I have two items for my write-up today on G.K. Beale's The Book of Revelation: A Commentary on the Greek Text.
1.
Revelation 17:10-11 states (in the King James Version): "And there are
seven kings: five are fallen, and one is, [and] the other is not yet
come; and when he cometh, he must continue a short space. And the beast
that was, and is not, even he is the eighth, and is of the seven, and
goeth into perdition."
Beale refers to different
interpretations of this passage: attempts to identify the seven kings
with seven Roman monarchs, as well as the argument that the five fallen
kings are Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, and Greece (nations that
oppressed Israel), Rome is the king who is, and an unknown kingdom is
the one who is to come. Beale is open to these interpretations
(although, on some level, he finds them problematic), but he ultimately
interprets the passage as symbolic and as relevant to the church age,
the time between Christ's first and second comings. Seven, for Beale,
indicates that the Beast's oppression is complete, for seven is a number
of completion. The reference to the past, present, and future depicts
the Beast as counterfeiting God, who was, is, and is to come. The
reference to the Beast as the eighth, for Beale, presents the Beast as
counterfeiting Jesus Christ, whose number (according to gematria) is
888. And Beale contends that the Beast was and was not in the sense
that Satan was defeated by Christ's death, and thus the Beast is (in
some sense) powerless, and yet the Beast continues to exercise power in
oppressing God's people. So the Beast exists, but does not exist.
For Beale, these are things that are pertinent to the entire church age. And
yet Beale also believes that they related to the first century, as the
Roman emperor counterfeited God and Christ----not in the sense that he
pretended to be the Jesus Christ whom Christians worship, but
in the sense that he claimed divinity and professed to do things that
Christians ascribed to Jesus Christ, such as inaugurating new
beginnings.
2. On page 889, Beale takes on the preterist view
that the woman of Revelation 17 is Jerusalem. Remember that many
preterists interpret the Book of Revelation in light of the destruction
of Jerusalem in 70 C.E., and thus their view of Revelation is as
Jerusalem-centric as they can make it. Beale acknowledges that the
woman is described as Israel is in the Hebrew Bible----as a harlot.
Yet, his problem with interpreting the woman as Jerusalem is that
Jerusalem did not rule over the kings of the earth, especially not in
the few centuries prior to 70 C.E. But Beale refers to how some
scholars have attempted to get around that: by saying that God gave
Jerusalem spiritual rule over the earth, that the state of the world
(whether it was at peace or in chaos) was contingent on Israel's
faithfulness to God, or that there are biblical and rabbinic texts
indicating that Jerusalem had "spiritual and economic influence over the
whole earth throughout the ages" (Beale's words).
Beale
thinks that the woman represents Rome, in some capacity. But, because
Revelation 17 depicts the Beast killing the woman, Beale believes that
the woman and the Beast represent different components of Rome: the
woman is the religious-economic aspect, whereas the Beast is the
political-military. But Beale also says that, in a sense, the churches
that compromise with Rome's idolatry are part of Babylon. For Beale,
Revelation 17 is about how other nations benefit from Rome economically
and are influenced by her idolatry (but Beale probably also believes
that Revelation 17 somehow relates to the church age).