[Note 2, p. 148 “Cf. Prov.6.23. Apoc. Bar.59.2,77.16; 4 Ezra 14.20f. Sifre Num. on 6.25, ¶41: ‘The Lord make his face to shine upon thee….’ ‘It refers to the light of the Torah, as it says Prov.6.23, ‘The Torah is a light’.’ ….Deut.R. 7.3: ‘Just as oil gives light to the world, so too do the words of the Torah give light to the world.”
[150] “…(we read of) Christ what might well have been written of the Torah. Thus in Matthew 18.20 we read: ‘For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.’ With this we may compare the saying in Pirke Aboth: ‘When they sit together and are occupied with the Torah, the Shekinah is among them.’1 [Note 1: “Cf. P. Aboth 3.7.] Again in Matt.11.29,30: ‘Take my yoke upon you’, etc., we are probably right in finding a contrast between the yoke of Christ’s teaching or law and that of the Torah. Taking the yoke of the Torah was a familiar Rabbinic expression. 2 [Note 2: “Cf. for example, P. Aboth 3.6;…”] In Matthew clearly there is a substitution of Christ for the Torah, and Christ, we may say, is pictured after the image of the Torah.3 [Note 3: “In the Didache 6.2, the commandments of Jesus are called (‘yoke of the Lord’) …”]’
[151] “… (Regarding Col. 1.15f) one figure in the Old Testament (which) bears a striking resemblance to the Christ depicted here by Paul. Judaism had ascribed to the figure of Wisdom a pre-cosmic origin and a part in the creation of the world. It becomes probable therefore that Paul has here pictured Christ on the image of Wisdom…. the term (reshith= ‘beginning’) in Prov. 8.22 was used by Rabbinic Judaism as the key to the bereshith which begins the Hebrew Bible. This latter bereshith of Gen.1.1 was correspondingly interpreted as meaning ‘by wisdom’.” another witness that revelation of jesus was the revelation of wisdom.
[152] Quoting Burney, Davies shows that the passage Col. 1.15-18 is an elaborate exposition of the word bereshith in Gen. 1.1: translating be as ‘in’, ‘by’, ‘into’, and reshith as ‘beginning,’ ‘sum total’, ‘head’, and ‘firstfruits’. Paul‘s conclusion is : “Christ fulfils every meaning which may be extracted from reshith….”
[153] Re the passage in I Cor.10.1-4, the way that the Rock is equated with Christ and with Water is: “Philo … interpreted the passage in Deut.8.15… as a reference to the Wisdom of God. He writes: ‘The rock of flint is the Wisdom of God from which he feeds the souls that love Him.’3 [Note 3: “Philo, Leb. Alleg.2.21.”] The same idea occurs in the Book of Wisdom where there is a vivid picture of Wisdom as the helper of Israel in the wilderness. There also Wisdom is connected with the giving out of ‘water out of the flinty rock.’4 [Note 4: “Wis. of Sol. 2.4”]
[154] “In Baruch 3.29ff we read: ‘Who hath gone up into heaven, and taken her [i.e. Wisdom] And brought her down from the clouds? Who hath gone over the sea, and found her And will bring her for choice gold?’ The words in Baruch refer to the undiscoverability of Wisdom whilst Paul uses them in Rom.10.6ff to describe the essential accessibility or nearness of Christ in order to prove that the Jews who reject Him are without excuse.2 [Note 2: … the passage quoted by Paul from Deut.30.12-14 refers to the Torah in Deut., whereas Paul applies it to Christ.” Christ is actually called the Wisdom of God in I Cor. 1.24 and 1.30….”
[155] “…. it is a pre-cosmic Wisdom and a morally recreative Wisdom that (Paul) finds in His Lord.”
[159]: “… the Messiah was already connected with Wisdom within Judaism…: (I Enoch 48.1-7)
1. ‘And in that place I saw the fountain of righteousness Which was inexhaustible….And around it were many fountains of wisdom….
2. And at that hour that Son of Man was named….
3. Yea before the Sun and the signs were created Before the stars of the heaven were made, His name was named before the Lord of Spirits….
6. And for this reason hath he been chosen and hidden before Him Before the creation of the world and for evermore.
7. And the wisdom of the Lord of Spirits hath revealed him to the holy and the righteous.”
I Enoch 49:2: “‘And in him dwells the spirit of wisdom.’ We need not cavil that these words are written of the Son of Man and not of the Messiah. The figure of the latter was highly complex and in Judaism as in the thought of Jesus and of the early Church the lineaments of the Son of Man and of the Messiah had become inextricably merged.’”
here we see how that wisdom is equated with the ‘son of man’, therefore with jesus.
[167] Commenting on the 28th chapter of Job, vss. 23, 25-27: “… Wisdom in this passage…is properly the idea or conception lying behind or under the fixed order of the Universe, the world plan. This fixed order itself with all its phenomena and occurrences is nothing but God fulfilling Himself in many ways, but these ways may be reduced to one conception and this is Wisdom, which is thus conceived as a thing having an objective existence of its own.”
[168-9] “… Wisdom as found in the Old Testament is in no sense a ‘nationalistic’ figure…. It is not surprising, therefore, that there should grow up a tendency to make the figure of Wisdom more distinctly Jewish. It is this that we find in the Book of Ecclesiasticus. There the figure of Wisdom becomes identified with the Torah, Wisdom takes up her abode in Israel and is established in Zion…. [p. 169] ” (Ecclesiasticus 24:)
[but christians understood that ‘torah’ means the living word of god, that jesus is ‘israel’ and that ‘zion’ is the church.]
“’… 8. Then the Creator of all things gave me commandment And he that created me fixed my dwelling place (for me), And he said: Let thy dwelling place be in Jacob, And in Israel take up thine inheritance. 9. He created me from the beginning of the world….’
In Verse 23 the identification of Wisdom with the Torah is made explicit:
‘All these things are the book of the Covenant of God Most High. The Law which Moses commanded (as) an heritage for the assemblies of Jacob.’ The Torah is regarded here as the expression of the Divine Wisdom.’” [Deut. 4:6 is cited:] “’Keep, therefore, and do them (i.e. the commandments) for this is your wisdom and your understanding.'”
[Quoting Edwyn Bevan:] “‘The author of the commandments (the Torah) is the author of the world and the wisdom embodied in the commandments is the wisdom diffused through the world.’ Yes, the Hebrew sage feels vividly that this Law handed down among his people is no mere code of a single race not even merely of the earth, but the Incarnation if one may say so, of a cosmic principle and akin to the stars.’”
[170] “… the Judaism of Palestine in Paul‘s day and elsewhere the identification of the Torah with Wisdom was a commonplace…. God ‘found out every way of knowledge, and gave it to Jacob his servant and to Israel his beloved’. ‘After that it was seen upon earth and conversed among men. This is the book of the commandments of God and the law which abideth for ever.’2 [Note 2: “Cf. Ap. Baruch 3.37f.”] So too in 4 Maccabees: ‘Wisdom (sophia) is a knowledge of things divine and human, and of their causes…’, and ‘This Wisdom is the education given by the Law.’3 [Note 3: Cf. 1.17; also 7.21-3, 8.7.]”
The Torah acquired certain characteristics through its identification with Wisdom:
“1. The Torah, like Wisdom, came to be regarded as older than the world. Thus it is the first among the seven things which were created before the world.5 [Note 5: “…. Gen. R.1.4; b. Pes.54A; b. Ned. 39b; b. Shab.88b-89a; b. Zeb. 116a. Bereshith Rabba I reads: ‘Six things preceded the creation of the world; among them were such as were themselves truly created, and such as were decided upon before the Creation; the Torah and the throne of glory were truly created.’…. Sifre on Deut. 11.10, Prov. 8.22 is taken to mean that the Law was created before everything6 [Note 6: …Sifre Deut. on 11.10, ¶37]”.
“2. Secondly, the Torah is brought into connection with creation: e.g. R. Akiba said: ‘Beloved are Israel to whom was given a precious instrument wherewith the world was created. It was greater love [p. 171] that it was made known to them that there was given unto them a precious instrument whereby the world was created, as it is said: ‘For a good doctrine have I given you; forsake not my Law.1 [Note 1:P. Aboth3.23….”]’ (Prov.4.2)” “3. Thirdly, the world is claimed to be created for the sake of the Torah. Thus R. Yudan said: ‘The world was created for the sake (literally: because of the merit) of the Torah’2 [Note 2: “Cf. Gen.R. 12.2.”] …. the significance of the equation of Wisdom with Torah,… must not be overlooked…. (Judaism) gave cosmic significance to morality and gave also to cosmic speculation a sobriety which otherwise it might have lacked. Another noteworthy factor is the possibility that within Judaism there were conceptions not far removed from the Platonic doctrine of ideas albeit expressed much more naively than in Plato. Thus the Torah had a celestial existence before it came into being at Sinai…. In any case the Torah was regarded as existing in two places, first in what Plato would have called the realm of ideas and secondly in time….”
[173]: Paul may have avoided the term ‘Logos‘ because of its Gnostic implications.
[174] “…. one of its [Judaism‘s] most fundamental convictions, that the universe conforms to the Torah, that Nature itself is after the pattern of the Torah; in short, to claim that the Torah was the instrument of creation was to declare that Nature and Revelation belonged together, that in theological terms there was a continuity not a discontinuity between Nature and Grace. To use Stoic terms, to live according to the Torah is to live according to Nature.1
[Note 1: “… H. Loewe in R.A. [A Rabbinic Anthology] p. lxix… writes: ‘What is true in nature is true in religion: what is false in science cannot be true in religion. Truth is one and indivisible. God is bound by His own laws….It is indeed ironical to note that the unity of the 19th Psalm has been impugned by some people for the very reason that it asserts, first, God’s supremacy alike in the natural and in the religious spheres, and secondly, the congruence of those spheres. The sun, in going forth on its daily round, is fulfilling Torah as much as is a human being who worships God, as much as is a Jew when he performs the commandments, which are ‘pure and enlightening to the eyes’ Ps. 19.8.’ He refers to Sifre Deut, on 32.1, ¶306….]”
This discussion of the concept of torah shows how the early christians, of jewish culture, regarded the Revelation of Christ.
1:1. “… things which must shortly come to pass….”
the following quotations show that the events depicted in the book of revelation were fulfilled in history shortly after the book was written:
“An argument of no mean force which we may use against the Jews, that the time when our Jesus did appear was the very time wherein the nation looked for the coming of Messiah. For why did no one arrogate that name to himself before the coming of our Jesus? Because they knew the fore-appointed and the expected time of the Messiah was not yet come. And why, after Jesus had come, did so many give themselves out for Messiah, according to what our Saviour foretold, Matt.xxiv? Because the agreeableness of the time, and the expectation of the people, might serve and assist their pretences.” (3:352-3.)
In fact, the ‘forty years of the Messiah’ was a tradition amongst the Jews, as attested in their writings. Lightfoot quotes R. Eliezer from Sanhedrin:
“‘The days of the Messiah are forty years, according as it is said, Forty years…shall I be grieved with this generation.’ The Gloss is, ‘Because it is …(in the future tense) it is a sign the prophecy is concerning the time to come.’ It is ingenuously done, however, of these Jews, that they parallel that faithless generation that was in the days of the Messiah with that perverse and rebellious generation that had been in the wilderness: for they will, both of them prove a loathing and offence to God for the space of forty years. And as those forty years in the wilderness were numbered according to the forty days in which the land had been searching [Num. xiv.34]; so also may those forty years of the Messiah be numbered according to the forty days wherein he was conversant amongst mankind after his resurrection from the dead.” [4:7-8. Quoting Sanhedrin fol. 99.1]
Lightfoot also records, concerning Rabbi Jochanan Ben Zaccai that it was said:
“Forty years before the destruction of the city, when the gates of the temple flew open of their own accord, Rabban Jochanan Ben Zaccai said, ‘O temple, temple, why dost thou disturb thyself? I know thy end, that thou shalt be destroyed; for so the prophet Zachary hath spoken concerning thee, Open thy doors, O Lebanon, that the fire may devour thy cedars.'” (4:44). forty years before the destruction of the temple would have been at approximately the time of the crucifixion.
From this it is clear that the tradition of the forty years of grace was strong amongst both the Jews of the Pharisaic religion as well as the Christians.
Commenting on 1 Cor. 10:11: “… upon whom the ends of the world has come…” Lightfoot says: “… the ends of the ages;… not … the ends of the world. {Aion}, age, in the Scripture, very ordinarily is the Jewish age…. So the disciples, Matt.xxiv.3, inquire of Christ … concerning the end of the age; and he answereth concerning the destruction of Jerusalem. In the same {sense} should I render the words of the apostle, Tit.i.2; ‘To the hope of eternal life, which God hath promised … before the times of the [Jewish] ages:’ that is, God promised eternal life before the Mosaic economy: that life therefore is not to be expected by the works of the law of Moses.”
this shows that the end of the age expected in the new testament was the time foretold by Daniel 9:24-27.
“Thus, therefore, the apostle speaks in this place: ‘These things which were transacted in the beginning of the Jewish ages are written for an example to you, upon whom the ends of those ages are come. And the beginning is like to the end, and the end to the beginning. Both was forty years, both consisted of temptation and unbelief, and both ending in the destruction of unbelievers: that in the destruction of those that perished in the wilderness; this in the destruction of those that believed not in the destruction of the city and nation.” [4:226]
1:1. “…and he sent and signified it by his angel…”
These quotes will show what the word ‘signified’ means in context, i.e., an interpreter:
Of the ten qualified men required to make up a synagogue, three were to be magistrates, one the public minister, three were to be deacons, coming to seven men. “We may reckon the eighth man of these ten to be the… the interpreter in the synagogue; who, being skilled in the tongues, and standing by him that read in the law, rendered in the mother-tongue, verse by verse, those things that were read out of the Hebrew text. The duty of this interpreter, and the rules of his duty, you may read at large in the Talmud.” (2:92-3.)
The angel who ‘signified’ the Book of Revelation may have been pictured as an interpreter similar to those of the synagogues.