Cerinthian authorship and urges that it was not written by
the apostle, on the ground of its difference in language, -style
and contents from the other Johannine writings. Its author
was some inspired man bearing the 'same name as the son. of
Zebedee. The arguments of Dionysius were repeated by Eusebius,
who ascribed the work to the presbyter John mentioned by
Papias (Eus. H.E. iii. 39) and was in doubt whether he should
place Revelation among the spurious (νόθα) works (H .E. iii. 25. 4)
or the accepted (ὁμολογούμενα).
Eastern Church.—In the Eastern Church the views of Dionysius and Eusebius were generally accepted. With the exception of Methodius and Pamphilus the book was not received by Eastern scholars. Thus it was either not mentioned or disowned by Cyril of Jerusalem, Chrysostom, Theodore of Mopsuestia, Theodoret and Amphilochus of Iconium. It is absent from the so-called Synopsis of Athanasius, the Stichometry of Nicephorus, the List of Sixty Books and other authoritative documents. It formed no part of the Peshitta New Testament. It was apparently unknown to Ephraem. Even when later it found a place in the Philoxenian and Harclean versions it never became a familiar book to the Syrian Churches, while it was unhesitatingly rejected by the Nestorian and Jacobite Churches.
But though the Syrian Church maintained this unconciliatory attitude to the book, opposition to it began gradually to disappear in the rest of the East. Thus it came to be acknowledged by Athanasius, Isidore of Pelusium, Gregory of Nyssa, and others. Commentaries on the book were written by Andreas, archbishop of Caesarea, in the 5th century, and Arethas in the 9th.
Western Church.—In the Western Church, Revelation was accepted by all writers from Hippolytus onward with the exception of Jerome, who relegated it to the class lying between the canonical and apocryphal. The authenticity of the book was unquestioned thenceforward till the Reformation, when the view of Jerome was revived by Erasmus, Carlstadt, Luther and others under various forms. In the Lutheran Church this opposition lasted into the next century, but in the Reformed it gave way much earlier. That Revelation has retained its place in the canon is due not to its extravagant claims to inspiration or its apocalyptical disclosures, but to its splendid faith and unconquerable hope, that have never failed to awake the corresponding graces in every age of the Church's history.
The History of Interpretation.—This is a most fruitful subject, and the study of it helps to settle other related questions. We first of all might divide the methods of interpretation into two classes: I. Methods which presuppose the literal unity of the book; II. Methods which presuppose some breach of this unity either in the plan of the book as a whole or in some of its details.
I. Methods presupposing the Literal Unity of the Book.—Where the book was accepted the problem of its interpretation was differently dealt with according to the age and environment of the interpreter. The book was first taken in a severely literal sense, and particularly in its chiliastic doctrine.
i. Chiliastic Interpretation.—Revelation was held to teach chiliasm, or the ~doctrine of the literal reign of 1000 years. Amongst the chiliasts were Cerinthus, Papias, Justin, Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Tertullian and Victorinus.[1] When the Church obtained the mastery of the world this method came naturally to be abandoned in favour of a spiritualistic interpretation, to which we shall presently refer. But the growing secularism of the Church led to a revival of the former method in the beginning of the 13th century amongst- the Franciscans. Thus Joachim of Floris in his Expositio magni abbatis Ioachimi in Apoc. teaches that Babylon is Rome, the Beast from the Sea Islam, the False Prophet the heretical sects of the day, and that on the close of the present age which was at hand the millennium would ensue. This method of interpretation was pursued to extravagant lengths by other Franciscans and was subsequently adopted by the Protestant reformers, who could justify their identification .of the papacy with 'the Antichrist from books written within the Roman communion. 'Joachim was the first to apply the “ recapitulation ” theory to Revelation.
ii. Spiritualistic Interpretation.—The founder of this school of interpretation was Ticonius the Montanist (floruit A.D. 380), though he followed therein the precedent set by Origen. His interpretation is on the whole mystical. Historical fulfilments, if not excluded, are not sought for. The millennium is the period between the first and second comings of Christ. The method of Ticonius was dominant in the Church down to the middle ages, amongst his followers being such notable churchmen as Augustine, Primasius, Cassiodorus, Bede, Anselm. iii. Universal H historical. M ethod of I interpretation.-A counter attempt over against Joachim to interpret Revelation in the light of history was made by Nicolas of Lyra (1329, in his Postilla), following (?) therein the lead of Petrus Aureolus (1317). Here for the first time a consistently elaborated world-historical interpretation is carried out from the reign of Domitian to Lyra's own period. Under this method might be classed the expositions of Luther, Osiander, Striegel, Flacius, Gerhard and Calovius; and English writers such as Napier, Mede and Newton. Throughout these later commentaries a strong anti papal interest which identified the pope with the Antichrist holds a central place-a doctrine which, as we have seen, goes back historically to the immediate disciples of Joachim and like-minded Franciscans. .
iv. Contemporary-Historical Method.—Under the stress of the Protestant attack there arose new methods on the papal side, and their authors were the Spanish Jesuits, Ribeira (ob. 1591) and Alcasar (ob. 1614). With these writers we have the beginning of a scientific method of interpretation. They approach the book from the standpoint of the author and seek the clue to his writings in the events of his time. It is from these scholars that subsequent writers of Revelation have learnt how to study this book scientifically.[2] This method was adopted and developed by Grotius,[3] Hammond, Clericus, Semler, Corredi and Eichhorn, Lücke, Bleek and Ewald, and the consciousness that Rome and not Jerusalem was the object of attack in Revelation became increasingly clear in the works of these scholars. The work of Ramsay, The Letters to the Seven Churches (1904), is a pure representative of this method.
v.–vii. Continuously Historical, Eschatological[4] and Symbolical Methods.—These methods are now generally regarded as unscientific, and call for no further notice here save to mention that the first was upheld by Hengstenberg, Ebrard, Maitland, Elliott, &c.; the second by Kliefoth, Beck, Zahn, and the third by Auberlen, Luthardt, Milligan and Benson.
The learned Cambridge Commentary by Swete (The Apocalypse of John, 2nd ed., 1907) makes use of several of the methods of interpretation enumerated above. Thus Dr Swete writes (p. ccxviii) of his work: “With the ‘preterits’ (contemporary-historical) it will take its stand on the circumstances of the age and locality to which the book belongs, and will connect the greater part of the prophecy with the destinies of the empire under which the prophet lived; with the 'futurists (eschatological) it will look for fulfilments of St John’s pregnant words in times yet to come. With the school of Auberlen and Benson it will find in the Apocalypse a Christian philosophy of history; with the ‘continuous-historical’ school it can see
- ↑ The oldest Latin commentary was written by this scholar (ob. 303). He was the first in extant literature to interpret certain passages in Revelation of Nero.
- ↑ The Jesuit Juan Mariana was the first after Victorinus to explain the wounded head ” as referring 'to Nero. This interpretation was introduced into Protestant exegesis by Corrodi.
- ↑ The beginnings of the literary-critical method are to be found in Grotius. 'Starting from the different dates assigned by tradition to the exile to Patmos and the different chronological relations implied in the book itself, her conjectured that the Apocalypse was composed of several works of St John, written in different places and at different times, some before, some after A.D. 70. Herein he was followed by Hammond and Lakemacher, but the idea was before its time and practically died stillborn.
- ↑ Or futurist. While it is impossible to interpret the Apocalypse scienti cally as a whole by the eschatological method, there are undoubtedly some sections in it which must be so interpreted.
