Abstract

© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: Sunday, February 13, 2000

Introduction to Revelation

Apocalypses were written by Jews in uncertain times to buttress faith. The genre is a recounting of past tribulations, a prophecy of worse to come and an assurance of ultimate victory and reward with proper punishment for former oppressors. Examples are Isaiah 24-27; Ezekiel 38-39; Dan 2:7-11; Zechariah 12-14; Mark 13 (Mt 24-25). Christians were fond of the apocalyptic type of writing when they were from time to time persecuted by Romans but it is accepted that Christians did not write their own. They read and adapted Jewish apocalypses like the scriptural examples and the Ascension of Isaiah and 4 Ezra. Revelation is the main apocalypse of the New Testament and might be thought to be a Christian work. It is, only in the sense that it is edited by Christians, but the bulk of the content is from earlier Jewish sources.

We now recognize that Apocalyptic was a particular interest of some of the Jewish sects from the Maccabees to the Jewish War. The main among these were the Essenes. If there ever was a fashion among the Pharisees for Apocalyptic, it was expunged after the Jewish wars of 70 AD and 132 AD when Judaism was badly battered as a result of apocalyptic fancies. These were large scale conflicts but we know from Josephus and the Books of the Maccabees that Palestine was a rebellious place for about 300 years. Did lesser incidents arise out of the apocalyptic notions of the Jews before their final abandonment of this way of thinking?

Historically, rather than theologically, the myth of Jesus is most convincingly explained from this historical fact of apocalyptic fervour among some Jews in the first century. Jesus obviously thought the end of the world was due and that it was his duty to help defeat the cosmic forces of evil by defeating them here on earth. The forces of evil to most Jews at the time were their idolatrous Roman oppressors and the Jews who collaborated with them. As an Essene Jesus believed that the time of the End had arrived and he had to act to demonstrate to God that Israel was not apostate by accepting foreign rule. He led a band of his followers called Nazarenes in an attack on Jerusalem and, probably with the help of many pilgrims attending the temple at Passover, he succeeded in defeating the Roman garrison of Jerusalem.

Naturally, Christians, who are not interested in history unless it supports their mythological beliefs, reject all this, but the Revelation of John is valuable evidence in this argument. It is the best source we have of the beliefs of Jesus himself, once the fairly obvious Christian alterations are discarded, and some of those Christian changes actually confirm that a victory was won.

Again Christians will concur, but claim the victory was the spiritual victory of perfect goodness in the form of God incarnate over mankind’s wickedness, represented mainly by the believers in the same God as the Christians, earlier chosen by God as His people—the Jews. Yet no one who reads Revelation could pretend that it is other than extremely violent and unforgiving. It is retained because Christians have never wanted or supported theological clarity. Christianity is a religion of lies and obfuscation and, by keeping this Jewish eschatology in their bible, Christian priests and parents can scare their charges into submission, while generally pretending that their god is purely love.

Nevertheless, the Apocalypse got into Christian tradition somehow, and the historical explanation is that it is how the Christians originally thought. Was it how their leader and, later, their God thought? We shall examine it here to show that the Apocalypse is nothing less than the beliefs of Jesus merely updated slightly in the 70 years after his death. If Christianity began with an apocalyptic Jewish sect, it would hardly be surprising that it had an eschatological tradition and mythology behind it. The Jewish sect was the Essenes, who saw themselves as prophets because they were forever watching for signs of the end of the world. The author of this book sees it as prophecy and no less a person than Paul the apostles declared that prophecy was one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit.

Revelation is still not too logical and many a scholar has suggested that bits have been misplaced but, since the Dead Sea Scrolls have been found revealing the sectarian literature of the Essenes, it is plain that the original apocalypse is very like some of the literature in the scrolls, notably the War Scroll, the Temple Scroll and some of the imagery in the hymns. Essene literature is not noted for its logic. It is emotional stuff—so is Revelation. It makes little effort to look tidy or complete but leaves the joins between its sources—so does Revelation.

Though it is given the name of John, the apostle who supposedly composed the fourth gospel, it is written in Greek described by scholars as “barbaric”. The author of John’s gospel had a limited Greek vocabulary but wrote what he wrote in a didactic style that shines through the translations, and is manifestly quite different from the style of this apocalypse. Similar phrases in both books here and there do not serve to prove a connexion. Christians quite deliberately used the New Testament just as Jews used the Old Testament, and all these parallels show is that some of the editors had gospels before them. Few people will deny that the poor Greek is a rendering of an Aramaic original, by someone untutored in Greek.

In parts, the author displays some subtlety of Greek grammar, showing that editors have been at work. There are some links with the fourth gospel notably the use of the title, “Logos”. Rather than proof of the author’s identity, this more likely shows a fashion in the milieu that both books were written—probably some eastern church. Far more significant, but not clear in the phony Christian translations, is the different Greek word used for “lamb”. In the gospels it is “amnos” except for one place in the fourth gospel (Jn 21:15, verses that look as though they have been added to puff the claim of the book to be written by the apostle John) but in the apocalypse it is “arnion”. The use of “arnion” is almost exclusively that of the author of this book.

The identity of the “Watcher” with John is made three times in Chapter 1 and twice in the last two chapters, suggesting rather that they are flaunting additions to assert authorship.

Main Division

Revelation is in several parts but two main ones can be distinguished by any reader—the division between what seem to be letters to seven churches and the rest of the book that is largely a description of the end of the world. If the seven epistles and the epilogue are removed, and fairly obvious cosmetic additions made by Christians—such as adding references to Jesus alongside or instead of references to God—are also removed, the result is a barely unadulterated Jewish apocalypse. Sometimes we read of the uniformity of the tone of the book, but the main division at Chapter 4 is plain to see, uniform tone or not. Such a notable scholar as Harnack vouched for this.

Modern Christian scholars do not deny that the author drew on Jewish sources to compose the work, but claim that the Christian content was too deeply integrated to be merely editorial. However, this becomes much less convincing if it is accepted that Christianity evolved from the Essene sect and did not emerge fully formed with the birth or baptism of Jesus. The Christian oriented choice of scriptural allusion that Christians see as so intimately woven into the fabric of Revelation as to be inextricable was there originally, but was Essene not Christian.

A peculiarity of the book is the number of Old Testament allusions in it—about 300 in 400 verses. Christians might not think this is odd, but for a book that is stylistically so early, it shows it was written for a Jewish audience. The first gentile Christians would mostly have known nothing about the Jewish scriptures, and Mark’s gospel, for example, eschewed such references. The growth of Christianity created the gentile interest in the Septuagint until scriptural references could be understood. Conceivably a book newly written about 100 AD for a learned audience might have been replete with scriptural references, but the style and poor grammar prove that was not the case. It therefore was a book written for Jews by Jews.

Alfred Loisy, the French scholar, said of Revelation:

The best that can be said of it is that for centuries men have taxed their wits to find in it a meaning which is not there, for the simple reason that the meaning that is there was immediately contradicted by the course of events.

The point is that the original authors of Revelation believed that the Eschaton, the End of Time, would be “soon”—then! Their successors realised they were wrong and made some alterations that appear particularly towards the end of the book, to push the Eschaton much later in time. Unfortunately, all subsequent Christians have done the same. A prophetic industry has been created in which interpretations of Revelation as supposedly “current” are made every generation. The foolishness of it all is that Christians continue to follow these “prophets” even though all their predecessors were quite wrong including the original ones recorded in the Holy Book!

The visions in Revelation are all aspects of the Essene theory of the End Time when the corrupted world is destroyed and replaced with an incorruptible world. Satan is imprisoned and ultimated is tortured for eternity but refuses to be converted. The wicked city, Rome, falls unrepentent. Nevertheless, Christian commentators say, the work is not dualistic because evil is routed. The same commentators say that Mazdayasnism (Persian religion) is dualistic even though the outcome is the same! They lie themselves silly to distinguish Christianity from its precursors because they insist on believing, contrary to all evidence and common sense, that Christianity was “revealed” once and for all and without any parents.

Some commentators will note with wonder that Jesus or the lamb is given honour in Revelation that is normally reserved for Yehouah. They do not want to consider that a Christian editor has simply changed Yehouah or some aspect of Him into Jesus and the lamb. Where this substitution has not occurred, the “lamb” has been simply added to “God”. Jesus and the Essenes expected Yehouah or his heavenly lieutenant, the angel Michael, to arrive with the hosts of heaven. Michael was however identified with the Messiah, and, when Jesus was thought to have been the Messiah but yet no hosts of heaven had arrived, they claimed he would return as Michael at the head of the hosts. The idea of the Christian Parousia was born out of God’s miracle at the End.

The main testament to the non-Christianity of Revelation is its partisanship—it makes no attempt at universality except in parts that are plainly later, Christian additions. The author declares he is a member of a brotherhood and writes for his brethren.

The emperor worship mentioned in Revelation 13:15 places the work in the time of Domitian, Christians say. Domitian was the first emperor to use the title “Lord and God”. But emperors from Augustus were claiming divinity under different titles as a way of obtaining loyalty. It was a device akin to having American schoolchildren swearing allegiance to the US flag. The title of the first emperor, “Augustus”, implies divinity. Zealous monotheists like Essenes and early Christians are hardly going to be more offended because a ruler already claiming to be a god does so under a new title.

Pliny tells us that Christianity was persecuted throughout the empire under Domitian, whereas the earlier persecution under Nero had only been local to Rome. No one considers that the work refers to persecution of the Essenes, and light editing was undertaken to make the earlier work topical at the end of the century. What reason could there have been for writing about a temple in a late Christian work? In Revelation 11:1-2 the reference to the temple implies that the work is pre-Christian and written before the Jewish War of 70 AD.

S H Travis in Christian Hope and the Future of Man sees “parallels in Parseeism (Zoroastrianism) to several doctrines of Jewish apocalyptic—dualism, universalism and individualism, resurrection of the dead, structured course of history, infuence of evil in the good world and eschatological victory of the good”. Not surprisingly, Travis thinks these ideas got into Judaism after the exile, under Persian influence but, needless to say, he does not think they are the “dominant factor”.

Why? Because Jewish apocalyptic was pessimistic, expected an immediate End and denied that all men would be saved! It is gratifying to know that Jesus, as a believer in Jewish apocalyptic, expected an immediate End—Christians mainly deny it because it proves that he was wrong. But there is nothing in these supposed differences.

Since when did Zoroastrians believe that all men would be saved? Any apocalyptic is pessimistic for the wicked because they get punished, but it is joyful for the Righteous who are rewarded with everlasting life in the presence of God. The end of the world must come at some time. Presumably those who believe in it might come to the conclusion that it might be “soon”. Jesus did, but then so did Zoroaster himself. Both were wrong and so their followers in both cases had to change the timetable.

Zoroastrian apocalyptic ideas preceded Jewish ones. Who then took their ideas from whom?

Prologue

1:1 The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him, to shew unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass; and he sent and signified it by his angel unto his servant John: 1:2 Who bare record of the word of God, and of the testimony of Jesus Christ, and of all things that he saw. 1:3 Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written therein: for the time is at hand.

The first sentence could scarcely be clearer in telling the reader that this is the “Revelation Of Jesus Christ”. Yet every Christian will insist it is the Revelation of John the Divine. Christians like to think that the “Watcher” in the drama is John, the author, and the revelation is delivered by the heavenly Jesus to him. Admittedly, in parts, the book tries to give this impression—notably in the last few verses—but here the revelation is declared to be God’s revelation to Jesus. The testimony is that of “Jesus Christ, and of all things that he saw”. The importance of this, that has been ignored by everyone for years, is that it is the set of beliefs that led Jesus utimately to the cross! There could be no more important document for understanding the historical Jesus, but Christians prefer to obfuscate this.

In other words, this is not, as it is offered to the faithful, a mysterious vision of the distant future shown by Jesus to a loyal disciple but the very vision of the near future held by the historical person of Jesus, as he believed God had delivered it to him. The disciple, whoever he was, is simply telling us what motivated the leader of the Nazarenes. The declaration is that things must “shortly come to pass” and “the time is at hand”, and the prologue tells us that this is “prophecy”. Christians do not understand adverbial phrases of time because they still take it to be prophecy 2000 years later. Jesus thought these things were at hand then!

The Greek word for “time” implies an extended time not an instant in time. It means exactly what the Essenes thought—the End Time being a period in time preceding the end of the world. Once the End Time had started the End could be soon but no one knew precisely when. Their esoteric reading of the signs from their biblical pesharim gave them signs of the times but did not give an exact time. If they were confident in the signs of the times, it was up to the leader to judge when the time would be. That is what Jesus did. He expected the End of the World as he watched in the Garden of Gethsemane. At the Last Supper he is described as using the same expression when he meant within a single night, so the extent of the period need not be long.

Lesser gods called angels are Persian inventions, beloved by the Essenes—and Christians! The disciple, supposedly John, received the revelation from an angel, which just means a messenger in Greek. Christians always want to suggest the supernatural, but there is nothing in the least supernatural here. The author received from a third party—apparently in the form of old scripts—the vision that Jesus had of the future in about 20 AD that led him to revolt against the Roman enemy and led to his crucifixion. There is not the least reason, if this is an early first century work, that it should not have been associated originally with John the Baptist, and maybe that is why the name John arose in its connexion. Whoever he was he is more modest in the Greek than our Christian translators suggest, for he does not vouch for “all things that he saw” but “as much as he saw”, a rather less assured declaration.

Apocalypses are always written as pseudepigraphs, books written in the name of an earlier figure and not under the author’s own name. By chosing an authoritative figure of the past, the author can give his book kudos and he can also make prophecies within the text that he knows have already happened, thus giving the false author prophetic credentials for prophecies as yet unrealised. Christians, of course, tell us that this apocalypse is an exception—the author really is who he claims to be! It is just another example of Christian gullibility and special pleading. All other examples are forgeries, except their own!

The fate of John the Apostle, if he is not entirely fictional, is that he was killed with or after his brother in the brief reign of Agrippa. He never appears again in Acts after his brother’s reported death. Later Christian tradition about John is contradictory but has it that he lived to over 100 years old. The legend was obviously necessary to account for the late appearance of the fourth gospel and Revelation.

It has long been speculated that the author was a John the Elder who was a disciple of John the Apostle. If true, it would be a hypothesis that removed the need for the author to have lived to over a hundred. John the Apostle might then have been the “angel” that passed on this old codex or scroll. Essenes sought to be angelic by being perfectly holy or saints, and equated themselves, as saints, with the angels of the heavenly hosts. In this early school of Christianity, saints might still have been called angels.

The prologue ends at verse 3 and the Revelation should begin but we find inserted seven letters to churches in Asia, of a rather different nature. Repetition of words like “witness”, “testimony” and “keep” are often taken as prove that the author was the same as the author of the fourth gospel but they might well have been simply sectarian words lost in the more westernised synoptic gospels and later works. The message of Revelation 1:3 is that of Luke 11:28, less succinctly expressed:

Blessed are they that hear the word of God, and keep it.

The bulk of Revelation is an Essene apocalypse from the time of Jesus or just afterwards. It tells us what Jesus expected at the time and it tells us a little about what happened at the time. The confusion has arisen because some Christian editors took it in the years up until about 100 AD and made some quite unsubtle Christian additions and alterations. They are often cosmetic, quite distinctively Christian relative to the Jewishness of the rest, and often betray later time clues.

Thus, the messianic name Jesus Christ only appears three times in this book, all in the first five verses, and the name Jesus alone only appears twelve times in 400 verses. Every appearance is in the obviously added prologue and epilogue or in a few cosmetic additions in the body of the book.

Visions of Heaven

At verse 1:10, the letters have been slipped in. The Watcher speaks of being “in the spirit” on the “Lord’s Day”, but the “Lord’s Day” he meant was the day he was about to describe—the day of the Vengeance of God. Christians seem to think he meant it was Sunday! He is actually taking the reader directly into his vision as the other references to the spirit (Rev 17:3; 21:10) prove, if the great voice that he hears is not sufficient evidence.

He 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. 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.

In Revelation 1:12, the Watcher turns to see the voice speaking and saw seven golden lampstands—not candlesticks. Lampstands are not candlesticks and link to Persian and Babylonian traditions. The figure the Watcher sees is 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. In Persian mythology, the seven spirits are aspects of God, and were put into Judaism after the exile. They then transposed into the archangels. Seven stars (Rev 1:16) also appear in Mitraism, another religion derived from Zoroastrianism. Conceivably, the Essenes had seven churches or principal centers. The two edged sword in his mouth pre-empts the apocalypse.

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 of a priest because the Essenes saw themselves as priests.

The original work resumed at verse 4:1.

4:1 After this I looked, and, behold, a door was opened in heaven: and the first voice which I heard was as it were of a trumpet talking with me; which said, Come up hither, and I will shew thee things which must be hereafter.

Thus the superfluous letters to churches can be excised along with a bit of linking material with the minimum of fuss and leaving no visible seam, and restoring the basic work. This has all been known for a century but until the Dead Sea Scrolls were found there was no clear basis for extracting the apocalypses. Now that we know of at least one strongly apocalyptic sect in first century Judaea, we have a reason for seeking the originals behind Revelation.

The vision draws on Daniel 7:6, Isaiah 6:1-3, Ezekiel 1:26-28 and 1 Enoch 14:15, where the door was not “open” but “was opened”. The Watcher, Jesus (originally—not John who is only relating the original vision as passed on to him) is then offered a vision of the End Time. When the door of heaven had opened the Watcher was ordered to ascend to see the future and he sees the throne of heaven. Most Christian commentators call the Observer, the “Seer”, but the Essenes called themselves among other things, the “Watchers for the kingdom”, and there can be little doubt that they are depicting the hero of this drama as a Watcher for the kingdom.

God is described as sitting on the throne looking like a precious stone surrounded by a rainbow. The whole description seems to be intent on generating an image of a prismatic kalaidoscopic effect in which the rainbow colours are multiply reflected. The Jewish god, like the Persian god, was a god of heaven, who had a voice of thunder, was associated with lightnings and had visual characteristics like the sun.

Before the throne are seven lamps of fire, like the lampstands again strongly mindful of the Persian religion where fire was considered holy. The number seven occurs about 50 times in Revelation. As a magic number it comes from Zoroastrianism also, but the Essenes were interested in all forms of astrology and numerology, because of their interest in prophecy, and for them seven was the number of the Eschaton, when earth (4) and heaven (3) merged.

Seven is thought to represent the seven planets, including the sun and the moon, known in antiquity, but seven is also associated solely with the moon, being a week, the number of days for each phase of the moon to develop. The Essenes, it might be protested, used a solar calendar not a lunar one, but that did not mean they were not interested in the moon. The Qumran “brontologions” proved that the Essenes used the moon for prophecy. Brontologions were tables for making predictions from thunder. Deciding what constellation thunder comes from in the sky is impossible but noting what constellation the moon is in at sunset on the day that thunder occurs is straightforward.

It is worth noting that, in this apocalypse, God is never called Father, the Christian name for Him. It might suggest a pre-Christian origin for this piece, but also that it preceded the proto-Christians, the Essenes, who themselves, or a sub-sect, had adopted this habit. Father appears in Revelation 14:1 but merely as a statement of a relationship not as a name of God. It might be, though, that the name “Father” for God had been suppressed in this work because the Romans knew those who called God “Father” were fanatical rebels. They did not want to incriminate themselves through this literature. Jesus was Barabbas!

In verse 4:4, 24 seats occupied by 24 Elders are described as surrounding the heavenly throne. The Babylonian religion had 24 star gods and the Jewish religion has 24 priestly courses, probably related at source when the Persians created Judaism out of Canaanite Baal-Yehouah worship. Elders watch Yehouah in his glory in Isaiah 24:23 which either was an Essene composition or profoundly influenced Essenism. Elders are evidently a select body of God’s Chosen Ones with whom Essenes would certainly have identified. The title “Elder” seems to have been taken forward into Christianity, so might have been an Essene title beforehand. Interestingly they are wearing victors’ crowns (stephanos). The theme of victor or conqueror runs through the apocalypse. In Hebrew, it is “nasach” (nasah) one of the punning meanings behind the name “Nazarene”.

Four peculiar beasts are described round about the throne, presumably meant to be at each of its legs—they are cherubims like those that commonly decorated the walls, gates and thrones of Babylon and Susa, and even Egypt. Many of the sources of this apocalypse are found in the Enochian Literature, particularly popular at Qumran. The four creatures are obviously zodiacal images representing the four quarters of the zodiac, representing the full span of the heavens and therefore the cosmos. When the Christian canon was fixed, years after the composition of Revelation, the four beasts were declared to stand for the four evangelists—another Christian fraud. The beasts had many eyes possibly a romantic reference to stars, but sun gods usually have many eyes, their rays from which no injustice can escape, the reason why sun gods were associated with justice, judgement and retribution, as here.

Verses 9 to 11 get quite Pythonesque. Every time the four creatures call out “Holy, Holy, Holy” the 24 Elders fall flat on their faces before the throne whilst throwing off their crowns and praising the occupant of the throne. They call Him “Lord and God”, the title chosen by the emperor, Domitian. Since none of these verses have any scriptural precedents, they are unlikely to be original, and the praising of God at the end of verse 8 is the natural end of the section. One is tempted to think that a humourous gloss written at the end of the first century, mocking Domitian’s sycophants, has been later included by an unintelligent copyist.

Lion or Lamb

Chapter 5 brings us back in touch with scriptural precedents. God has a scroll in His right hand but no one is willing to break the seven seals on it and open it. The Watcher wept in sorrow, but was comforted by an Elder who says:

Weep not: behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, hath prevailed to open the book, and to loose the seven seals thereof.

This is most interesting and valuable for the interpretaion of the rest of the piece. The saviour who breaks the seals and opens the book is none other than the expected Messiah described as the Lion of Judah. Furthermore, he has again “prevailed” or “conquered”, the theme of “nasah” again.

The most interesting point is the hero being a lion. Heroes are normally lions, if any animal, but in the rest of the apocalypse, the lion has become a lamb! There can be little doubt that every lamb in this apocalypse was originally a lion! The Aramaic for a mature lion is “ari” and it has passed into Greek as a loan word. In this gospel, the Greek word for lamb is “arnion”. Plainly the original ari has been changed into arnion thoughout the book. It explains why the unusual word arnion should be used rather than the more usual amnos. Admittedly, the lion of Judah is a leon not an ari, but “the Lamb of Judah” meant nothing so arnion could not have been substituted here. Instead of changing ari to arnion, a literate gentile editor made it into leon severing the connexion between the words when most Christians had become gentiles.

The animal was some sort of Persian or Babylonian sphinx or griffin, perhaps a ram-headed lion with seven horns and eyes, and the seven spirits of God—the Persian personified qualities of God that became the seven Jewish archangels.

The effect of messing about with lions and lambs is that the lion of verse 5:5 that opened the scroll is a dead lamb in verse 5:6, a Christian rationalisation—how can a dead lamb take the scroll? If this were meant to be a revelation to the messiah as we suspect, the Watcher took the scroll.

Essenes

Revelation 5:8-10 has marked references to the Essenes, called the saints:

And when he had taken the book, the four beasts and four and twenty elders fell down before the Lamb, having every one of them harps, and golden vials full of odours, which are the prayers of saints. And they sung a new song, saying, Thou art worthy to take the book, and to open the seals thereof: for thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation; And hast made us unto our God kings and priests: and we shall reign on the earth.

The Essenes did not offer sacrifice but preferred blessings and prayer as a sweet savour or odour for god. Parallels like this cannot be explained away. The “new song” is met in Psalms 144:9 and Isaiah 42:10. Both are proper messianic songs referring to conquest of the nations and mighty Jewish victories over their enemies. Here, later Christians have replaced the original with a reference to Christ’s apparent death and resurrection, but originally the blood was that of the peoples of the nations, not Jesus’s. Pacifism has no part of any of the process, whether expressed in the original songs or the rest of Revelation taken, by Christians still, to be prophetic though they are supposed to be pacific people themselves!

The Jews were prophesying a mighty warrior sent by god to defeat their enemies. The only way that Jesus could have been attached to these prophesies is if he had seemed to have fulfilled them. He must have won a military victory over the Romans. The result was to be that the victors, originally righteous Jews then later Christians, would rule the world as kings and priests. The Essenes considered themselves to have begun this process—they were priests and they were princes.

Four Horsemen

When the seals on the scroll are successively opened, each gives a vision as a sign of some event leading up to the End Time when God made his judgement—an ancient Zoroastrian idea. Jews expected such signs and Essenes claimed also to have the prophetic ability of reading these signs. Jesus, in the gospels, was constantly asked for “a sign”. The Book of Revelation explains why. The Watcher, who is the Messiah, has had all of these signs revealed by the angels and elders of heaven. These visions were a collection of the signs the Essenes expected to signify the coming End. Though written before the time of Jesus, it was altered almost 100 years after his death.

The mysterious visions accompanying each seal are taken from the apocalypses of Zechariah, whose prophesy of a heavenly host emerging from the Mount of Olives, Jesus was expecting in the Garden of Gethsemane—the reward for the righteous Jews that had defeated the usurper of God, Rome. The sources used here are not uniformly the Septuagint as was usual for Christians, being predominantly none-Hebrew speaking gentiles. This is more proof that the work is pre-Christian.

When the “first” seal (not “one of the seals”) was opened the Watcher is presented with a vision of the four horsemen, apparently using the four judgements of Ezekiel 14:21:

Saith the Lord God; How much more when I send my four sore judgments upon Jerusalem, the sword, and the famine, and the noisome beast, and the pestilence, to cut off from it man and beast.

The Essenes were not inhibited in interpreting scripture and the matching of the four judgements with the four horses and chariots of Zechariah did not have to be precise. Indeed, though the four seem to represent different afflictions, the Essenes will have seen them all as being eponyms for God’s enemies rather than having semantic meaning. “Noisome beasts” can hardly have been a serious problem in Jerusalem, but they were if the expression meant beastly people like Greeks and Romans.

A white horse was used in the ceremonial triumphs of victorious Roman generals. Red is the colour of blood and the red horseman wielded a sword. Those wielding a sword in Jerusalem at the time were surely Greeks and Romans, and we can guess that pestilence and famine both meant foreign invaders too.

The black horse is famine, the scales suggesting rationing not justice, and food prices of about ten times normal suggesting exploitation to the point of starvation—this was not any natural famine. Moreover, just as scales represent justice today, they were the symbols of Roman magistrates, as too were ears of corn! The magistrates would have been responsible for distributing dole during famines. The command of a voice not to hurt oil and wine sounds like a Christian interpolation from the time of Domitian.

The pale or green horse should have been pestilence but is assigned to death, and even eternal death, being associated with hell. The reference to this horseman having a “quarter of the earth” could have meant originally a “quarter of the land”, meaning the land of Herod the king. Judaea was a quarter of the land of Herod, the other parts being Galilee, Gaulanitis and Peraea, and had been taken in direct rule by Rome in 6 AD. Thus the pale horseman was expressly Roman and metaphorically killed like the “beasts of the earth”.

In 1 Enoch 47, the “martyrs” are a sacrifice to God and the End will come when the roll of martyrs is complete. The fifth seal depicts the Christian martyrs as sacrifices to God. Martyrs are “witnesses”, or perhaps “watchers”, but are certainly the dead saints or perfectly holy men that “slept” until they were resurrected into the kingdom of God—in the literature of Enoch popular at Qumran. White robes signified the incorruptible body of resurrection. They were under an alter and dressed in white robes calling for vengeance. This shows they were Essene and not Christian saints. Christians have always claimed they forgave and did not require revenge. The pre-Christian source also shines through in their calling to the “despot”, or slave master of the universe, rather than to Christ. They wanted to know “how long” before they were avenged, and were assured they need only rest “a little while longer”.

The cosmic events of the Sixth seal seem to be partly allusions to the Jewish scriptures, but mountains represent world states like Assyria and Babylon or, at the time of Jesus, Rome.

An Interlude

Chapter seven is a parenthesis that is substantially Essene. Four angels are poised to unleash the elements against the earth but a fifth one ascending from “the rising of the sun” tells them to wait until God’s slaves—the despot’s slaves—had been sealed on their foreheads. Branding slaves on their forehead was a Roman practice.

The god of heaven of the Persians and the Hebrews naturally had a sun aspect and this was respectively personified as the rising sun, Mithras (Mica), and the archangel Michael. Essenes prayed to the rising sun and held it in reverence. They believed the righteous would be saved from the “angels of the Lord” when they unleashed justice upon the earth.

In his vision, Jesus saw 12,000 saints sealed for each of the twelve tribes—144,000 in all. The vision reveals that, after the saints of the remnant of Israel, the holy ones of all the nations of the earth then came, waving palm branches symbolic of victory. The victory they symbolised came to be seen as the victory of the Nazarenes over the Roman garrison of Jerusalem, without which Jesus could never have entered the city as a king or captured the temple.

In Revelation 7:10, “and to the lamb” has been added. Jewish referents have been replaced by “the lamb” at the end of the first century to Christianise this otherwise Essene work. The tribulation of verse 7:14 is associated with the “Abomination of Desolation” (Dan 9:27), the definitive marker of the coming End. Plainly the Essenes saw themselves as being bloodied saints, but the reference to the robes being white in blood invokes the imagery of the scapegoat sent out into the wilderness to lift the sins of the nation.

The final verses of the chapter give an Essene vision of heaven and therefore how they tried to live on earth, since they seemed to think of themselves as a bridgehead of heaven on earth. They felt obliged to praise God “night and day” and they arranged rostas allowing God to be offered continuous prayer and songs of blessing or thanksgiving. The “springs of living waters” of verse 7:17 remind us of the springs at En Gedi that the Essenes seemed to think were the first trickles of healing water in the river flowing from the alter of Ezekiel’s idealized temple, presumably the heavenly one mentioned elsewhere in Revelation and the one built “without hands” on the third day.

Apocalypse

The interlude over, in 8:1 the Watcher resumes his observance of the opening of the seals. The short silence at the beginning is reminiscent of a lull before a storm and is meant to remind the righteous that such a lull would not mean the End had been postponed.

Persian influence is again clear in 8:2 where God has his traditional seven angels, the Jewish inheritance of the seven Amesha Spentas of Ahura Mazda, transferred to Yehouah worship by Ezra and similar Persian administrators of Judah.

Similarly in Esther, seven Persian Princes that were allowed to face the king are mentioned. In this allegory, the king is the Most High God, so the seven allowed to face the Jewish God are the seven archangels, really aspects of Him, like the Amesha Spentas of Ahura Mazda. Thus, Tobit 12:15 identifies Raphael as one of the seven holy angels that go into the presence of the glory of God. Tobit, like Esther, is manifestly Persian. Enoch 30 names six of these “angels who watch” and Raphael, Gabriel and Michael are among them. In Revelation 8, each of the angels has a trumpet, reminding us vividly of the Qumran War Scroll. Trumpets are an eschatological symbol of God’s judgement.

Then “another” angel appears in the role of High Priest, though the context is again plainly Essene, there being no hint at sacrifice but instead incense and the prayers of the saints are offered. An eighth angel might symbolise the eighth day of creation when God ceased from his rest to create the incorruptible world, at least in later Jewish tradition. So the eighth angel might represent the messiah and the Christians saw Christ as the heavenly High Priest. Yet, Essenes and Christians alike seem to see Christ in the form of the archangel Michael, at least in their vision of his coming, whether it was a first coming as the Essenes thought, or the second coming the Christians invented to explain the initial death of their messiah.

The action of this eighth angel ensures the safety of the saints—the Essenes—before fire is rained upon the earth. For Christians the character of the messiah is pacific—that of a lamb—and it seems possible that the eighth angel disguises the fact that the messiah was expected to rain retribution upon the unrighteous people who remained on the earth after he had called up the saints. Originally, the eighth angel would have been the Lion of Judah assisting God in his creative efforts by destroying the unrighteous so that an uncorruptible world could begin.

If though, there were only seven archangels, the Lion of Judah and the eighth angel must have been one of them, and the one he would have been was Michael, the leader of God’s retributive armies (hosts). The Lion of Judah was the archangel Michael who was the protector of the Jewish nation. Revelation is more compatible with the Essene belief that Michael would come with the heavenly hosts, than the Christian idea that it would be Jesus. Jesus himself, in the Garden of Gethsemane, was expecting the angelic hosts to come, and relics of the idea remain in the gospels. The death of Jesus obliged Christians to invent the second coming with Jesus in Michael’s original role.

What follows is strikingly reminiscent of the War Scroll, with each angel sounding a loud trump to add to the calamities on earth. Each time a trumpet was sounded a third of the earth (again possibly “land” originally) is destroyed by fresh disasters. Since there are more than three trumpets, these thirds are not meant ot be different thirds. They signified the Roman third of the kingdom of Herod—Judaea and unrighteous collaborating Jews—the other two tetrachies of Philip and Antipas being acceptable by comparison. Consistency was not an Essene strong point and indeed they delighted in riddles or “mysteries” so the different divisions of the kingdom of Herod into thirds or quarters, they would not have seen as a problem, though they might suggest a mixing of original sources.

The great burning mountain cast into the sea is the might of Rome just as in Jeremiah 51:25 it was Babylon and, in Mark 11:23, Jesus is referring to the same mountain though it is not yet burning. It was a convention to use Babylon for Rome, part of the Essene code necessitated for their own safety—to keep the Romans in the dark if they should discover any of their material, and to allow them to preach openly but “parabolically”. Babylon and the mountain are parabolic allusions to Rome.

Salvation from the East

The beginning of the next chaper introduces us to the “Abyss”, yet another concept from Persian religion. The Abyss in Persian religion is full of demons and here they appear in the form of scorpions to torture the unrighteous so badly they wish for death. Possibly there has been some tampering with the Essene original here because the army of demons is described quite favourably and is doing the work of God. They sound like the Parthians whom the writers of this work seemed to regard as allies against Rome, or even the saints themselves. The Parthians were, of course, the successors of the Persian empire and were Rome’s most dangerous enemies. They seemed therefore natural allies of the Essenes but here are depicted as demons. Later, the gentile Christians would not have wanted to show they favoured Rome’s enemies, and perhaps some changes were made. The added Greek name (Apollyon) might also suggest this. Both Abaddon and Apollyon mean destruction or eternal death for the Essenes, but Abaddon could be read as the “Father’s Strength!”

Revelation 9:14, clarifies this when four angels bound in the Euphrates are ordered to be loosed, and a mighty army issues forth. The Essenes who were more clearly identified with Persia than any other Jewish sect, obviously expected salvation to come from the east, beyond the Euphrates, Parthia, the direction of the morning sun. For the Essenes, God’s armies would come from the east—literally! Again, the fraction one third is repeated, suggesting the third of the land that was Romanised.

In Revelation 10:1, an angel arrives who is, from his description, the archangel Michael, a Jewish personification of the retribution of God. Verse 10:3 confirms from his lion-like roar that he is also the Lion of Judah.

In Revelation 10:4, the Watcher understands the messages of thunder. The allusion here is to a system of prediction, considered then to be part of astrology, using thunder to foresee the future. The Essenes were experts in this form of fortune telling as we know from the brontologions of Qumran, books of tables relating the positions of the constellations when thunder is heard on any particular day. Further links with the Essenes are found in verse 10:7 when the expressions “mysteries of God” and “his slaves the prophets” are found. Essenes in particular were concerned with the “mysteries of God”, which they thought they could interpret by careful study of the scriptures and for this reason they saw themselves as the successors of the legendary prophets. The End Time is here. The angel in verse 10:6 promises no more delay, seemingly an answer to the sacrificed saints who wanted vengeance. In Daniel 12:7 the delay had been a time, two times and a half a time, but this mysterious number does soon turn up in Revelation.

The curious mention of the Watcher eating the scroll, which tasted like honey but was bitter to the stomach, might be an echo of the bees and honeycomb of Joseph and Aseneth. Essenes were reputed to have kept bees among their other skills, but the ritual or symbolic meaning of bees in their world view is not clear except that they were traditionally considered to be creatures of the sun.

Pilate’s 3½

In Chapter 11 we see how silly it is to imagine that the Watcher was John, the putative author and disciple of Jesus, the creator of a new universal or catholic religion. If John had any role, it was that he related the vision of Jesus—or more probably some earlier Essene Righteous Teacher—that then became standard Essene apocalyptic. The Watcher, Jesus as far as the narrator knew, was instructed to measure the temple but omit the court of the gentiles! All the universalist insertions by Christian editors are negated by this fact. Indeed, the court of the gentiles was blamed for the gentiles treading the holy city underfoot for 42 months—seemingly the mysterious period of time of Daniel.

Gentile Christians quickly learned to obscure, knowingly or otherwise, every reference to the pre-Christian Nazarenes and Essenes that they could, to curry favour with the Roman authorities. The meanings of many contemporary allusions have therefore been irretrievably lost. What is clear is that the time period was taken to be an important sign of the coming End and it was associated with the Abomination of Desolation, or desecration of the temple by foreigners.

Pilate entered Jerusalem clandestinely with his soldiers at the start of his governorship. No word now remains that he desecrated the temple but it seems impossible to believe he did not. Otherwise, what was the purpose of his furtive entry into Jerusalem, and how could he purloin the temple Corban, as he did, without desecrating it? The leadership of the Essenes when this happened will have considered it a major sign that the End would come after the 42 months specified in Daniel. They would therefore have started a campaign expected to conclude with the arrival of the heavenly host, 3½ years later. This is the campaign that brought martyrdom and deification to the Essene leader of the time, Jesus the Nazarene.

The two witnesses also prophesy a period of 42 months of tribulation before the End (1260 days—an Essene month was 30 days long). Jewish law required two witnesses. The witnesses will have been Moses and Elijah as they were at the Transfiguration, but they will in reality have been Essene leaders for they have the powers of retribution. They had power over the rain as did Onias the Rainmaker.

The Satanic beast in Revelation 11:7 emerging from the bottomless pit is, as ever, Rome and it makes war against the two witnesses showing that they symbolise the Righteous—the Essenes. These verses up to Revelation 11:10 are highly interesting, if this is a pre-Christian work. They prophesy something close to the story of Jesus—but not quite! The differences are sufficient to exclude the passage as a Christian insertion.

The two witnesses are killed in the Roman attack and lie in the street of the Great City, not entombed for 3½ days not three. The Great City is called Sodom and Egypt, both of which there are grounds for thinking the Essenes might have used as code names for their own “city” at Qumran. Meanwhile their enemies rejoice. The phrase “Our Lord Jesus Christ” is introduced to make the reader identify the city of Sodom or Egypt with Jerusalem. Then in 11:11-12, the two corpses, after 3½ not three days, are resurrected and ascend to heaven in full view of everyone, including their enemies. The second woe is completed with an earthquake and many deaths. All this is so close to the Christian myth that it is hard to see why the writers of Revelation if they are Christians should have wanted to introduce mytholocgy so close to, yet different from, the original. It is easier to think that this is the original[†]Menehem. See the account in this directory of Menehem at 0163Menehem.php..

The sounding of the seventh trumpet brings the declaration in heaven that the kingdom of God has begun. Finally, the heavenly temple opened and the Ark of the Covenant was once more revealed. Jewish mythology had it that the Ark would be returned to the heavenly temple. This is even more proof that we are not reading a Christian composition. Christians saw the church as their temple, as did the Essenes—on earth—but they, unlike Christians, still believed that a temple would be restored in the incorruptible, perfect kingdom of God.

The Beast

Chapter 12 seems to be dissociated from what went before. The reason is that the archangel Michael is now openly the heavenly saviour not Jesus (the lamb). It continues to be heavily indebted to Persian religion and perhaps other Mesopotamian mythologies, and might have been added from another Essene source after the compiler had put together the rest of the book.

The heavenly woman in travail must have originally been Israel personified and not the virgin Mary. She is depicted like Ishtar or Isis but the symbolism of the twelve stars, sun amd moon, will have been seen as appropriate to Israel, certainly by the Essenes who were interested in astrology.

The dragon that swept down a third of the stars is Rome regarded as Satan. In the Psalms of Solomon, Pompey is called the Dragon. The Dragon threatens Israel and her child, the messiah who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron, a severity inappropriate to the metaphor of a lamb.

Bearing in mind the Persian origins of much of this, the myth is obviously an adaptation of the birth of Marduk and the threats of the dragon, Tiamat. Bel Marduk was the Babylonian god but was adopted by the Persians as a local variant of their own god of heaven, Ahura Mazda, just as Yehouah was. The woman fled into the wilderness for 1260 days, proving that she was not just Israel, but the righteous remnant of Israel—the Essenes themselves and their repentant followers. She escapes again in 12:14. Verses like 12:15-16 seem to be elements of the myth of Marduk and Tiamat retained as symbolic of God’s victory over evil.

Revelation 12:7 gives the cosmic battle between the hosts of Satan and the heavenly hosts led by the archangel Michael (Dan 12:1). The hosts of Satan on earth are the Romans who have to be beaten to defeat the Dragon finally. In fact, the archangel Michael defeats the Dragon in heaven and despatches him to earth to continue his disruption until his ultimate defeat on earth.

The description of the beast in Chapter 13 is from Daniel 7. The seven headed dragon is Babylonian and there is no necessity to see emperors in the heads. The ten diadems on the other hand plainly represent kings or kingdoms and imply that the monster is a world state. The blasphemous name (Rev 13:1) dates the composition fairly precisely to the first Caesar that openly adopted a divine name—Caesar Augustus means the Venerable, Worshipful or Divine Caesar. Later Caesars claimed divinity more insistingly, but Augustus was the first of them to claim divinity by name. In Revelation 13:4, men worshipped the beast because Roman Emperors from Augustus claimed divinity—they were worthy of veneration or worship.

The beasts’s mortal wound that was healed must mean the civil war between Octavian (later Caesar Augustus) and Antony, won by Octavian thus healing the wound and actually strengthening the monster, Augustus being a most competent ruler. F C Jenning comments:

There had been such a political convulsion, such an upheaval of the understrata of the social fabric, as had overturned all authorities beyond the possibility of recovery, apart from supernatural intervention. The devil picked up the fallen prince from the dust of death, infused a new spirit—his own spirit—into him.

From the vantage point of Egypt, Antony and Cleopatra perhaps looked invincible and the Orient looked to the defeat of Rome. Octavian’s victory looked then like the work of Satan.

The mouth speaking blasphemies might well be a reference to Caiaphas, who took power over the civil authorities in Judaea at the same time that Pilate took over the governorship, or to Pilate himself, bringing the narrative up to date at the time when Jesus undertook his 3½ years campaign against Rome (note the expression emphasising this in Revelation 13:9). Evidently he made war on the saints and overcame them recalling the defeat of the Nazarenes but then the tables were turned in an Essene sounding passage (Rev 13:10). The reference to the Book of Life is yet another Persian feature.

The Two Horned Beast

The little two horned beast was perhaps Pilate. We have no record of the acts or speeches of Pilate when he took over the governorship of Judaea, but if 13:6 referred to him, he had little regard for the Jewish god and His people. History confirms this. He secretly moved legionaries into Jerusalem overnight and probably occupied the temple (the “abode of God”) creating an “Abomination of Desolation”. The 3½ years originated in the reign of the Greek king Antiochus Epiphanes but became inscribed in prophecy through Daniel and then was seen as a vital sign of the End.

Pilate is popularly considered to have taken the governorship of Judaea in 26 AD but this might be a Christian forgery and he actually took it in 18 AD when Caiaphas became High Priest. The apocalyptic Jews might have seen the period between the accession of Tiberias in 14 AD and the arrival of Pilate as a manifestation of the magical interval of 3½ years. Pilate then committed an Abomination of Desolation signalling a further 3½ years before the End. The leader of the Essenes at that time was Jesus because John the Baptist had already been jailed by Antipas around 14 AD.

However, the two horned beast might have been Caiaphas because the mention of him bringing fire from heaven suggests he was a priest or a prophet. Caiaphas was the High Priest and his name means prophet. The allusions here are hard to untangle now. Some indeed might not be contemporary but be references back to older sources. Alexander the Great was often depicted with two horns and these images might be the source of the depiction of Pilate or Caiaphas as two horned. Perhaps the two horned beast represents the joint rule of Caiaphas and Pilate. According to conventional history they ruled together for ten years but it might have been eighteen. Thus each of them was a horn of the two horned beast.

Much speculation has been made on the identity of the man whose number was 666 or 616, but the really interesting fact is that everyone had to bear a mark. What historical evidence is there for such branding? Roman legionaries often tatooed themselves with the symbol of their general. Roman slaves were branded as a sign of ownership, but here everyone had to be branded to be able to lead any sort of life. Did Pilate institute any such rule, or indeed any Roman? The Essenes probably notionally branded themselves with the cross in water on their foreheads as their successors, the Christians, were to do, symbolizing their slavery to God—both seemed to consider themselves God’s slaves, the proper translation of the word “servant” we often read in the New Testament. Indians still wear caste marks, but before this time, Ptolemy Philopater had ordered the Jews of Alexandria to be branded with the ivy leaf of Dionysos!

Judgement

Chapter 14 of Revelation is strongly Essene with little Christian editing. The 144,000, again branded, are chaste and undefiled by women, they are “spotless” and no “lie” is found in their mouth—a strong hint of Essenism, since they hated lying, a legacy of Persian religion. Their brand is their “Father’s name” but probably was the cross (ancient “T” standing for Tammuz, the dying god mourned by the women of Jerusalem in Ezekiel 8:14). They are the “first fruits”—the saints that would first be resurrected into the kingdom of God.

An angel announces the judgement of God and brackets it with the fall of Babylon—code for Rome. All of those who have submitted to Rome will be punished. The “One like unto the Son of Man” of Daniel appears with his sickle to reap the earth (or the “land” meaning the Jewish land) because the vines are ripe. The blood flowed from the winepress for 200 miles—just the sort of vengeance the Essenes wanted for apostates. This river of blood is thought by some commentators to have been the original end of the book, or one of its sources.

The linking of wine and fornication in Revelation 14:8 is typically Essene. The Essenes liked to pun on their words for wine and sin, and fornication was a code word for idolatry, worshipping false gods. Plainly, Greeks, Romans and even the Jews themselves (and presumably therefore the earliest Christians) saw the Jewish God as being like Dionysos, whence the branding of Philopater, but only worship of the Jewish form of Dionysos was permissible.

Death came to be the punishment of those who refused to worship the Roman emperors, but here eternal death is the punishment of those that do! The saints were willing to suffer torture and death in this world knowing they were the “first fruits” of the next—the delusion of all religious fanatics that makes them such courageous opponents. Josephus confirms that the Essenes would endure any degree of torture and the first Christians inherited this reputation, though few had to prove it contrary to Christian mythology.

That the original was not Christian is proved by the crude Christian substitution of the “lamb” for whatever stood in the original. Christ watches with his holy angels the agonies of the wicked being tortured eternally! Jesus was not very loving or forgiving in those days.

Victory over the Beast

In Revelation 15:2, a “victory over the beast” is mentioned. This Chapter seems to have been added after the bloody judgement that ended the book originally. Was it an addition after the victory of Jesus and the Nazarenes over the Jerusalem garrison? It was still written before Christianity because the “song of the Lamb” is obviously inserted, makes no sense and sounds incongruous. There are several references to the “new song” to parallel the “Song of Moses” (Ex 15:1-11) that celebrated the victory of the Israelites over the soldiers of Pharoah, a parallel event to the Nazarene victory over the Romans that must be surmised to make sense of all this.

All of the bowls with their strifes are the hopes of the Essenes and are therefore not historical. Revelation 16:12-16 is purely Essenic. Those who “watch” are blessed as are those who “keep” their garments so that they do not walk naked. Though the nude body was admired by the Greeks, nakedness was a great shame for Jews and particularly for Essenes who declined even to pollute the rays of the sun by exposing their privvy parts to them.

The faith that salvation would come from Persia is again confirmed. They are gathered to Armageddon where the ultimate cosmic battle would occur. Three frogs appear as unclean spirits. In Persian religion, the frog is an agent of Ahriman, the Persian Satan, as the bringer of plagues. In verse 16:15, it is plainly God Almighty who announces that he comes “like a thief”. Paul, in 1 Thessalonians 5:2, uses this expression before the gospels were written, showing that it probably goes back to the Essenes themselves.

According to scriptural prophecy, the mountains of the world were to be razed to the ground. But mountains were always a code word for contemporary super-powers that oppressed the Jews. So, with the seventh bowl, the nations of the world (mountains) were destroyed and Jerusalem split into three. The voice of God declares, “It is done”, meaning, presumably, the punishment of the wicked and the destruction of the corrupt world.

The Harlot of Babylon seems to be yet another personification of Rome, though it could be a deprecatory reference to Jerusalem under Roman rule. The imagery is thoroughly Essene, the Essenes considereing women to be harlots depraving men and destracting them from their natural inclination to worship God. The seven hills and her domination over the kings of the earth seem to confirm her identification with Rome. Roman coins of the time depict the city as a woman on seven hills. The harlot has her mark on her forehead, an echo of the earlier references to branding perhaps, but apposite because Roman whores were indeed so marked. The “name of mystery” probably simply indicates that a code word is being used.

The mention of the blood of the saints and the martyrs of Jesus indicate that this was added later, apparently referring to the Nazarene battles that have been suppressed by the gentile church. Note that “martyrs” came to mean those who had died for the Christian cause, but originally the Greek simply meant witnesses and even this could be a translation of the Hebrew or Aramaic word for “observer” or “watcher”. So “martyr” might originally have been another name for Essene. If these passages had been added at the end of the first century then the gentile Christians might have begun to find meaning in the seven horns as the seven emperors of Rome. If they meant anything like this in the original composition they might have been seven Roman rulers in Jerusalem—perhaps Pompey, Herod, Archelaus, three prefects and Pilate.

Chapter 18 of Revelation is an exultant hymn of victory, and must stand for a victory in fact—a victory that was thought to be the first falling brick in the collapse of Babylon—Rome. This prayer or hymn is vindictive and, if considered as prophecy, wrong! Far from falling, Rome was eventually taken over by the Christian church. The city was to be repayed double and given an equal measure of torture.

Babylon-Rome is depicted as being thrown down like a great stone in the sea, proving again that the mountain spoken of by Jesus as being cast into the sea was Rome. The commercialisation of Rome is totally slated, yet another interesting example of Christian (and Jewish) hypocrisy, and their constant selection from their holy writings of what they like while ignoring what they do not.

In Revelation 19, heaven rejoices that Rome has been destroyed, calling out “Hallelujah”, a word that became closely associated with Christianity, though this is the only place it appears in the New Testament. Christians say it means, “Praise the Lord” but it is Hebrew for “Praise Yehouah”.

Verse 19:2 again implies that a victory has been won signifying the end of Rome. God has avenged on Rome, “the blood of His slaves”. A battle must have been won that the remaining “slaves” of God felt was a victory to them that avenged previous losses.

The Bride

In Revelation 19:6-7, the result of the victory was that the Almighty reigns and the “marriage of the Lamb” had come, because the ”bride had made herself ready”. The bride was always Israel, the land and the people, personified as a woman, often immoral because of apostasy or dalliance with foreign rulers. The bridegroom was, of course, God not the Lamb, a Christian alteration. Israel is Yehouah’s bride in Hosea 2:19, Isaiah 54:1-8, Ezekiel 16:7, 4 Ezra 9. Matthew 22 and Luke 14 have hints at a marriage tradition. F W Grant explains in his book on Revelation:

Israel was Yehouah’s married wife (Isa 54:1, Jer 31:32), now divorced indeed for her unfaithfulness, but yet to return (Hos 2), and be received and reinstated. Her Maker will be then once more her husband and more than the old blessing be restored. In Psalms 45 Israel’s king, Messiah, is the Bridegroom; the Song of Solomon is the mystic song of His espousals. The land too shall be married (Isa 62:4). In the New Testament the same figure is still used in the same way.

A H Burton in his commentary on the Apocalypse points out that the bride of the Jewish scriptures (Psalms 45) is associated with the messiah as a triumphant warrior girded with a sword, his enemies falling before him as he rides in majestic glory. In Revelation the bride is “associated with a rejected and suffering lamb”. Yet not far away in Revelation is precisely the glorious warrior expected. Such misalignments never seem to give Christian commentators any pause. Why is the bride suddenly marrying a sheep instead of the glorious image of God His prophets had previously led the Jews to expect?

Paul’s epistles change the groom into Jesus instead of God, and here Jesus is called the Lamb. The parts of the gospels that make Jesus the groom are editorial redactions (Mt 9:15; Jn 3:29).

Plainly there was a reason why the bride had “made herself ready”. Some event showed that she had rejected foreign rulers and gods. In this context it could only have been the suppressed victory of the Nazarenes over the Roman garrison of Jerusalem that allowed Jesus to lord it there unopposed for a week or so before the Romans counter-attacked. That brief victory would have been sufficient, in Essene eyes, to prove to God that His people had not deserted him, and God’s heavenly hosts were expected to complete the task. Jesus waited in Gethsemane for the Mount of Olives to cleave open. It never did and instead he was arrested and punished by crucifixion for his rebellion.

Oddly, in view of the incredible modern popularity of angelolatry, verse 19:10 seems to be a warning against angel worship. This angel is a shadowy figure but elsewhere the archangel Michael has been prominant. Christianity is effectively worship of the archangel Michael in the guise of Jesus the Messiah. This looks rather like an early warning to Jews who were inclined to venerate the archangel Michael excessively, when God alone was to be worshipped, but could be a warning to Christians not to think Jesus is an angel. The angel had been deified, but Christians were not to worship angels in general.

In Revelation 19:11-16 the conquering angel, Michael, is described as “faithful and true”, words applied to Jesus in chapters 1 and 3, but also attributes of Michael’s equivalent in Persian religion, Mithras, who was venerated by Roman merchants for his honesty. In fact, the attributes of Michael are given to Jesus not the other way round. Verse 19:11 was the original. Jesus was identified with the archangel and therefore acquired his attributes.

The name inscribed on his head, that no one knows but himself, suggests the name, Michael, which is not a name but a question or statement implying a name that cannot be said (“Who is like God”). The archangel Michael is the Lion of Judah, the angel of the Lord, in other words Yehouah himself in Jewish mythology, so his name is ineffable. The passage even declares that the name is also the “word of God”, the word of God being His name expressed without having to say the actual word. Christians, from John’s gospel, take this to be Jesus, “the Word” whereas this document, if it is pre-Christian as we assume, actually reveals much of the origins of Christian mythology. There is little reason why Jesus should be depicted as some lesser angel but every reason why an angel identified with God should be deified in its own right.

The figure is on a white horse, the symbol of a conqueror in Revelation 6:1-2. The gospel Jesus, following Jewish myth, chose a donkey not a horse. This is not Jesus! His robe is dipped in blood or sprinkled with it. It will represent the blood of the covenant, though blood has already been used a symbolic of vengeance. It identifies Michael as the agent of the honouring of God’s new covenant with His righteous remnant, the saints. Michael is the leader of God’s heavenly armies, all dressed in pure white linen, like the Essenes. This messianic figure wore the title “king of kings and lord of lords”, a title ever since applied to Jesus but one which was a title of the ancient Babylonian god, Marduk—recognized by the Persians as the Babylonian Mazda—who appears in the bible as God’s agent Mordecai in the romance called Esther.

The Hebrew prophets saw God as emerging as a warrior (Isa 13:4; 31:4; Ezek 38-39; Joel 3; Zech 14:3). It boggles the rational mind that Christians can identify the supposedly pacific Jesus with this fierce warrior and his armies. They never seem to stop to think that the original Jesus was seen as a warrior and with good reason—he had defeated a cohort of Roman soldiers. The later myth was part of the need to cover up this victory because it would not have gone down too well in the Roman empire. Thus, the image presented here, the original messianic image, does not fit Christianity as it evolved. It is more proof that the concept of the messiah presented in Revelation is that of the precursors of the Christians—the Essenes.

Verses 19:19-21 again describe the defeat of the Roman garrison. Pilate representing Rome and Caiaphas, the false prophet, representing the collaborating Jews, are thrown into a lake of brimstone. The concept is Persian and so too is the memory of the silent towers where birds of the air pick the flesh from dead bodies (Rev 19:17-18). Satan the Dragon that is Rome is to be chained up for 1000 years, again Persian. But, from chapter 20, the work is more strongly Christianized. All that had been foreseen in these Essene visions had not happened, even after forty years had been allowed to pass to give time for the final battles of the heavenly hosts and God’s enemies. The brutality of the Jewish War that ended in 70 AD all bar the last stand of the Essenes at Masada must have seemed like the final battle but it did not turn out favourably. Satan won it! The Essene documents from the third decade were revised in the last decade of the first century and the last two chapters were an explanation that the final battle had been postponed for 1000 years. (After, 2000 years, the final battle has been dispensed with altogether by all but the loony fringe of fundamentalism.)

In Revelation 21:7, “He who conquers” will again mean the Nazarenes from a pun on the word “nasach”, and it declares each of them to be “His son”, meaning that they all had the surname bar Abbas (Barabbas)!

Christian Additions

Verses 20:5 to 20:7 are inserted or misplaced from elsewhere. The original resumes at 20:11. The dead are judged on the basis of their deeds—”what they had done”. This is Persian passed into Judaism and certainly is not Christian, Paul teaching Christians that “faith” was what saved not good deeds. The Essenes accepted that judgement was on “works” and the epistle of James seems to be written explicitly to refute the false idea that “faith” saved.

The notion of a second death was also Essene. They believed in “eternal death” for the wicked and “eternal life” for the righteous. So the good and bad alike died a first death, were judged and then the wicked died a second death, evidently by being incinerated in the sulphurous lake. They died forever in this lake, but apparently were not kept alive in eternal torture as later Christians believed.

So to Chapter 21 where the old earth and heaven too had passed away (Jesus’s own belief according to the gospels). New ones were created instead, with a new Jerusalem, declared to be the bride (explaining the guests at the earlier wedding feast, for Jerusalem, standing for Israel, is literally the bride and the guests are therefore the righteous that are saved). Heaven and earth are united, signified by the descent of the New Jerusalem to earth and God dwells with mankind in an uncorrupted eternal life in which everything is renovated (Rev 21:5) and given the water of life. God then declares once again, “It is done”, apparently now meaning the new creation that replaced the previously destroyed corrupt world.

In Revelation 21:1, the sea is also evaporated at the End. In the scriptures, the sea is the domain of whatever is opposed to God (Isa 27:1; 51:9-10; Psalms 74:13; 89:10), an idea dramatized in the calming of violent seas by Jesus. The whole idea is again Babylonian, the sea being the monster, Tiamat, defeated by Marduk.

Note that in verse 20:8, “liars” are among those whose lot is eternal death in the burning lake of sulphur, not surprisingly in view of the huge Persian influence on the Essenes, both of whom abhorred lying, but surely a warning to Christians who habitually lie without even thinking about it, and even declare it to be justified as long as it benefits Christianity.

Again in verse 20:9 the bride is identified with Jerusalem and is described as if the whole city was the temple in heaven, explaining Revelation 20:22, where the Watcher declares he can see no temple. In verse 21:4, the foreheads of the righteous are again spoken of as branded with a name. As we saw, from the scriptures and from Christian practice continued from the Essenes, the mark will have been that of the cross. The original ended, plainly enough, at Revelation 22:7.

The final addition, as Dr Charles realized long ago, was the section Revelation 20:4-15. This editor was faced with the problem of the absence of the general resurrection that the first Christians had thought began with the resurrection of Jesus and, in Matthew, a few more anonymous saints. Perhaps the Jewish War was the cosmic battle (regrettably lost) but, if Jesus was the first fruits of the dead, what had happened to the rest of the fruits? No general resurrection had occurred and the original revived saints of Matthew—who would have been the strongest witnesses of all to the truth of Christianity—apparently just disappeared into the general population and refuse to reveal themselves. Initially, the judgement had been postponed 40 years after Jesus’s own disappointment. This editor decided it was safer not to pussyfoot and solves the problem by inventing a second resurrection after 1000 years. That this resurrection also never happened did not deter any Christians, whose strong point never was thinking about their beliefs.

Jewish apocalyptic thought had a concept of the Millennium (1 Enoch 91-104) and the Essenes who were fond of Enoch might have had such a view. But the second resurrection was a pure expedience necessitated by the supposed resurrection of Jesus as first fruit of the dead. There is nothing to suggest that the Essenes believed in anything other than one life after death for the righteous—an eternal one.

Conclusion

Revelation reveals some important things about the origins of Christianity, but not what Christians believe. It is built on pre-Christian sources strongly influenced by Persian religion. That makes it most likely to have been from the school of the authors of the sectarian documents from Qumran, thought to have been the Essenes. It purports to give visions of the judgement of the wicked world and creation anew of an uncorrupted world of heaven and the earth united. These visions make most sense if they were the visions held by apocalyptic Jews before Christianity began, indeed, if they were the views of Jewish leaders like Jesus.

Insertions seem to have been made, perhaps in the twenties of the first century, that refer to Jesus’s victory over the Romans, a victory suppressed by the gentile bishops but the victory upon which his original reputation among Jews depended.

Finally at the end of the century, the gentile Christians got hold of it, translating it extremely roughly into poor Greek and made crude cosmetic changes to Christianize it. More literate editors have made a few further alterations since.

The analysis here bears out the thesis of The Hidden Jesus that Jesus defeated the Romans and held Jerusalem before being defeated and crucified, quite properly in Roman law, as a rebel.

Link: The Revelation of Jesus Restored

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