"The Patmos Public Library: Good, Bad, or Indifferent?

"
A Paper Read to the Chicago Society for Biblical Research
Chicago, IL, October 29, 1988

In suggesting a title for this presentation, I

foolishly assumed the mantle of a comedian. Little did I expect

that the title would lead many to assume that I would be

offering the latest on the archeology of an island off the coast

of Asia Minor, with particular emphasis on a noble public

structure for the intellectual benefit of a handful of convicts.

My greatest fear is that a half-dozen archaeologists showed up

specifically to hear the latest on the excavation of the Patmos

Public Library. They will no doubt exclaim, with apologies to

Walter Mondale, "Where's the Slides?" My only hope is that by

the conclusion of this paper, the title will be justified at

least in part.

One of the most vexing problems in the study of

apocalyptic literature concerns the frequent use of allusive

references to previous literature such as the Old Testament. As

you may have noticed, in the latest issue of Biblical Research

I published an article entitled "Elusive Allusions: The

Problematic Use of the OT in Revelation." In that article I

pointed out the great need for further work on the problem and

probed into the results of literary criticism to find fresh ways

to address the problem with respect to the Book of Revelation.

For those of you who have not read the article, I would like to
summarize its argument briefly.

On the first page of the handout you have received you

will notice a chart:

Numbers on left = passages from seven trumpets

Names on top = major commentators on Rev who addressed the

issue

Numbers in chart = # of allusions to OT claimed for passage

by commentator

Bottom numbers = # of allusions to OT claimed for entire

section by commentator

Careful examination reveals serious irregularities in

judgment:

25 to 109

Ford and Dittmar

Ford and Hühn

Nestle and UBS

288 to 1

Careful examination of the way these commentators dealt

with specific allusions demonstrates even greater irregularities

than those revealed in this chart. This evident chaos of

citation compels me to the conclusion that most, if not all, of

the major commentators on Revelation have not done consistently

critical work in the evaluation and listing of allusions to the

OT in the Apocalypse. This further suggests the need to develop

appropriate methods by which proposed allusions can be tested.

 The work of literary critics has more and more, in

recent years, been called into service in the interpretation of

biblical texts. In the aforementioned article, therefore, I

turn to the work of critics of English and American Literature

to see if they may already have developed refined methods of

evaluating an author's allusive use of earlier literature. My

search was rewarded with the insight that allusions must be

carefully distinguished into two types, called direct allusions

and echoes. A direct allusion is when an author consciously

points the reader to a particular context in earlier literature.

Such an allusion may be limited to a couple of words, or even

the simple mention of a name or an idea.1 An echo, on the other

hand, is where the author uses a familiar concept but is totally

unaware of any prior literary context. The concept is simply

"in the air," a "live symbol" which, in the case of Revelation,

is sometimes said to be drawn from "stock apocalyptic." A well-

known literary critic calls an echo a "flash in the brainpan."

Critical to the correct interpretation of an allusion

is a sound judgment on whether the author intended a direct

allusion or not. If the author of a document is merely echoing

an earlier idea, it would be incorrect to import the literary

1
A good example of a direct allusion is the statement "Where's the slides?" in the introduction
to this paper. I consciously referred to Walter Mondale's use of "Where's the beef?" as a
reference to Gary Hart's unwillingness to be specific about his ideas in the 1984 election
campaign. But your appreciation of the allusion is further enhanced if you perceived, as I hope
you did, that underlying Mondale's usage of the phrase was the hamburger commercial featuring
the prototypical "little old lady."
context in which that idea can be found into the interpretation

of her document. To interpret an echo correctly one must search

antecedent and contemporary literature for clues as to the

echo's meaning, but since the author was unconscious of any

literary connection between her use of an echo and earlier

usage, we should not assume such a connection.

The problem arises in how to determine when an author

was consciously pointing the reader to an earlier context as an

aid to understanding her intention. Since the author himself

can no longer, in the case of Revelation, be consulted, we must

freely admit that we are dealing in the realm of probabilities.

The interpreter's task is to gather all evidence that might

point to the author's intention in the matter and weigh the

likelihood that the author had a prior context in mind at a

given point in his work.

The evidence for a direct allusion is two-fold,

internal and external. Internal evidence has to do with the

evidence of the text itself. Does one find in the text

sufficient parallels of wording, ideas and/or literary

structures to make it reasonable that the author's choice of

wording was significantly dependant on an earlier work?

Certainly multiple pieces of internal evidence would encourage

the conclusion that there was a cause and effect relationship

between the language of the antecedent text and the language of

the text being studied.

 But internal evidence alone can be deceptive. Authors

may use parallel language because they both reflect a common

source or were influenced by a common cultural heritage. Here

is where external evidence comes into play. External evidence

concerns what we can learn about an author's exposure to

antecedent literature from sources outside the text. What books

did he have in his library? What do we know about his reading

habits? What kinds of books were his contemporaries reading at

the time? The clearest external evidence would come from a

biography that described the author's reading practices. Of

comparable value might be historical works that deal with the

influences that made an author what he was. Demographic and

archeological studies might shed light on the general reading

habits of the age and geographical place involved.

Unfortunately, regardless of one's view of the

authorship of Revelation we have little or no external evidence

concerning the author of the book. His personal life and

reading habits are unknown. How helpful it would be if we could

know whether the Patmos Public Library was good, bad, or just

indifferent! But we at this time have no contemporary source

that offers any useful details about John's life that would help

us in the process of evaluating his allusions to the OT and

other antecedent literature.

In the face of this reality, we are left with whatever

evidence can be drawn from the text of Revelation itself, and

from our general knowledge of the times in which John lived.

The crucial contribution of this paper is to examine the

possibility that we can expand on the external evidence by a

creative exploration of previously unnoticed phenomena in the

text of Revelation itself. What I am specifically referring to

is the evidence in the book of Revelation for the author's use

of previous works as a whole. This means more than just listing

proposed allusions to earlier works, it means analyzing the

cumulative effect of apparent allusions to a specific background

document in order to gather evidence that might point to the

author's familiarity with the book in the form in which we now

have it.

This procedure admittedly entails the danger of

circular reasoning. For example, we create a list of the direct

allusions to Daniel in the Apocalypse. Then we use that list to

determine whether or not the author was likely to have read

Daniel carefully enough to allude to it regularly. If we decide

that he did it strengthens our view that our list of direct

allusions is correct. But while such reasoning is somewhat

circular, it appears to be our only window into the author's

reading habits at this time. And if both tasks are carefully

done, they should increase the certainty with which we can speak

of the author's use of direct allusions. I doubt that any

scholar today would try to explain the multitude of parallels

between Daniel and Revelation as fortuitous. And unless we can

find an intermediate work that contains all the same parallels

it must be conceded that it is virtually certain that the author

of Revelation worked directly from a copy of Daniel that is

substantially similar to what is available to us today.

To get a clear picture of an author's alleged use of

an antecedent document, it is not sufficient to list the total

number of direct allusions to that document. It is necessary to

demonstrate a wide spread of usage throughout the antecedent

document. For example, if the author of Revelation alludes once

each to five different portions of the book of Amos, it is far

more likely that he was familiar with Amos than if he alluded

five times to one passage in the book. The multiple citation of

that single passage could be attributed to an intermediate

source or to the possibility that the statement or idea was "in

the air" as a result of the influence of Amos in the author's

community.

Even a cursory glance at the percentages in the table

on page 2 indicate that Joel, Zechariah and Daniel stand out in

terms of the broad scope with which the author of Revelation

made use of their language and ideas. In the second rank are

the books of Isaiah and Ezekiel, nearly a tenth of which are

alluded to at some point in Revelation.

What may come as a surprise is the relatively low

ranking of the Psalms. In terms of raw statistics, there are

more allusions to Isaiah and the Psalms in Revelation than to

any other OT book, and such numbers ought to be taken into

consideration. But the proportional method used in the tables

factors in the size of a source document which in part accounts

for the large number of references to Isaiah and the Psalms.

Both of these books also contain a considerable number of

memorable aphorisms such as "I am the First and the Last" and

"The Lord reigns" which are repeated over and over in

Revelation. Such aphoristic repetition increases the quantity

of references without increasing the likelihood that the author

was broadly familiar with the contents of that source. Both

Isaiah and the Psalms are alluded to roughly twice as often as

the number of verses referenced. In the case of Daniel the

ratio is nearly three to one, with Amos nearly four to one. A

large number of allusions, therefore, does not necessarily

translate into a broad familiarity with the content of the book

as a whole. The Psalms rank second in terms of total number of

allusions, but only fifteenth in terms of the percentage of the

book referenced. Isaiah and Daniel, on the other hand, rank

high in both measurements.

By way of contrast, repeat references to Zechariah and

Ezekiel are relatively rare. In each case the total number of

allusions is only slightly greater than the number of verses

referenced. This finding would appear to substantiate the

assertion of Goulder, Vanhoye and others that Revelation follows

the structure and content of Ezekiel section by section.

 The overall picture indicates that the author of

Revelation was unquestionably familiar with most of the later

prophets and with the book of Exodus. While it is quite likely

that he was familiar with the entire OT as we know it, this

method can, given the current state of the evidence, offer

little conclusiveness with regard to the rest of the OT

documents (although the quantity of references to Genesis,

Deuteronomy, Kings and Chronicles might encourage one to

consider John familiar with them even though less than two

percent of any book is actually alluded to).

A glance at the results with regard to the extra-

canonical literature is not particularly encouraging. At no

point can we say that there is conclusive evidence that the

author of Revelation was familiar with any one of the listed

documents. This is particularly surprising with respect to the

book of Enoch. While the evidence of Qumran may lead us to

believe that the book was fragmented in the first century, we

would have expected that the apparent reference to so many

portions of the book as we know it would have yielded a higher

total of references and a larger percentage. We certainly

should not exclude the possibility that John was familiar with

Enoch, the Psalms of Solomon or 2 Maccabees, but the evidence

here collated is indecisive on that point. It rather points to

a special relationship between the author and the Old Testament,

alluding to it more frequently and more comprehensively than to

 other ancient sources.

It may be profitable to compare the results obtained

in this brief search with those which might be obtained when

other lists of allusions to antecedent literature in Revelation

are examined. Your suggestions with regard to reliable sources

for such an investigation would be greatly welcomed. It might

also be profitable to lay out in detail the pattern of citation

as it is found in various source documents. Here we may also be

able to trace the possibility that John had read some of these

source documents in fragmented form.

It is interesting, for example, that 13 of the 14

verses alluded to in Ethiopic Enoch are found in the first two

books, "The Parable of Enoch" and "The Similitudes of Enoch."

There is also a solitary reference to one of the Dream Visions.

Since the absence of the "Similitudes" at Qumran allows the

possibility that that portion of Enoch could have been written

after Revelation, it is not impossible that John was familiar

only with the introductory book, called by E. Isaac "The Parable

of Enoch (chaps. 1-36).2

By way of contrast, every chapter of Zechariah is

2
The Parable of Enoch (1-36)
8 verses
The Similitudes of Enoch (37-71)
5 verses
The Book of Heavenly Luminaries (72-82)
The Dream Visions (83-90)
1 verse
The Two Ways (Including the Apoc of Weeks) (91-107)
repeatedly referenced, with the exception of chapters 7-10 which

are never alluded to, at least according to Nestle. This is a

curious omission since scholars inclined to divide Zechariah

into two books from different eras generally divide the book

between chapters 8 and 9. John's usage of both sections is

abundantly clear so if his edition of Zechariah was fragmented

at all the apparent absence of chapters 7 to 10 in his thinking

could offer a challenge to current theories of fragmentation.

More likely, however, this omission simply indicates the

Revelator's relative disinterest in the content of chapters 7

through 10 with regard to his purpose in writing Revelation.

One thing is most clear, no matter how valuable this

type of research may ultimately prove, this presentation is only

the barest hint of a suggestion toward how the matter ought to

be approached. Hopefully this paper will stir a broader

interest in the whole question with the resulting fruitful

interaction of many minds.

In conclusion, we are not yet able to determine

whether the Patmos Public Library, or whatever library might

have been available to John at the time that he wrote

Revelation, was good, bad, or just indifferent. It may even be

that no library was immediately available to him, that he was

limited to the halls of his memory. But to the extent that we

can gain access to that library, in whatever form it took, we

can enhance our ability to appreciate the fantastic mysteries of

this fascinating book.
 REFERENCES TO THE OLD TESTAMENT IN REVELATION

Total Verses Total Percentage

The OT Books Allusions Referenced Verses Referenced

Genesis 43 25 1533 1.63%

Exodus 79 57 1212 4.70%
Leviticus 12 5 859 0.58%
Numbers 10 10 1261 0.79%
Deuteronomy 27 14 959 1.46%
Joshua 8 6 658 0.91%
Judges 5 3 618 0.49%
Ruth 0 0 85 0.00%
I Samuel 3 3 810 0.37%
II Samuel 12 4 695 0.58%
I Kings 25 11 816 1.35%
II Kings 16 10 719 1.39%
I Chronicles 15 6 942 0.64%
II Chronicles 14 3 822 0.36%
Ezra 2 2 280 0.71%
Nehemiah 6 2 406 0.49%
Esther 4 1 167 0.60%
Job 13 11 1070 1.03%
Psalms 163 88 2461 3.58%
Proverbs 8 4 915 0.44%
Ecclesiastes 0 0 222 0.00%
Song of Solomon 1 1 117 0.85%
Isaiah 260 127 1292 9.83%
Jeremiah 102 61 1364 4.47%
Lamentations 2 1 154 0.65%
Ezekiel 154 120 1273 9.43%
Daniel 152 56 356 15.73%
Hosea 14 10 197 5.08%
Joel 18 13 73 17.81%
Amos 27 8 146 5.48%
Obadiah 1 1 21 4.76%
Jonah 1 1 48 2.08%
Micah 5 4 105 3.81%
Nahum 6 2 47 4.26%
Habakkuk 2 2 56 3.57%
Zephaniah 4 4 53 7.55%
Haggai 0 0 38 0.00%
Zechariah 51 38 210 18.10%
Malachi 8 4 55 7.27%
 REFERENCES TO OTHER LITERATURE IN REVELATION

The Apocrypha
and Total Verses Total Percentage
Pseudepigrapha Allusions Referenced Verses Referenced

I Maccabees 0 0 924 0.00%

II Maccabees 6 10 558 1.79%
III Maccabees 3 2 228 0.88%
IV Maccabees 18 4 482 0.83%
Tobit 4 4 298 1.34%
Baruch 1 1 213 0.47%
Wisdom of Sirach 17 4 1390 0.29%
Wisdom of Solomon 13 5 439 1.14%
Psalms of Solomon 7 5 293 1.71%
Enoch 24 14 1061 1.32%