Greco-Roman Symbolism in the Book of Revelation
Robert C. Newman
Biblical Theological Seminary
Introduction
The Book of Revelation B as is widely recognized B makesmany allusions to the OldTestament, but never quotes from it directly. Thus the UBS Greek New Testament, in its AIndex ofQuotations,@ has no entry for Revelation quoting any Old Testamentbook, but its AIndex of Allusions and Verbal Parallels@ has some 632 entries for Revelation.[1] My own experience of teachingRevelation for many years on the seminary level has convinced me that theseallusions can be very useful in helping us think through what may be themeaning of various disputed passages.
Some of these Old Testamentallusions are simple references to a specific theme or passage. For instance, Rev 1:7, Ahe is coming with the clouds@ is clearly a reference to Dan 7:13, Aone like a son of man, coming with the clouds ofheaven.@ Likewisethe next phrase Aevery eye shall see him, even those who pierced him@ refers to Zech 12:10: AThey willlook on me, the one they have pierced.@ On the other hand, the reference to Aa lamb, looking as if it had been slain@ (Rev 5:6) is a clear allusion to the theme ofsacrifice found throughout the Old Testament.
Other allusions are more complex than these. Some allude to a combination of OldTestament passages. For instance,the several references to a (two-edged) sword coming from Jesus= mouth (Rev 1:16; 2:16; 19:15, 21) seem to pick upboth Isa 49:2, AHe made my mouth like a sharpened sword,@ and Isa 11:4: AHe willstrike the earth with the rod of his mouth; with the breath of his lips he willslay the wicked.@ Otherallusions are modifications of Old Testament pictures; for instance, the beastof Revelation 13 is a combination of the four beasts of Daniel 7. Still others seem to be newapplications of Old Testament passages. For instance, the two olive trees of Zechariah 4 seem originally torefer to the high priest Jeshua and the governor Zerubbabel back in the 6thcentury BC, whereas the two olive trees of Rev 11:4 seem to point to figuresstill future when John received his vision.
Besides Old Testamentallusions, commentators have regularly suggested that Revelation also containsallusions to non-biblical materials. For instance, the above-mentioned AIndex ofAllusions and Verbal Parallels@ has some 32 entries for Revelation connecting withapocryphal and pseudepigraphal Jewish works. As interesting as it would be toexplore these, that is not our subject here. Instead, we want to concern ourselves with Greco-Romanconnections rather than extra-biblical Jewish ones.
A number of Greco-Romanallusions have been identified by William M. Ramsay in the letters to the sevenchurches, Revelation chapters two and three. Here numerous references are made tospecific features of the cities in which these churches were located. For instance Sardis had never beentaken by storm, but only by stealth at night, and Rev 3:3 says to theChristians at Sardis: Aif you do not wake up, I will come like a thief, andyou will not know at what time I will come to you.@ And the city of Laodicea was plagued with a watersupply which provided only an unpleasant lukewarm water by the time it reachedthe city; Jesus (Rev 3:16) says to its church: Abecauseyou are lukewarm B neither hot nor cold B I amabout to spit you out of my mouth.@ In general, such allusions are not controversial.
Evangelicals have been moreskeptical about alleged allusions to Greco-Roman paganism. This is no doubt partly due to our desireto be faithful to the biblical teaching against idolatry. And in addition, we are particularly skeptical whencommentators give the impression that this material was borrowed by the authorof Revelation in an attempt to invent a literary vision when he himself hadseen no vision at all. Concernabout this way of reading the book is certainly understandable.
Here, however, I wish tosuggest another spin on this data, since there do appear to be examples ofsymbolism in Revelation which connect with the Greco-Roman world,[5]and even with its paganism. Thisstate of affairs can be understood without endorsing paganism or faking ofvisions if we will pay serious attention to the claims of the book itself. For Revelation does not claim to beJohn=s composition, but rather God=s B Aa revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him toshow to his servants what must soon come to pass@ (Rev1:1). If indeed wetake the source of Revelation to be God, then he may perfectly well have chosento communicate his message by using pictures that would be understandable tohis Greco-Roman readers, most of whom had grown up in paganism. Let=s see.
Symbols in Revelation withLittle or No Old Testament Background
Let us begin in a verynatural way. Given the large numberof Old Testament allusions in Revelation, what pictures or symbols occur in thebook which seem to have very little or no Old Testament background?
1. The white stone. Mostwould agree that one of these is the reference in Rev 2:17, where the one whoovercomes is promised by Jesus, AI willgive him a white stone with a new name written on it.@ Whatdoes that mean?
Both Keener and Charles notethat juries sometimes gave their verdict by voting with colored stones, where awhite stone stood for innocent and a black one for guilty. This is seen in Ovid=s Metamorphoses 15.41: AIt was the custom in ancient times to use white andblack pebbles, the black for condemning prisoners and the white for freeingthem from the charge.@ To areader familiar with this custom (or with Ovid=s work),Jesus= promise would be seen as giving his followersacquittal at the last judgment.
Another possibility mentionedby both Charles and Keener is the custom of giving pebbles of various colors asadmission tickets to public celebrations. This connection might then beunderstood to mean that Jesus is promising his followers admission to thefestivities celebrating his return (in Jewish terms, the Messianic banquet).
Charles gives a number ofother suggestions for the white stone, finally opting for an amulet engravedwith a name. But none of these others seem as cogentas the two above B acquittal at the judgment or admission to thebanquet. As for choosing betweenthese two, both are very appropriate. Perhaps God has chosen a figure which can do double duty.
2. Deep secrets andmysteries. The reference in Rev 2:24 to the Adeep secrets@ ofSatan and in 10:7 to the Amystery of God@ may beintended to bring to mind the mystery religions of the Greco-Roman world, withthe attraction produced by their secret rites and initiations. Everyone would have had someacquaintance with these.
3. The seven hills. Thereference to the harlot seated on seven hills in Rev 17:9 would immediatelysuggest Rome to nearly any reader of John=s time,whether Jewish or Gentile in background. This was a familiar expression in the classical writers, such as Horace,Virgil, Martial, Cicero, and Propertius. This picture would provide the readerwith a hint that the harlot is not only (in some sense) Babylon B as she is explicitly named B but also Rome.
4. Title on her forehead. Theharlot is pictured in Rev 17:5 as having a title on her forehead. This is not unique in Revelation, wherethe mark of the beast on the foreheads of his followers is the beast=s name (13:16-17), and God=s seal on the 144,000 is the name of the Lamb and theFather (14:1). Likewise in the OldTestament, the high priest had a gold plate on his forehead with God=s name on it (Ex 28:36-38), so this might be an OldTestament allusion. Yet it isnoteworthy that the title on the harlot=sforehead is her name, and ARoman harlots wore a label with their names on theirbrows@[10]
Symbols with Old TestamentBackground But Unique Features
5. Crowns to theovercomers. In Rev 2:10 a Acrown oflife@ is promised to the one who overcomes, and in 3:11believers at Philadelphia are warned to hold on to what they have, Aso that no one will take your crown.@ Thoughcrowns are mentioned frequently in the Old Testament, the figure here seems tobe more that of crown as a reward, as was common for victors in both militaryvictories and athletic events of the Greco-Roman world.[11]
6. The four horsemen. Thehorses and riders which come forth as Christ opens the first four seals inRevelation six have a background in Zechariah chapter one (and to a lesserextent, in the chariots of chapter six). Yet the figures riding the horses and the color of the horses seem to beallegorical in a way they are not in Zechariah. This fits well with theGreco-Roman penchant for allegorical figures, which is seen in their artworkand especially their coinage. Thus, whatever the first rider mayrepresent, the second is surely War, the third Famine, and the fourthDeath. My own guess is that thefirst rider is Conquest rather than Christ, as some would think, or theAntichrist, as others have suggested.
7. The seven-sealedscroll. In Revelation chapter five, the Lamb receives a scroll fromthe One seated upon the throne, a scroll sealed with seven seals, which onlythe Lamb is worthy to open. Thoughsealed documents were a standard practice in the ancient near east to protectlegal transactions from fraud, and though both Dan 12:9 and Isa 29:11 refer tosealed documents, the reference to seven seals has no Old Testament background. Roman wills were typically sealed with seven seals, and sowere some other legal documents. One might suggest this picture conveysthe idea that Jesus (having died) is opening his own will. Or perhaps the scroll is the title deedto earth, lost when Adam fell into rebellion, but won back by Jesus whoconquered through his death.
8. He who is, and was, andis to come. This triple characterization of God (Rev 1:4, 8, 4:8, with ashorter double version in 11:17 and 16:5) clearly has roots in hisself-revelation to Moses in Ex 3:14. Yet this triplet form is more elaborate than either the Hebrew there orits Greek translation. G. K. Bealenotes that Aa similar threefold formula is found in pagan Greekliterature as a title of the gods, which may have sparked John=s appeal to the Jewish formulas as an apologetic.@[14]
9. The seven stars. Thesestars in Jesus= hand (Rev 1:16, 20) are the seven angels associatedwith the seven churches, represented by the lampstands. The number seven is thus sufficientlyexplained by this correspondence. Yet some have felt there is an additional reference to some prominentgroup of seven stars in the sky B perhapsthe Pleiades, or the Great Bear (Big Dipper), or the seven planets known to theancients (Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn).[15]
Symbols Resembling PaganMythology
10. The Woman, the Childand the Dragon. This incident in chapter twelve hasprobably attracted the most attention as a suggested allusion to Greco-Romanpagan mythology. Though each itemindividually could be reproduced from Old Testament and Jewish sources, this isnot true of the whole. The shapeof the story is close to (1) the Egyptian myth of Isis begetting Horus, opposedby the red dragon Typhon, with Horus later killing the dragon; and (2) theGreek myth of Leto bearing Apollo, opposed by the dragon Python, and Apollolater killing Python. Charles= take onall this is that the chapter Ais full of mythological features which could not havebeen the original creations of a Jew or a Christian,@ but that Ainternationalmyths have been used and transformed to higher ends.@[17] Keener,from a more orthodox perspective, says the Avisionreapplies imagery that was widely known in ancient mythology.@[18] Keeneralso notes that AVirgil and other Roman writers also extolled the birthof a divine boy who would bring deliverance to the world.@[19]
What should we make ofthis? The proposal of C. S. Lewis,found in his books Pilgrim=sRegress and Till We Have Faces, may be worth exploring.[20] He suggests that God has not lefthimself without witness among the pagans, and that B in addition to sending them rain, crops, food, andjoy (Acts 14:17) B God has somehow implanted stories among the pagans,which (though distorted and corrupted by them), nevertheless continue totestify about God=s redemptive activity. This approach would also explain Jesus= remark in John 12 when Greeks arrive requesting anaudience with him. We are not toldwhether they got it or not, but if Jesus= wordsin verses 23-24 were spoken to them, they would surely have thought of thedying and rising grain gods when he said Aunless agrain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a singleseed. But if it dies, it producesmany seeds.@
Charles, I think, is rightwhen he says that this vision Acould not have been the original creation of a Jew ora Christian.@ Besidesclaiming that a Agoddess with child@ isquite foreign to Jewish thought, he notes that a Christian would not have leftout any reference to the death and resurrection of Jesus. But of course, we are not claiming thata Jew or Christian invented this vision, but that God did! In that case, God might be callingattention to a story which the pagans knew well, and which God approved of (inits original form), for he himself had put it there!
This, in fact, is what anumber of evangelical missiologists have been exploring under the rubric Aredemptive analogies,@ themost famous work of this sort being Don Richardson=s book Eternity in Their Hearts. It is also one of the things whichmakes the AGospel in the Stars@ theoryso attractive, though at the moment it does not appear that the details of theclassical constellations go back to the patriarchal period.[22]
Speaking of stars, Ernest L.Martin has suggested that the picture of the woman Aclothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet@ (Rev 12:1) provides an astronomical date for thebirth of Jesus. The woman he takes to be theconstellation Virgo (the virgin), which being one of the twelve constellationsof the Zodiac, is clothed with the sun for about one month each year. The moon makes a complete circuit ofthe heavens each month, and for one day is just below the virgin=s feet. For the year Martin believes is that of Jesus= birth (3 BC), that day would have been September11. Martin may have somethinghere, which I hope to explore in a paper at the ETS national meeting inNovember of 2000.
Following this suggestion,the dragon in the vision might be represented by one of the dragon or snakeconstellations in the sky, probably Draco, which encircles the north polarregion above Virgo, or possibly Hydra, the water snake, which extends alongsideVirgo to the south.
11. The harlot riding thebeast. In Rev 17, John sees another vision B a woman who is identified as a harlot, as Babylon,and as seated upon seven hills. She is riding upon a beast that is clearly the beast of chapter 13 andwhich, as we noted above, is a combination of the four beasts of Daniel chapter7.
The harlot figure has asignificant Old Testament background along two lines. One of these is Israel as harlot, as seen, for example, inIsa 1:21; Jer 2:20; and Ezekiel 16. The other is the pagan city as harlot, referring to Tyre in Isa 23:17and to Nineveh in Nah 3:4. Thedescription of Babylon given in Revelation 18 seems to suggest that it is thelatter of these two pictures which is being called up in Revelation.[24]
The riding motif does notoccur in the Old Testament, but is unique to Revelation. Commentators have often taken the factthat the woman is riding the beast to be an indication that she initially is incontrol of the beast, but that the beast later rebels and destroys the woman(Rev 17:16): AThe beast and the ten horns you saw will hate theprostitute. They will bring her toruin and leave her naked...@ Those ofus (like myself) who have only ridden horses on rare occasions are not soinclined to feel sure the rider is in control!
However, if we look into theGreco-Roman background for an analogy to the woman riding the beast, we find astriking parallel in the Europa myth. According to Apollodorus and Ovid, Zeus sees Europa, daughter of thePhoenician king, playing with friends at the seashore, and loves her. He disguises himself as a bull andeventually get Europa to climb on his back. He then heads out to sea and takes her to Crete, where hehas children by her. Clearly inthis case, the rider was not in control of the mount.
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For believers seeking to correlate Revelation withcurrent events, it is intriguing to note that the Europa symbol has recentlybeen used to represent the European Union (formerly the Common Market). The British government issued a 16pence stamp to commemorate the 2nd election of the European Parliamentwhich featured Europa riding the bull. TIME magazine also used the Europa motif in threeillustrations for an article about preparations for the European Community=s Maastricht Treaty. Perhaps we are to read the harlotpicture as alluding to Europe as well as Babylon and Rome.
Conclusions
Well. That was a quick tour of the book ofRevelation, looking for possible items in which allusion is made to Greco-Romansymbols. We found a number of goodcandidates, more than ten by our count. The count would be higher if we subdivided the various elementsinvolving the horsemen, mother, child, dragon, harlot and beast. Doubtless others could be found; I havein fact omitted some rather minor examples which I did not think would addanything to our discussion. Isuspect a scholar versed in Greco-Roman antiquities could find more, andprobably a real inhabitant of that ancient culture more yet.
What have we learned? It looks like most of the pictorialelements chosen to make the message of Revelation vivid to its originalrecipients were drawn from Scripture. This is not surprising since the recipients are professingChristians. Yet a significantnumber were drawn from the culture in which they lived, some even from paganmythology.
It is true that Revelationdoes not tell us it is drawing on pictures from the culture, but then neitherdoes it tell us that it is drawing on pictures from the Old Testament. AsRamsay has shown, some of the elements would only be obvious to a person whowas familiar with the particular background involved. We of evangelical heritage are familiar with the biblicalbackground. The inhabitants of thevarious cities of Asia would be familiar with their local background. And those who had lived all their livesin the Greco-Roman world would be familiar with the general culturalbackground.
Regarding the question ofcontextualizing the Gospel, I think this feature in the book of Revelation addsone more element to be included in any discussion of the matter. If we are right about these allusionsto Greco-Roman culture, we see God doing something of this sort right here.
This material should alsocause us to ponder the question, AWhatsort of presence did God maintain among the gentiles during those longcenturies in which he more or less confined his activity to Israel?@ While wemust take the biblical statements about his Agivingthem over@ to various sins (Romans 1) full weight, we should notuse these statements to evaporate other biblical evidence that the matter isnot quite black and white. Inparticular, the question of what sorts of special revelation may have continuedoutside Israel needs some further thought.
Reference Notes:
.Barbara Aland, et al, eds. TheGreek New Testament, 4th rev.ed. (Stuttgart: DeutscheBibelgesellschaft; London: United Bible Societies, 1993), pp 890-900.
.Robert C. Newman, ATheReturn of Christ: Interpreting Revelation by Its Allusions,@ IBRI Research Report 24 (1985); Course Notes for NTG790Revelation (Hatfield, PA: BiblicalTheological Seminary, 1998).
.Aland, Greek NT, pp 900-901.
.William M. Ramsay, Letters to the Seven Churches of Asia (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1963).
.AJohnwrote in Greek and used Old Testament, Jewish, and sometimes Greco-Roman figuresof speech and images.@Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1993), p 760.
.Keener, p 771;. R.H. Charles, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on theRevelation of St. John the Divine (Edinburgh:T. & T. Clark, 1920), 1:66.
.Keener, p 771; Charles, p 66.
.Charles, 2:69; G. K. Beale, The Book of Revelation (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999), p 870, givesreferences.
.Harold Mattingly, Roman Coins (London:Methuen, 1927), pp 67-71; Zander H. Klawans, Reading and Dating RomanImperial Coins (Racine, WI: Whitman, 1953),pp 44-50.
.G. R. Beasley-Murray, The Book of Revelation (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1981), pp 120-23.
.Charles, 1:299ff; Keener, p 793ff; Isis and Horus: Didorus of Sicily 1.21.3;Plutarch, Isis and Osiris; Leto (Latona)and Apollo: Homeric Hymn to Apollo10-140, 350-375; Apollodorus, Library 1.4.1. There seems tohave been some confusion between these two women, see Herodotus 2.156.
.C.S. Lewis, The Pilgrim=sRegress (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1958), pp151-54; Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1956).
.Don Richardson, Eternity in Their Hearts(Ventura, CA: Regal, 1981).
.For the proposal, see E. W. Bullinger, Witness of the Stars (1893) and J. A. Seiss, The Gospel in theStars (1891); for the problems, see RobertC. Newman, A3919 kokab@ in NewInternational Dictionary of Old Testament Theology and Exegesis, 2:610.
.Ernest L. Martin, The Star That Astonished the World (Portland, OR: ASK Publications, 1991).
.Thomas R. Edgar, ABabylon:Ecclesiastical, Political, or What?@ Journal of the EvangelicalTheological Society 25 (Sept 1982):333-341.
.Apollodorus, Library 1:298-99; Ovid, Metamorphoses 2:830-875.
.This Week in Bible Prophecy (May 1993):9.
.Bruce W. Nelan, AWhich Wayto Maastricht, Mijnheer?@TIME (December 9, 1991): 38-41.