Revelation 21:1,2

The title: Revelation 21:1 a b = Revelation 20:11 c. Revelation 20:1 c = Revelation 20:13 a. The absence of the sea from John's ideal universe is due not to any Semitic horror of the ocean, nor to its association with Rome (Revelation 13:1), nor to the ancient idea of its dividing effect (“mare dissociabile,” “the unplumbed, salt, estranging sea,”), but to its mythological connexion with the primitive dragon-opponent of God, the last trace of whom is now obliterated. cf. Sib. ver. 159, 160, 447 (ἔσται δʼ ὑστατίῳ καιρῷ ξηρὸς πότε πόντος), Ass. Mos. x. 6, 4 Esd. 6:24, Test. Leviticus 4, etc., for this religious antipathy to the treacherous, turbulent element of water. “La mer est une annulation, une stérilization d'une partie de la terre, un reste du chaos primitif, souvent un chatiment de Dieu” (Renan, 449). Plutarch (de Iside, 7 f., 32) preserves the Egyptian sacred tradition that the sea was no part of nature (παρωρισμένην) but an alien element (ἀλλοῖον περίττωμα), full of destruction and disease. The priests of Isis (32) shunned it as impure and unsocial for swallowing up the sacred Nile. One favourite tradition made the sea disappear in the final conflagration of the world (R. J. 289), but John ignores this view. The world is to end as it began, with creation; only it is a new creation, with a perfect paradise, and no thwarting evil (Barn. vi. 13). His omission of the ocean is simply due to the bad associations of the abyss as the abode of Tehom or Tiâmat (cf. Oesterley's Evol. of Messianic Idea, 79 f., G. A. Smith's Jerusalem, i. 71 f., and Hastings' D. B. iv. 194, 195).