INTRODUCTION οσα

serves to obliterate most of the exceptionally numerous and glaring irregularities of its syntax. But one drawback of this advantage is that the distinctive characteristics of the book are less vividly felt ; the further one goes from the original, the less visible are those idiosyncrasies of conception, style, and construction which mark off the Apocalypse from the rest of the early Christian literature and notably from the Fourth Gospel. The psychological difference by itself should not be pressed too far. One has only to recollect men like Samuel Rutherford and Keble, to understand how vindictiveness to religious opponents is compatible with a sweet and even devout spiritual tone in certain natures. But the disjunctive canon in the present case proceeds from a wider induction. Thus e.g. the well- known resemblances of the Lamb and the Logos are both specious and secondary. The former (τὸ ἀρνίον Apoc. ; 6 ἀμνὸς τοῦ θεοῦ, Gospel, ἀρνίον being reserved for Christians) does not exist in the original, nor is it peculiar to the Johannine literature. The latter again (6 λόγος τ. θεοῦ, Apoc. ; 6 λόγος, Gospel) is verbal (cf. note on xix. 13) ; the two ideas are adapted from totally different soils in pre-Christian Judaism and for alien ends. Some closer analogies, such as (a) the relation of God, Christ, and the believer (cf. on ii. 27, iii. 19 f.), (b) the use of the partitive ἐκ, ἵνα, δείκνυµι (of revelation), etc., (c) the explanation of Hebrew terms, (d) formulas like μετὰ ταῦτα, and (e) phrases about witnessing or keeping God’s word (commandments), do not neces- sarily imply more than a common milieu of thought and expression such as contemporary writers belonging to the same school might | naturally employ. A common religious dialect often produces similar instances of corresponding or coincident expression in different authors of the same period. On the other hand, the Apocalypse has a vocabulary of its own, whose peculiarities are not to be explained simply from the subject matter ; 6.6. δοῦλοι θεοῦ (in explicit contrast to Joh. xv. 15), λατρεύειν, οἰκουμένη, παντοκράτωρ, πίστις, ὑπομονή, etc. besides cases of the multiplied genitive (xiv. 8, etc.). It ignores many favourite and even characteristic terms of the Fourth evangelist, ε.σ. ἀλήθεια, ἀληθής, ἀληθῶς, ἀπεκρίθη κ. εἶπεν, ἀφιέναι τὰς ἁμαρτίας, θεᾶσθαι, ἴδε, ἴδιος, καθὼς, μετὰ τοῦτο, πάντοτε, παρρησία, πώποτε, ὑψοῦσθαι, χάρα» sonship (cf.on xxi. 7) asking (ἐρωτάω) God, darkness, μὲν . . . δέ, µένειν (except in xvii. 10, historically), πονηρός or ἄρχων τοῦ κόσμου (of the devil), to be of God or to be born of God, love to God or Christ, ὑπέρ with genitive, ἀντί, ὑπό (accus.), pévror, etc., etc. Even where the Apocalypse uses certain terms or ideas of the Fourth Gospel, it is in a different sense; ¢.g. αἰώνιος (only in xiv. 6, never with ζωή), light and the world (physically not spiritually), ἐκεῖνος (never substantival),