The Seven Churches of the Revelation of Jesus 1

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Introduction and Greetings
Seven Letters
Seven Churches

Abstract

Clues in the seven letters to churches show that these chapters are from that period when Christianity and Judaism were dividing. Read properly, the letters offer an important insight into this division. They are written from the Jewish side of the divide and the “Nicolaitans” were Hellenised Jews. It was the wing of the church that Paul took it upon himself to represent. The seven letters are from the same school as the epistle of James, placing their emphasis on works rather than faith, and they criticise those who are tempted, mainly by the Nicolaitans, into apostasy. Doubtless the Nicolaitans, like Paul, put emphasis on faith. If the Nicolaitans are the Hellenized Jews, like Paul, who were changing the nature of the original Essene beliefs, then these letters are meant to butress the faithful against the apostates.

Introduction and Greetings

The seven letters to churches occupy the first three chapters of Revelation, but from then on there is not a single mention of a church or churches. This indicates strongly that the letters to the churches have been inserted into the apocalypse, which otherwise has nothing to do with churches. No less an authority than R H Charles concur that the letters are a separate work from the rest of the Apocalypse. The word ”church” is often a translation of Hebrew or Aramaic words used by Essenes to mean ”assembly” or ”congregation”. Thus the word was taken into Christianity from the Essene usage.

Clues in the text show that these chapters are from that period when Christianity was just dividing from Judaism. These letters are written from the Jewish side of the divide and the ”Nicolaitans” were Hellenised Jews, supposedly named after Nicolaus, one of the Hellenist deacons appointed in Acts. It was the wing of the church that Paul took it upon himself to represent. We are therefore reading in the seven letters a missive from the leaders of the Jerusalem Church not from anyone in Patmos or Ephesus. Proof is the emphasis on works not faith. Doubtless the Nicolaitans, like Paul, put emphasis on faith. These letters chime to the tune of the epistle of James the Just, though James is giving less parabolic advice.

The greeting (Rev 1:4) is just like the beginnings of Paul’s epistles, suggesting they might have been contemporaneous with this part of Revelation. Because the first work in Revelation was this supposed letter to the seven churches, the greeting makes it seem that the whole book was a letter. Note that ”him who is and who was and who is to come” is listed separately from Jesus.

Jn 1:8 is clear that the ”Lord God”, the ”Alpha and Omega, ” the ”Almighty” is the one “who is, who was and who is to come”. It is not Jesus! Jesus is seen here as a faithful witness but it is God who comes to renew the world, from the subsequent descriptions, in his guise of the archangel Michael. These small points show that Jesus had still not yet been identified with the archangel Michael and the ”Parousia” was still that of God, as the word is properly used, not of Jesus.

Seven spirits before the throne are mentioned, a debt to Persian religion that has the seven Amesha Spentas of Ahura Mazda, that translated into the seven archangels of Judaism. It suggests we are looking at a Jewish—specifically Essene—document that has been Christianised. An original Christian work would hardly interpose seven anonymous spirits between God’s throne and his son. An explanation would be that Jn 5 with its references to Jesus Christ was added. Christians of an evangelical bent, embarrassed by the absence of references to seven spirits in the Jewish scriptures, try to convince us the Holy Ghost has a multiple personality!

In Jn 1:5, Jesus is described as ”the first begotten of the dead”, an important expression that explains the beginning of Christianity. Jesus was thought to have resurrected, when his corpse disappeared, because he was the first of the dead saints to be raised up by God in the general resurrection promised in Hosea. For the apocalyptic Jews this was the sure sign that the kingdom of God was coming. Matthew’s gospel emphasises it by having more—but anonymous—saints resurrected as well.

Though Jesus himself expected the heavenly hosts on the night of the Last Supper, his followers persuaded themselves that forty years of cosmic war and disaster were now necessary before the renewal of the world. In that forty years Christianity began. The constant references herin to ”patience” is surely because the patience of the faithful is being sorely tried by the failure of the second coming to come!

Jesus is also called ”prince of the kings of the earth”, a reference to his title of ”nasi”, a prince or leader, and ”the earth” in the underlying Aramaic will have been ”the land”, meaning the Jewish land.

The reference to ”made us kings and priests”, in Revelation 1:6, is a Christianisation of the Essene conviction that they were all prophets, priests and princes. Exodus 19:5-9 has the promise that Israel would be God’s priests if they stayed righteous. Essenes believed they were righteous and so this promise applied to them. Christians inherited these titles from the Essenes, they were not granted by Jesus.

In Revelation 1:7, Jesus is described as coming ”with clouds” a reference to Daniel but most likely a misinterpretation of ”coming with princes” meaning the armies of heaven. ”Even so, Amen” at the end of Jn 1:7 is interesting because both Jesus and the Essenes had the habit of repeating ”Amen” and ”Even so” is simply a translation of ”Amen” into English.

Seven Letters

In Revelation 1:9, the author admits that he is a member of a brotherhood, a concept that Christians other than monks tried to disavow. Next we get a typical Christian mistranslation. The author is made to say he shares tribulation ”with you in Jesus” when properly he shares ”the tribulation of Jesus”. He links this with the kingdom and patience or endurance. So, the translators contrive to show that the recipients of the letter as well as the author were suffering external tribulations but were enduring them, when it is plainly a past tribulation—that described in the gospels—and the endurance was the agony of the absence of the kingdom of God.

The word for tribulation which in Greek properly means ”pressure” is used here metaphorically just as we might when we say, ”The allied forces exerted pressure on the enemy”. The tribulation is a ”trouble” as the struggle in Northern Ireland is called ”the troubles” by the Nationalists. The ”tribulation of Jesus” shared by all, therefore was the Jewish nationalist uprising in which Jesus captured Jerusalem then lost his life. If Jesus’s followers thought he had been the first of the dead to rise in the kingdom, they were waiting for the kingdom to come, and their patience was being tried because after 40 years it was showing no signs of appearing.

So, what it was intended to mean is that they suffered because the kingdom was yet far and they were being patient in waiting for it to come. If Jesus died in 21 AD and his followers expected a forty year cosmic war, then towards the end of this time the first Christians would have been anquished that nothing was happening. The older document seems then to have been re-edited and issued as a letter to churches around 65 AD.

What is slightly confusing about the chapters containing the letters is that, first, they assume in the audience a knowledge of the later apocalyptic chapters and, second, the letters have been set into the beginning of the apocalypse. At this stage the Jewish Christians who were receiving this letter were still awaiting the end—though they were beginning to worry about its continued absence. Thus, they were familiar with all of the apocalyptic visions that appear later in Revelation. Nowadays, the letters would be better read after the apocalypse.

Jn 1:10 is really the beginning of the vision of the true apocalypse in chapter 4, but the letters have been slipped in at this point and make use of the same Watcher as the Apocalypse. He identifies himself with God’s Spirit as the other references to the spirit (Rev 17:3; 21:10) prove.

The Watcher is told to write what he sees into a book and send it to the seven churches, and this is repeated at 1:19, but then the speaker dictates the letters. This reveals a join in the text—the Watcher having been brought from the Apocalypse, where he watches, into the letters, where he writes as an amanuensis. With the exception of the description of the archangel Michael in verses 1:12-16, everthing from the list of churches in 1:11 to the end of the chapter looks like the join, though it draws on apocalyptic imagery.

Seven Churches

The seven churches appear explicitly spoken by the voice of God. It is certain, if this is an edited Essene work that these churches cannot have been meant originally. What then were they? The names of the towns in which the churches were supposedly founded do have just about discernible meanings. Ephesus is desirable; Smyrna is Myrrh; Pergamum is marriage; Thyatira is incense or continual sacrifice; Sardis is a remnant or escapers; Philadelphia is a loving brotherhood; Laodicia is a judgement on people. There are tantalizing echoes of Essene beliefs in these names. Essenes were obsessed with puns and parallels in words as the scroll interpretations prove. Did diaspora Essenes pick these places to found communities because of the connotations of their names, and did the Essene congregations then evolve under Pauline influence into Christian churches?

Reading the letters to the churches themselves, one is inclined to think that no specific congregations were ever meant. Even Christian commentators question whether the letters really were directed at these churches because of their specific vices and virtues, but rather meant types of people.

In Revelation 1:12, the Watcher turns to see the voice speaking and saw seven golden lampstands—not candlesticks, apparently to be identified with the churches. Lampstands are not candlesticks—this is not meant to be a menorah—and link to Persian and Babylonian traditions of fire worship. The figure also has a girdle round the chest, not an item of sacred wear in Judaism but most important to a Zoroastrian. The figure the Watcher seems to be identified with the ”one like a son of man” of Daniel, not the supposed messianic title of Jesus, and the ”one like the son of man” in Daniel was the archangel Michael, the guardian spirit (Persian, fravashi) of the Jewish people.

The expression used in Daniel however is simply the phrase used for the image of a man. So the author might just be describing an image illuminated by the seven lamps. This is just the sort of thing that the religions of the time did, and conceivably here is a brief description of the revelation of a hierophant to the faithful. The image of the beast mentioned several times later in the apocalypse refers to just such illuminated images, associated with Hellenistic religions.

In Persian mythology, the seven spirits are aspects of God that came into Judaism with Ezra. They then transposed into the archangels. Seven stars (Rev 1:16) also appear in Mitraism, another religion derived from Zoroastrianism. The two edged sword in his mouth pre-empts the apocalypse and seems rather unsuitable imagery for gentle Jesus.

The description is that of a sun god—whiteness, gold, a furnace, flame and fire, burnished bronze or brass, a face like the sun, and stars in his grasp being mentioned in a few brief sentences. Michael is effectively the face of God and the instrument of His justice. He wears a golden girdle, the girdle being associated with Persian religion but most people take it to mean the breastplate (essen) of a priest. The Essenes saw themselves as priests and angels.

Revelation 1:17 to 1:20 sound like a redactor’s addition. In 1:20 mysteries are explained but they are left unexplained generally in this book, suggesting it is a later Christian interpolation, but the editor is thinking still in Persian terms, the seven stars being Fravashis, heavenly equals, of the churches, and the lampstands are declared to be the churches themselves. The actual letters to the churches begin at the start of chapter 2.