In the previous four articles, we have reviewed the evidence in support of an original Essene core to the book of Revelation as composed by a follower of John the Baptist. John taught an apocalyptic message, and when the Jerusalem temple fell in 70 CE, alarm bells would have gone off for his surviving followers signaling the last week of Daniel 9’s prophecy—in fact, as sacrifices to YHWH ended, they were already halfway through those seven final days! Within Revelation, we repeatedly encounter this notion of “half a week.” In this sense, the Apocalypse, like Daniel before it, weaves its narrative in a non-chronological, dreamlike sequence, where a single event might be described in various parts of the text with different symbolism.
The mistake that Biblical scholars often make whilst attempting to interpret Revelation is to take literally the cosmic language employed by the author. Doing so selectively defines only some language as symbolic when in fact the entire work is meant to be viewed in such a manner. For example, in Revelation 13, we are told that the Beast represents a man. In Daniel, the four beasts are unmasked to represent four great empires.[i] Why should we accept these as metaphors and yet hold that events such as the stars falling to earth are meant to be literal? Yes, Revelation describes the end of the age, much as Daniel did before it, but this does not equate to the end of time. As James D. Tabor states, those first-century Jews who took seriously the prophets of old truly did believe they were living in the “last days” or the “end of the age.” On the other hand, Tabor writes, “It is extremely important to point out that they did not expect the ‘end of the world’; that phrase never occurs.”[ii] In the space below, we propose that while the author of Revelation undoubtedly saw the Hebrew God as participating in the contemporary struggles of His people, YWHW was understood to be at work invisibly.
That said, in the early to mid-first-century CE, The Dead Sea Scrolls Sectarians undoubtedly believed that the supernatural destruction and renewal of the world were imminent.[iii] When the cataclysm of 70 CE arrived and YHWH seemingly failed to show up, they were deeply disappointed. But this turn of events did not cause their faith to collapse. Instead, as we see in many doomsday cults to this day, the sect was forced to reinterpret its beliefs.[iv] “The final age shall be prolonged,” claims the Habakkuk Pesher, “and shall exceed all that the Prophets have said; for the mysteries of God are astounding.”[v] In this final part of our series, we will demonstrate how Revelation is the result of this reinterpretation as the Dead Sea Scroll Community was faced with the reality of failed prophecy.
Thy Kingdom Come
It is fitting that in his mystic chronicle of the End of the Age and renewal of all things, the author of Revelation takes us back to the beginning. The ancient serpent of Eden reappears, here explicitly identified as the Devil and Satan (Rev. 12:9 NRSV). What John proceeds to describe is the birth of a New Creation. Thus, the primitive struggle between Good and Evil, Yahweh and Leviathan, is reenacted.[vi]
In Revelation, this transition from old to new occurs three and a half days (years) after the deaths of the Two Witnesses, who we have previously identified with the High Priests Ananus ben Ananus and Joshua ben Gamla. An angel proclaims, “the kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord” (Rev. 11:15 NRSV). The Ark of the Covenant reappears in the heavens after centuries of having been lost, adding to the eschatological significance of the historical events playing out.[vii] It is then, in Chapter 12, that the woman clothed with the sun appears in heaven and gives birth to a male child, undoubtedly the messiah.[viii] Also, Satan is cast out of heaven and down to earth. It’s a great victory for God, but everyone on earth is pretty much screwed.
This climactic chapter in the astrotheological epic is the author’s way of reinterpreting Daniel’s 70 weeks prophecy. For humans, the world keeps on turning, but invisibly, Satan has been defeated and the dawn of a new age has begun. Jewish tradition also tells of the messiah being born at the moment that the Jerusalem Temple fell and this timing is seemingly affirmed in Revelation 12.[ix] Israel has not been redeemed but completely defeated by the Romans, and so the logic goes that the messiah was indeed born, but he was snatched up to be in the presence of God until he is to at last fulfill his duties–apparently at some later date. In fact, it appears as if after the apocalypse failed to arrive within a few years of 70 CE, the author felt it necessary to play it safe and push off the earth’s physical renewal another thousand years! We read in Chapter 20 that the dead are indeed raised and reigning as priests with God, sharing in a “first resurrection” that would precede the general resurrection. They may have died, but rest assured they needn’t worry about the “second death.” As it is written earlier, “’Blessed are the dead who from now on die in the Lord.’ ‘Yes,’ says the Spirit, ‘they will rest from their labors, for their deeds follow them'” (Rev: 14:13 NRSV). This telling verse acknowledges that death was apparently still a thing, its personification not to be tossed into the inferno for another millennium, but those who saw their loved ones perish on earth could take comfort in knowing that these martyrs were currently enjoying special privileges in the Lord’s celestial kingdom.
Israel, commonly called the Holy Land, is a sacred space for the Jewish people and we see further in Chapter 12 that eschatological significance is given to the very geography of the region. After being cast down to earth, the Dragon/Serpent, in its efforts to destroy the woman, “poured water like a river after the woman, to sweep her away with the flood. But the earth came to the help of the woman and swallowed the river that the dragon poured from his mouth” (Rev. 12:15-16 NRSV).[x] The “river” in question can only refer to one, as there is only one river in all the world that holds such vital importance to the Jewish people–that being the River Jordan. This river, seen from the mountains above (i.e., Yahweh’s POV), can itself be likened to a winding serpent. The defeat of this serpent, aka Leviathan, by Yahweh in the original creation myth of Israel, is in all likelihood an analogy for the conquering (whether militarily as in the Biblical narrative or ideologically as modern archaeology has suggested) of the Holy Land by the worshipers of Yahweh.[xi] During the First Jewish Revolt, at the time of the destruction of the land, the author of Revelation has this cycle repeat in order to signify the forming of a New Creation.
Further investigation into the details provided in Chapter 12 adds weight to our identification of the Jordan as Leviathan. As quoted above, the earth aids the woman in “swallowing up” the river. This terminology of “swallowing up” has been discussed exhaustively by Robert Eisenman, as it is an expression found frequently in the Dead Sea Scrolls.[xii] Following this train of thought, it would not be unreasonable to suggest that the Dead Sea is the location where the earth swallows up Leviathan, the river. The celestial woman is often identified as Israel.[xiii] It should be recalled that the Dead Sea Scroll Community saw themselves as representing the “True Israel.”[xiv] Using this symbolic language, John’s community retells the history of its fleeing from the “land of Damascus” in the north to Qumran in the south as Judas and his Sicarii grew in strength around Galilee and his hometown of Gamala. We might recall the Habakkuk Pesher, which tells us that the Wicked Priest pursued the Teacher of Righteousness to the place of his exile to “swallow him up” in the heat of his fury.[xv]
Dragon’s Lair
We have seen how John portrays the Jordan River as emanating from the mouth of the primordial agent of chaos, the Serpent/Dragon. Following this hypothesis to its logical conclusion allows us to trace this evil to its source—symbolically depicted as the “mouth” of the serpent. The serpent’s mouth as described can refer only to a single locale and it is one of the utmost importance for our study. In the far northern part of Israel, beneath Mr. Hermon, there lies a cave commonly referred to as the “Gates of Hades”. Those brave (or foolish) enough to enter this geological Hellmouth would have encountered a seemingly bottomless pit that finally dropped into a watery abyss—this underground spring being a major source of the Jordan River. Such a place cannot have gone without mystical significance in the minds of the ancients. Josephus details the landmark with the following words:
The place is called Panium, where is a top of a mountain that is raised to an immense height, and at its side, beneath, or at its bottom, a dark cave opens itself; within which there is a horrible precipice, that descends abruptly to a vast depth; it contains a mighty quantity of water, which is immovable; and when any body lets down any thing to measure the depth of the earth beneath the water, no length of cord is sufficient to reach it. Now the fountains of Jordan rise at the roots of this cavity outwardly; and, as some think, this is the utmost origin of Jordan.[xvi]
Josephus, War of the Jews Book 1, Chapter 21
In the popular legends of the time, this area was believed to be the abode of Pan, the bestial god of untamed nature, shepherds, and sexuality, who amongst other things, is believed by some to have influenced later depictions of Satan.[xvii] During the Roman Period, Herod the Great dedicated a magnificent temple to Caesar Augustus on these sacred grounds. Thus, to traditionalist Jews of this time, this region at the foot of Mount Hermon would have been associated with great power but also great evil. In John’s Apocalypse, the cave at Paneas was the mouth of the Dragon, spewing the serpentine River Jordan from its watery depths.[xviii]
By no coincidence, Paneas is also closely associated with the early Jesus cult. It is at Paneas, renamed Caesarea Philippi under Herodian rule, where a pivotal moment in the career of Jesus takes place. Matthew’s gospel recounts something akin to a coronation ceremony enacted between Jesus and his disciples. Peter declares that Jesus is “the Messiah, the Son of the living God” (Matt. 16:16 NRSV). These words of Peter, declaring Jesus King Messiah, would have been understood as directly opposed to the Roman Imperial Cult, which had its local headquarters a stone’s throw away. In reply to this, Jesus says to his lead advocate, “And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven” (Matt. 16:18-19 NRSV).
This concept of keys and binding is echoed by the author of Revelation. In Chapter 9, we are told of a fallen star who is granted the “key to the shaft of the bottomless pit.” This demonic entity promptly uses the key and unleashes a plague of mutant locusts upon the earth. After describing the bizarre appearance of the insectoids, John prophecies, “They have as king over them the angel of the bottomless pit; his name in Hebrew is Abaddon, and in Greek he is called Apollyon” (Rev. 9:11 NRSV). Abaddon, as the personification of the bottomless pit (Sheol/Hades), appears notably in the Dead Sea Scrolls and the sect’s enemies are also fittingly referred to as the “Men of the Pit.”[xix] The Greek name, “Apollyon,” seems to share a root with the name of the god, “Apollo,” who was closely associated with Caesar Augustus.[xx] As some scholars have postulated, Abaddon/Apollyon is perhaps merely another guise of the familiar prime evil otherwise known as Belial and Satan.[xxi]
To the followers of the Jesus movement, (Zealots, Sicarii, whatever we want to call them), the fact that their leader acted in ways analogous to Caesar was seen as befitting his Messianic office. To his detractors, including those who followed John the Baptist (i.e. the Essenes, the Dead Sea Scrolls Community), Jesus’s actions were equivocal to the pagans’ in their blasphemy. God is one– and He has no son! As we read, Revelation’s author is himself admonished multiple times for his readiness to worship the angel of his visions. “You must not do that!” the angel scolds him. “I am a fellow slave with you and your comrades the prophets, and with those who keep the words of this book. Worship God!” (Rev. 22:9 NRSV, cf. Rev. 19:10) We might observe that in these verses, there are no mentions of worshipping Jesus or the Lamb.
As we already noted in part two of this series, Revelation 11 describes the Two Witnesses as being killed by “the beast that comes up from the bottomless pit.” We have also demonstrated how Judas the Galilean became known as Jesus Christ by his devotees and that John’s disciples viewed him as an antichrist, the Beast from the Sea. Thus, we can further decode the symbolism used to reference the historic events of the First Jewish Revolt Against Rome. Jesus, proclaimed as Messiah at Paneas, the city of the bottomless pit, was believed to have “descended into Hell” upon dying. As Tacitus records, after the crucifixion, Jesus’s movement was “checked for the moment.”[xxii] Soon, however, Cephas and others became convinced that Jesus was alive and more powerful than ever. The revolutionary movement started by Jesus started to gain traction once again. The ideology that Jesus preached, his Spirit, invigorated the Jewish rebels, inspiring them to rise up against their Roman overlords and the corrupt aristocracy that supported them. It is in this way that the beast “ascended from the bottomless pit,” killing the High Priests Ananus and Joshua, effectively taking revenge on the family (and indeed, in the case of James, the very individual) responsible for the deaths of Jesus and his brother James.
Of course, Jesus’s fate was well known amongst his Jewish followers and, as Revelation presumes to foretell, this time was to be no different. “The beast that you saw was, and is not, and is about to ascend from the bottomless pit and go to destruction” (Rev. 17:8 NRSV). This description is a dark parody of the attributes of Yahweh, “who is, and who was and who is to come” (Rev. 1:8), signaling the blasphemy and idolatrous nature of its subject.[xxiii] It is also a symbolic description of the Jewish messianic movement ignited by Judas bar Jesus. After its resurrection leading up to the First Jewish Revolt, it was again destroyed with the defeat of the Zealot armies in 70 CE and the final mass suicide of the Sicarii, Judas’s relatives, at Masada in 73/74 CE. Jesus was raised, it would appear, only to be killed again.
What’s in a Name?
The final connection we suggest here between Jesus and the Beast of Revelation concerns a name given by the Nazarene’s Jewish detractors. He is said to be the “Son of Pandera” also spelled, “Panthera” (the panther).[xxiv] Pandera was said to have been a Roman soldier who seduced, or perhaps raped, Jesus’s mother, Mary. This allegation is similar to the one spun by the Pharisaic rivals of John Hyrcanus, who claimed that his mother had been raped while in captivity.[xxv] But there may perhaps be more to the name than at first meets the eye. If we break down the Greek word, panthera, we are first greeted by pan, a word meaning “all,” that also just happens to be the name of the pagan god worshipped at Paneas (Caesarea Philippi)–the exact location where Jesus was proclaimed Messiah by Peter. Théra comes from the same root as thērion and may be translated to “wild beast,” or alternatively, to “net” or “trap.”[xxvi] The Beast of Revelation 13 is an amalgam of the four sea beasts depicted in Daniel 9, where they are described as a lion, a bear, a leopard, and a ten-horned monster. As such, Revelation’s Beast from the Sea can truly be described as “all beasts”– or, translated into Greek, panthera.[xxvii]
To those who did not accept Jesus as the Messiah, he was the son of all wild beasts, a bastard progeny of the violent Hasmoneans with all of their impure heathen blood. Like the god, Pan, and his later folkloric avatar, the Pied Piper, Judas bar Jesus was viewed as a deceiver who lured in the youth of the nation by playing them a sweet tune, lofty promises of glorious kingdom come, which we are told they “received with pleasure.”[xxviii] Outsiders, such as Josephus, lamented the popularity of this “innovation,” likening it to an “infection which spread thence among the younger sort.”[xxix] Similarly, The Mandean Book of John, a later work that likely draws on earlier traditions of The Baptist’s disciples, echoes this condemnation of Jesus in a further allusion to both the horned beasts of Revelation and the melodious magnetism of the Pied Piper. Accusing the Nazarene of misleading Israel, the Mandean text reads that he “lied to them with a horn and played different things with a trumpet.”[xxx]
Conclusion
It is often said that truth is a matter of perspective. The Book of Revelation is a prime example of this phenomenon. Where one person sees the promised Messiah, another may perceive a sinister antichrist. In this series of articles, we have explored how the rise of the Jesus Movement and events that culminated in the First Jewish Revolt Against Rome were interpreted by both John the Baptist’s Qumran Essenes and the Jewish Sicarii Christians.
To state that the Apocalypse is a complex work is a glaring understatement. John’s text is a symbolic tour de force that weaves anciently established mythemes into an intricate structure of visions, some of which may or may not have at one point stood alone as discreet texts. As I have endeavored to prove, however, the sparse references to the name “Jesus” and the distinctive usage of words and ideas common to the Dead Sea Scrolls allow us to peel back the early Christian layer, revealing a document that was originally harshly critical of Jesus and his followers.
Although Professor Ford did not share many of the ideas I propose here, her essential premise lays the foundation for my interpretation of the Apocalypse. As she writes in her Commentary, “Revelation is a composite work from the ‘Baptist School’ who represented a primitive form of Christianity and inherited the Baptist’s prophetic, apocalyptic and ‘fiery’ (boanergic) tendencies.”[xxxi] First published in 1975, the veracity of Dr. Ford’s insights must finally be recognized. It is perhaps a matter of faith to believe that as Qumran studies mature past their current obsession with the Hasmonean era, Ford will be given the credit she so deserves within the scholarly community.
In the original Revelation, John the Baptist played the part of The Lamb and Judas bar Jesus, who was known as both Judas the Galilean and Jesus Christ depending on who you asked, was symbolized by the Sea-Beast. Jesus came from the line of Hasmonean kings who, as supporters of the Pharisees, had been enemies of the Torah-conservative Essenes ever since the death of Alexander Jannaeus in the first century BCE. As the Sea-Beast, Jesus is portrayed as a blasphemer whose followers were ideologically opposed to the Scrolls Community, symbolized by a woman—the true Israel—even violently pursuing her from the Damascus area and region of upper Galilee down to the wilderness area of Qumran.
In the decades following the deaths of John and Jesus, conflict continued to escalate until the eventual outbreak of the Revolt in 66 CE. During this time, belief in Jesus’s resurrection became a rallying cry for adherents of his rapidly-expanding Sicarii revolution. This idea was taken up with particular vehemence by Saul of Tarsus, whom John’s disciples labeled a False Prophet. Saul, known as Paul within his ecclesiastical circle, became known for his miracle-working and his insistence that Jesus, as the divinely appointed Lord, could—and should—be worshipped alongside YHWH.
By 68 CE, the situation in Jerusalem had exploded and several rebel factions were now active in Jerusalem. Longstanding agreements between the Temple administration and the Imperial overseers were officially severed with sacrifices forbidden to be made in the name of Caesar. Ananus ben Ananus and Joshua ben Gamla, two former high priests who opposed the war with Rome, were murdered and their bodies cast into the city streets without burial. This traumatic incident was recorded in Revelation 11, with Ananus and Joshua portrayed as the two witnesses who had been hated by the earth’s inhabitants. Indeed, at this time, the Zealot movement had consumed the citizenry and people simply did not want to hear appeals for peace.
The popular support for the Zealot cause ultimately ended in the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple in 70 CE at the hands of Titus Flavius and his Roman army. Reflecting on this apocalyptic event, the author paints Jerusalem as an adulteress cheating on her husband with the fledgling Christianity’s Hellenistic innovations and perceived idol worship. Revelation argues that Jerusalem got what she deserved, with the pagan Romans, much like the Babylonians before them, acting as mere agents of God’s wrath. In truth, the mystery of Revelation 17:5 is a paradox—Jerusalem herself had become wicked Babylon.
When Revelation’s ur-text fell into the hands of the Jewish Christian scribe, he would have found certain parts appealing. The text was insulting but with some touching up, it was worth salvaging. Appending the letters to the seven churches, parts of Chapter 22, along with other references to Jesus scattered here and there, this Sicarii sympathizer, one who had perhaps witnessed the fall of Jerusalem himself, was able to make use of the book’s symbolism for his own cause. In his sights were supporters of Paul, the so-called Apostle to the Gentiles, who Revelation’s original author also opposed. The Sea-Beast became Nero Caesar with the addition of the Number of the Beast, conspicuously missing in some of Revelation’s earliest copies. The Whore of Babylon became Rome and so on. It did not take much for the Christian redactor to completely change the meaning of the ur-text’s symbolism. At the link below, I present the text of the original Essene Revelation as best as I can currently reconstruct it. It is by no means authoritative, but it might nevertheless provide a useful glimpse into the mind of the anti-Christian author.
In his book, The Jesus Dynasty, James Tabor recalls the words of an old professor speaking on the investigation of history: “When you get closer to the truth, everything begins to fit.” [xxxii] While I am aware it will still take much persuasion to change established presuppositions, the case I have presented in the past five articles offers strong explanatory power for how to interpret both Revelation’s mysteries and the early Jesus Movement as a whole. Combined with our previous reconstruction of the Historical Jesus, the pieces fit too snugly for it all to be a mere illusion. Did John and his Dead Sea Disciples foresee this eventual discernment? As the Prophet Habakkuk is quoted in the Scrolls, “For as the waters cover the sea, so shall the earth be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord.”[xxxiii] Indeed, Revelation depicts the end of one age. As our knowledge of Jesus, his followers, and even his enemies deepens, perhaps we are now at the beginning of another.
Notes
[i] See Craig R. Koester, Revelation: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2014), p. 580, where the four empires are identified as the Babylonians, Medes, Persians, and the Hellenistic empire of Alexander the Great and his successors.
[ii] James D. Tabor, The Jesus Dynasty (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2006), 157.
[iii] John J. Collins, The Apocalyptic Imagination: An Introduction to Jewish Apocalyptic Literature, Third Edition (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2016), 260-263.
[iv] For an influential work on such occurrences see Leon Festinger, Henry W. Riecken, and Stanley Schachter, When Prophecy Fails (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1956). Another interesting case study is that of The Lord Our Righteousness Church, chronicled in The Cult at the End of the World, directed by Ben Anthony (2007; Belgrade: Firefly Productions). In the case of the latter, Messianic claimant Wayne Bent aka Michael Travesser proclaimed to his New Mexico cult followers that the “Day of Judgement” would arrive on October 31, 2007. On midnight of the promised date, Travesser and his followers were seen celebrating despite the lack of any visible sign of God’s intervention. Their jubilation was apparently the result of this eschaton coming in a way which they were able to perceive but the filmmakers were not.
[v] 1QpHab Column VII in Geza Vermes, The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English Revised Edition (London: Penguin Books, 2011), 513.
[vi] See for example Koester, Revelation, 558. Also see J. Massyngberde Ford, Revelation (New York: Doubleday, 1975), 199.
[vii] For a discussion of the eschatological significance of the ark’s reappearance, see Marilyn F. Collins, “The Hidden Vessels in Samaritan Traditions,” Journal for the Study of Judaism in the Persian, Hellenistic, and Roman Period 3, no. 2 (1972): 97–116. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24656260.
[viii] Collins, The Apocalyptic Imagination, 418.
[ix] Gerald J. Blidstein, “Messiah in Rabbinic Thought,” Jewish Virtual Library, AICE, 2008, https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/messiah.
[x] The term used in this verse for the dragon’s actions, potamophoretos, is noted in Koester, Revelation, 553 to be a rare word that is also notably used to describe the Dead Sea Scroll’s Spouter of Lies in the Damascus Document. The Liar was said to have “poured over Israel waters of lies and made them stray into a wilderness without path.” This employment of a rare term provides a further link between Revelation and the Qumran Community, and indeed, the use of water symbolism puts the Liar’s ministry in stark contrast with the purifying mission of John the Baptizer.
[xi] For the relationship of the combat myth to military conquest, see Adela Yarbro Collins, The Combat Myth in the Book of Revelation (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2001), 117.
[xii] For one example, see Robert H. Eisenman, James the Just in the Habakkuk Pesher (Leiden: Brill, 1986), 92.
[xiii] See Koester, Revelation, 543 for several possible interpretations of the woman, including the Jewish community. See also, Ford, Revelation, 195-198 where Ford suggests the woman represents “a priestly community,” (197) correlating the woman’s cosmic garments with the high priest’s vestments. Ford also posits a prophetic role for this priestly community citing the woman’s act of “proclaiming the Spirit in the face of contradiction” (198). Both descriptions fit the Qumran community and strengthen our case for its connection to the original text of Revelation.
[xiv] See Vermes, The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls, 26. Also, see Michael Wise, Martin Abegg Jr., and Edward Cook, The Dead Sea Scrolls (New York: HarperCollins, 2005), 114.
[xv] 1QpHab Column 11. For the “swallow” terminology employed in this passage, see Eisenman, James the Just in the Habakkuk Pesher, 92.
[xvi] Flavius Josephus, War of the Jews Book 1, trans. by William Whiston (London: W. Bowyer, 1737) Chapter 21 Paragraph 3, https://www.ccel.org/ccel/josephus/works/files/works.html.
[xvii] Alexander Kulik, “How the Devil Got His Hooves and Horns: The Origin of the Motif and the Implied Demonology of 3 Baruch,” Numen 60, no. 2/3 (2013): 198, http://www.jstor.org/stable/24644852.
[xviii] Taking this imagery one step further, the Jordan River, “spewed” from the mouth of the dragon, could actually be seen as the “son” of the dragon. Thus, we can closely associate the Jordan with the Sea-Beast who is given great authority by its father, the dragon.
[xix] For example, see 1QS Column 9 in Wise, Abegg, and Cook, The Dead Sea Scrolls, 131.
[xx] For an article detailing Augustus’ relationship to Apollo available online, see Isaac Roberts and Patrick Brewer, “Apollo: Foreigner in Rome,” MQ Ancient History: City of Rome Blog, Macquarie University Department of Ancient History, accessed November 16, 2022, https://ancient-history-blog.mq.edu.au/cityOfRome/ApolloBlog.
[xxi] Pieter G R de Villiers, “Prime Evil and Its Many Faces in the Book of Revelation,” Neotestamentica 34, no. 1 (2000): 76, http://www.jstor.org/stable/43048379.
[xxii] See Annals Book 15 Section 44 in Tacitus, Annals, trans. John Jackson, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1937). Available online at https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Tacitus/Annals/15B*.html#44.
[xxiii] Koester, Revelation, 689. See also Ford, Revelation, 288.
[xxiv] See Tabor, The Jesus Dynasty, 59-72. Though I disagree with Tabor on the literal veracity of the “son of Panthera” tradition, the discussion cited is pertinent to the evolution of the tradition in Rabbinic literature.
[xxv] Flavius Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews Book 13, trans. by William Whiston (London: W. Bowyer, 1737), Chapter 10 Section 5, https://www.ccel.org/ccel/josephus/works/files/works.html. For further discussion, see Eyal Regev, The Hasmoneans: Ideology, Archaeology, Identity (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 2013), 121-122.
[xxvi] It must be noted that the author of this work is not an expert in Biblical Greek and thus, I am relying on my sources for this information. For Revelation’s usage of “beast,” see Koester, Revelation, p. 568. For translation of “therion” and its relationship to “thera,” see entries 2342. therion, Bible Hub, Accessed July 9, 2022, https://biblehub.com/greek/2342.htm and 2339. Thera, Bible Hub, Accessed July 9, 2022, https://biblehub.com/greek/2339.htm. While we emphasize, the translation of “wild beast” here, another interesting parallel can be drawn between the “three nets of Belial” detailed in the Damascus Document. This message, while sounding good on the surface, was ultimately seen to be a trap for those who got sucked in.
[xxvii] For a discussion of the relationship of Revelation’s Beast from the Sea to the four beasts of Daniel, see Koester, Revelation, 580 and Ford, Revelation, 219. It is also interesting to note that in the medieval period, the panther was viewed as a mythical creature with composite features taken from other animals. It was also a symbol for Christ and was said to have the power to lure all other beasts to it with its sweet breath. See David Badke, “Panther,” The Medieval Bestiary, June 2, 2022, https://bestiary.ca/beasts/beast79.htm#:~:text=A%20gentle%2C%20multicolored%20beast%20whose,and%20sleeps%20for%20three%20days.
[xxviii] Josephus, Antiquities Book 18, Ch. 1, Par. 1.
[xxix] See Josephus, Antiquities Book 18, Ch. 1 Par. 1. Also, cf. Matt. 19:14 and Matt 18:1-6, where particular honor is given to children in Jesus’s ministry. The indoctrination of children from a young age is a topic for which we can find numerous examples of in modern cult and political movements, but we shall save a discussion of any potential parallels between these and the Jesus movement for another time.
[xxx] See The Mandean Book of John 30:5-10 in The Mandaean Book of John: Critical Edition, Translation, and Commentary, ed. Charles G. Häberl and James F. McGrath, (Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2019), 83. Available online at http://www.gnosis.org/library/The Mandaean_Book_of_John_Open_Access_Ve.pdf.
[xxxi] Ford, Revelation, 56.
[xxxii] Tabor, The Jesus Dynasty, 75.
[xxxiii] Habakkuk 2:14 in Vermes, The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls, 515.