John of Gischala vs. Josephus, and the Book of Revelation

For my blog post today on Lee Harmon's Revelation: The Way It Happened, I will focus on Lee's argument that the Jewish rebel John of Gischala was the John who wrote the Book of Revelation, and that this John had Josephus in mind when he was talking about the false prophet in Revelation 13:11-16.  This will be my last formal post about Lee's book, but I may refer to it in future posts.

According to Lee, John in Revelation 13 regarded Josephus as the false prophet because Josephus willfully contributed to Rome's victory when there was a Jewish revolt in Jerusalem in the first century C.E.  Moreover, as I talked about a couple posts ago, Josephus held that the Roman Vespasian was the fulfillment of Messianic prophecy.  According to Lee, John had this in mind when he portrayed the second beast (the false prophet) supporting the first beast.  When John says that the false prophet would do wonders and cause fire to come down from heaven, Lee interprets that in light of "the magical practices of the imperial cult", which Josephus upheld by contributing to Rome's triumph over Jerusalem (page 168).  When John criticizes Balaam in Revelation 2:14, Lee believes that this is John responding to Josephus' claim that Vespasian was the fulfillment of Balaam's prophecy in Numbers 24:17----that a star would come from Jacob, and a scepter would arise from Israel.

Lee's discussion about the false prophet was actually my favorite part of this book.  I struggled with what he was saying about the two witnesses, Daniel 9, and all those Jesuses, as interesting as those discussions were.  But I got goose-bumps when he was interpreting the false prophet of Revelation 13 as Josephus.  He looked like he was on to something.

But do I agree?  I don't know.  One could perhaps argue that the second beast (the false prophet) of Revelation 13 was far more powerful, grandiose, and influential on a worldwide scale than Josephus ever was.  That would be a good point, but that by itself does not convince me that Lee is incorrect to argue that the second beast represented Josephus.  John could have seen the events surrounding the Jewish rebellion in 70 C.E. in exaggerated terms because it was important to him.  John of Gischala had just fought against the Romans, and Josephus was a factor behind the Jews' loss to them.  It wouldn't surprise me that he would portray Josephus as a significant figure among the forces of evil!

It's the whole Balaam issue that perplexes me, somewhat.  For one, the Book of Revelation mentions Balaam within the context of the letter to the church in Pergamum, which is in Asia Minor.  Revelation 2:14 states (in the KJV): "But I have a few things against thee, because thou hast there them that hold the doctrine of Balaam, who taught Balac to cast a stumblingblock before the children of Israel, to eat things sacrificed unto idols, and to commit fornication."  I don't see what this has to do with Josephus' application of Balaam's prophecy to Vespasian.  Rather, it seems to relate to what is going on at Pergamum, not Jerusalem.  I think that Lee should have brought Pergamum more into the picture in his discussion of Balaam, even if Lee wanted to argue that John's reference to Balaam was somehow related to Josephus' use of Balaam's prophecy to bolster the idolatrous Roman empire.  Incidentally, while Asia Minor does play a significant role in Lee's book (since the Christian character Samuel is pressured there to honor idols in order to make the contacts that he needs for business), Lee does not talk much about the seven letters to the churches of Asia Minor.

Second, Lee seems to present Josephus as depicting Balaam positively, while John depicts Balaam negatively.  But Josephus himself depicts Balaam negatively in Antiquities 4.  And Josephus' portrayal is similar to that of John: Balaam contributed to the Israelites' idolatry and their sleeping with Midianite women.  At the same time, John (within Lee's scenario) may not have encountered Josephus' negative portrayal of Balaam in Antiquities 4.  Lee seems to portray John as one who is familiar with Josephus' Wars of the Jews, which Josephus wrote prior to Antiquities.  Antiquities may not have been written when John was interacting with Josephus' work.

I'd like to close this post by tossing out some things that I found interesting in my research, and you may find them helpful, too, if you ever want to read Lee's book.

1.  Here are the articles about John of Gischala in the Jewish Encyclopedia and wikipedia.

2.  Lee says that John of Gischala ignored the Sabbath and Jewish dietary laws.  Lee may be implying that this could be an indicator that John was a follower of Jesus, who himself was arguably liberal on Sabbath observance and dietary laws.  I could not find anything about John of Gischala's ignoring the Sabbath, but the passage in which Josephus accuses John of disobeying the dietary laws is Wars of the Jews 7:264, which states (in William Whiston's translation): "for the food was unlawful that was set upon his table, and he rejected those purifications that the law of his country had ordained; so that it was no longer a wonder if he, who was so mad in his impiety toward God, did not observe any rules of gentleness and common affection toward men."

But it seems to me that, according to Josephus, John of Gischala appealed to the law when it was convenient for him.  John of Gischala warned the Zealots that their abolition of the law and law-courts could incur the wrath of the people (Wars of the Jews 4.223).  (See this article, which maintains that the Zealots were arguably undermining the law.)  John dissuaded the Roman Titus from entering Gischala on the Sabbath, providing John with an opportunity to escape at night (Wars of the Jews 4.102-104).  And John made lots of money selling kosher oil to Jews, so they wouldn't have to use Greek oil (Life 1.74-75).  Did John have an ideological reason for disobeying the law?  Or was John simply an impious person who exploited the law whenever he could for his own advantage?  Or was John truly impious or anti-law, at the outset?  Lee himself does not buy all of Josephus' bad-PR about John of Gischala.  On page 203, Lee says that Josephus accused John of plundering the Temple, and yet Josephus also says that the Romans found vast treasures in the Temple when they took it over.  The treasures were still there when the Romans came, in short!  Could Josephus have been incorrect on John's approach to the Torah?

3.  Others have argued that John of Gischala is significant to interpreting New Testament eschatology.  This article, for example, argues that John of Gischala was the man of sin in II Thessalonians 2:3-4!  That's different from what Lee argues!

I'd like to thank Lee for sending me a copy of his book on Revelation.  It's definitely worth the read!

Daniel 9:24-27, and the Hardest Passage in Lee Harmon's Book

In my blog post today on Lee Harmon's Revelation: The Way It Happened, I'll be talking about the most difficult passage in Lee's book.  I'll use as my starting-point Daniel 9:24-27.  That passage says the following (according to the King James Version):

24 Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people and upon thy holy city, to finish the transgression, and to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up the vision and prophecy, and to anoint the most Holy.
25 Know therefore and understand, that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem unto the Messiah the Prince shall be seven weeks, and threescore and two weeks: the street shall be built again, and the wall, even in troublous times.
26 And after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, but not for himself: and the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary; and the end thereof shall be with a flood, and unto the end of the war desolations are determined.
27 And he shall confirm the covenant with many for one week: and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease, and for the overspreading of abominations he shall make it desolate, even until the consummation, and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate.

A significant number of people who interpret this passage believe that a day here actually means a year, and thus the seventy weeks are 490 years.  You start counting at "the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem".  People have different opinions about what that was, and thus at what year we should start the count.  Was it Ezra's decree in II Chronicles 36:22-23 and Ezra 1:2-4 that allowed Jews to return to their homeland, making the starting-year 538 B.C.E.?  Was it Artaxerxes' decree in Ezra 7 permitting Jews to return to their homeland and to beautify the Temple, making the starting-year 458-457 B.C.E.?  Was it Artaxerxes' permission for Nehemiah to go to Jerusalem to rebuild the city walls (Nehemiah 2:5-8), placing the starting-year at 445-444 B.C.E.?  Or was it Jeremiah's prophecy that Jerusalem would be rebuilt, putting the starting-year at around 597 B.C.E.?

The 458-457 B.C.E. starting-year works out best for a number of Christians, for the count ends up in the first half of the first century C.E., which was when Jesus Christ lived, died, and rose again.  For these Christians, Jesus Christ was the Messiah the prince of Daniel 9:25, and the Messiah who is cut off in Daniel 9:26.  There are Christians who even argue that Jesus was the one of Daniel 9:27 who would cause sacrifices to cease, since Jesus, through his atoning death, nullified the need for animal sacrifices.  A number of Christians regard Daniel 9:24-27 as a prophecy about Jesus Christ----more, an exact prediction of when Jesus Christ would come and die.

What if you start your count with any of the other starting-years?  Where do you end up?  Well, they take you to dead ends, as Lee Harmon on his blog discusses in this post.  They're dead-ends in the sense that nothing spectacular happened at those times.  There was no Messianic sort of figure who died in those years.

A number of historical-critics argue that the ending-point for Daniel 9 was intended to be the second century B.C.E., which was when Antiochus IV Epiphanes was desecrating the Temple, prompting the Maccabees to revolt.  The Messiah (or Anointed One) who is cut off in Daniel 9:25 is often interpreted within this scenario as the priest Onias III.  The destruction of the city and the abomination of desolation are interpreted in light of what Antiochus IV did.  This interpretation makes a degree of sense, for Daniel 7-12 does appear to concern the time of Antiochus IV, for a variety of reasons.  The problem is that you don't end up in the time of Antiochus IV when you count off from any of the proposed starting-years, the years decreeing the rebuilding of Jerusalem.  One attempt to solve this problem is to say that the Jews in this case did not keep good track of time: that they didn't know exactly how many years there were between the decree and such events as the Messiah being cut off and the abomination of desolation.  Another solution I have heard is that the 490 years are not literal but are formulaic or perhaps symbolic.  Lee in this blog post offers yet another proposal: that some of the years are concurrent (occurring simultaneously) rather than consecutive (occurring one after the other).  According to this view, the forty-nine years (seven weeks) of Daniel 9:25 are between the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 B.C.E. and Cyrus' decree around 537 B.C.E. that the Jews could return to Jerusalem.  The 62 weeks, or 434 years, of Daniel 9:25 are the time between Jeremiah's prophecy of Jerusalem's restoration, which Jeremiah made around the year 597 B.C.E., and 167 B.C.E., which is the time of Antiochus IV.  So the 49 years and the 434 years overlap.  My problem, however, is that I don't understand why Lee starts the count for the 49 years at 586 B.C.E., the year of Jerusalem's destruction.  My impression from Daniel 9:25 is that the count for the 49 years starts from the decree to rebuild Jerusalem, not the year that Jerusalem was destroyed.

Okay, so the 490 years do not fit the Antiochus IV interpretation all that well.  Many conservative Christians would say that the 490 years fits the Jesus Christ interpretation perfectly!  But there are problems here, which Lee discusses in Revelation: The Way It Happened.  So you start your count with Artaxerxes' decree in 458-457 B.C.E.  The Messiah, according to Daniel 9:25, comes 483 years later, which is 25-26 C.E., the time when Jesus was alive on earth.  The thing is, near the end of these 490 years from the decree to rebuild the Temple, something else is supposed to happen: the destruction of the city and the sanctuary.  There are many Christians who apply this to the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 C.E.----"Christ fulfilled Daniel 9!", they proclaim, "since Christ was crucified, and later Jerusalem and the Temple were destroyed!"  But there is a serious mathematical problem, here.  Daniel 9:24-27 appears to present the destruction of Jerusalem and the sanctuary as occurring right after the Messiah has been cut off, not over four decades later.  If we interpret the destruction of the city and sanctuary in Daniel 9:26 in reference to the events of 70 C.E., then we have more than 490 years: we have 528 years!  But the text says 490 years is allotted for all these things to take place.

In Lee's book, a Christian named Samuel and his son Matthew discuss these issues.  Matthew says that he heard from his tutor that Daniel 9:24-27 was about Antiochus IV's desecration of the Temple, and the Jews' subsequent purification of it.  In this scenario, the events of Daniel 9:24-27 are in the past, and they took place in close proximity with one another, as the text seems to present.  We then get into some speculation: Perhaps the events of 70 C.E. did take place very soon after the death of Jesus, but it was Jesus son of Ananus, the one in Josephus' Wars of the Jews 6:300ff (see Chapter 5 here) who predicted the fall of Jerusalem, four years before it happened. 

I don't think that Jesus son of Ananus would work as the Messiah of Daniel 9, since he doesn't fit the 490 years.  Again, 70 C.E. (or even a few years earlier than that, which was when Jesus son of Ananus preached) is much too late!  In any case, it's when Lee talks about Jesus son of Ananus that things start to get confusing.  Lee disagrees with the view that Jesus of Nazareth in Mark's Gospel was "nothing more than a composite of several wartime historical characters" (page 176), for Paul talks about Jesus decades prior to the Jewish wars; thus, Lee believes that there was a historical Jesus of Nazareth.  But Lee does seem to argue that Mark's depiction of Jesus of Nazareth was, on some level, based on John of Ananus, and Lee lists similarities between the two: they were believed to be possessed by a demon, they preached at the Temple, they "declared woes upon Jerusalem and the temple", they were scourged, and they were silent when they were chastened and when they appeared before an official.  Moreover, Lee appears to be suggesting that there are other Jesuses behind the Jesus of New Testament theology: there is the high priest Jesus (or Joshua) in the Book of Zechariah, who was one of the original two witnesses, and there was Jesus son of Gamala, who could have been one of the inspirations for the two witnesses in the Book of Revelation.  Remember that the two witnesses in Revelation 11 are killed, rise again three-and-a-half days later, and go to heaven, and this is followed by an earthquake.  This sort of thing happens to Jesus in some of the Gospels: he dies, rises from the dead three days later, and ascends to heaven, and Matthew's Gospel mentions some earthquakes going on during these events.  I'm not sure whether Lee's on to something, or if what we're seeing are mere coincidences or floating motifs that are being applied to different people.

But let's get back to Daniel 9!  Samuel in Lee's book interprets Daniel 9:27 in this manner: we have the final week of the seventy weeks, and this is seven days, or actually seven years.  The first three-and-a-half years are the events of the Jewish war around 70: the abomination of desolation and the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple.  The second three-and-a-half years are when Jesus restores the Temple.  Samuel refers to a saying that appears on the lips of Jesus in John 2:19: "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up" (this saying appears in a slightly different form in Mark's Gospel, which is earlier; see Mark 14:58; 15:29).  Samuel interprets this to mean that Jesus would rebuild the Temple three years (remember, a day equals a year in Daniel 9) after its destruction, which is similar to how he sees Daniel 9:27. 

There are two questions that one can ask.  First, wasn't Jesus in John 2:19 referring to his own resurrection on the third day, with the Temple representing his body?  But that was in the Gospel of John, which was later than the Book of Revelation, and was also later than the setting for Samuel and Matthew's conversations in Lee's book.  Samuel does not know about this.  According to Lee, Samuel does not even know the stories about Jesus' bodily resurrection or appearances.  These stories would first appear in the Gospel of Matthew, which has not been written yet.  (The child Matthew has not yet grown up and written it.)  The Gospel of Mark, after all, simply ends with the tomb being empty, and the women not telling anyone because they were afraid.

Second, Matthew in Lee's book asks: If Jesus were to rebuild the temple three or three-and-a-half years after its destruction, why hasn't he yet?  The setting for Samuel and Matthew's conversations is nine years after the destruction of the temple.  Samuel replies that he doesn't know, but he speculates that the city may have been rebuilt in heaven: it's already built, but it hasn't come down to earth yet!

At this time, I'd like to quote the hardest passage in Lee's book.  It's on pages 179-180:

"Where did the Gospel of John come up with this idea, this alternative interpretation of rebuilding the Temple?  Well, in a curious way, it parallels Revelation, which hints at an oral tradition, and some of Paul's writings also compare our bodies to the Temple of God.  Note that Revelation actually specifies precisely three and a half days (years?) before the resurrection of the three priests, which better fits the vision of Daniel, if his 'rebuilding of the Temple' depicts the resurrection of the body of Jesus.  Daniel divided his final 'week' into two three-and-a-half day/year periods.  Jesus, the peasant prophet, and Jesus, the resurrected priest, come together to tell the story of Jesus of Nazareth, each contributing three and a half years/days to perfectly fulfill the final week of the prophecy of Daniel, and John, Revelation's author, can safely forget about the restoration of the Temple promised in Daniel and Mark from then on."

I've read this paragraph a number of times, and I still don't get it!  Lee's still a talented writer throughout the vast majority of this book, however.  And, even if I don't understand that one paragraph, I enjoyed reading his discussion on Daniel 9:24-27, and the tangents where that led him.
 

Lee Harmon on the Two Witnesses

In my post today about Lee Harmon's Revelation: The Way It Happened, I'll be talking about Lee's discussion about the two witnesses of Revelation 11.  Who are the two witnesses?  In Revelation 11:3-13, we read the following about them (and I will be using the KJV because it's in the public domain):

3 And I will give power unto my two witnesses, and they shall prophesy a thousand two hundred and threescore days, clothed in sackcloth.
4 These are the two olive trees, and the two candlesticks standing before the God of the earth.
5 And if any man will hurt them, fire proceedeth out of their mouth, and devoureth their enemies: and if any man will hurt them, he must in this manner be killed.
6 These have power to shut heaven, that it rain not in the days of their prophecy: and have power over waters to turn them to blood, and to smite the earth with all plagues, as often as they will.
7 And when they shall have finished their testimony, the beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit shall make war against them, and shall overcome them, and kill them.
8 And their dead bodies shall lie in the street of the great city, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified.
9 And they of the people and kindreds and tongues and nations shall see their dead bodies three days and an half, and shall not suffer their dead bodies to be put in graves.
10 And they that dwell upon the earth shall rejoice over them, and make merry, and shall send gifts one to another; because these two prophets tormented them that dwelt on the earth.
11 And after three days and an half the Spirit of life from God entered into them, and they stood upon their feet; and great fear fell upon them which saw them.
12 And they heard a great voice from heaven saying unto them, Come up hither. And they ascended up to heaven in a cloud; and their enemies beheld them.
13 And the same hour was there a great earthquake, and the tenth part of the city fell, and in the earthquake were slain of men seven thousand: and the remnant were affrighted, and gave glory to the God of heaven.

Lee's extensive discussion about the two witnesses occurs on pages 113-121.  I'll use as my starting-point something that Lee says on page 121:

"Moses and Elijah, Peter and Paul, Ananus and Jesus----how did these pairs get so tangled inside John's swirling head?  Undoubtedly, the original inspiration for the two witnesses of Revelation has been found in the Jewish priests, Ananus and Jesus.  Yet for common first-century Christians, many of whom probably fled Jerusalem before any of this happened, it appears that the Christian heroes Peter and Paul reaped the greater benefits of the story, as the legends grew for both their miracle working and evangelical abilities.  The tradition of their martyrdom under Nero became widespread in the late first century."

I can't say that I entirely understand what Lee is getting at here, but allow me to detail the similarities Lee highlights between the two witnesses and the various pairs that got "so tangled inside John's swirling head":
Moses and Elijah: The two witnesses are prophets and perform some of the miracles that Moses and Elijah did.  Moses turned water into blood, and Elijah stopped the rain.  Elijah, like the two witnesses, ascended to heaven.  Moses could have, at least according to the Assumption of Moses.

Peter and Paul: Both performed miracles, like the two witnesses (though, as far as I know, there are no stories about Peter and Paul turning water into blood, or stopping the rain).  The two witnesses are killed by the Beast, and there are stories about the martyrdom of Peter and Paul by the Roman emperor Nero, whom Lee contends was the Beast of Revelation 13.  The two witnesses were left unburied for three-and-a-half days, and Lee refers to a statement by the sixth century figure John Mahalas that the corpses of Peter and Paul were left unburied.  The two witnesses ascended to heaven, and there's the notion that Peter and Paul ascended to heaven: Paul in II Corinthians 12:2, and Peter in the early second century Apocalypse of Peter.  Plus, there's I Clement's statement that Peter after bearing witness was taken to "the well-deserved place of glory", and Paul "to the holy place" (in whatever translation Lee is using).  Lee also mentions the story in Acts 14 about Paul getting up after having been stoned and left for dead, as Lee sees a similarity between that and the two witnesses' resurrection.  Lee believes that the two witnesses are killed in Jerusalem, whereas Peter and Paul were martyred in Rome.  Lee speculates that, if John was referring to Peter and Paul when he was talking about the two witnesses, John could have moved their deaths to Jerusalem out of a conviction that prophets perish in Jerusalem.

Ananus and Jesus son of Gamala: These guys are priests who are mentioned by Josephus.  They were around during the first century Jewish uprisings in Jerusalem against Rome.  Josephus' telling of their story is in Wars of the Jews Book 4.  Lee, on page 120, notes a similarity between them and the two witnesses: "Curiously, just as [Revelation 11:]13 says, this earthquake did occur at the 'very hour' the Idumeans murdered, ridiculed, and left the two great priests, Ananus and Jesus, unburied in the streets of Jerusalem!"

Ananus and Jesus son of Gamala are significant in terms of Lee's interpretation of the two witnesses.  On page 203, Lee, thinking that the John who wrote Revelation was the John of Gischala who was a leader of the Jewish rebellion against Rome, says that Josephus depicts John of Gischala spying on Ananus and Jesus son of Gamala and passing on secrets to the rebellious Zealots.  Lee says: "Josephus seems to blame John's deception for the deaths of these two priests, but in reality, John pulled all stops to show his allegiance to them, even immortalizing them as the two great witnesses of Revelation."

Revelation 11:9 says that "they of the people and kindreds and tongues and nations" will see the dead bodies of the two witnesses.  Lee interprets the phrase "every tribe and language and people and nation" as God's people, since Revelation 5:9 uses that expression to refer to those whom God has purchased.  God's people are the Jews, according to Lee.  Lee seems to argue in a couple of places that, at the time that Revelation was written, there was not a firm line separating Jews from Christians.  Lee says on page 291: "A million Jews from all over the empire congregated in Jerusalem, where, in John's mind, they beheld the death of the two witnesses (priests) and then suffered in the war against the beast."

Here are some points that I want to make in response to Lee's arguments:

1.  So who exactly are the two witnesses, according to Lee?  Are they characters who are based on Moses and Elijah, Peter and Paul, and Ananus and Jesus, or can they actually be identified with Peter and Paul, or with Ananus and Jesus?

2.  Like I said, as far as I know, there are no stories about Peter and Paul turning water into blood, or shutting up the heavens, which is what the two witnesses did.  Perhaps one could argue that there could have been traditions like that, since there were a lot of miracle stories out there about these towering Christian figures, and so maybe there were other stories circulating that we do not know about.  Perhaps.  Come to think of it, maybe Peter and Paul could work out as the two witnesses, if we allow John some latitude as a writer (which John exercised if he put their deaths in Jerusalem, when their deaths actually occurred in Rome).


3.  I have questions about associating the two witnesses with Ananus and Jesus son of Gamla:

a.  As far as I know, Ananus and Jesus son of Gamala did not turn water into blood, shut up the heavens, or spit out fire from their mouths against their enemies.  Perhaps one could argue that John associated them somehow with bloody water or famine that occurred during the rebellion, or that the fire from their mouths symbolized their preaching, or the disaster that came upon Jerusalem because many Jews did not heed them.  Lee should have discussed this a bit more in his book.

b.  I have not read Josephus as extensively as Lee has, but what I am finding in my perusal of Book 4 of Wars of the Jews, wikipedia (see here), and Lee's book is that Ananus and Jesus were opponents of the Zealots, on some level.  That's why they were eventually killed.  I think that Lee should have gone into more detail about why John would consider their message to be so righteous, especially since Lee also appears to argue that the martyrs in Revelation consist of some of the people who died while rising up against Rome.  Is John in Revelation for the uprising against Rome that occurred in the late first century, or (like Ananus and Jesus son of Gamala, it appears) against it?  (UPDATE: Sometime after writing this, I looked through Lee's book again, and I also perused the speeches of Ananus and Jesus in Book 4 of Josephus' Wars of the Jews.  It appears that Ananus and Jesus' concern was to protect the Temple from the Zealots.  Does that mean that they were against any rebellion against Rome?  I don't know.  Jesus son of Gamala in his speech seems to praise the value of liberty from the Romans.  One could apparently be anti-Zealot and still support some sort of uprising against Rome.  I still think that Lee should have gone into a little more detail about why John in Revelation would consider Ananus and Jesus' message righteous, as well as their stance on the Romans.  But the situation was more complex than I presented it here.) 

c.  According to this Josephus' Antiquities 20.9.1, Ananus ordered the execution of James, the brother of Jesus.  Would John portray Ananus as one of the two witnesses, after Ananus had done something like that? 

d.  Something that the Peter and Paul interpretation has going for it is that the Roman emperor Nero, the one Lee argues was the Beast, killed them, and Revelation 11 says that the Beast killed the two witnesses.  But the Idumeans killed Ananus and Jesus.  How would Lee explain that, especially since this narrates that the Idumeans were on the side of the Zealots, who were anti-Rome?  That said, I don't have thorough knowledge about what the Idumeans did during this conflict.  (UPDATE: On page 40, Lee narrates that the Idumeans initially joined the Zealots, but "when the exhausted Idumeans finally realized that Ananus had not really been a traitor and they had been duped into helping the Zealots, they packed up and went home."  Still, the Romans were not the ones who killed Ananus and Jesus son of Gamala, whereas, according to Lee, Nero is the Beast, and the Beast in Revelation 11 is the one who kills the two witnesses.  Perhaps one could argue that the two witnesses are based on Ananus and Jesus, on some level, but that there is not a perfect match between them.) 

e.  As far as I know, there are no legends that Ananus and Jesus son of Gamala got up and ascended to heaven three-and-a-half days after their deaths, which is what Revelation 11 says about the two witnesses.  Lee speculates that John may have depicted the two witnesses as doing this "perhaps in competition with Josephus", who ends Ananus and Jesus' story with their shameful deaths (page 118).  I can't rule this out, entirely.  This might work if you grant John some latitude as a writer: John was telling the story differently from Josephus.  But, again I ask, what about the message of Ananus and Jesus son of Gamala did John like? 

f.  I have issues with how Lee goes from identifying "every tribe and language and people and nation" with God's people, to arguing that those from around the world who saw the corpses of the two witnesses (and presumably mocked them) were Jews who beheld the death of Ananus and Jesus son of Gamala.  God's people are the good guys in the Book of Revelation.  The ones who mocked the two witnesses at their death are bad guys.  I have problems associating the two with each other.  Moreover, while there are many scholars who would agree with Lee that there was not always a solid line separating Jews from Christians, I have a hard time interpreting the martyrs and God's people in Revelation as anything other than Christian, since there seems to be so much in Revelation about their devotion to Jesus.  I have my doubts that John in Revelation understood the martyrs and God's people as non-Christian Jews.  But perhaps there are angles that I am not looking at adequately.

Josephus on Signs; Giants from the Abyss

I started Lee Harmon's Revelation: The Way It Happened.  Some months ago, I read and blogged through the sequel to this book: Lee Harmon's John's Gospel: The Way It Happened.  See here for my posts on that.  And see here for Lee's excellent blog, The Dubious Disciple.  I'd like to thank Lee for sending me a copy of Revelation: The Way It Happened.

I'm going to play by ear how I blog through this book.  I do want to cover the broad themes of Lee's book, but I'll probably blog about tidbits here and there that interest me.  If that ends up overlapping with the broad themes, that will be good.  If it does not adequately do so, then I'll write a post about Lee's book that is more comprehensive.

Here are two tidbits for today:

1.  On pages 53-54, Lee says the following about the first century C.E. Jewish historian Flavius Josephus:
"In discussing the signs of the times, Josephus describes a light shining in the Temple, as well as a star like a sword, pointing to Jerusalem (probably Halley's comment in 66, which many Jews understood as foretelling the destruction of Jerusalem).  At one point, a heifer being led to sacrifice gives birth to a lamb in the midst of the Temple.  It is Josephus who first relates the story of the voice from the Holy of Holies saying, 'We are departing.'  But he implies that the common perception that the 'Day of the Lord' has arrived misinterprets these signs."

The idea that Josephus believed in those kinds of supernatural phenomena somewhat surprised me, for I assumed that Josephus was a fairly level-headed historian.  I learned in a class, after all, that Josephus often sought ways to rationalize away certain miracles in the Bible!  But it turns out that Josephus does talk about the signs that Lee is discussing, and much more, in Wars of the Jews, Book 6, Chapter 5.

Josephus is criticizing Jewish figures of the late first century C.E. who were holding out hope that God would deliver the Jews from the Romans.  Josephus' point was that there were signs that Jerusalem would be destroyed.  Josephus also applied to the Roman Vespasian the ancient oracle that someone from Israel would rule the earth, noting that Vespasian was made the emperor when he was in Judea.  Earlier in his book, Lee argues that John the Revelator had Vespasian in mind when he was writing about the first horseman of Revelation 6:2----who looks so much like the conquering Jesus, yet most likely was not that.  According to Lee, John probably regarded Vespasian as a false Messiah because Vespasian was considered by some to be the prophesied Messiah, plus Vespasian, like Jesus, performed miracles (see my posts here, here, and here).

I don't know a whole lot about Josephus' eschatological views.  But he does appear to be applying to Vespasian some Messianic prophecy.  One question I have is: Why did Josephus believe that God willed the destruction of Jerusalem?  Put differently, what, according to Josephus, did Jerusalem do that so offended God?  The New Testament says that Israel rejected Jesus.  Within rabbinic literature is the idea that Jerusalem was destroyed on account of Jewish infighting.  What was Josephus' view?

2.  On page 89, Lee is discussing Revelation 9, in which weird scorpions are coming out of the abyss amidst smoke to afflict human beings.  Lee cites Cassius Dio, a second-third century C.E. author who wrote a vast history of Rome.  In Cassius Dio 66.23.1, we read (in this translation): "Thus day was turned into night and light into darkness. Some thought that the Giants were rising again in revolt (for at this time also many of their forms could be discerned in the smoke and, moreover, a sound as of trumpets was heard), while others believed that the whole universe was being resolved into chaos or fire."  The context for this passage is Cassius Dio's discussion of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in Italy, which destroyed the Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum.

The wikipedia article on Mount Vesuvius says that it erupted in 79 C.E.  That is when Lee dates the Book of Revelation.  For Lee, the eruption of Mount Vesuvius is significant in understanding a number of the cataclysmic events in the Book of Revelation.  Lee says that John could have seen the eruption from Patmos, yet Lee speculates that John may have been closer to the event (though Revelation 1:9 says John was on Patmos).  Lee also argues against the eruption occurring on a Tuesday, thereby allowing it to have happened on a Sunday, the Lord's Day, which was the day that John was in the spirit (Revelation 1:10).  In terms of the importance of Mount Vesuvius to understanding the Book of Revelation, I think that Lee is on to something, even if John happened to be viewing the event from Patmos on a Tuesday.  As far as I know, John doesn't say that he viewed the entire vision on the Lord's day.

Who were the giants whom Dio Cassius was talking about?  As far as I can see, Dio Cassius does not say.  But this article refers to giants who tried to overthrow Zeus, and some of them had feet that were serpents.  Giants are different from scorpions, right?  Yeah, but I still think that Lee and others who have interpreted Revelation 9 in light of the giants in Dio Cassius are on to something.  In both, you have rebellious figures coming out of the abyss in smoke.  Lee brings up other considerations in his discussion of Revelation 9, such as the idea that Nero----the oppressive Roman emperor who died in 68 C.E.----would lead Parthians from the east in an attack on Rome (see here).  Does not Revelation 16:12 refer to the kings of the east?  And Lee interprets the Apollyon of Revelation 9:11, the king of the Abyss, in light of the portrayal of Nero as Apollo.  For Lee, John's point was that demonic forces would be instigating Parthia's hordes, led by Nero.  Again, Lee and others who hold this particular interpretation are probably on to something!

Was Jonah Dead? Was Jesus Taking Away Dionysus' Glory?

My church is going through John's Gospel: Wisdom from Ephesus With Michael Card for its weekly Bible study.  Two things stood out to me at last night's meeting.

1.  A group of us was talking about the topic of Jesus going to hell during the time between his' death and his resurrection.  One person (whom I will call Joe) was offering his opinion and, in the course of his talk, he said that he believed that Jonah died inside of the great fish, but God brought Jonah back to life.  Joe was referring to Jonah 2:6, which says (in the King James Version): "I went down to the bottoms of the mountains; the earth with her bars was about me for ever: yet hast thou brought up my life from corruption, O LORD my God."  Were there mountains and bars in the belly of the great fish?  Probably not.  Consequently, according to Joe, Jonah was in Sheol.

I can see Joe's point.  I can also think of reasons that some might disagree.  They might view Jonah 2:6 as poetic or metaphorical rather than literal.  Moreover, they might interpret Jonah 2:6 to mean that God rescued Jonah from a near-death experience, not that God resurrected Jonah from the dead.  It was interesting to hear Joe's interpretation, though.  I've heard the view that God raised Jonah from the dead before, but I did not hear that view justified through an appeal to Jonah 2:6.

2.  Michael Card in the DVD was saying that elements of the Gospel of John spoke to the place where John was writing, Ephesus, as John challenged the paganism of the city.  Ephesus had a god of healing, Asclepius, and snakes were used in some of the healing rituals that were carried out in his name.  In John 3, we see Jesus appealing to the story in Numbers 21 about the brass serpent that the Israelites looked upon to receive healing, as Jesus likened himself to the brass serpent.  In Ephesus, there as a high regard for Dionysus, who changed water into wine.  In John 2, we see a story about Jesus changing water into wine.  According to Michael Card, Jesus in John's Gospel was taking back the glory from the pagan god Dionysus. 

I already knew about some of this information because I had read Lee Harmon's John's Gospel: The Way It Happened.  And Lee in his book about Revelation discusses the similarities between a miracle that was attributed to Vespasius and one of Jesus' miracles.  Some Christian apologists maintain that Dionysus actually was not said to have changed water into wine.  See here.  Personally, the sources discussed in that link look rather ambiguous to me.  But let's say that there was a pagan story that Dionysus changed water into wine.  Should we really go all ga-ga over a Christian who said that Jesus did miracles that pagan gods were said to perform?  It's like how some scholars treat the Hebrew Bible: P wrote Genesis 1 to say that the God of Israel, not Marduk, was supreme.  So someone's saying that one's own god is better than another by claiming that his god can do what is attributed to another god.  Big deal?  I don't find that particularly powerful!

But suppose that John was saying that his audience in Ephesus could know that Jesus changed the water into wine because his Gospel was eyewitness testimony?  Someone in the group was saying that John 2 was probably powerful to some of the pagans at Ephesus because the stories about Dionysus were legends, whereas the story about Jesus changing water into wine was a fact.  John may have been trying to make that point: the Ephesians could trust eyewitness testimony to a miracle more than a legend about Dionysus.

Am I convinced by this, though?  I don't know.  I wouldn't be surprised if people had eyewitness stories about healing from pagan cults.  The pagan cults were popular, after all.  I'm sure that they were effective in bringing healing, at least some of the time, otherwise who would use them?  And, when these cults weren't effective, their defenders could perhaps explain that away: the person seeking healing was not pleasing the god enough, or the god had a reason for that person to remain sick.  Elements of Christianity have that same approach today.

John and John: Openness to Biblical Criticism

My church started a new Bible study last night.  We're going through John's Gospel: Wisdom from Ephesus, with Michael Card. 

What impressed me most last night was the openness of people in the group, and Michael Card on the DVD, to scholarly ideas about the composition of the Bible.  The pastor was saying that he learned from the History Channel's miniseries on the Bible that the John who wrote the Gospel of John was not the same person as the John who wrote the Book of Revelation.  Someone else in the group, who is rather conservative and evangelical yet is part of the more liberal Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA), said that he was in a Bible study group about the Book of Revelation, and it was discussing the question of whether the same person wrote the Gospel of John and the Book of Revelation.

I had something to contribute to this discussion, for I got back into reading Lee Harmon's Revelation: The Way It Happened (and my blog posts on that book will appear starting June 25).  I happened to read the night before my Bible study Lee's discussion of the authorship of Revelation, so the issue was fresh in my mind.  I told the group about reasons that many scholars believe that John's Gospel and Revelation are by different people (different Greek styles), while also explaining the arguments of conservative scholars who maintain that the same guy wrote both books (i.e., literary reasons for the stylistic differences, and patristic ascription of Revelation to the apostle John).  I'm happy when I can come across as smart, as rarely as that happens! 

On the DVD, Michael Card was saying that Matthew and Luke base the outline of their story on the Gospel of Mark, so he was essentially agreeing with Markan priority.  While Card believes that John, the author of John's Gospel, was an eyewitness to Jesus, he seems to think that there's more to what John is doing than simply writing down what happened.  According to Card, John's Gospel was written much later than the synoptics, and so John had more time to reflect about the significance of Jesus.  The implication of this is that we see in John things that happened, mixed with John's retrospective and theological reflections about Jesus' significance.

I enjoyed hearing Michael Card talk about some of the differences between John's Gospel and the synoptics.  John leaves out some of the things that other Gospels have, while going in a different direction.  John, unlike Matthew and Luke, does not have a birth story about Jesus, but John does discuss the incarnation.  John does not have a Last Supper scene, but he does describe what happened after the Last Supper.  John, unlike the synoptics, does not have parables, but Jesus in John's Gospels is himself a parable----Jesus is the light of the world who goes on to open the eyes of the blind, and Jesus is the bread of life who feeds the multitudes.

I'm appreciative whenever an evangelical acknowledges some human element in the Bible, because that is a good counterweight to the ideas about the Bible that a number of conservative Christians hold: that all of the Bible's words were spoken or dictated by God.  I know that there are many conservative Christians who would distance themselves from this model of revelation, but there are still a number who hold fast to it.

I'm doubtful that some of the people in my group would be open to other conclusions that biblical scholarship has made: the view that Moses did not write the Pentateuch but that it contains contradictory sources or layers, or the idea there there are multiple hands in the Book of Isaiah.  It doesn't really tax one's faith to say that different Johns wrote John's Gospel and the Book of Revelation.  After all, even according to traditionalists, the Bible contains the work of more than one author!  But to say that Moses did not write the Pentateuch does not sound right to a number of conservative Christians, one reason being that Jesus seems to attribute parts of the Pentateuch to Moses.  The same would go for the question of how many Isaiahs there are.  And, for some reason, there are a number of conservative Christians who wouldn't be open to the idea that Paul did not write all of the letters attributed to him.  I think that the reason for their discomfort here is that such a view would make the letters less authentic----they'd like for a letter that is attributed to Paul to be from Paul, not from some unknown who was pretending to be Paul.

Moreover, I'm not sure if people in the group would acknowledge that the Bible contradicts himself.  Some in the group are more open to that than others.  When John's Gospel is different from the synoptics, that's not a contradiction, in the eyes of many conservative Christians.  Rather, John's Gospel and the synoptics are highlighting different aspects of the truth.   

Starting John's Gospel: The Way It Happened

I started Lee Harmon's John's Gospel: The Way It Happened.  I'd like to thank Lee for sending me my Advanced Reader Copy.

This book is a sequel to another book that Lee wrote, Revelation: The Way It Happened.  I have not read all of that particular book, but I read parts of it on Google Books (see here), and I found the prose to be quite gripping.

Lee includes a summary of his Revelation book in John's Gospel: The Way It Happened.  Essentially, what I got out of that summary was that Christians during the first century were expecting for the end to come very soon, but that did not happen, and life just kept on going on.  In John's Gospel, the characters are trying to cope with that disappointment as well as other problems that Christians were experiencing, such as economic marginalization by pagans in Asia Minor and marginalization within synagogues.

The book alternates between fiction and non-fiction, even as the fictional parts manifest the author's awareness of issues within biblical studies.  In my latest reading, the prophet John is dictating his Gospel to a lady named Ruth, while Matthew expresses his sarcasm.  Matthew was a character in Lee's Revelation book, and he is the author of the Gospel of Matthew (but my impression is that Lee does not equate him with Matthew the tax-collector and disciple of Jesus).  Matthew is bitter because the end did not come, and he and his father gave up so much because they expected for Jesus to return soon.  Moreover, in my latest reading, Matthew, John, and Ruth debate about who exactly Jesus is.  Matthew believes that Jesus originated at the virgin birth, whereas John is proposing the radical idea that Jesus pre-existed and actually is God.  The Epistle to the Colossians comes into their discussion, since Colossians portrays Jesus as pre-existent wisdom, and Matthew expresses skepticism that Paul wrote that epistle.

Lee returns to this story, while he also has non-fictional sections that go into the historical background behind the Gospel of John.  For example, Lee has a section on the Greco-Roman conceptions of the logos, which are important to know in interpreting John 1.

Lee draws from biblical scholarship in this book.  Unlike Lee, I wouldn't call John Shelby Spong "one of our foremost Jesus scholars" (page 10), as quotable and insightful as Bishop Spong may be.  But Lee does demonstrate a grasp of scholarly debates in a footnote on the curse of the heretics in synagogues.  Although Lee views the curse to be present in the late first century and part of the controversy between Jews and Christians, he's aware of the scholarly arguments that it has a later date and was directed towards heretics in general, not Christians, specifically.  I tend to agree with Lee that, since there was controversy between Christians and mainstream Judaism in the late first century, as we see in the Gospel of John, there is a strong possibility that the curse of the heretics was directed against Christians.

I found something that Lee says on page 26 to be particularly interesting: "[The Gospel of John's] incarnation theme reminds us of Caesar Augustus, who, as the incarnation of the god Mercury, 'became visible' and whose birthday became 'for the whole world the beginning of the gospel.'  [(In a footnote, Lee refers to a resolution from the Provincial Assembly of Asia Minor that made these claims about Caesar Augustus.)]  Its descent and ascent theme brings to mind how the incarnated Mercury descended as the son of a god for the atonement of humans before ascending back to heaven.  While rich in Jewish symbolism, John's Gospel nevertheless makes the Christ story available to any reader living in Asia Minor or educated in Hellenistic tradition."

This passage in Lee's book made me think about scholarly arguments about divine kings in Greco-Roman conceptualization (see here, here, and here).  There is nuance in terms of this issue, but I did a search, and apparently Horace had a poem about how Augustus was an incarnation of Mercury (see here).  While I have questions about the extent to which Greco-Roman conceptions of divine rulers overlapped with the Christian doctrine of the incarnation, Lee mentions things that are certainly relevant to this issue.