John's Use of the Old Testament in Revelation

Trinity Journal, Spring 2000 by Juncker, Gunther H

G. K. Beale. John's Use of the Old Testament in Revelation. JSNTSup 166. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998. 443 pp. $85.00.

This is a difficult book to review without at the same time reviewing the entire Beale corpus: first, more than half of the book consists of previously published material; and, second, Beale refers throughout to his own works (references to Beale in the author index comprise fourteen lines as compared to Bauckham, Caird, and Sweet, the next most frequently cited authors, at three lines each). A certain amount of self-referencing is often necessary and unavoidable; here, however, the constant reference to other works, particularly his recent commentary, eventually becomes frustrating to the reader and self-defeating for the author. The work is not unhelpful in its own right, and it serves adequately as a compendium of earlier material, but it does not read well either as a typical collection or as a sustained monograph. In light of this, our review will focus on those portions of the book that are new.

Chap. 1 surveys recent "exegetical" and "hermeneutical" studies (an admittedly debatable distinction) on the OT in Revelation. Beale summarizes his revised 1980 dissertation on John's contextually sensitive use of Daniel in one paragraph. His evaluation of Vogelgesang, "The Interpretation of Ezekiel in the Book of Revelation" (1985), and the unlikely contention that Revelation is an "anti-apocalypse," summarizes Ruiz's (see below) cogent critique. His evaluation of Paulien, "Decoding Revelation's Trumpets" (1987), is based on his JBL review that highlighted Paulien's inadequate criteria for identifying and interpreting OT allusions. His fourpage survey of Bauckham, The Climax of Prophecy (1993), observes that this work supports the view that John uses the OT in a contextually sensitive manner; he then adduces one example of Bauckham's exegesis. His survey of Fekkes, Isaiah and the Prophetic Traditions in the Book of Revelation (1994), indicates that Fekkes has established useful criteria for assessing and classifying OT allusions. Fekkes has also demonstrated that John uses the OT in a contextually sensitive manner.

Beale treats Ruiz, Ezekiel in the Apocalypse (1989), and Moyise, The Old Testament in the Book of Revelation (1995), two of his most trenchant critics, separately, since both advocate a reader-response hermeneutic. Beale engages Ruiz primarily at the exegetical level, showing that from the existence of audiences and a liturgical setting it does not follow that meaning is forever open-ended or that Ruiz has correctly exegeted the groups of texts that he adduces to support his view (e.g., the exhortations to "hear," the word "mystery," and the grammatical solecisms). Beale engages Moyise primarily at the epistemological level by means of a defense, following Hirsch, of authorial intention. Beale also follows Hirsch in distinguishing between meaning and significance. Brief mention inter alia of Caird (1980), Carson (1996), Gruenler (1991), Elvis Presley (1956), and the "critical realism" of Wright (1992) round out this discussion. Readers for whom this is an area of interest will wish to consult the works of Thiselton and Vanhoozer, as well as Dunn's "Historical Text as Historical Text" (1995).

In chap. 3, sec. C, Beale argues in favor of the amillennial (or "inaugurated millennial") view that the bowl judgments recapitulate the trumpet judgments, both describing the same interadvent period. He concludes, for example, that (1) the five parallel visions in Daniel provide the basic structure and paradigm for the five parallel, recapitulative visions in the central section of the book of Revelation (4-7, 8:1-11:19, 12:1-14:20, 1516, 17:1-21:8); (2) the word "last" (E aXaro") in 15:1 does not mean chronologically last such that the bowls occur in history after the trumpets, but (and here it is difficult to determine which view Beale adopts) they are either sequentially last with reference only to the order in which John received the seven-fold visions or they are historically last only in the sense that they occur throughout the "last" or "latter" days; and (3) the word "ended" (@TEVa) in 15:1 does not have a temporal nuance implying historical sequence but is parallel to "full" ( y4w) in 15:7b and 21:9 and also means "full" or "filled up" in the metaphorical sense that the seven bowls more fully portray the wrath of God than the seals or trumpets.

Beale devotes much valuable space to the similarities between the seven trumpets and the seven bowls, to the similarities of both trumpets and bowls to the Exodus plagues, and to the similarities between the trumpets and the Jericho narrative. He argues that John is picking up not only on the imagery of the Exodus plagues and Jericho trumpets but also on the underlying theology as well, though not all will agree that the underlying theology is determinism (a "theologically charged conclusion" indeed!). Beale's comparisons are detailed and instructive, but his conclusions occasionally outrun the evidence. For example, from the fact of parallel visions in Daniel, it does not follow that the five visions in Daniel or in Revelation are "synonymously parallel" (emphasis added), or temporally coterminous; from the fact that the trumpets and bowls in Revelation occur in the latter days it does not follow that they occur throughout the latter days; from the fact that a certain non-temporal nuance is possible for a temporal word it does not follow that it is probable (e.g., Beale's nuance for ETE,aOt is unattested elsewhere); and from the fact that the trumpets and bowls are judgments modeled on paradigmatic OT judgments, it does not follow that they are not also warnings (Beale's contrast between "mere warnings" and judgments seems tendentious).