1:11. “…What thou seest write in a book….”
The question as to the original language and alphabetic characters of the Book of Revelation bears upon its interpretation, for the writing itself enters into the meaning of the text, for example, in such passages as 13:18 regarding the meaning of 666.
“The Jerusalem Talmud treats of this matter [of the alphabet used for Holy Scripture] in these words: ‘R. Jochanan de Beth Gubrin saith, There are four noble tongues which the world useth: the mother-tongue, for singing; the Roman, for war; the Syriac, for mourning; the Hebrew, for elocution: and there are some which add the Assyrian, for writing. The Assyrian hath writing [that is, letters or characters], but a language it hath not. The Hebrew hath a language, but writing it hath not. They chose to themselves the Hebrew language in the Assyrian character. But why is it called…the Assyrian? …Because it is blessed ( or direct) in its writing. R. Levi saith, Because it came up into their hands out of Assyria.’
“‘A tradition. R. Josi saith, Ezra was fit, by whose hands the law might have been given, but that the age of Moses prevented. But although the law was not given by his hand, yet writing [that is, the forms of the letters] and the language were given by his hand….’The law was given in the Assyrian language; and when they sinned it was turned into breaking. {That is, letters more rude and disjoined}. And when they were worthy in the days of Ezra, it was turned for them again into the Assyrian. I show to-day, that I will render to you …Mishneh, the doubled, or, as if he should say the seconded (Zech.ix.12). And he shall write for himself the mishneh (the doubled) of this law in a book (Deut.xvii.18), namely, in a writing that was to be changed.
“Discourse is had of the same business in the Babylonian Talmud, and almost in the same words, these being added over: ‘The law was given in Hebrew writing, and in the holy language. And it was given to them again in the days of Ezra, in Assyrian writing, and the Syriac language. The Israelites chose to themselves the Assyrian writing, and the holy language…and left the Hebrew writing and the Syriac language to ignorant persons…But who are those idiots (or ignorant persons)? R. Chasda saith,…The Samaritans. And what is the Hebrew writing? R. Chasda saith,…that is, according to the Gloss, ‘Great letters, such as those are which are writ in charms and upon doorposts.’….
“…by ‘the mother-tongue’ (the Hebrew, Syriac, Roman, being named particularly) no other certainly can be understood than the Greek….
“…that writing which the Gemarists call…and which we have interpreted by a very known word, Hebrew writing,–is not therefore called… [Hebrew]…because this was proper to the Israelites, or because it was the ancient writing, but (as the Gloss very aptly)…because the writing or character was in use among them that dwelt beyond Euphrates. In the same sense as some would have Abraham called…Hebrew, signifying on the other side, that is, beyond or on the other side of Amana.
“Many nations were united into one language, that is, the old Syriac,–namely, the Chaldeans, the Mesopotamians, the Assyrians, the Syrians. Of these some were the sons of Sem and some of Ham. Though all had the same language, it is no wonder if all had not the same letters. The Assyrians and Israelites refer their original to Sem; these had the Assyrian writing: the sons of Ham that inhabited beyond Euphrates had another; perhaps that which is now called by us the Samaritan, which it may be the sons of Ham the Canaanites used.
“[Quoting the Talmud] …’The law was given to Israel in the Assyrian writing in the days of Moses: but when they sinned under the first Temple and contemned the law, it was changed into breaking to them.’
“Therefore, according to these men’s opinion, the Assyrian writing was the original of the law, and endured and obtained into the degenerate age under the first Temple. Then they think it was changed into the writing used beyond Euphrates or the Samaritan; or, if you will, the Canaanitish (if so be these were not one and the same); but by Ezra it was at last restored into the original Assyrian….
“[Some think that the law was first written in Samaritan]…it is much more probable that there was no change at all (but that the law was first writ in Assyrian by Moses, and in the Assyrian also by Ezra), because the change cannot be built and established upon stronger arguments.
[There is the question of Keri and Kethib, that is, the way the text is read, versus the way it is written. The Talmuds discuss the fact that there were three texts: “‘They found three books in the court…“ From the discussion, two versions usually agreed, and so they were accepted as authoritative.]
Lightfoot says this: “I do much suspect that these three books laid up in the court answered to the threefold congregation of the Jews, namely in Judea, Babylon, and Egypt, whence these copies might be particularly taken. For, however that nation was scattered abroad almost throughout the whole world, yet, by number and companies scarcely to be numbered, it more plentifully increased in these three countries than any where else: in Judea, by those that returned from Babylon; in Babylon, by those that returned not; and in Egypt, by the temple of Onias. The two copies that agreed, I judge to be out of Judea and Babylon; that that differed to be out of Egypt: and this last I suspect by this, that the word…Zaatuti smells of the Seventy interpreters, whom the Jews of Egypt might be judged, for the very sake of the place, to favour more than any elsewhere. For it is asserted by the Jewish writers, that ….[Zaatuti] was one of those changes which the Septuagint brought into the sacred text.
“…It is therefore very probable, that the Keri and Kethib were compacted from the comparing of the two copies of the greatest authority, that is, the Jewish and the Babylonian: which when they differed from one another in so many places in certain little dashes of writing, but little or nothing at all as to the sense, by very sound counsel they provided that both should be reserved, so that both copies might have their worth preserved, and the sacred text its purity and fulness, whilst not one jot, nor one tittle of it perished.” [2:104-107]
“In all the following ages these things obtained: ‘If any write the holy books in any language, or in any character, yet he shall not read in them [publicly in the synagogue], … unless they be written in Hebrew.’….
“Very many passages of that nature might be produced, whereby it appears plain that the Hebrew text was read in the synagogue of the Hebrews., that is, of those of Babylon and Palestine, and whose soever mother-tongue was Syriac or Chaldee….
“Therefore, how much the more zeal and honour they had for the Hebrew text, so much the less grateful to them was the version of it into another tongue. For they thought so much of honour, virtue, and worth departed from the holy text, as that language or those very letters were departed from.
“I. In that canon … the holy books pollute the hands; whereby, as they say, the worth of those books is proved, if there be made any change of the language or characters, so much they believe the nobility of them is diminished. For ‘the Targum, if it be written in Hebrew, and the Hebrew Bible, if it be written in the language of the Targum, and the writing changed, they defile not the hands; and indeed those books do not defile the hands, unless they be written in Hebrew.’
“II. It is disputed, ‘Whether it be lawful to snatch the holy books out of the fire on the sabbath-day,’ when that cannot be done without some labour. And it is concluded without all scruple, that if they are wrote in Hebrew, they ought to be snatched out; but if in another language, or in other characters, then it is doubted….
“III. It is disputed further, … ‘If the holy books so written shall come to your hands,’ whether you may destroy them with your own hand, either by cutting or tearing them, or throwing them into the fire; and it is concluded, indeed, in the negative: which yet is to the same effect as though it were determined in the affirmative. ‘Let them be laid up (say they) in some foul place, where they may be consumed by themselves.’
“And it is related of Rabban Gamaliel first, that when … the Book of Job, made into a Targum, was brought to him, he commanded that it should be buried under a heap of stones. Which example also a certain Rabbin afterward urgeth to his great grandson Gamaliel, that he also should bury under ground the Book of Job Targumized, which he had in his hand, to be consumed.
“The Book of Job Targumized was that book translated into the Chaldee language, the mother-tongue of the nation, the tongue into which the Law and the Prophets were rendered in the synagogues; and yet by no means did they tolerate the version of that book, (which, indeed, was not read in the synagogues,) though rendered in that language; much less would they tolerate the version of the Law and the Prophets into a more remote and more heathen language.
“These things well considered, one may with good reason suspect that the Jews thought not so honourably of any version, as to cast away the Hebrew Bible, and to espouse that in the room of it….” [4:296]
Davies, [212]: “It is surely significant that even the ‘prophetic spirits’ of Rabbinic Judaism did not declare ‘Thus saith the Lord’ but appealed to a past revelation, ‘It is written’.”
[225] “… Paul… claims that he himself has written Christ in the hearts of Christians, just as Moses had written the Law on tablets of stone.” [Cites 2 Cor.3.1-3, also Midrash on Ps.119.10; cf. Sifre Deut. on 6.6, §33; 4 Ezra 9.31]
1:13: “… One like unto the Son of Man”
Davies, [278-282] Davies discusses the concept of the Son of Man as found in the Book of Daniel and developed in the Similitudes of Enoch; whether the Son of Man was an individual Messiah or the community of the Faithful Remnant. Quoting in agreement with Dr. H. H. Rowley:
“‘The Son of Man in Enoch is no human figure but rather the personifying of the Danielic concept of the Son of Man in a supramundane person who should be the representative and head of the kingdom that concept symbolized, and who should come down to dwell with men.'”1 [Note 1 p. 278: The Relevance of Apocalyptic, p. 57.]
Davies discusses the merging of the ideas of the Son of Man, the Messiah, and the Suffering Servant. Quoting W. Manson:
“‘Points of comparison might be indefinitely multiplied, but enough evidence has been adduced to show that the concepts of the Davidic Messiah, the Suffering Servant, and the pre-existent Heavenly Man, however disparate in origin they may have been, have in the religious thought of Israel been conformed to the same type, and are to be recognized, therefore, as far as the religion of Israel is concerned, as successive phases of the Messianic idea, which connect respectively with Israel as nation, Israel as Church, and Israel as the final, perfected elect of the Reign of God.”1
[Note 1, p. 280: “…We shall be concerned with the Suffering Messiah above; but here it is noteworthy that the Son of Man in Daniel was interpreted of the Messiah. But the Son of Man in Daniel is a suffering figure — he represents the Saints of the Most High who are persecuted; cf. Dan.7.21.25. The whole context points to a suffering Son of Man. Did not then the Rabbis think of a suffering Messiah? Moore gets over this difficulty by maintaining that the Rabbis ‘concerned themselves little about total contexts’ … and isolated Dan.7.9-14 ‘without concern about the beginning of the chapter’. This, however, is not very convincing. The fact that the Messiah = the Son of Man and that the latter was a Suffering Son of Man should be borne in mind when we discuss the idea of a suffering Messiah in first-century Judaism above.” [End note 1].
“… we find much evidence that in the second century [of Christian era] the conception of a Suffering Messiah was familiar. Particularly important is the evidence of the Dialogue with Trypho2. Trypho does not know of any other possibility than that of [p. 281] a Suffering Messiah. It is the manner of Christ‘s death, not His suffering, that is the stumbling-block to Trypho.
[Note 2, p. 280: “Probably Trypho is another name for Rabbi Tarfon (A.D.120-40) a contemporary of Justin Martyr. Schürer writes: ‘if then Trypho is ready to make these concessions, he thereby only represented views held in the circles of his Palestinian colleagues.'”]
[281]”…. It is surely significant that a representative of the Jewish viewpoint regards it as an accepted fact that the Messiah should suffer.
“In addition to this the Talmud often refers to the Suffering of the Messiah…. [b. Sanh.93b, 98a, 98b…] ”The Rabbis said: ‘His name is ”the leper scholar’, 1 as it is written, Surely he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him a leper, smitten of God and afflicted’ [Isa.53.4].’
“Despite the late date of the Talmudic passages, however, in view of all the above it cannot be disputed that in the second century after Christ the idea of a Suffering Messiah, and indeed of a Messiah suffering as an atonement for human sin, was, at least in certain circles, [p. 283] a familiar one….”
Davies goes on to point out that, if the Rabbis believed in a Suffering Messiah before the first century, [Christian era], i.e. in the Similitudes of Enoch, and again in the first part of the second century, i.e. in the discussion with Trypho and the Rabbinic literature, then considering the time it takes for the development of ideas, “to deny the emergence of the idea of the Suffering Messiah to pre-Christian Judaism is indefensible.”
See also 5:6: That the Son of Man in 1:13 is the same as the Lamb Who Was Slain in 5:6.