ΧΙ. 1. Καὶ "ἐδόθη “por "Kddapos ὅμοιος Ὁ ῥάβξῳ, λέγων, a x. 11.
12 6, must be Christianising touches by the editor. As 8 ¢ is the only place in the Apocalypse where Jesus is thus de- signated (contrast 4), and as the un- exampled at... ἑστῶτες occurs in 4, the editor may be using a previous translation of the fly-leaf. Otherwise, the repeated traces of Hebraistic idiom suggest that he translated it from an Aramaic or Hebrew original (so especi- ally Weyland, Briggs, and Bruston) which was a Jewish (or Jewish Christian) oracle, composed towards the end of the siege in 7ο A.D. between May and August (cf. Joseph. Bell, v. 12,3) by a prophet who anticipated (cf. 5. Ο., 219, 220) that the temple and a nucleus of the God-fearing would be kept inviolate dur- ing the last times of the Gentiles, at the end of which anti-Christ or the pseudo- messiah would blasphemously re-assert himself in the temple (hence its preserva- tion, 1, 2), according to one cycle of tradition (2 Thess... 11, 3, etc., cf) 4. C. 160 f.), after murdering the two heralds of messiah. The motives and further career of the beast are omitted, if not in the source, at least by the editor. He resumes the subject afterwards (cf. xiii. 6), when the eschatological monster is specially identified with the imperial power. Here his main concern is with the fate of the two witnesses. Probably it was this feature of the oracle which primarily led him to adopt and adapt it, as showing how the beast or anti- christ was foiled in his attack on mes- siah’s forerunners, just as (in xii.) the dragon is foiled in his attack on messiah himself. The other details are left standing; in their present setting they have much the same pictorial and dramatic interest as the minutiz of the parables, and it is perhaps doubtful whether the editor lhnked any sym- bolic or allegorical meaning to them, although such can easily be attached in a variety of ways, e.g., to the language of 1, 2 in the light of Barn. iv. 11, Ign. ad Magn. 7, etc. (so Weiss, Simcox, Swete, and others). Even the two wit- nesses are not to be identified with any historical figures of contemporary life, much less taken as allegorical or as typifying aspects of the church’s testi- mony. |‘ The νου... is of ‘the nature of a superimposed photograph showing traces of many pasts” (Abbott). The original Jewish tradition which lay behind the source expected only Elijah,
xxi. 15-16,
y. Ezek. xl.
3-6, xlii. 16-19, Zech. ii, 1.
who should preach repentance to the pagan world, but he was occasionally furnished with a companion in Moses (on the basis of Deut. xviii. 15 ; cf. Mal. iv. 4, 5, the transfiguration-story, and possibly the two radiant saints of Apoc. Pet. 6f.). The only other serious rival is Enoch, a grand figure in Jewish and early Christian eschatological tradition (for the curious Sir. xliv. 16, cf. E. Bi. 1295). Later tradition, indeed, thinking mainly of Elijah and Enoch (Gfrorer ii. 261 f.; A. C. 203, 211), whom antichrist in wrath slays for their witness against him, and whom God (or Michael and Gabriel) resuscitates, suggests a fairly apposite cycle of belief which may re- produce the earlier Jewish expectation out of which the materials of this frag- mentary oracle have been drawn. The unique character of this expectation is illustrated, not so much by Anu and Nudimmut, Marduk’s predecessors in the fight against Tiamat, as by the Zoroastrian belief that the temporary triumph of the evil spirit would be fol- lowed by the appearance of two reformers or prophets, Hushédar and Hushédarmah (S. B. E. xxiii. 195; cf. Hiibschmann, 227), who would act each for a mil- lenium on earth as the precursors and heralds of their Lord, the Persian mes- siah. This belief is much older than the sources in which it occurs, and like several other Zoroastrian traits, it may have fused with the Jewish expecta- tion in question, though the Zoroastrian heralds do not appear simultaneously (c/. Encycl. Relig. and Ethics, i. 207). Here at any rate the appearance of the two anonymous and mysterious witnesses precedes the final outburst of evil (xi. 7, xii. f.) and the manifestation of messiah (xi. 15 f., xiv. 14f.)—an idea for which no exact basis can be found in the strictly Jewish eschatology of the period. It may have grown up under the influence of this kindred trait in the adjoining pro- vince of Zoroastrian belief, unless the doubling of the witnesses was simply due to the side-influence of the Ze- chariah-trait (in νετ. 4). Wellhausen argues from the singular πτῶμα (8, ο) that the two witnesses were a duplication of the original single witness, i.e., Elijah; but the singular is collective, and there is no trace of any conflation with Jonah,