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The Revelation of Jesus 3

The Two Horned Beast
Judgement
Victory over the Beast
The Bride
Christian Additions
Conclusion
The Revelation of Jesus Restored

Abstract

The myth of Jesus is convincingly explained from the 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 Jews at the time were their idolatrous Roman oppressors, and the Jews who collaborated with them. If the seven epistles and the epilogue are removed from Revelation, and obvious cosmetic additions made by Christians, such as blasphemous references to Jesus as God also, what remains is a Jewish apocalypse—nothing less than the beliefs of Jesus. 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 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.

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Last uploaded: 12 May, 2008.