“I, John, your brother and partner in the tribulation and the kingdom and the patient endurance that are in Jesus, was on the island called Patmos on account of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus” (Rev 1:9).
“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more” (Rev 21:1).
i) Commentators often puzzle over the significance of the sea in Rev 21:1. Some think it’s a literary allusion to the malevolent symbolism of the sea in OT usage (e.g. Isa 51:10-11).
ii) Beyond the specific interpretation of Rev 21:1, this raises the general question of what background considerations are in play when interpreting an author like John. What background would be relevant to the author and his audience?
iii) For example, if we seek an explanation in textual parallels, this assumes that a literary background is the foremost consideration. Is that a correct assumption?
This might seem more obvious to a modern scholar than to the original audience. After all, a modern scholar has greater access to the OT than the average 1C reader or listener. A modern scholar has the entire OT at his fingertips, in the Hebrew, Greek version, and any number of English versions (or whatever his mother tongue).
It doesn’t follow that the average 1C reader or listener would have the same textual command of the OT.
iv) Mind you, that doesn’t necessarily mean we should avoid a literary explanation. An author may write on more than one level, with more than one audience in mind. He may write in such a way that his writing is broadly intelligible to a general audience.
Yet he also, at one and the same time, be writing for an ideal reader. He may include textual clues which only a more sophisticated reader would register. Although any fairly intelligent reader or listener could get the gist of the story or the gist of the argument, only a more astute or educated reader would appreciate all of the subtleties.
v) However, is the literary background the only or primary consideration? What about the biographical background of the author? Should our interpretation look to a text, or look to an experience, to explain the author’s meaning?
Obviously, a writer’s personal experience can figure in his meaning. For example, when Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn penned One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, his own, first-hand experience was clearly the foremost influence.
vi) Mind you, to identify the biographical background raises similar questions to the identification of the literary background. For that to be meaningful to the audience, the biographical allusion must also be publicly accessible.
vii) Returning to Rev 21:1, beyond any literary allusions, is it not probable that the symbolism of the sea also held a more personal significance for John. He received his visions on the island of Patmos, a penal colony. What made it a penal colony was the fact that, as a smallish island, surrounded by an ocean, the sea formed an impenetrable barrier to escape. You couldn't swim to the mainland. (The only possible escape would be to be a stowaway aboard a ship.)
So I'm sure that John was acutely aware of the sea. Everyday. Associated the sea with his captivity.
As such, it might also be emblematic of the persecution and captivity which many Christians can expect to face in this world, in contrast to the new order to come.
viii) It seems reasonable to me to connect 1:9 with 21:1. John’s captivity on Patmos is not a private, autobiographical presupposition. Rather, that sets the stage for the record of his visions. At the outset, he tells his audience where all this took place.
Moreover, Patmos was not an obscure desert island. As Aune explains in his commentary (1:77), Patmos, along with other islands comprising the Sporades, was a militarily strategic outpost, guarding the city of Miletus.
So it wouldn’t be surprising if John’s audience formed a mental picture of his situation. This information was common knowledge—or so I assume.
The biographical background doesn’t exclude the literary background. Both considerations may be equally salient.
But I do think some interpreters are trained to focus on words rather than events—especially at the level of one individual life. They themselves inhabit a literary universe. A world of books and cross-references.
It’s easy to lose sight of the real time, real space dimension of an author as we tune our ears to make out literary parallels. To think in terms of language rather than the reality which those linguistic structures represent. Sometimes we need to leave the library and go outside.
This earth is only 29% land by area, so if the sea is no more, that means people will be able to live on the 71% of the new earth that was under saltwater on the old earth. So it's not so much the removal of something malevolent, but the addition of something beneficial.
ReplyDeleteNow, if the book was the Revelation of John, then his mindset and attitude would be important. But the book is the Revelation of Jesus Christ to John, and Jesus in turn got it from the Father. The very first words of the book are, "The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him". So when you use biographical information to cast about for the author's meaning, you are saying John put his own stamp on the vision.
RUBY RED SAID:
ReplyDelete“This earth is only 29% land by area, so if the sea is no more, that means people will be able to live on the 71% of the new earth that was under saltwater on the old earth. So it's not so much the removal of something malevolent, but the addition of something beneficial.”
i) I construe 21:1 to be symbolic rather than literal.
ii) And there’s nothing inherently maleficent about the ocean. Indeed, it’s essential to life on earth as we know it.
“Now, if the book was the Revelation of John, then his mindset and attitude would be important. But the book is the Revelation of Jesus Christ to John, and Jesus in turn got it from the Father. The very first words of the book are, "The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him". So when you use biographical information to cast about for the author's meaning, you are saying John put his own stamp on the vision.”
It’s clear, as we study the book, that the process of inspiration was more complex than you make it out to be.
i) For one thing, the book is loaded with literary allusions to the OT. It’s not as if he saw a bunch of literary allusions.
ii) For another thing, although John was in a position to transcribe verbatim whatever he heard, he had to describe what he saw in his own (inspired) words. He had to show the reader, in suitable, verbal imagery, what he saw—using picturesque words and descriptions.
iii) In divine providence, God can include the experience of the prophet in the prophecy. Indeed, in the Apocalypse itself, John is a participant as well as an observer. For John, it’s an interactive experience, as he talks to heavenly figures, and vice versa. He’s not just a passive spectator.
Yes, I agree that the prophet must interpret what he sees, so when John says "Something like a great mountain was cast into the sea" we can imagine that he saw an asteroid fall from space. But when he says "the sea was no more" that means the same thing whether the observer was from the First Century or from the 21st Century. The ancients weren't dummies. And whether this was literal or symbolic doesn't matter, it is what God wanted to communicate, not John. So the oceanophobia you attribute to John (based perhaps on his isolation on an island) should have nothing to do with the basic imagery of the prophesy.
ReplyDeleteRUBY RED SAID:
ReplyDelete“But when he says ‘the sea was no more’ that means the same thing whether the observer was from the First Century or from the 21st Century.”
It means what it meant at the time it was written. What it meant to the author and his target audience. (While it’s possible for the audience to misunderstand, their historical horizon establishes a semantic boundary of possibly correct or incorrect interpretations.)
It ought to mean the same thing to a 21C reader, but that make take a bit of effort on our part. While the Bible was written for us, it wasn’t written to us. We have some responsibility to consider what it would have meant to the original author and his target audience. Authors write to be understood, drawing upon the referential universe of discourse which they share in common with their immediate audience.
“The ancients weren't dummies.”
Which is why it’s not unreasonable to expect the implied reader to link 1:9 to 21:1.
“And whether this was literal or symbolic doesn't matter, it is what God wanted to communicate, not John.”
You’re drawing an artificial wedge between divine and human intent, as though the authorial intent of the sacred writer is at variance with the divine intent. That’s a very strange theory of inspiration.
Communication is a public phenomenon, dependent on a cultural code language which an author shares with his audience. Meaning is socially assigned. Symbolic discourse involves socio-linguistic conventions.
There is no purely abstract mode of communication—devoid of spatiotemporal particulars.
God, in his inspiration and providence, is orchestrating and exploiting those factors. God generally works through media, not apart from media.
“So the oceanophobia you attribute to John (based perhaps on his isolation on an island) should have nothing to do with the basic imagery of the prophesy.”
As long as that perspective is publicly accessible, why not?
Suppose instead of putting forth the captivity of John of Patmos as a hypothesis to explain his apparent dislike of sea imagery, you put forth a hypothesis that Paul was a misogynist to explain his apparent dislike of women (they must remain silent, etc). Would your hermeneutic be accepted then? No, there would be a hue and cry over "feminist new age scripture twisting" because first principles always get thrown under the outcome-based theology bus.
ReplyDeleteRUBY RED SAID:
ReplyDelete“Suppose instead of putting forth the captivity of John of Patmos as a hypothesis to explain his apparent dislike of sea imagery, you put forth a hypothesis that Paul was a misogynist to explain his apparent dislike of women (they must remain silent, etc). Would your hermeneutic be accepted then? No, there would be a hue and cry over ‘feminist new age scripture twisting’ because first principles always get thrown under the outcome-based theology bus.”
i) You suffer from an irrational hostility towards the perfectly innocuous idea that we should take writer’s personal situation into account as part of the interpretive process. That hardly involves an outcome-based agenda since his personal situation was whatever it was regardless of our alleged agenda.
ii) I never said that John’s suffers a general animus towards the sea. As a man who made his living earlier in life as a fisherman, he might well have generally fond associations with large bodies of water.
The question, rather, has to do with the metaphorical significance of the oceanic imagery in 21:1, and whether his personal experience contributes to that intentional symbolism.
iii) The comparison with a misogynistic Paul is tendentious because it employs a hypothetical which would effectively deny Paul’s inspiration. By contrast, there’s nothing prejudicial to John’s inspiration in the suggestion that God may have used John’s experience as one of the vehicles by which God communicated his message to and through his messenger. The message can incorporate the experience of the messenger. That’s certainly a factor in some of the Davidic psalms about his enemies (to take one example of many).
God put him in that setting, so why should that setting not be allowed to figure in the inspired imagination of the prophet? John himself drew attention to that setting in 1:9.
You’re shadowboxing with some invisible adversary. Whoever or whatever that may be, you’re dragging that fixation into a post which has nothing to do with your pet peeve.
Mr. Hays, Revelation itself supplies its own interpretation of the sea imagery and it is more than mere allusion to malevolent symbolism in the OT.
ReplyDeleteREV 17:1 Come hither; I will shew unto thee the judgment of the great whore that sitteth upon many waters...15 And he saith unto me, The waters which thou sawest, where the whore sitteth, are peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues.
The sea represents the multitudes of scattered humanity after Babel. In Daniel four beasts rise out of the sea, each one is a Gentile pretender for world domination. The final beast in Revelation 13 also rises out of the sea...out of the world of the Gentiles.
Immediately after the judgment when whoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire, then we read there is no more sea. That means there exists only the people of God at that point, united.
The sea represents more than one thing in Revelation. Its particular significance varies with the context. Some of the oceanic imagery is positive rather than negative (e.g. 4:6; 5:13; 15:2).
ReplyDeleteAlso, are you now endorsing annihilationism?
Only God has innate immortality; for all created beings, immortality is conditional. For human beings, immortality is conditional on salvation in Jesus Christ, while the wicked face the second death.
ReplyDelete1 Timothy 6:15-16...God, the blessed and only Ruler, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone is immortal...
The doctrine that all human beings are innately immortal was, in fact the first lie:
Genesis 3:4 And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die
Thanks for tipping your hand. The fact that you're a heretic helps explain your eccentric approach to hermeneutics.
ReplyDeleteI've reviewed all of the stock arguments for annihilationism, so I don't need to repeat myself here.