346
ς Isa. xliv. 6, xlviii. 12, cf. below on iii. 14.
d Cf. xxii. 3, 16f.
e Job xxxviii. 17, Sap. xvi. 13.
, A - 5, θανάτου καὶ τοῦ adou.
f = κλεῖδας (Helbing 4ο). the grave, see Rohde’s Psyche (1894), 491 f., 673 f.
ΑΠΟΚΑΛΥΨΜΙΣ ΙΩΑΝΝΟΥ is
fol 4 ἐγώ εἰμι °6 πρῶτος καὶ 6 " ἔσχατος, 18. καὶ] ἐγενόμην νεκρός καὶ ἰδοὺ Lav εἰμὶ eis τοὺς αἰῶνας τῶν αἰώνων' “καὶ ἔχω τὰς κλεῖς ἕ τοῦ 19. Γράψον οὖν ἃ εἶδες, καὶ ἃ εἰσὶ καὶ ἃ
6 Gen. obj. For Hades = θαν. or
10m. και ο ζων, after εσχατος, with primitive Latin text (Pr., Tic., Beatus, etc.), Haussl. 218-220, Wellh. The words (a tharginal gloss., from και κι. ζ. €.?) are more likely to have been added (and retained for their bearing on Christ’s pre-existence)
than omitted; they add nothing to the sense or continuity of the passage.
The
expression is used of God in iv. 9-10, as of Yahveh in Ο.Τ. XQ om. και (’ ΙΓ ο ζων was a marginal note, it would enter the text at first without kat,” Simcox).
an exception to the rule. The present vision presents him as superhuman, messianic, militant and divine. But the writer is characteristically indifferent to the artistic error of making Christ’s right hand at once hold seven stars and be laid on the seer (16, 17). Cf. the fine application of the following passage by Milton in his “ Remonstrant’s Defence ”. The whole description answers to what is termed, in modern psychology, a '' pho- tism ”.
Ver. 18. Not “it is I, the first and the last” (which would require ἐγώ eipe before μὴ Φοβοῦ), but “I am, etc.” The eternal life of the exalted Christ is a comfort both in method and result; ἐγενόμην νεκρός (not ὡς; really dead), his experience assuring men of sym- pathy and understanding; καὶ idov, κ.τελ., his victory and authority over death=an assurance of his power to rescue his own people from the grim prison of the underworld (Hades, cf. 3 Macc. ν. 50, the intermediate abode of the dead, being as usual personified in connexion with death). A background for this conception lies in the primitive idea of Janus, originally an Italian sun- god, as the key-holder (cf. Ovid’s Fasiz, i. 129, 130, Hor. Carm. Sec. 9, 10) who opens and closes the day (sun = deus clauiger), rather than in Mithraism which only knew keys of heaven, or in Mandzan religion (Cheyne’s Bible Problems, 102-106). The key was a natural Oriental symbol for authority and power (cf. in this book, iii. 7, ix. I, xx. I). Jewish belief (see Gfrérer, i. 377-378) assigned three keys or four exclusively to God (‘‘ quos neque angelo neque seraphino committit ’’); these in- cluded, according to different views, “‘clauis sepulchorum,” ‘clavis uitae,” “ clauis resurrectionis mortuorum’”’. To ascribe this divine prerogative to Jesus as the divine Hero who had mastered death
is, therefore, another notable feature in the high Christology of this book. For the whole conception see E. B. D. ch. lxiv. (fifth century B.c.?): “I am Yesterday and To-day and To-morrow . . . I am the Lord of the men who are raised again; the Lord who cometh forth from out of the darkness.” It is based on the theophany of the Ancient of Days in Dan. vii. g f. (yet cf. x. 5, 6), who bestows on the ideal Israel (ὡς vids ἀνθ.) dominion. John changes this into a Christophany, like the later Jewish tra- dition which saw in vids ᾱ. a personal, divine messiah. When one remembers the actual position of affairs, the confi- dent faith of such passages is seen to have been little short of magnificent. To this Christian prophet, spokesman of a mere ripple upon a single wave of dis- sent in the broad ocean of paganism, history and experience find unity and meaning nowhere but in the person of a blameless Galilean peasant who had perished as a criminal in Jerusalem. So would such early Christian expecta- tions appear to an outsider. He would be Staggered by the extraordinary claims advanced on behalf of its God by this diminutive sect, perhaps more than staggered by the prophecy that imperial authority over the visible and invisible worlds lay ultimately in the hands of this deity, whose power was not limited to his own adherents.—Christophanies were commissions either to practical service (Acts x. 19, etc.), or, as here, so composition.