether a prophetess or a group, taught apparently that Christians might lawfully partake of these religious banquets, and this the writer of the Apocalypse regarded aa equivalent to Jezebel's idolatry in the OT.
It is also plain that the followers of 'Jezebel' were Gnostics, for the latter were explicitly inquirers into the ' deep things,' the esoteric truths which the ordinary person was incompetent to understand. In 1 Co 2^* St. Paul claims for his disciples that the Spirit who searches all things (same verb as is used in Rev 2'*), yea, the deep things of God, had revealed these hidden things to them. The apocalyptic writer, however, is more concerned here with the opposite depths — those of Satan. Thus in 2* he speaks of the false Jews in Smyrna who formed a synagogue of Satan. In 2^ he says that Satan had his throne at Per- gamum. In 3* Philadelphia is charged with har- bouring a synagogue of Satan. These passages, taken in connexion with the references to the teaching of Balaam in 2''* and of the Nicolaitans in 2^*, favour the interpretation of Jezebel which sees in the name a term of opprobrium applied dyslogistically to a heretical sect or form of doctrine. That the depths of Satan are Gnostic doctrines is clear from Iren. (II. xxii. 1), who says that the Ptolemseans said that they had found the mysteries of Bythus, a phrase repeated in II. xxii. 3 (cf. Hippol. Hcer. V. vi., and Tertullian, adv. Valent. i., de Bes. Carnis, xix.). The name Jezebel does not occur anywhere in the Apostolic Fathers. W. F. Cobb.
JOB flci/S).— Job is named by Ezekiel (W*-^)— in the 6th cent. B.C., probably about two centuries before the writing of the Book of Job — along with Noah and Daniel as a proverbially righteous man. After the publication of the great drama, it was natural that he should be regarded ratlier as a model of patience in affliction {vir65eiy/j.a rrjs kuko- TradeiasKal/j.aKpo9vfilas,Jei5^''- ''). Whiletheprofound speculations of the book regarding the problems of pain and destiny, as well as the theological doc- trine which the poet intended to teach, might be beyond the grasp of the ordinary reader, the moral appeal of the simple opening story came home to ail suffering humanity. 'Ye have heard of the patience (tV viro/iovi'jv) of Job' (S^')- Similarly the conclusion of the tale, which revealed (-Jod's final purpose in regard to His servant (t6 t^Xos Kvpiov), proving Him to be full of pity and merciful {iroXO-
JOEL
JOHN, EPISTLES OF
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air\ayxvos Kai oiKTipfKjiv), presented a situation which all readers might be asked to observe. The im- perative i'Sere, which is as well supported as eiSere, calls their attention to a surprising fact, which they might well mark, learn, and inwardly digest. The Quran repeats the admonition and the lesson. ' And remember Job ; when he cried unto the Lord, saying, Verily evil hath afflicted me : but thou art the most merciful of all those who show mercy. Wherefore we [God] heard him and re- lieved him from the evil which was upon him, and we restored unto him his family,' etc. [sura 21). ' Verily we found him a patient person : how ex- cellent a servant was he ' (sura 38).
James Strahan. JOEL ('Iw5?X). — Joel is proved by internal evi- dence to have been one of the latest of the Hebrew prophets. The prominence in his writings of priests and ritual at home, and of a diaspora abroad, his reference to the distant sons of Greece, his use of Aramaic words, and the lurid apoca- lyptic colouring of his prophecies, clearly point to the Persian period. But Joel has not the wide (mtlook of some of the other propliets. He is not fascinated eitlier by Isaiah's visions of Israel as the light of the Gentiles, or Malachi's of the lieathen waiting upon Jahweh. He has not the humanitarian feeling of the author of Jonah, who may have been his contemporary. He is a rigid and exclusive Israelite. In his view the heathen, as being apparently beyond redemption, are to be destroyed, not to be won to the knowledge of God. But if he is narrow, he is intense ; and while he cherishes the priestly ideals, his hope for Israel lies rather in such a ditiusion of the prophetic spirit as shall create an insi)ired nation. Nothing less will satisfy him than the fnlhlment of Moses' wish : ' Would to God that all Jahweh's people were prophets.' For him the goal of Hebrew his- tory, the Divine event to which all things move, is that God shall, by the miglity working of His Spirit, so enlighten and control His people, so adapt them to share His confidence and receive His revelations, that the tiirilling experiences which have liitherto been confined to the prophets shall then be shared by all Israel. 'Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions : and also upon the servants and upon the handmaids in those days will I pour out my spirit '(2^**- 29).