20:1-2. “And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan, and bound him a thousand years,”
On John 16:11: “…the prince of this world is judged,” Lightfoot comments: “…It is well known that the prince of this world was judged when our Saviour overcame him by the obedience of his death, Heb.ii.14: and the first instance of that judgment and victory was when he arose from the dead: the next was when he loosed the Gentiles out of the chains and bondage of Satan by the gospel, and bound him himself, Rev.xx.1,2: which place will be a very good comment upon this passage.
“And both do plainly enough evince that Christ will be capable of judging the whole world, viz. all those that believe not on him, when he hath already judged the prince of this world. This may call to mind the Jewish opinion concerning the judgment that should be exercised under the Messiah, that he should not judge Israel at all, but the Gentiles only; nay, that the Jews were themselves rather to judge the Gentiles, than that they were to be judged. But he that hath judged the prince of this world, the author of all unbelief, will also judge every unbeliever too.” [3:410]
20:3. “… till the thousand years should be fulfilled….”
The Jews commonly believed that the Messias would change everything so completely that it would be a new world. “Hence was that received opinion …That God, at that time, would renew the world for a thousand years….they used…the world to come, by a form of speech very common among them, for the times of the Messias….” [2:63]
20:4-5. “…And they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years…”
“… (the disciples) were altogether ignorant that Christ should rise. They believed, with the whole nation, that there should be a resurrection at the coming of the Messias.” [2:244]
The traditions, speaking of the ‘days of the Messias’, say that the righteous dead will be raised to eternal life: “…’The Messias shall raise up those that sleep in the dust‘…
And: “…’in those years, when God shall renew his world (or age),…this world shall be wasted for a thousand years; …’ To this you may also lay that very common phrase…the world to come: whereby is signified the days of the Messiah…”
“…Not that they imagined that a chaos, or confusion of all things, should last the thousand years; but that this world should end and a new one be introduced in that thousand years.” [2:310-11]
“…The Jews, … looked for the resurrection of the dead at the coming of Messiah: and that truly, and with great reason, though it was not to be in their sense.
“The vision of Ezek. about the dry bones living, chap.xxxvii, and those words of Isaiah, ‘Thy dead men shall live,’ &c. chap.xxvi.19, suggest to them some such thing, although they grope exceedingly in the dark as to the true interpretation of this matter….
“It is true, ‘many bodies of the saints arose’ when Christ himself arose, Matt.xxvii.52: but as to those places in Scripture which hint the resurrection of the dead at his coming, I would not understand them so much of these, as the raising the Gentiles from their spiritual death of sin, when they lay in ignorance and idolatry, to the light and life of the gospel. Nor need we wholly expound Ezekiel‘s dry bones recovered to life, of the return of the tribes of Israel from their captivity, (though that may be included in it;) but rather, or together with that, the resuscitation of ‘the Israel of God’ (that is, those Gentiles that were to believe in the Messiah,) from their spiritual death.
“The words in Rev.xx.5, ‘This is the first resurrection,’ do seem to confirm this. Now what, and at what time, is this resurrection? When the great Angel of the covenant, Christ, had bound the old dragon with the chains of the gospel, and shut him up that he should no more seduce the nations, … by lying wonders, oracles, and divinations, and his false gods, as formerly he had done: that is, when the gospel, being published amongst the heathen nations, had laid open all the devices and delusions of Satan, and had restored them from the death of sin and ignorance to a true state of life indeed. This was ‘the first resurrection.’
“That our Saviour in this place speaks of this resurrection, I so much the less doubt, because that resurrection he here intends, he plainly distinguishes it from the last and general resurrection of the dead, ver. 28, 29; this first resurrection from that last: which he points therefore to, as it were, with his finger, by saying, ‘The hour is coming, and now is,’&c.” [3:299]
Davies, [287-8] “… (on the Resurrection of Jesus) Is it possible for us to determine with exactitude the eschatological significance that he would be led to ascribe to such an event? ….First, there was the Messianic expectation of the prophets, both pre-exilic and exilic, according to which there would arise a scion of the House of David who would judge the nations and then allow the righteous who survived the sifting of the judgement to enter His Kingdom. This Messianic Kingdom would be the consummation of world history and its scene would be this earth, albeit an earth transformed in various ways. According to the earliest sources only those alive at the advent of the Messiah would be judged and could therefore participate in the blessings of the Messianic Kingdom, but later it was held that there would be a resurrection of the dead at the advent of the Messiah in order that they too might be judged and be partakers of the Kingdom.
Secondly, on the other hand, there arose what we may conveniently call the Danielic eschatology, according to which the Kingdom of God is made manifest not through the advent of a Messiah but through that of the Son of [p. 288] Man, a supernatural being. The inauguration of this kingdom is marked by a general resurrection of the dead, and their judgement. The kingdom itself is of a supernatural character. We cannot here trace the various vicissitudes of these two views of the end in order to show how now one and then the other predominated; we merely point out that Judaism had somehow to harmonize both. This harmonization was accomplished ingeniously in the first century A.D., when we find that the Messianic Kingdom comes to be regarded as one of temporary duration preceding the final consummation of the historical process, which was supernatural, the Age to Come. Thus the eschatology of the first century falls into the framework: this Present Age (ha-olam hazeh), the Messianic Era, the Age to Come (ha-olam ha-ba). This meant a change in the incidence of the Resurrection. There was no compelling reason why the dead should be raised to participate in a Messianic Age which itself was ‘but for a season’, and so it came about that the Resurrection was placed at the end of the Messianic Kingdom or at the beginning of the Age to Come. This is the view in Baruch, 4 Ezra and the rabbinical literature.”
Davies, [289] “The death of believers … compelled Paul to assume two resurrections: ‘a first in which believers in Christ attain to a share in the Messianic Kingdom, and a second in which all men who have ever lived upon earth, at the end of the Messianic Kingdom, appear for final judgement before the throne of God, to receive eternal life or eternal torment.
Davies, [296] “The Resurrection had designated Christ the Son of God, and from that moment the Kingdom of the Son was ‘actualized”, the victory of the Cross was the beginning of that triumph of Christ over the evil powers mentioned in 1 Cor.15.24. It is not after but before the Parousia that the Messianic Kingdom lies in the mind of Paul: and as we shall see it was already giving place to the final consummation.
“In the third place, Paul clearly connects the Parousia of Christ with the day of judgement for the world” (See also quotes at 1:7 above).
Davies, [297] “…. In the thought of Paul, … the Resurrection of Jesus is regarded as the firstfruits. This figure implies … ‘that the full harvest will follow’. We cannot doubt that in the Resurrection of Jesus Paul saw the beginning of the End; already in that resurrection the powers of the Age to Come were at work.”
Davies, [299] “Judaism had expended much thought upon the problems involved in ‘resurrection’, and the early Church would naturally be influenced by the contemporary Jewish speculation in this field…. In 2 Maccabees it is recorded that Judas commanded that sacrifices should be offered for the sins of the dead, and the author remarks that therein he did ‘well and honestly in that he was mindful of the resurrection: for if he had not hoped that they that were slain should have risen again, it had been superfluous and vain to pray for the dead’.6“ [Note 6:”2 Macc.12.43f.”]
Davies, [301] “In the Apocalypse of Baruch we read that the dead are raised as they were buried in order that they might be recognizable:….”2 [Note 2: “2 Baruch 50.1-4]
Davies, [303] “There can be no question that in those earlier passages where Paul deals with resurrection he is thoroughly pharisaic.” [304]”…. for Paul the Christian dispensation was a new creation which could be compared and contrasted with the old creation, and we had occasion to observe how this principle that ‘the End’ corresponds to ‘the Beginning’ governed Paul’s thought also on the Resurrection of Jesus…. Paul thus remains true [p.305] to his pharisaic background in that he insists on the embodied nature of the resurrection life. Further, the analogies which he uses in order to express this truth reveal the essentially Rabbinic cast of his thought….[cites 1 Cor.15.35-40].
“All the above analogies or figures are such as would come naturally to a Rabbi. Thus with [the above] we may compare the following:
(a) Rabbi Eliezer said: ‘All the dead will arise at the resurrection of the dead, dressed in their shrouds. Know thou that this is the case. Come and see from (the analogy of) the one who plants (seed) in the earth. He plants naked (seeds) and they arise covered with many coverings; and the people who descend into the earth dressed (with their garments), will they not rise up dressed (with their garments)?’1 [Note 1:”Pirke de Rabi Eliezer, ¶xxxiii,p.245.]
(b) Queen Cleopatra asked R. Meir, ‘I know that the dead will revive, for it is written, And they (the righteous) shall (in the distant future) blossom forth out of the city (Jerusalem) like the grass of the earth. But when they arise, shall they arise nude or in their garments?’ He replied, ‘Thou mayest deduce by an a fortiori argument (the answer) from a wheat grain: if a grain of wheat which is buried naked, shooteth forth in many robes, how much more so the righteous, who are buried in their raiment?’2 [Note 2:”b. Sanh.90b]
“The analogy of the grain of corn used by Paul was thus probably a Rabbinic commonplace…. [p.306] And again the reference to the varying degrees of glory of the heavenly bodies would be suggested naturally by the apocalyptic tradition; such a passage as Dan.12.2-3….”
[p. 307]”….Again just as Paul described the life of the Age to Come by saying that ‘eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man the things which God hath prepared for them that love him’, so a saying of a first-century Rabbi is reported as follow: ‘R.Hiyya b. Abba said in R. Johanan’s name: All the prophets prophesied (all the good things) only in respect of the Messianic Era, but as for the world to come ‘the eye hath not seen, O Lord, beside thee, what he hath prepared for him that waiteth for him’.2 [Note 2:”b. Sanh. 99a”]”
Davies, [313] “….The term skηnoV is used in the LXX to translate the Hebrew sukkâh [tabernacle or booth]…. The Christian, so it might have occurred to Paul, would have to live in a booth before reaching the Promised Land.”
Davies, [46] “… Adam was conceived of as being created immortal, one day in his life might correspond to a thousand years.2“ [Note 2: “Cf. Jubilees 2:23.] …”