47λ
Δ -- lol . . XX. 1. Καὶ εἶδον ἄγγελον καταβαίνοντα ἐκ τοῦ οὐρανοῦ, ἔχοντα α i. 18, ix.
τὴν "κλεῖν τῆς " ἁβύσσου καὶ ἅλυσιν μεγάλην ἐπὶ τὴν χεῖρα αὐτοῦ. 2. καὶ ἐκράτησε τὸν δράκοντα, 6 ὄφις ὁ ἀρχαῖος, 4 ὃς ἐστι διάβολος
ο. Rom. x. 7,4 Esd. iv. 8.
b Mk. v. 3f,
A A καὶ 6 Σατανᾶς, καὶ ἔδησεν αὐτὸν "χίλια ἔτη, 3. καὶ ἔβαλεν αὐτὸν ο Mk. vi.i7,
d xii. 9.
> x 38 αν μα 3 δν 3 , > a ο λ e=a Va εἰς τὴν ἄβυσσον καὶ * έκλεισεν καὶ ἐσφράγισεν ἐπάνω αὐτοῦ, ἵνα μὴ Day
πλανήσῃ ἔτι τὰ ἔθνη, ἄχρι τελεσθῇ τὰ Χίλια ETH: μετὰ ταῦτα δεῖ λυθῆναι αὐτὸν ™ μικρὸν χρόνον. 4. καὶ εἶδον 'θρόνους---καὶ ἐκάθισαν ἐπ᾽ αὐτούς, * kat κρίµα ἐδόθη αὐτοῖς-- καὶ τὰς |’ ψυχὰς τῶν ™ πεπελ-
εκισµένων "Sid τὴν µαρτυρίαν ᾿Ιησοῦ καὶ διὰ τὸν λόγον τοῦ θεοῦ,
Dragon (Theod.) 14.
in Apoc. = “angels”; cf. Matt. xix. 28 = Luke xxii. 30. m Mt. xiv. 1ο, Acts xii. 2, Rom. viii. 35, Clem. Rom. v.-vi. (am. λεγ.
= “persons,” sc. εἶδον. eA ni. 9.
reign for the saints without interfering with the more spiritual and transcendent outlook of xx. 11 f. His procedure fur- ther enabled him to preserve the primi- tive idea of messiah’s reign [4] as distinct from that of God, by dividing the final act of the drama into two scenes (4 f., tr f.).—With the realistic episode of 1-3, angels pass off the stage (except the angel of xxi. 9 f. and the angelus inter- pres of xxii. 6-10), in accordance with the Jewish feeling that they were inferior to the glorified saints to whom alone (cf. Heb. ii. 4) the next world belonged. There is no evidence to support the conjecture (Cheyne, Bible Problems, 233) that ἄγγελον in ver. 1 represents {απ already corrupt text of an older Hebrew Apocalypse, in which mal’ak was written instead of mika@’él”’ (cf. above on xii. 7).
CHAPTER XX.—Vv. 1-3. The dragon is flung by an angel, not by God or messiah, into the pit of the abyss which formed his original haunt (cf. on ix. 1), and there locked up, like an Arabian jin, so as to leave the earth undisturbed for the mil- lenium. The prophet thus welds together two traditions which were originally in- dependent. The former echoes Egyptian (E. B. D. 4, “thine enemy the serpent hath been given over to the fire, the serpent-fiend hath fallen down headlong ; his arms have been bound in chains . . the children of impotent revolt shall never more rise up”) and especially Parsee eschatology (Htibschmann, 227 f.) which held that one sign of the latter days was the release of the dragon Dahaka—once bound fast at mount Demavend—to cor- rupt the earth and eventually to be destroyed prior to the advent of the messiah and the resurrection of the dead.
g xill. 14, xvi. 13, 2 Th. ii. 9-10, cf. Weinel, 21.
of God, Jub. iv. 29, 2 Pet. iil. 8; cf. E. Bt. ili. 3096-7. ~ £ From Dan. vi. 17 and Bel and
i Never
lvi.g
h xvii. το, k 1 Cor. vi. 2, Sap. iii. 8.
The Iranian view was that Fredun could
not kill the serpent, whose slaughter was
reserved for for Same (Bund. xxix. g). But John abstains from giving any reason for the devil’s reappearance. He simply accepts the tradition and falls back (ver. 3) piously upon the Set of a myste- rious providence. Some enigmatic hints in a late post-exilic apocalypse (Isa. xxiv. 21, 22, the hosts on high and the kings on earth to be shut up in the prison of the pit but—after many days—to be visited, {.6., released), upon which John has al- ready drawn, had been developed by subse- quent speculation (cf. the fettering of Azazel, En. x. 4 f., liv. 5 f.) into the dogma of a divine restraint placed fora time upon the evil spirit(s); see S. C. gt f., Charles’ Eschatology, 200 f£.—€6vy. Strictly speaking, the previous tradition (xix. 18, 21) left no inhabitants on earth at all. Such discrepancies were inevit- able in the dovetailing of disparate con- ceptions, but the solution of the incon- gruity here probably lies in the interpre- tation of ἔθνη as outlying nations on the fringe of the empire (8) who had not shared in the campaign of Nero-anti- christ and consequently had survived the doom of the latter and his allies (ct XViii. ϱ).