c Only here καὶ "ἐπὶ "τῆς "κεφαλῆς αὐτῆς στέφανος ἀστέρων δώδεκα---2. καὶ
in Αρος, 15 επί with gen. , . οΓκεφαλή. τεκειν. d Isa. xxvi. 17, Mic. iv. 10. 5 < SERS ives ¢ Obj. infin. Tas κεφαλὰς αὐτοῦ ἑπτὰ of ‘desire , implied in ΤΟ preced. ptcc” (Burton,
389). ; f Ezek. xxix. 3; only in Apoc. in N.T. Dan. vii. 7.
g cf. vi. 4. k Only in Apoc. in N.T., cf. xix. 12, xiii. 1.
ἐν yaotpi éxovuca: καὶ Sxpdfe! ἆὠδίνουσα καὶ βασανιζοµένη 3. Καὶ ὤφθη ἄλλο σημεῖον ἐν τῷ οὐρανῷ, καὶ ἰδοὺ ΄ δράκων 5 πυρρὸς µέγας, ἔχων " κεφαλὰς ἑπτὰ καὶ ' κέρατα δέκα" καὶ ἐπὶ Ἐδιαδήματα : 4. καὶ ἡ οὐὖρὰ αὐτοῦ σύρει τρίτον τῶν ἀστέρων τοῦ οὐρανοῦ, καὶ ἔβαλεν αὐτοὺς eis τὴν γῆν. A 1c 5 , lg 2.4 a x a λλ , m = καὶ 6 δράκων | ἕστηκεν ἐνώπιον τῆς γυναικὸς τῆς µελλούσης ™ τεκεῖν,
h Ps. Ixxiv. 13-14. i From 1 For form cf. Win. § 14, 14.
ma τεκεῖν incorrectly for τίκτειν; .réxy (cf. xi. 7), on mood see Burton, 303, 305.
1 Read και (NVC, Aeth., Pr., S., etc.) κραζει (NSAP, 1, etc., Hipp.), edd.
51). The original figure was that of Israel personified as a pregnant goddess-mother, but it probably represented to the prophet the true Israel or Zion of God (Wernle, 276-288) in which his Christ had been born (cf. John xvi. 21, with John xiv. 30, also En. xc. 37). The idealisation was favoured by the current conceptions of Zion as pre-existent in heaven (cf. xix. 8, xxi. 8, and Apoc. Bar. iv. = widow) and as a mother (4 Esd. ix. 38-x. 59). The prophet views the national history of Israel as a long preparation for the anguish and woe out of which the mes- siah was to come. ‘‘ Tantae molis erat Christianam condere gentem” (Grotius). The idea is echoed in Ep. Lugd., where the church is ‘‘the virgin mother”. The virgin-birth falls into the background here as in the Fourth Gospel, though for dif- ferent reasons. The messiah of Apoc. xii. is not the son of Mary but simply born in the messianic community, and the description is no more than a trans- cendental version of what Paul notes in Rom. ix. 4,5. The editor’s interest lies not in the birth of messiah so much as in the consequences of it in heaven and earth. At the same time the analogies discovered between Cerinthus and this passage (by Vélter and others) are wholly imaginary (Kohlhofer, 53 f.).
Ver. 3. πυρρός: Vergil’s serpents which attack Laokoon have blood-red crests, and Homer‘s dragon has a blood- red back, but here the trait (cf. above) is reproduced from the red colour of Typhon, the Egyptian dragon who persecuted Osiris (Plut. de Iside, 30-33). The seven heads are taken from the seven-headed hydra or muSmahhu of Babylonian my- thology. The devil’s deputy in xiii. 1 (= the composite muSru8Su of Babylonia) has the same equipment of horns and heads, but the diadems adorn his horns.
Here, to John’s mind at any rate (cf. ver. g), the dragon is not equivalent to any contemporary pagan power like Pompey (Ps. Sol. ii. 29) or the king of Babylon.
Ver. 4. The symbolism is a reminis- cence of an ztiological myth in astrology (cf. the cauda of the constellation Scorpio) and of the primitive view which regarded the dark cloud as a snake enfolding the luminaries of heaven in its hostile coils (Job iii. 8, xxvi. 13, with A. B. Davidson’s. notes). Thus the Iranians (S. B. E. iv. p- Ixxiii., Darmesteter) described the fiend as a serpent or dragon not on the score of craftiness but ‘‘ because the storm fiend envelops the goddess of light with the coils of the cloud as with a snake’s fold’’. The same play of imagi- nation would interpret eclipses and fall- ing stars, and, when the pious were compared to stars (as in Egyptian theo- logy, Plut. de Iside, 21), it was but a step to the idea of Dan. viii. (cf. Sib. Or. v. 512 f., the battle of the stars), where Antiochus Epiphanes does violence to some devout Israelites who are char- acterised as stars flung rudely down to earth (z.e., martyred, 1 Macc. i.) Ori- ginally, this description of the dragon lashing his tail angrily and sweeping down a third of the stars probably re- ferred to the seduction of angels from their heavenly rank (so 8-9} to serve his will (Weiss). But John, in recasting the tradition, may have thought of the Danielic application, {.6., of the devil succeeding in crushing by martyrdom a certain number of God’s people. In this event, they would include at least, if they are not to be identified with, the pre-Christian martyrs of Judaism (cf. Heb. xi. 32 f. Matt. xxiii. 35).---ἔστηκεν, a conventional posture of the ancient dragon cf. e.g., Pliny, H. N. viii.3, ‘nec flexu multiplici ut reliquae serpentes cor-.