Petersen / Bray Revelation

1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-0-8308-4254-4
Verlag: IVP Academic
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 352 Seiten

Reihe: Reformation Commentary on Scripture

Discover the world of sixteenth-century interpretation of Revelation Known as one of the most enigmatic books of the Bible, Revelation has sparked centuries of diverse theological debate, capturing the imaginations of Reformers navigating a time of immense upheaval. This volume, part of the Reformation Commentary on Scripture series, invites readers to engage with the perspectives of key Reformation-era theologians, offering a window into their reflections on prophecy, eschatology, and profound hopes for moral renewal. Guided by Rodney Petersen and Gerald Bray, this masterfully curated commentary guides readers through a wealth of early modern commentary on the book of Revelation, including voices across theological traditions-Lutheran, Reformed, Anglican, Radical, and Catholic. Much of the material-including commentaries, sermons, treatises, and confessions-appears for the first time in English, providing pastors, scholars, and students with fresh perspectives on the text. Through their expert curation, Petersen and Bray expand our understanding of how Revelation has been interpreted historically, enlightening contemporary reflection and practice. This volume offers more than theological insights-it's a resource for spiritual growth and deeper engagement, ideal for pastors seeking to invigorate their sermons or scholars aiming to broaden their knowledge of Reformation biblical interpretation. Key Features: - Reformation Insights on Revelation: Discover how sixteenth-century Reformers approached one of the Bible's most provocative books, navigating interpretations from preterist to futurist, historicist to spiritualist. - Diverse Theological Voices: Read from Reformation commentators such as David Chytraeus and Heinrich Bullinger, as well as lesser-known figures. - Previously Untranslated Works: Engage with sermons, treatises, confessions, and commentaries appearing in English for the first time, enriching your understanding of Reformation theology. - Scholarly Depth: Expand your knowledge of early modern exegetical diversity while gaining fresh perspectives on apocalyptic literature. - Pastoral Utility: Equip your sermons with insights that connect Scripture's historical richness to contemporary issues. Additional contents include: - A Guide to Using This Commentary - Introduction to Revelation - Map of Europe (Reformation Era) - Timeline of the Reformation - Biographical Sketches of Reformation-Era Leaders Enrich your library with this essential resource. Whether you're a pastor or a scholar deepening your study of biblical history and interpretation, Revelation is a volume that inspires understanding and bridges past and present. Add this commentary to your collection today and immerse yourself in the rich legacy of Reformation thought.

Rodney Petersen (PhD, Princeton) is emeritus executive director of Cooperative Metropolitan Ministries in Boston and president of Forgiveness International. He is also a visiting scholar at Duke University Divinity School. Gerald L. Bray (PhD, La Sorbonne) is a professor at Beeson Divinity School of Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama, and director of research for the Latimer Trust. He has written and edited a number of books on different theological subjects, including Galatians, Ephesians in the Reformation Commentary on Scripture series, Biblical Interpretation: Past and Present, The Doctrine of God, and Romans in the Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture series. A priest of the Church of England, Bray has also edited the post-Reformation Anglican canons.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Petersen, Rodney

Bray, Gerald

Leseproben

Introduction to Revelation

He will wipe away all tears from their eyes; there will be no more death, and no more mourning or sadness. . . . “Now I am making the whole of creation new. . . . It is already done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End.”

Revelation 21:4-6, Jerusalem Bible

Authorship and Canonicity

Literature on the authorship and canonicity of Revelation has grown in recent years along with recognition of the diversity and significance of apocalyptic literature.1 This section offers a brief summary of work on the authorship and canonicity of Revelation with its textual exegesis and interpretation insofar as it relates to sixteenth-century commentaries.2

Among the apocalyptic literature available to early Christian communities, Revelation is the only work to have been accepted as a part of the biblical canon. Despite the existence of Jewish and Christian apocalyptic literature, exegetes in the sixteenth century were aware that elements from Daniel, Ezekiel, Zechariah, and other books of the Hebrew canon had been imported into the text of John’s Revelation. Daniel is generally regarded as marking the beginning of the genre of apocalyptic literature, dated as having been written during the persecution of Antiochus Epiphanes (175–164 BC).3 Important Jewish apocalyptic writings outside the Old Testament exist, such as Enoch, the Apocalypse of Baruch, the Assumption of Moses, and the Ascension of Isaiah. Apocalyptic literature was associated with the destruction of the Jewish temple in AD 70, prior to or contemporary with the reign of the Roman Emperor Domitian (AD 81–96).4 This history served as a foundation to later speculation on the meaning of the text.

According to historian Irena Backus, “The chief characteristic of apocalyptic literature is its recourse to one or several visions of the past, the present, and the future,” visions normally granted by God but “mediated by one or several angels. This enables the author to transmit new prophecies without fearing accusations of excessive self-importance.”5 Differently from Jewish apocalyptic works, Revelation is written in the author’s own name (Rev 1:9)—whichever John it was, he wanted his name known to the communities he was addressing. How one reads a piece of apocalyptic literature shapes interpretation: as happening in the time of its authorship (preterist), in the future (futurist), throughout the events in the history of the church (historicist), or as symbolic of those events (spiritualist).

Revelation was held in high regard by the millenarian ante-Nicene Fathers, including Justin Martyr and Irenaeus, who took it to be the work of John the Evangelist. However, as Backus writes,

as millenarianism began to lose hold in the Eastern, and particularly the Alexandrian, church, the respectability of the Apocalypse was challenged. Dionysius of Alexandria questioned its apostolic authorship, ca. A.D. 250, on grounds of difference in style and content from the Fourth Gospel. Eusebius of Caesarea admitted its place in the canon with some reluctance. Some subsequent Eastern writers and councils (Cyril of Jerusalem, Council of Laodicea, John Chrysostom) did not include it in the canon.6

This negative perspective on Revelation eventually reached Western Europe, when Erasmus and others discovered the Greek fathers, but it was not characteristic of the Latin Middle Ages. In the churches of the West the attribution of Revelation to John the Evangelist was maintained in the Muratorian fragment or canon (c. 170) and by Tertullian (c. 155–c. 240) and Hippolytus (d. 235). Here the perspective on Revelation was more positive.

Commentaries and the Interpretation of Revelation

Five periods of interpretation of Revelation contributed to how the text was understood in the sixteenth century.

1. Patristic and early Greek commentaries: Spiritual interpretation. The thrust of an early and literal exegetical tradition was shaped by the work of such later commentators as Origen (185–254); Victorinus of Petovium (d. 304), a disciple of Origen; and Tyconius (d. c. 380). In particular, Victorinus, Tyconius, and their predecessors shaped the exegesis of Revelation in the West around a method of textual recapitulation, in Victorinus, and symbolic interpretation, in Tyconius, in late antiquity and the early Middle Ages.

A Platonist, Origen was author of the Hexapla, a critical edition of the Hebrew Bible in six versions. It was central to knowledge of the LXX and imperative for a knowledge of the true text of Scripture. This monumental analysis of the Old Testament, written in response to Jewish and Gnostic critics, heightened Origen’s influence among sixteenth-century radicals, magisterial Reformers, and humanists on such issues as the nature of the soul, universalism, free will, and pacifism.

Victorinus, referred to as the first exegete of the Western church, suffered martyrdom under Diocletian. His commentary on Revelation is cited by later critics both for his comprehensiveness and for his contribution to a theory of recapitulation, according to which similar spiritual truths are embedded in different but logically parallel symbols.7 As an example, the vision of the angel with the seal of the living God (Rev 7:2) is understood to be Elijah. Victorinus gives this figure a threefold task: (1) to anticipate the time of antichrist, (2) to preach penance, and (3) to convert to faith many from Israel as well as from the Gentile nations. This image comes together with the warning cry of the eagle who flies across the heavens (Rev 8:13), which Victorinus views as the Holy Spirit speaking, as it were, through the mouths of the prophets (Rev 11:3). Victorinus reads Revelation not as a prophecy but as an unveiling by Christ of the true sense of Scripture. Through recapitulation, Revelation relates the same events in different ways, for example, the bowls of wrath (Rev 16:1-17) do no more than elaborate on the persecutions already revealed by the trumpets (Rev 8:6–11:15). At issue is not chronology but an understanding of the text.8 Victorinus’s way of reading the text was handed down to the medieval church under the authoritative name of Jerome (c. 342–420), who, however, was uncomfortable with Victorinus’s millenarian viewpoint and therefore revised the ending of Victorinus’s commentary, bringing the heavenly Jerusalem down and to the realm of prophecy.9

The spiritual or symbolic interpretation of the text was taken up by Tyconius and given structure by his Book of Rules. No longer extant, the contents of this work have been reconstructed from later commentaries that cite it, for example, Primasius (d. c. 560), Bede the Venerable (c. 673–735), and Beatus of Liebana (730–785). Contemporary scholarship on Tyconius circled around the question of whether this lost commentary could be recovered and reconstructed from such later sources as those cited. Work by Kenneth Steinhauser (1987) and Roger Gryson (2011) led to Gryson’s publication of a reconstructed Latin edition of Tyconius’s Exposition of the Apocalypse.10

Tyconius’s comments on Revelation were guided by the hermeneutical orientation set forth in his Book of Rules. He begins the Book of Rules with this prologue:

Before anything else that seemed good to me, I considered it necessary to write a little guidebook and to fabricate, as it were, keys and windows to the secrets of the law. For there are certain mystic rules which maintain the inner recesses of the entire law and make the treasures of truth invisible to some people. If the logic of the rules is accepted without ill will, as we communicate it, then whatever is closed will be opened and whatever is obscure will be elucidated, so that anyone who walks in the vast forest of prophecy guided by these rules as, in a way, by pathways of light, may be kept from error. Now, these are the rules: (1) on the Lord and his body, (2) on the bipartite body of the Lord, (3) on the promises and the law, (4) on the particular and the general, (5) on times, (6) on recapitulation, and (7) on the devil and his body.11

Tyconius’s Exposition was written after a period of persecution of Donatists, of which Tyconius had been one. Rather than finding in Revelation the time of the antichrist and the end of the world, Tyconius interpreted John’s visions as figurative of the struggles facing the church in the period between the incarnation and the second coming of Christ.12 The satanic forces of the text represented worldly and decadent ecclesiastical powers. The two witnesses of Revelation 11 were not seen as persons from the past or present but as symbolic of the church holding the two Testaments. Similarly, a corporate identity was granted the antichrist, not as a specific person but as a body, the corpus diaboli, omnipresent evil and false Christians.

Tyconius “completely neutralized the millenarianism of the Apocalypse by referring the thousand years of the chaining up of Satan to the incarnation.”13 Backus continues,

However, while doing away with the messianic interregnum...