440
e Cf. Abbott, 206 f. i fi. 13; cf. καθήµενον Dalman i. § ix. 2.
14. καὶ εἶδον, καὶ ἰδοὺ νεφέλη "λευκή, καὶ ἐπὶ τὴν νεφέλην ΄ὅμοιον υἱὸν ἀνθρώπου, "ἔχων ἐπὶ τῆς κεφαλῆς αὐτοῦ
g& Cf. on ii. 20, iii. 12, and λέγων (η) or οἱ τηρ. (12) above.
which still awaits them in the latter days”. John does not share the current pessimistic belief (cf. Apoc. Bar. xi.-x1i. 4, Verg. Aen. i. 94 f., with Isa. lvii. τ f.) that death was preferable to life, in view of the overwhelming miseries of the age. His thought is not that death is happier than fife under the circumstances, but that if death came in the line of religious duty it involved no deprivation. The language reflects Gen. ii. 2 (with κόπων put for ἔργων), but while it is true enough, it is hardly apposite, to think of the dead as resting from works (Heb. iv. 9), no more being needed. The root of the passage lies not in the Iranian belief (Brandt, 423 f., Boklen, 41) that the soul was escorted by its good deeds to bliss in another world (cf. Maas, Orpheus, 217 f.), but in the closer soil of Jewish hope (cf. Bacher’s Agada d. Tannaiten,? i. 399 f.; Volz 103) as in En. ciii. 2, 3, Apoc. Bar. xiv. 12, 13, and Pirke Aboth vi. 9 (hora discessus hominis non comi- tantur eum argentum aut aurum aut lapides pretiosi aut margaritae, sed lex et opera bona). In 4 Esd. vii. 35 (where, at the resurrection of the dead, ‘the work shall follow and the reward be dis- closed”’) opus may be a Hebraism for “recompense” (Ps. cix. 20 ἔργον, cf. 1 Ti. v. 25). Contemporary Jewish es- chatology also took a despairing view of the world (cf. 4 Esd. iv. 26-33). But while the dead are pronounced “‘ blessed,” e.g., in Apoc. Bar. xi. 7, it is because they have not lived to see the ruins of Jerusalem and the downfall of Israel. Better death than that experience! Death is a blessing compared with the life which falls upon times so out of joint (x. 6 f.). The living may well envy the dead. In John’s Apocalypse, on the other hand, the dead are felicitated because they miss nothing by their martyrdom. Yet life is a boon. No plaintive, weary cry of Weltschmerz rises from the pages of this Apocalypse.—avamratw in the papyri means relief from public duties or the “resting” of land in agriculture (cf. U. Wilcken’s Archiv f. Papyrusforschung, 1. pp. 157 f.).
Vv. 14-20, in their present position, are a proleptic and realistic summary of the final judgment, representing as a divine catastrophe what xvi.-xvii. delineate as the outcome of semi-
political movements (cf. xviii. after xvii.). The strange picture ot messiah (τή f., contrast 1. το f., xix. 11 f.), the absence of any allusion to the Beasts (9-11) or to the Imperial cultus, the peculiar angel- ology, and the generally disparate nature of the scene as compared with the con- text, point to the isolated character of the episode. The abrupt mention of the cily (20) suggests that the tradition belonged to the cycle underlying xi. 1-13 (the city, 13), and several critics (e.g., Spitta, Erbes, Weyland, Volter, Schon, Briggs, Rauch) regard it variously as a finale to the oracles of that chapter. But the connexion is one of tradition rather than of literary unity. The data of style and content leave it uncertain even whether the episode goes back to a source or a tradition, whether it is Jewish (so especi- ally Sabatier, Pfleiderer, and Rauch) ar Jewish Christian (Schon, Erbes, Bru- ston, J. Weiss, etc.), and, if Jewish Christian, whether it was written by the author of the Apocalypse (Weizsacker} or not. The least obscure feature is the victory of the messiah over antichrist and hjé legions (not of an angelic judgment an Israel, J. Weiss) in the vicinity of (cf. xi. 13, xiv. I f., and xx. g)