REVELATION AND THE HISTORICAL JESUS

Frank Zindler wrote an article titled “Did Jesus Exist?” in the American Atheists website. Let me start by quoting in whole Zindler's comments relating to what Revelation does or doesn't say regarding the historical Jesus:

“A third category of writing [in the New Testament], apocalyptic, of which the Book of Revelation is an example... gives no support for the historicity of Jesus. In fact, it would appear to be an intellectual fossil of the thought-world from which Christianity sprang – a Jewish apocalypse that was reworked for Christian use [citing Ford]. The main character of the book (referred to 28 times) would seem to be 'the Lamb,' an astral being seen in visions (no claims to historicity here!), and the book overall is redolent of ancient astrology [citing Malina].”

“The name Jesus occurs only seven times in the entire book, Christ only four times, and Jesus Christ only twice! While Revelation may very well derive from a very early period (contrary to the views of most biblical scholars, who deal with the book only in its final form), the Jesus of which it whispers obviously is not a man. He is a supernatural being. He has not yet acquired the physiological and metabolic properties of which we read in the gospels. The Jesus of Revelation is a god who would later be made into a man – not a man who would later become a god, as liberal religious scholars would have it.”

    1. The first, and most important, argument underpinning all of Zindler's thesis is that the book began life as a Jewish writing, but was changed into a Christian one by judicious additions. The only citation he can provide for that idea is the Anchor Bible commentary by J. Massyngberde Ford. However, it is well known that Ford's strange ideas concerning the origin of Revelation are rather unique to say the least. She believes that John the Baptist wrote the bulk of it.

It is worthy of note that no major, or even minor, commentary on Revelation published since that time holds to that view. For example, although Beale cites her comments on a number of specific passages in Revelation, he doesn't even bring up her authorship view when discussing that particular issue. And concerning the date of its final composition, he says that only “a minority of commentators [Ford and van der Waal are cited] have dated it immediately prior to the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D.”

Recent works by Beasley-Murray, R.E. Brown, and Leon Morris omit her thesis entirely in their discussions on authorship. And Robert Mounce writes, “Professor Ford acknowledges that she has advanced a 'bold hypothesis' and hopes, not necessarily that it will be accepted, but that it will stimulate further discussion. A major question that Ford does not answer is how an essentially Jewish apocalypse ever found its way into the Christian canon. How did it happen that during the same period of time a number of Christian apocalypses were excluded from the canon and a decidedly Jewish apocalypse was included? Until this question is answered, many will suspect that Revelation is more Christian than the author's hypothesis will allow.”

Another problem with Ford's piecemeal composition theory is that is highly unlikely that more than a single person was responsible for the production of this work due to its highly complex literary structure, which can simultaneously be viewed as a chiasm, a series of alternating scenes taking place in heaven and on earth, or as something which has been labeled as progressive recapitulation – a hallmark of the apocalyptic Old Testament literature (see my post titled “Book of Revelation: Introduction to the Literary Structure” for more details).

Also supporting a unified composition is the number of words or phrases occurring exactly 7 or 12 times, or multiples thereof. There is no denying the significance of the number seven (generally symbolizing completion or totality) in this book. Besides the obvious series of seven churches, bowls, trumpets, etc., certain words and phrases appear exactly seven times or in multiples of seven. Examples of seven-fold usage include: “who was, who is, and who is to come,” “hear what the Spirit says,” “spirits,” “prophecy,” “candlestick,” “cloud,” “trumpet(er),” “worthy,” “bottomless pit,” seven lists with four related elements such as “kindred, tongue, people, tribe, etc.,” “the prophets,” “kingdom,” “wonder/miracle,” “earthquake,” “reign,” slave,” “seal (noun and verb),” “(God's) wrath,” “Almighty God,” “Jesus Christ,” seven blessings, seven doxologies coupling “glory” and “honor” (if one includes the textual variant at 19:1), 3 ½ year (or day) periods, sarx applied to the human body, hymns directed to God, antiphonal hymnic units, seven references to Jesus coming “quickly.” McGinn identifies two series of seven unnumbered visions at 12:1-15:4 and 19:11-21:8 (7A) In addition, “servant,” “woe,” “for ever and ever,” “them that dwell on earth” and “patience” appear 14 times in the Revelation as well as references to the four living creatures. “Lord,” “power,” “king (or King of kings),” “book” and “day” occur 21 times each. “Lamb” is applied to Christ 28 times, and God's “throne” appears 42 times. “Angel” appears 77 times in Revelation.

    2. Zindler next contrasts the main character in the story, the Lamb, with Jesus. That totally ignores the quite obvious use of that metaphorical term to refer to the coming Messiah in the OT and to Jesus specifically in John 1:29,36; Acts 8:32; and I Peter 1:19 as a sacrificial lamb killed on our behalf. And because John sees Him in a vision, Zindler feels he can safely ignore anything in Revelation as speaking at all regarding historical events. This is in spite of the fact that the Lamb's (i.e. Christ's) prior death on earth is strongly alluded to in 1:5 (“freed us by his blood”), 1:7 (“those who pierced him”), 1:18 (“I was dead and see, I am alive forever and ever”), 3:21 (“just as I myself conquered and sat down with my Father “), 5:5 (“The lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David has conquered”), (“Lamb who has been slain”), 5:9 (“you were slaughtered”), 5:12 (“worthy is the Lamb that was slaughtered”), 11:8 (“ where their Lord was crucified”), and 12:11 (“they have conquered by the blood of the Lamb”).

We thus have here the historical story of the earthly Jesus whose ancestry was through Judah and David, who with his family had to escape to Egypt to elude death (see Rev. 12:1-12), was crucified, pierced in the side, and conquered death to be raised to reside with God in heaven.

    3. Then Zindler throws in the fact that Malina sees many references to astrology in Revelation. I am not quite sure what that is supposed to prove, certainly not that John the Baptist was behind the writing of the book since both the Jewish prophets and the NT teachings rail against any form of magic practices as examples of idolatry. But let's examine that statement more closely.

The Dictionary of Biblical Imagery states: “Revelation, shrouding political eventualities in metaphor and spiritual imagery, draws heavily on magic symbolism...John does not create these images but avails himself of the standard literary stock at hand.” But why, one might ask, does he use these particular symbols which come from pagan beliefs? C. E. Arnold does a good job of answering that question, as you can see below:

“As the early church appropriated much of the OT tradition regarding idolatry, it would have taken over the negative perspective on astrology. The Torah expressly prohibited Israel from worshiping the stars (Deut 4:19). One may also assume that the anti-magic polemic of Acts and the Apocalypse and the Apostolic fathers includes an anti-astrology stance. Nevertheless, astral imagery holds a prominent place in the book of Revelation.” Arnold cites passages such as Revelation 1:16,20; 8:10-12; 9:1;12:4,7; 22:16 before mentioning why it is included at all:

“The astral imagery here and elsewhere, would have communicated powerfully to people who came into the church steeped in a background of astrological practices. One message that comes out strongly is Jesus' supremacy and sovereignty over all the stars.” This is really the only rationale for astral imagery that is possible, and it makes no sense to have come from John the Baptist since he was supposedly writing to a wholly Jewish audience which did not come out of such a pagan background. So that fact actually argues strongly against the first of Zindler's points.

Another article in DBI says “virtually all the biblical star motifs converge in the book of Revelation.” And many of these include Christ's presence. “In symbolic uses they appear in apocalyptic visions of impending cosmic events that we can barely imagine, and they represent such transcendent beings as saints in eternal glory and the resplendent ascended Christ.”

    4. Next, Zindler makes light of the fact that there are only 13 specific mentions of Jesus or Christ in the whole book, a statistic that he hopes in itself will convince us that it is not enough times to even consider (note how he puts an explanation point at the end of his sentence to emphasize these paltry numbers). One wonders how many times would have actually been needed to convince him. The problem with his reasoning is that Jesus is referred to using different language throughout Revelation. He is the one who is and was and is to come (1:4), the son of the Father (3:21; 14:1), the one who was dead and now alive forever (1:18), their Lord (11:8), the son who is the ruler of all nations (12:5:19:15), the male child (12:13), the Lamb who is the son of the Father (14:1), and Lord of lords and King of kings (17:14; 19:16).

And, as mentioned above, it is not necessarily just the sheer number of times something is mentioned in Revelation that counts, but also whether it harks back to a symbolic number such as 7 or 12. Thus, both “Jesus Christ” and “God Almighty” appear seven times each, and “Lamb” appears 28 times.

    5. Zindler's last piece of “reasoning” is a bit hard to understand, or to take. He commits the fallacy of the excluded middle in order to try and convince us of his thesis. He reasons that Revelation demonstrates the liberal scholars are incorrect in stating that the early church started with a historical personage, Jesus, and turned him into a deity. Therefore, considering the supposed very early date of Revelation, the opposite must be true: the Church first came up with the idea of a heavenly god and then saw in the earthly Jesus the fulfillment of that vision. Number one: this reasoning, such as it is, depends entirely on Zindler's (and Ford's) discredited date for the writing of Revelation. Number two: it totally ignores the possibility of the complete NT picture being true, namely, that Jesus Christ began as the eternal Deity alongside God the Father, voluntarily humbled Himself as a human being, was crucified on the cross, rose from the dead to again take His place beside the Father, and will come again in Judgment (see Philippians 2).