Christ, and the messiah of Satan, i.¢., the Roman empire in the person of its emperor with his blasphemous claim to divine honours upon earth, The series of tableaux which depict their entrance on the scene indicates that the prophet has now reached the heart and centre of his subject. But at this point his method alters, and the thread of purpose is less patent. Hitherto the Book of Doom, with its seven seals, has sufficed for the artistic and rather artificial pre- sentation of his oracles. Now that the seventh seal is broken, the Book, ex hypothesi, is opened; we expect the secrets of divine judgment to be unbared. Instead of describing what follows as the contents of this book, however, the prophet relates how he absorbed another and a smaller volume (x.), containing the sum and substance of the final oracles which bear on the world’s fate.1 He then pro- ceeds, in terms of current and consecrated mythological traditions, to portray the two witnesses (xi.) who herald the advent of the divine messiah (xii.) himself, in the latter days. Messiah’s rival, the dragon or Satan, is next introduced, together with the dragon's commission of the Roman empire and emperor (xiii.) as the supreme foe of God’s people. Here is the crisis of the world! And surely it is a nodus dignus vindice ; God must shortly and sternly interfere. The imperial power, with its demand for worship, is con- fronted by a sturdy nucleus of Christians who will neither palter nor falter in their refusal to give divine honours to the emperor. Characteristically, the prophet breaks off to paint, in proleptic and realistic fashion, the final bliss of these loyal saints (xiv.), and the corresponding tortures reserved by God for the enemy and his deluded adherents. But at this point, just as the closing doom might be expected to crash down upon the world, the kaleidoscope of the visions again alters rather abruptly. The element of fantasy
1The distinctive and Jewish characteristics of the following oracles (xi.-xiv., xvii. f.) suggest, as Sabatier was almost the first to see, that the contents of this βιβλαρίδιον are to be found here; so Weyland (a Jewish Neronic source in x.-xi. 13, Xii,-xiii., xiv. 6-11, xv. 2-4, xvi. 13, 14, 16, xix. 11-21, xx.-xxi. 8), Spitta (a Jewish source, ο. 63 B.C., in most of x.-xi. xiv. 14 f., xv. 1-8, xvi. I-12, 17, 21, xvii. 1-6, xvili., xix. 1-8, xxi. 9-27, xxii. I-3, 15), Pfleiderer (Jewish source, Neronic and Vespasianic, in most of xi.-xiv., xvii.-xix.), and J. Weiss (Jewish source, Neronic, in xi, 1-13, xii. 1-6, 14-17, xiii. 1-7, xv.-xix., xxi. 4-27). But the first editor has worked over the contents of the βιβλαρίδιον so thoroughly that it is impossible to be sure that it ever was a literary unity. The probability is that xi.-xiii. at least reproduce fragments from it; the evidence hardly warrants us in postulating the incorporation of any coherent source. After chap. x. the symmetry of the Apocalypse is impaired by rapid
and bewildering alterations of standpoint to which no satisfactory clue can be found,
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