1:1

1:1. “The revelation of Jesus Christ….”

 

The following quotes help to show how the contemporary jews understood the relationship of ‘Revelation’ to ‘Light’:

 

[from Lightfoot, 3:330-1:]  “… ‘R. Biba Sangorius saith, … Light is the name of the Messiah.  As it is written, … Light dwells with him,’ Dan.ii.22….

 

                “They {the Jews} were wont to adorn their Rabbins and doctors with swelling and magnificent titles of Lights….”

 

The following shows how significant the time-telling lights of the heavens were:

 

                “…It was attested before the Sanhedrim by two persons that they saw the new moon.  So Christ mentions two witnesses attesting him to be the light, viz. the Father and himself….

 

                “… ‘One witness is not to be believed in his own cause.  {But}…

 

                “…’The father and the son, or any sort of relatives, are fit and credible witnesses….'” 

 

[The following is from Davies:  185] Regarding Paul‘s familiarity of Rabbinic teaching that the Holy Spirit is Light: [Note 1: “This would throw light on the experience of Paul on the road to Damascus.  The Risen Lord whom he there encountered belonged to the realm of Spirit…. The Risen Christ, the Lord the Spirit, appeared to Paul when ‘suddenly there shined round about him a light from heaven’…. The whole of Paul’s conversion fits naturally into a Rabbinic background, where the Spirit would naturally be conceived as Light.”

 

                [191] The Hellenistic idea of gnosis is distinct from the Hebrew idea of ‘revelation,’ however, they are related in that in Hebrew, Light includes both Revelation and Wisdom.  Re the Hellenistic desire for gnosis: “This desire for [gnosis], which arose as a reaction against an arid rationalism, is not to be confused with the desire for an intellectual understanding of the meaning of things: [gnosis] is the vision … of God which gives an intimate personal insight into ultimate reality; it is an experience intense and highly emotional which delivers man from the tyranny of eίmaρmέnh.  It illumines its possessor and gives him ….[soteria, ‘wisdom’].

 

1:1. “The Revelation.”

 

Greek apocalupsis, ‘through the veil.’  the following will give a sense of the importance of the idea of the veil:

 

                “…’In the first Temple there was a wall one cubit thick, separating the Holy from the Holy of Holies; but when they built the second Temple, it was doubted whether the thickness of that wall should be accounted to belong to the measure of the Holy, or to the measure of the Holy of Holies.  Wherefore they made the Holy of Holies twenty cubits complete, and the Holy forty cubits complete; and they left a void cubit between the Holy and the Holy of Holies, but they did not build any wall there in the second Temple: only they made two hangings, one contiguous to the Holy of Holies, and the other to the Holy; between which there was a voice cubit, according to the thickness of the wall that was in the first Temple; in which there was but one catapetasm [or veil] only.”

 

                “…’they hung up two veils, that they might be sure to offend neither against this part nor that….”  {When the Gospels say the veil, singular, was rent,}  “…it would easily be understood of a passage broken into the Holy of Holies by some astonishing and miraculous rending of the hangings….”  (2:370-1.)

 

                Lightfoot believed that the Gentiles lost access to true knowledge of God at Babel because the only language that had the true religion was Hebrew and they could no longer understand it.  Therefore when the Day of Pentecost came, it restored to them the Holy language and lifted the veil, Isaiah 25:7.  (4:28.)

 

1:1.  To show.”  ‘Revelation‘ means exhibition, manifestation, etc.

 

[2:49-50]:  “…The kingdom of heaven implies, 1. The exhibition and manifestation of the Messias, Matt. xii.28…. 2. The resurrection of Christ; death, hell, Satan, being conquered: whence is a most evident manifestation that he is that ‘eternal King,’ &c:….3. His vengeance upon the Jewish nation, his most implacable enemies: this is another, and most eminent manifestation of him: see Matt.xvi.28, xix. 28….”  From this we know that the contemporary Jews would have understood the phrase: “The Revelation of jesus Christ…” to mean, among other things, “Christ’s vengeance upon the jewish Nation”.

 

[2:318] “False Christs broke out, and appeared in public with their witchcrafts, so much the frequenter and more impudent, as the city and people drew nearer to its ruin; because the people believed the Messias should be manifested before the destruction of the city; and each of them pretended to be the Messias by these signs.”  Therefore, they believed that the ‘Revelation’, ‘coming’, or ‘manifestation’ of Jesus Christ was to precede the destruction of the City, and the destruction, in fact, was to be a feature of his “revelation”.

 

The following help us understand how The words ‘Urim and Thummim connoted ‘Light and Revelation,’ or ‘Perfection of Light’ in the contemporary jewish culture:

 

                “III. The high priest, indeed, ministered in the second Temple as in the first, in eight several garments.  Amongst these was the pectoral, or breastplate, wherein the precious stones were put (out of which the jasper chanced to fall and was lost): but the oracle by Urim and Thummim was never restored: see Ezra ii.63; Neh.vii.63.  And if not restored in the days of Ezra or Nehemiah, much less certainly in the ages following, when the spirit of prophecy had forsaken and taken leave of that people.  For that is a great truth amongst the Talmudists; ‘Things are not asked or inquired after now [by Urim and Thummim] by the high priest … because he doth not speak by the Holy Ghost, nor does there any divine afflatus breathe on him.’ [3:259-60] It appears that they believed the Holy Ghost was necessary in order to use the Urim and Thummim.

 

                In Acts 3:24: “… We have Moses and Samuel mentioned together in this place, as also Psalm xcix.6; because there are few or no prophets between these two, I Sam.iii.1, and the apparitions of angels having been more frequent.  And, after the decease of Phinehas, it is a question whether there was any oracle by Urim and Thummim, through the defect of prophecy in the high priests, till the times of Samuel: but then it revived in Abimelech, Abiathar, &c. … Samuel was the master of the prophets.'”  [4:41-2]

 

                Commenting on 1 Cor. 12:8, Lightfoot sees the gifts of governments and of discerning of spirits as parallel, indeed one and the same thing.  “But … in this place to me sounds not governments, or a power of ruling, but it speaks a deep and profound reach, … in which sense the Seventy {i.e. the Septuagint translation} interpreters more than once, and answers to the Hebrewprudent counsels.  Prov.i.5, …. The Interlinear version reads, … The understanding man shall possess wise counsels.… And the same Seventy, chap.xi.14, … they who have not … {i.e. governments} fall.  What the word means you may easily gather from the antithesis in the following words … but safety is in much counsel….

 

                “… discerning of spirits, was the judging between magical and diabolical spirits, and their operations, and between the operations and speech of the Holy Ghost.  For many false prophets had at that time gone out into the world, 1 John iv.1; and that … according to the working of Satan in all power, and signs, and lying wonders: so that it was impossible, to distinguish between their wonders and the true miracles of the Holy Ghost.  But the most merciful God taking pity upon his people, among other gifts of the Holy Ghost shed abroad for the edification of the church, granted this also to some, that they might distinguish of prophetical spirits, whether they were true and divine, or false and diabolical.  That this deep reach is pointed out under this word … {‘governments‘}, the apostle’s order, the signification of the word, and the thing itself, do not a little persuade….”  [4:254-5]

 

                In sum, the Urim and Thummim was the power of the Holy Spirit to govern through the discerning of spiritual realities.

 

Davies, [331] Passages from the TOSEFTA: Sotah 13.2:  “Since the destruction of the first temple the kingdom ceased from the house of David, and Urim and Thummim ceased, and the cities of refuge ceased, as it is said: ‘And the Tirshatha said unto them, that they should not eat of the most holy things, till there stood up a priest with Urim and Thummim.’  As a man says to his friend, ‘Until the return of Elijah‘, or ‘Until the rising of the dead’.  From the death of Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi, the latter prophets, the Holy Spirit ceased from Israel.  But in spite of that it was allowed them to hear messages from God by a Bath Qol.”  {‘Bath Qol’ means the Voice from heaven.  The book of Revelation is showing Jesus as the Priest with urim and Thummim, that is, the Holy Spirit had returned.}

 

                [143] ” (Quoting Dr. Dodd): ‘It is not the least remarkable feature of the Gospels as historical documents that although they all–even Mark— are written under the influence of a ‘high’ Christology, yet they all–even John–represent Jesus as a teacher with His school of disciples.’  Throughout the Gospels friend and foe give to Jesus the title of Rabbi— ‘the courtesy title commonly given to Jewish teachers of the Law’– (the Talmud knows him as a Rabbi of the Tannaitic period)3 the teaching of Jesus is handed down in a Rabbinic form and he is represented to us as disputing with Rabbis upon points arising out of ‘the interpretation of the Torah or the unwritten tradition’.”  [Note 3: “b. `Abodah Zarah 16b-17a.”]  In contrast to the Talmud, the Book of Revelation shows jesus as more than a mere Rabbi, indeed, the Light and Revelation (Urim and Thummim) of God.

 

                [144] “…. Paul must have regarded Jesus in the light of a new Moses, and … recognized in the words of Christ a νόμος τοΰ χριστοΰ [‘Law of Christ’] which formed for him the basis for a kind of Christian Halakah2.”  [Note 2: “…. on Mark 1.22, 27.  … it is pointed out that it was quite usual to speak of different Torahs, e.g. the Torah of the Hillelites, the Torah of the Shammaites, etc.; cf. b. Sotah 47b; b. Megillah 3a; and it is argued convincingly that Mark 1.21-8 records how Jesus was regarded as the author of a new Torah or of new Halakoth such as only authorized Rabbis could lay down (cf. Mark 1.27).”  when jesus spoke, it was as the voice of god.

 

                [148-9] “…. not only did the words of Jesus form a Torah for Paul, but so also did the person of Jesus.  In a real sense conformity to Christ, His teaching and His life, has taken the place for Paul of conformity to the Jewish Torah.  Jesus Himself–in word and deed or fact is a New Torah…. Paul and the other Christian ministers had found the Light which had come into being at creation, in the face of Jesus.  The significance of this is only fully realized when it is recalled that in Rabbinic Judaism the Torah was associated with light2, and … [149] ‘The original light created by God in the beginning had been equated not with the Torah, the mere reflection of the light which had been vouchsafed to Moses, but with the true knowledge of God revealed in the person of Jesus who… was Himself that primal light….’  The object of the argument was to prove that Jesus, not the Torah, was the true revelation of the divine glory and the divine light…. By Torah Judaism meant … ‘all that God has made known of his nature, character and purpose and of what he would have man be and do’…. that He Himself in toto was a full revelation of God and of His will for man.” 

 

Here we see how the concepts of Light, Wisdom, Torah, (the Word), And Revelation were all related, if not identical, in Hebrew Thought.

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