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Lion as Slain Lamb: On Reading Revelation Recursively

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 September 2014

Patricia M. McDonald
Patricia M. McDonald*
Affiliation:
Mount Saint Mary's College
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Abstract

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Because of their communities' experiences and tendencies, New Testament writers such as Paul and Mark stress the death and resurrection of Jesus as the source and model of the Christian life. In the Book of Revelation, John's version of this is that the lion of the tribe of Judah indeed “conquers” but does so as the Lamb who was slain; the Christian witnessing that leads to the victory of Christ's followers may also entail their death. Yet the seer associates the Lamb imagery with that of ancient near eastern and classical versions of the conquest myth. Does John risk subverting his own purposes? The paper examines his presentation of the Lamb and suggests that he does indeed run such a risk, at least for the inattentive reader, but this does not justify neglect of such a creative and imaginative soteriology in which evil is overcome by the word of God.

Type
Articles
Information
Horizons , Volume 23 , Issue 1 , Spring 1996 , pp. 29 - 47
Copyright
Copyright © The College Theology Society 1996

References

1 Catholics have not always neglected the Book of Revelation. See, e.g., Emmerson, Richard K. and McGinn, Bernard, eds., The Apocalypse in the Middle Ages (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1992).Google Scholar

2 With most contemporary scholars, I take it for granted that the seer of Revelation is what he says he is: someone called John, a servant of Jesus Christ (Rev 1:1) who is the recipient of prophecy (1:3; 10:11; 22:18-19) and sees himself as having particular pastoral responsibility for at least some of the churches in Asia Minor (Rev 2 and 3). He is familiar with a variety of traditions, both ancient (e.g., the Old Testament) and more contemporary (e.g., Jesus material that is witnessed to other New Testament components, including the Synoptic, Johannine, and Pauline strands).

3 On this, see Wink, Walter, Naming the Powers: The Language of Power in the New Testament, vol. 1, The Powers (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984), esp. 113–15.Google Scholar

4 Caird, G. B., in The Revelation of St. John the Divine, Harper's New Testament Commentaries (New York and Evanston: Harper & Row, 1966), 74Google Scholar, insists that, since John himself “has told us what he means by it,” searching Jewish literature is unnecessary. Loren L. Johns, in a presentation at the 1994 Annual Meeting of the Society for Biblical Literature, ignored Caird's advice. His exploration of six biblical and various extra-biblical possibilities (the Testaments of Joseph and of Benjamin; 1 Enoch) led him to conclude, however, that, as no one source is sufficient to account for John's portrayal of the Lamb, the seer himself may well have invented the imagery.

5 See Vanni, U., “Il simbolismo nell'Apocalisse,” Gregorianum 61 (1980): 461–506, at 470–71.Google Scholar Vanni notes that theriomorphic (animal) symbolism in general is oscuramente superiore rispetto al livello degli uomini (471 and n. 23): it refers to a level of reality somehow transcending that at which humans operate.

6 Ibid., 491.

7 Yet the understanding of that inner reality is, as a rule, determined by the concrete Christian experience; this is the basis of Caird's “rebirth of images” (Revelation, 73). See, e.g., Sweet, John, Revelation, TPI New Testament Commentaries (Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1990), 125–32.Google Scholar

8 Paul and the synoptic gospels testify to Jesus' Davidic ancestry (see, e.g., Rom 1:3-4; Mk 10:47-48, and Matthew's and Luke's infancy narratives and genealogies); Jn 7:42 probably implies it, in ironical fashion.

9 The other New Testament occurrences of nikan are in Lk 11:22 (a parable about a “strong man” being overcome by one stronger); Rom 3:4 (quoting Ps 51:6, where it means “acknowledged as just”); and Rom 12:21 (where Paul exhorts his readers not to be conquered by evil but to conquer evil with good). The link with the Johannine usage is not strong, although the example of Jesus presumably underlies all of them. (See also Rom 8:37, where Paul makes the link between Christians' act of conquest—hypernikōmen—and their experience of divine love).

10 This is the case in Rev 2:7,11,17,26; 3:5,12,21(2x); 5:5; 21:7.

11 Collins, Adela, The Combat Myth in the Book of Revelation, Harvard Dissertations in Religion 9 (Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, 1976), 57, 209.Google Scholar

12 Ibid., 208, for P. D. Hanson's analysis of Zechariah 9.

13 The Divine Warrior, Marduk, is not killed in this version of the myth.

14 Collins, , The Combat Myth, 209Google Scholar, taken from Hanson, Paul D., “Zechariah 9 and the Recapitulation of an Ancient Ritual Pattern,” Journal of Biblical Literature 92 (1973): 37–59, at 54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

15 Collins, The Combat Myth, Appendix, 245-61.

16 Ibid., chaps. 3 and 5.

17 Ibid., 44, where Collins is dependent on Ricoeur, Lévi-Strauss, and Wayne Meeks.

18 Ephesus and Thyatira (2:2,19) probably belong here, too.

19 See, e.g., Psalms of Solomon 17:21-25; in v. 25 the sight of this descendant of David suffices to make the nations flee. A convenient source is Charlesworth, James H., ed., The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, vol. 2 (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1985), 639–70.Google Scholar The first century C.E. manifests a variety of Jewish expectations about the messiah. See, e.g., Neusner, Jacob, Green, William S., and Frerichs, Ernest, eds., Judaisms and Their Messiahs at the Turn of the Christian Era (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987)Google Scholar, and, more recently, Collins, John J., The Scepter and the Star: The Messiahs of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Other Ancient Literature, The Anchor Bible Library (New York: Doubleday, 1995).Google Scholar

20 The Lamb could even have been offered as a sacrifice. As Sweet, (Revelation, 128)Google Scholar notes, the sacrificial sense of sphazō, the verb translated as “slain,” “was prominent in secular Greek and predominant in LXX.” However, John's use of sphazō elsewhere in the book (6:4; 13:3; 18:24) gives no support to this interpretation.

21 “The reality is not subject to the word but the word to the reality” (Hilary of Poitiers, De trinitate 4, quoted to good effect by Barth, Karl in Church Dogmatics I.1: Doctrine of the Word of God (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1936), 407).Google Scholar See McKenna, Stephen, ed., St. Hilary of Poitiers: The Trinity, The Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 25 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1968), 103.Google Scholar

22 Christian tradition came to interpret Jesus' crucifixion in various ways, one of the more prominent of them being on the analogy of the ritual sacrifice of a lamb without blemish. On this, see, e.g., Ex 12:5; Ezek 46:13; Heb 9:14; 1 Cor 5:7; 1 Pet 1:19; and probably Jn 1:29,36. Isa 53:7 is also relevant to the whole picture of “lamb” christology. See Sweet, , Revelation, 124–25.Google Scholar

23 In Rev 1:2, e.g., John “gives witness to the word of God and to the testimony of Jesus” (both genitives are subjective).

24 John presumably expects his audience to understand this on a first hearing because of current usage in Johannine communities.

25 See Rev 2:7, 11, 17, 26; 3:5, 12, 21.

26 Harrington, Wilfrid J. O.P., Revelation, Sacra Pagina 16 (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1993), 226.Google Scholar

27 See below on Rev 19:21; 6:2 maybe another example.

28 See Caird, , Revelation, 80.Google Scholar This remains true whatever one's precise understanding of the first horseman may be. The topic is much controverted because of the mixture of positive and negative imagery in 6:2 and consequent disagreement about how it relates to its context. For a recent treatment, see Kerkeslager, Allen, “Apollo, Greco-Roman Prophecy, and the Rider on the White Horse in Rev 6:2,” Journal of Biblical Literature 112 (1993): 116–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

29 This goes counter to the expectation deducible from 11QMelchizedek and the War Scroll, where Michael's prevailing in heaven seems to be the cause of the Messiah's being able to prevail on earth. See, conveniently, Betz, Otto and Riesner, Rainer, Jesus, Qumran and the Vatican: Clarifications, trans. Bowden, John (New York: Crossroad, 1994), 91–92.Google Scholar

30 Ford, J. M., Revelation, Anchor Bible 38 (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1975), 234.Google Scholar

31 E.g., Caird, , Revelation, 179;Google ScholarSweet, , Revelation, 222;Google ScholarHarrington, , Revelation, 146;Google ScholarBeasley-Murray, G. R., Revelation, New Century Bible Commentary, rev. ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1978), 223.Google Scholar

32 See, e.g., Caird, , Revelation, 179.Google Scholar

33 The Old Testament does not explicitly associate Israel as virgin with the people's fidelity, but idolatry is graphically described in terms of a woman's sexual infidelity in, e.g., Ezek 16 and 23, and in Hos 1-3; in Hos 4, the first of the Lord's grievances against Israel is their lack of fidelity (v. 1).

34 Not all commentators see military language here. Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, e.g., in a careful consideration of 14:1-5, considers that “[t]he expression parthenoi [virgins] probably points … to the cultic purity of the Lamb's followers as well as to their representation of the ‘bride of the Lamb’” (see The Book of Revelation: Justice and Judgment [Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985], 181–203, at 189).Google ScholarSweet, (Revelation, 223 n. v)Google Scholar notes that the seer may intend a contrast with “the Galli, the emasculated priests of Cybele, the Great Mother, who was widely worshipped in Asia Minor.”

35 The Greek word used here is rhomphaia. It is also used in 6:8, one of the four traditional Old Testament means by which the four horsemen (or, at least, some of them: the text is unclear) bring death; the Old Testament background is that of covenant curses, i.e., the expected consequences of breaking God's covenant that were threatened in such texts as Ezek 14:21. (The same instrument is denoted by a different Greek word, machaira, in Rev 6:4.)

36 Wis 18:14-16 contains the idea of God's word as being like a powerful sword. See also Isa 49:2-3, where the servant of the Lord says that God made his mouth “like a sharp sword.”

37 This is not the case with the other two uses of machaira, sword, in 13:10,14: the first refers to a real possibility of Christians being killed and the second to the apparently mortal wound from which the Beast recovered, perhaps a reference to Nero's suicide, for which he used a sword; there were persistent rumors that he was not really dead.

38 See also Isa 11:4.

39 This scene and the related one in Rev 20:7-10 is prepared for in 16:14, where three sign-performing “demonic spirits” assemble “the kings of the whole world” at Armageddon for “the battle on the great day of God the almighty.”

40 Similarly, Wis 16:12 reads: “For indeed, neither herb nor application cured them, but your all-healing word, O Lord”; this is probably a reference to the Law.

41 In Wis 2 a similar sentiment is graphically expressed in personal terms rather than as a military metaphor: the just one provokes the malice of others.

42 See Rev 20:10, 14-15.

43 John may wish to imply that there was a battle that he chooses not to describe, or he may envisage a situation like that described in Psalms of Solomon 17:24-25, where the Davidic messiah has only to warn the “unlawful nations” to cause them to “flee from his presence.”

44 “The kings of the earth” are referred to as such in 1:5 (on this, see below, in text); 6:15; 17:2, 18; 18:3, 9; 19:[18],19; 21:24; see also 16:14 and 17:20, 12[2x]. Other ways in which John refers to his opponents are “the inhabitants of the earth” (3:10; 6:10; 8:13; 11:10[2x]; 13:8,[12],14[2x]; 17:[2],8); “the nations” (2:26; 5:9; 7:9; 10:11; 11:2, 9, 18; 12:5; 13:7; 14:6, 8; 15:3, 4; 16:19; 17:15; 18:3, 23; 19:15; 20:3, 8; see also 21:24, 26; 22:2); “the rest of the human race” (9:20); “those who claim to be Jews and are not” (2:9; 3:9); “those who call themselves apostles but are not” (2:2); the Nicolaitans (2:6, 15); the Balaamites (2:14) and the Jezebelites (2:20).

45 Susan Mathews, “The Tribulation, the Kingdom, and the Patient Endurance in Jesus” (unpublished paper).

46 Or their “glory”; the Greek word is doxa, that which in Revelation as a whole, is God's possession (15:8; cf. 18:1 and 21:11, 23) and something that creation rightly gives to God and to the Lamb. The noun is used seventeen times in the book and the verb twice: the eternal attribution of glory to God in the heavenly liturgy (4:9, 11; 5:12-13; 7:12; 15:4 [verb]) is that which humans on earth should also be making (11:13; 14:7). They are free to refuse (16:9) and Babylon even attempts to glorify itself (18:7, verb), but the eventual overthrow of such elements becomes an additional occasion for glorifying God (19:1, 7).

47 He also presupposes the existence of whatever force may be necessary to get the various beasts into the pool of sulfur, but that is not subject to human control and John has nothing to say about it (Rev 19:20 and 20:14-15).

48 See Fiorenza, Elisabeth Schüssler, Revelation: Vision of a Just World, Proclamation Commentaries (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1991), 117.Google Scholar

49 I should like to thank Bill Collinge, Dennis Hamm, S.J., Susan Mathews, Bill Portier, and Gerard Sloyan for their responses to earlier drafts of this paper.