6—17.
409
Δ a . σµένοι εἰς τὴν ὥραν καὶ ἡμέραν καὶ µῆνα καὶ ἐνιαυτόν, «ἵνα f Constr. i.
Β , OW he , a , ἀποκτείνωσι τὸ "τρίτον τῶν ἀνθρώπων. στρατευμάτων τοῦ ‘immKod δισµυριάδες pupiddwv: ἤκουσα τὸν
ἀριθμὸν αὐτῶν.
A - καὶ τοὺς καθηµένους ἐπ᾽ αὐτῶν, ἔχοντας θώρακας ᾿"ῥακινθίνους καὶ ᾿θειώδεις᾽ καὶ αἱ κεφαλαὶ τῶν ἵππων ds κεφαλαὶ a A cal λεόντων, καὶ ἐκ τῶν στοµάτων αὐτῶν °
9, Sib. Or. iii. 544, v. 103.
17. Καὶ " οὕτως εἶδον τοὺς ἵππους ἐν τῇ | ὁράσει,
i Only here in Ν.Τ. Diff. sense in iv. 2. Only in Acts ii. 17 (O.T. quot.), elsewhere in N.T. curious variant spineas (= ἀκανθίνους) Pr. see Nestle’s Einfuhr. 264.
9, V. I2, xiv. 6, article grouping several substan- , . tives. πυρινους και g With ἐλυθ. rather than ἡτ. despite Viii. 6. Q h Zech. xiii. ki.e., ‘As is now to be described”. m Nah. ii. 3: on the n 1 Chron. xii. 8.
16. καὶ 6 ἀριθμὸς τῶν
i
ἐκπορεύεται πὂρ καὶ καπνὸς
o (Constr. as in 1 Tim. vi. 4, Jas. iii. 10), cf. xi. 5, Job xli. 19-21, Joel ii. 3.
f. d. klass, Alterth. (1902) 705 f. Pro- bably the author means that the angels set in motion the hordes of cavalry (two hundred million) described in the semi- mythical, semi-historical pageant of the next passage. But he does not directly connect the two, and it is evident that here as at vii. 1 Ε., we have “« dream-like incon- sequences” (Simcox), or else two frag- ments of apocalyptic tradition, originally heterogeneous, which are pieced together (at νετ. 16). The four angels here do not correspond in function or locality to the four unfettered angels of vii. 1; they rather represent some variation of that archaic tradition in which four angels (perhaps angel-princes of the pagan hordes) were represented as bound (like winds ?) at the Euphrates—a geographi- cal touch due to the history of contem- porary warfare, in which the Parthians played a réle similar to that of the Huns, the Vikings, or the Moors in later ages. Since the first century B.c. a Parthian invasion of some kind had formed part of the apocalyptic apparatus so that there is no particular need to allegorise the Euphrates into the Tiber or to find the four angels in Ps. Ixxviii. 49 (LXX). The bloody and disastrous Parthian cam- paign of 58-62 (cf. on vi. 2) may account for the heightened colour of the scene, whether the fragment was composed at that period, or (as is most probable) written with it in retrospect. But the entire vision is one powerful ‘maginative development of a tradition preserved in a Syriac Apocalypse of Ezra (published by Baethgen) which may be based on old Jewish materials: ‘‘and a voice was heard, Let those four kings be loosed, who are bound at the great river Eu- phrates, who are to destroy a third part of men. And they were loosed, and there was a mighty uproar.” Could this be reckoned as proof of an independent tradition it would help to illumine the
application of the idea in John's Apoca- lypse, especially if one could accept with Kohler the attractive conjecture of Iselin that ἀγγέλους represents a confusion (or variety of reading, cf. 2 Sam. xi. 1, 1
Chron. xx. 1) between oxo (Ξ-ἄγγ.) and 059557 in a Hebrew original of Apoc. ix. 15 (Zeits. aus der Schweis, 1887, 64). The conjecture (Spitta, de Faye, J. Weiss) ἀγέλαι (=hosts, as in 2 Macc. iii. 18, etc.) is less likely, and ἐπὶ cannot be taken with Adoov (Bruston). Cavalry formed a standing feature of the final terror for the Jewish imagination ever since the Parthians loomed on the political horizon (Ass. Mos. iii. 1). The whole passage was one of those denounced by the Alogi as fantastic and ridiculous (cf. Epiph. Haer. li. 34). Gaius also criticised it as inconsistent with Matt. xxiv. 7.