The Apocalypse of St. John

563 Pages·2017·21.82 MB·English

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THE APOCALYPSE
OF ST JOHN
BY THE SAME EDITOR.
8vo. 58. net.
THE AKHMlM FRAGMENT OF THE
APOCRYPHAL GOSPEL OF ST PETER
8vo. 15».
THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST MARK:
THE GBEEK TEXT WITH INTRODUCTION NOTES
AND INDICES.
LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO. Limited.
THE
APOCALYPSE OF ST JOHN
THE GEEEK TEXT
WITH
INTRODUCTION NOTES AND INDICES
HENRY BARCLAY _SWETE, D.D.
BON. LITT.D. DUBLIN HON. D.D. GLASGOW
BEOIC8 PROFESSOR OF DIVINITY
AND FELLOW OF GONVTLLE AND CAITS COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE
FELLOW OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY
Hon&on
MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited
NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
I906
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DEDICO
s. R. a
PREFACE.
Eight years ago I was permitted to finish a commentary on
the earliest of the four Gospels. As a sequel to it, I now offer a
commentary on the Revelation of St John.
The Apocalypse discloses the heavenly life of our Lord, as the
Gospels paint His life in Galilee and Jerusalem. In the Gospels,
He is seen teaching and working in His mortal flesh ; in the
Apocalypse, He belongs to another and a higher order. But the
ascended life is a continuation of the life in the flesh ; the Person
is the same yesterday and to-day, in Palestine and in Heaven.
Thus the Apocalypse carries forward the revelation of the
Gospels. It carries it, however, into a region where the methods
of the biographer and historian avail nothing. We are in the
hands of a prophet, who sees and hears things that elude
the eyes and ears of other men; the simple narrative of the
Evangelist has given place to a symbolism which represents the
struggle of the Apocalyptist to express ideas that lie in great
part beyond the range of human thought. Yet the life which
St John reveals is not less real than that which is depicted by
St Mark, nor are its activities less amazing. No miracles meet
us here, but we are in the presence of spiritual processes which
are more wonderful than the healing of the sick or the raising
of the dead : a supervision of all the Churches, which surpasses
the powers of any earthly pastor; an ordering of nature and life,
which bears witness to the investment of the risen Lord with all
authority in heaven and on earth; a perfect knowledge of men, and
a prescience which reads the issues of history. The revelation of
the Lord's heavenly life becomes, as we proceed, a revelation of
the things which are and the things which shall come to pass
viii PREFACE.
hereafter; we see the glorified life in its bearing upon the course
of events, until the end has been attained and the whole creation
has felt its renovating power.
To comment on this great prophecy is a harder task than to
comment on a Gospel, and he who undertakes it exposes himself
to the charge of presumption. I have been led to venture upon
what I know to be dangerous ground by the conviction that
the English student needs an edition of this book which shall
endeavour to take account of the large accessions to knowledge
made in recentyears,andshall bedrawn uponascalecommensurate
with that of the larger commentaries on other books of the New
Testament. More especially I have had in view the wants of the
English clergy, who, scholars at heart by early education or by the
instincts of a great tradition, are too often precluded from reaping
the fruits of research through inability to procure or want of
leisure to read a multitude of books. It is my belief, and the
belief has grown in strength as my task has proceeded, that the
Apocalypse offers to the pastors of the Church an unrivalled store
of materials for Christian teaching, if only the book is approached
with an assurance of its prophetic character, chastened by a frank
acceptance of the light which the growth of knowledge has cast
and will continue to cast upon it.
The Apocalypse is well-worked ground. It would not be
difficult to construct a commentary which should be simply a
catena of patristic and mediaeval expositions, or an attempt to
compare and group the views of later writers. Such an under
taking would not be without interest or value, but it lies outside
the scope of the present work. In this commentary, as in the
commentary on St Mark, it has been my endeavour, in the first
instance, to make an independent study of the text, turning to
the commentaries afterwards for the purpose of correcting or
supplementing myown conclusions. As a rule, the interpretations
which are offered here are those which seemed to arise out of the
writer's own words, viewed in connexion with the circumstances
under which he wrote, and the general purpose of his work,
without reference to the various schools of Apocalyptic exegesis.
There are those to whom the results will appear bizarre, and a
medley ofheterogeneouselements; but the syncretism,ifit be such,
PREFACE. iz
has been reached, not by the blending of divergent views, but
through the guidance of definite principles, which are stated in
the introduction. Here it may be briefly explained that I have
sought to place each passage in the light of the conditions under
which the book was composed, and to interpret accordingly; not
forgetting, however, the power inherent in all true prophecy of
fulfilling itself in circumstances remote from those which called it
forth.
But, with this reservation, I have gladly used the labours of
predecessors in the field, especially the pregnant remarks of the
patristic writers. Of modern commentators, Bousset has helped
me most, and though I differ profoundly from his general attitude
towards the book, and from not a few of his interpretations,
I gladlyacknowledge that I have greatlybenefited bythe stores of
knowledge with which his book abounds. The Jewish Apocalypses
edited by Professor Charles, and other apocalyptic writings,Jewish
aud Christian, have been always at my side. For geographical
and archaeological details I am deeply indebted to the works of
ProfessorW. M. Ramsay,the article on Asia Minorby DrJohannes
Weiss in Hauck's recast of Herzog's Realencyklopadie, and the
admirable monograph on ProconsularAsiacontributed by Monsieur
Victor Chapot to the Biblioth&que de V&cole des Hautes iZtudes.
During my preparations for the press, I have been unable
to make a personal use of the University Library ; and though
my difficulty has been partly overcome in the past year through
the kindness of the Syndics of the Library, the loss has been
serious, and I fear that it will be felt by readers who look for
fulness of detail and the use of the latest editions. From gross
inaccuracies my work has been saved, as I trust, by the ready help
of many friends. My warm thanks are due to the Rev. J. H.
Srawley, of Gonville and Caius and Selwyn Colleges, and to the
Rev. H. C. O. Lanchester, Fellow of Pembroke College, who have
read the proofs of the introduction, text, and notes. Mr Srawley
has verified nearly all the references in the notes; the indices
and the Biblical references in the introduction have been
corrected by the care of a relative. My colleagues, Professor
Reid and Professor Ridgeway, have allowed me to submit
to them the proofs of portions of my book in which I had
X PREFACE.
occasion to enter upon ground which they have severally made
their own. To the Rev. A. S. Walpole, editor of a volume of
Latin Hymns which is shortly to appear in Cambridge Patristic
Texts, I owe my knowledge of the splendid stanzas which precede
the introduction.
Other debts of various kinds call for acknowledgement here.
Messrs T. and T. Clark, of Edinburgh, with the ready consent
of Professor Ramsay, have permitted me to adapt to my own use
the map of Asia Minor which accompanies the article on Roads
and Travel (in the New Testament) in the supplementary volume
of Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible. The Rev. T. C. Fitzpatrick,
President ofQueens' College,supplied the negativefromwhich the
engraving of Patmos has been produced; and the specimen of
MS. 186 came from a photograph of the entire MS. kindly
taken for me by Professor Lake, of Oxford and Leyden. For
the page of coins illustrating the life and worship of pagan Asia
in the age of the Apocalypse I have to thank Dr M. R. James,
Director of the Fitzwilliam Museum, who helped me to select
them from Colonel Leake's famous collection, and his assistant,
Mr H. A. Chapman, to whose skill the casts were due. Lastly, it
is a pleasure once again to say how much I owe to the unfailing
attention of the workmen and readers and the ready assistance of
the officials ofthe University Press.
I part with the work which has occupied the leisure of some
years under a keen sense of the shortcomings that are apparent
even when it is judged by the standard of my own expectations,
yet not without an assured hope that it may help some of my
fellow-students to value and understand a book which is in some
respects the crown of the New Testament canon. In letting it
go from me, I can only repeat Augustine's prayer, which stood
at the end of the preface to St Mark, and is even more necessary
here. Domine Deus...quaecumque dixi in hoc libro detuo, agnoscant
et tui; si qua de meo, et Tu ignosce et tui.
H. B. S.
Cambridge,
F. of the Transfiguration, 1906.