Conclusion.
A very ingenious interpretation, with much valuable truth, but not the last word yet on this mysterious book, and very doubtful in its solution of the numerical riddle. The primary meaning of the beast, as already remarked, is heathen Rome, as represented by that monster tyrant and persecutor, Nero, the very incarnation of satanic wickedness. The oldest interpretation (Lateinos), known already to a grand-pupil of St. John, is also the best, and it is all the more plausible because the other interpretations which give us the alphabetical value of 666, namely, Nero and Caesar Augustus, likewise point to the same Roman power which kept up a bloody crusade of three hundred years against Christianity. But the political beast, and its intellectual ally, the false prophet, appear again and again in history, and make war upon the church and the truth of Christ, within and without the circle of the old Roman empire. Many more wonders of exegetical ability and historical learning will yet be performed before the mysteries of Revelation are solved, if they ever will be solved before the final fulfilment. In the meantime, the book will continue to accomplish its practical mission of comfort and encouragement to every Christian in the conflict of faith for the crown of life.
[1243] Apokalupsis Iesou Christou Rev. 1:1. The oldest inscription in Cod. ' is apokalupsis ioanou. Later MSS. add tou hagiou and tou theologou, etc.
[1244] "Tot verba, tot mysteria."--"Niemand weiss, was darinnen steht." Zwingli would take no doctrinal proof-text from Revelation.
[1245] The amount of nonsense, false chronology, and prophecy which has been put into the Apocalypse is amazing, and explains the sarcastic saying of the Calvinistic, yet vehemently anti-Puritanic preacher, Robert South (Serm. XXIII., vol. I., 377, Philad. ed., 1844), that "the book called the Revelation, the more it is studied, the less it is understood, as generally either finding a man cracked, or making him so." The remark is sometimes falsely attributed to Calvin, but he had great respect for the book, and quotes it freely for doctrinal purposes, though he modestly or wisely abstained from writing a commentary on it.
[1246] Rev. 4:11; 5:8-14; 7:12-17; 11:15; 14:13; 15:3; 19:1, 2, 6, 7.
[1247] Herder: "How many passages in the prophets are obscure in their primary historical references, and yet these passages, containing divine truth, doctrine, and consolation, are manna for all hearts and all ages. Should it not be so with the book which is an abstract of almost all prophets and Apostles?"
[1248] Zur Einleit. in die Offenb. Joh., p. 1. The translation is condensed.
[1249] Prof. Godet compares the Apocalypse with the Song of Songs, viewed as a dramatic poem, and calls it "the Canticle of the New Testament," as the Song of Songs is "the Apocalypse of the Old." But I cannot see the aptness of this comparison. Eichhorn treated the Apocalypse as a regular drama with a prologue, three acts, and an epilogue.
[1250] See Lücke, pp. 66-345; Lange, pp. 6 sqq.; Hilgenfeld, Die jüdische Apokalyptik (1857); Schürer, N. T'liche Zeitgeschichte (1874), pp. 511-563.
[1251] Godet (p. 297): "The Apocalypse is the precious vessel in which the treasure of Christian hope has been deposited for all ages of the church, but especially for the church under the cross." Dr. Chambers (p. 15): "The scope of this mysterious book is not to convince unbelievers, nor to illustrate the divine prescience, nor to minister to men's prurient desire to peer into the future, but to edify the disciples of Christ in every age by unfolding the nature and character of earth's conflicts, by preparing them for trial as not a strange thing, by consoling them with the prospect of victory, by assuring them of God's sovereign control over all persons and things, and by pointing them to the ultimate issue when they shall pass through the gates of pearl never more to go out."
[1252] Comp. § 50, (this vol.).
[1253] See the testimonies in Charteris, Canonicity, pp. 336-357; also Lücke (pp. 419-887), Alford (iv. 198-229), Lee (pp. 405-442), and other commentators.
[1254] This is the almost unanimous opinion of the Tübingen critics and their sympathizers on the Continent and in England.
[1255] Comp. Rev. 1:10; 1 Cor. 14:15. See, besides the references mentioned at the head of the section, the testimony of Dr. Weiss, who, in his Leben Jesu (1882), I. 97-101, ably discusses the difference, between the two books, and comes to the conclusion that they are both from the same Apostle John. "Yes" (he says, with reference to a significant concession of Dr. Baur), "the fourth Gospel is 'the spiritualized Apocalypse,' but not because an intellectual hero of the second century followed the seer of the Apocalypse, but because the Son of Thunder of the Apocalypse had been matured and transfigured by the Spirit and the divine guidance into a mystic, and the flames of his youth had burnt down into the glow of a holy love."
[1256] The great majority of older commentators, and among the recent ones Elliott, Alford, Hengstenberg, Ebrard, Lange, Hofmann, Godet, Lee, Milligan, and Warfield (in Schaff's "Encycl." III. 2035). I myself formerly advocated the later date, in the Hist. of the Ap. Church (1853), pp. 418 sqq
[1257] The early date is advocated or accepted by Neander, Lücke, Bleek, Ewald, DeWette, Baur, Hilgenfeld, Reuss, Düsterdieck, Renan, Aubé, Stuart, Davidson, Cowles, Bishop Lightfoot, Westoott, Holtzmann, Weiss; and among earlier writers by Alcasar, Grotius, Hammond, Abauzit, and John Lightfoot.
[1258] Suetonius, Vespas. c. 1 "Rebellione trium principum et caede incertum diu et quasi vagum imperium suscepit firmavitque tandem gens Flavia."
[1259] So Bleek (p. 121), Lücke (in the second ed.), Böhmer, Weiss, Düsterdieck (Introd. pp. 55 sqq. and Com. on Rev. 13:3, and 17:7-14).
[1260] So Ewald, Reuss, Baur, etc. See NOTES below.
[1261] Comp. ch. vi., pp. 376-402, and especially the most graphic description of those terrible years by Renan, in L'Antechrist, ch. xiv., pp. 320-339, which I would like to transcribe if space permitted. His facts are well supported by heathen and Jewish testimonies especially Tacitus, Suetonius, Strabo, Pliny, Josephus, etc.
[1262] See Alford, Com. iv., 245 sqq.; Elliott, 4th vol.; Sam. Davidson, Introd. to the N. T., first ed. III. 619, revised ed., vol. II. 297, and Lee, Com. p. 488. Davidson adds a fourth class of "extreme," as distinguished from simple "Futurists," who refer the entire book, including Rev. 2 and 3, to the last times. Lee substitutes with Lücke the term "Historical" for "Continuous," but Historical applies better to the first class called "Preterists." Lee adds (491), as a fourth system, the "Spiritual system," and names Augustin (his "City of God," as the first philosophy of history), J. C. K. von Hofmann, Hengstenberg, Auberlen, Ebrard as its chief defenders. It is the same with what Auberlen calls the reichsgeschichtliche Auslegung.
[1263] So Herder, in his suggestive book MARAN AThA, das Buch von der Zukunft des Herrn, des N. Testaments Siegel, Riga, 1779. He was preceded in the anti-Jewish explication by Abauzit of Geneva (1730), who assigned the book to the reign of Nero, and Wetstein (1752), and followed by Hartwig (1780) and Züllig. The last, in a learned work on the Apocalypse (Stuttgart, 1834, 2 vols., 1840), refers it exclusively to the Jewish state.
[1264] a = 1, b = 2, r = 100, a = 1, x = 60, a = 1, s = 200; total, 365. A vast number of engraved stones, called " Abraxas-gems," are still extant. The origin of Abraxas is usually ascribed to Basilides or his followers.
[1265] I = 10 + e = 8 + s = 200 + o = 70 + u = 400 + s = 200, total iesous = 888. Comp. Barnabas, Ep. c. 9; and the Sibylline Books, I. 324-331.
[1266] These pious absurdities are surpassed by the rationalistic absurdity of Volkmar, who (in his Com. on the Apoc., 1862, p. 197) carries the imaginary hostility of John to Paul so far as to refer "the false prophet" (Rev. 16:13; 19:20) to the Apostle of the Gentiles, because he taught (Rom. 13) that every soul should be subject to the then reigning Nero (ie., the beast)! Even Hilgenfeld (Einleit. p. 436) and Samuel Davidson (I. 291), while agreeing with Volkmar in the Nero-hypothesis, protest against such impious nonsense.
[1267] See Lee, Com. p. 687. Adam Clarke regarded this unanswerable.
[1268] Adv. Haer., v. 30, §§3 and 4. Josephus, from prudential regard to his patrons, the Flavian emperors, withheld the interpretation of the fourth beast and the stone cut out of the mountain in Daniel's vision. Ant. x. 10, § 4. On which Havercamp remarks: "Nor is this to be wondered at that he would not now meddle with things future; for he had no mind to provoke the Romans by speaking of the destruction of that city, which they called the eternal city."
[1269] If they go farther, they discover the anti-Christian beast in the mediaeval German (the so-called "Holy Roman") empire in conflict with the papacy, in the Napoleonic imperialism, the Russian Czarism, the modern German empire (the anti-papal Cultur-Kampf ), in fact in every secular power which is hostile to the interests of the Roman hierarchy and will "not go to Canossa." This would be the very reverse of the old Protestant interpretation.