Lives of the apostles of Jesus Christ

by David Francis Bacon

Again the mournful tragedies of earlier apostolic days pass before him. Again he sees his noble brother bearing his bold witness of Jesus; and with him that other apostle, who in works and fate as much resembled the first, as in name. Their blood pouring out on the earth, rises to heaven, but not sooner than their spirits,——whence their loud witness calls down woful ruin on the blood-defiled city of the temple. And when that ruin falls, no regret checks the exulting tone of the thanksgiving. All that made those places holy and dear, is gone;——God dwells there no more; “the temple of God is opened in heaven, and there is seen in his temple the ark of his covenant,” and all heaven swells the jubilee over the destruction of Jerusalem. And after this, when the apostle’s view moved forward from the past to the future, and his eye rested on the crimes and the destiny of heathen Rome, the bitter remembrance of her cruelties towards his brethren, lifted his soul to high indignation, and he burst forth on her in the inspired wrath of a Son of Thunder;——

“Every burning word he spoke,

Full of rage, and full of grief.

“Rome shall perish; write that word

In the blood that she has spilt.

Rome shall perish,——fall abhorred,——

Deep in ruin as in guilt.”

In respect to the learning displayed in the Apocalypse, some most remarkable facts are observable. Apart from the very copious matters borrowed from the canonical writings of the Old Testament, from Isaiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, and other prophets, from which, as any reader can see, some of the most splendid imagery has been taken almost verbatim,——it is undeniable, that John has drawn very largely from a famous apocryphal Hebrew writing, called the Book of Enoch, which Jude has also quoted in his epistle; and in his life it will be more fully described. The vision of seven stars, explained to be angels,——of the pair of balances in the hand of the horseman, after the opening of the third seal,——the river and tree of life,——the souls under the altar, crying for vengeance,——the angel measuring the city,——the thousand years of peace and holiness,——are all found vividly expressed in that ancient book, and had manifestly been made familiar to John by reading. In other ancient apocryphal books, are noticed some other striking and literal coincidences with the Apocalypse. The early Rabbinical writings are also rich in such parallel passages. The name of the Conqueror, “which no one knows but himself,”——the rainbow stretched around the throne of God,——the fiery scepter,——the seven angels,——the sapphire throne,——the cherubic four beasts, six-winged, and crying Holy, Holy, Lord God of hosts,——the crowns of gold on the heads of the saints, which they cast before the throne,——the book with seven seals,——the souls under the altar,——the silence in heaven,——the Abaddon,——the child caught up to God,——Satan, as the accuser of the saints, day and night before God,——the angel of the waters,——the hail of great weight,——the second death,——the new heaven and earth,——the twelve-gated city of precious stones,——and Rome, under the name of “Great Babylon,”——are all found in the old Jewish writings, in such distinctness as to make it palpable that John was deeply learned in Hebrew literature, both sacred and traditional.

Yet all these are but the forms of expression, not of thought. The apostle used them, because long, constant familiarity with the writings in which such imagery abounded, made these sentences the most natural and ready vehicles of inspired emotions. The tame and often tedious details of those old human inventions, had no influence in moulding the grand conceptions of the glorious revelation. This had a deeper, a higher, a holier source, in the spirit of eternal truth,——the mighty suggestions of the time-over-sweeping spirit of prophecy,——the same that moved the fiery lips of those denouncers of the ancient Babylon, whose writings also had been deeply known to him by years of study, and had furnished also a share of consecrated expressions. That spirit he had caught during his long eastern residence in the very scene of their prophecy and its awful fulfilment. If this notion of his dwelling for a time with Peter in Babylon is well founded, as it has been above narrated, it is at once suggested also, that in that Chaldean city,——then the capital seat of all Hebrew learning, and for ages the fount of light to the votaries of Judaism,——he had, during the years of his stay, been led to the deep study and the vast knowledge of that amazing range of Talmudical and Cabbalistical learning, which is displayed in every part of the Apocalypse. But how different all these resources in knowledge, from the mighty production that seemed to flow from them! How far are even the sublimest conceptions of the ancient prophets, in their unconnected bursts and fragments of inspiration, from the harmonious plan, the comprehensive range, and the faultless dramatic unity, or rather tri-unity, of this most perfect of historical views, and of poetical conceptions!

All these coincidences, with a vast number of other learned references, highly illustrative of the character of the Apocalypse, as enriched with Oriental imagery, may be found in Wait’s very copious notes on Hug’s Introduction.