Revelation 5:6

Christ, crucified and risen, is in the centre. To him all things bow and sing. It is prosaic to attempt any local definition, as though the author had some architectural plan in his mind (ἐν μ. = “half-way up the throne,” or by repetition = “between,” cf. Genesis 1:7), or to wonder how so prominent a figure had hitherto escaped his notice. Plainly the ἀρνίον did not originally belong to the mise-en-scène of iv., though the symbol may have none the less had an astral origin (= Ram, in Persian zodiac). The prophet brilliantly suggests, what was a commonplace of early Christianity, that the royal authority of Jesus was due to his suffering for men, but the framework of the sketch is drawn from messianic dogmas which tended to make Christ here a figure rather than a personality. ἀρνίον (like θηρίον, diminutive only in form) is not aries (so variously Havet and Selwyn, 204 208), nor substituted (Vischer, Rauch) for the “lion” of the original Jewish source, but probably applied (cf. Hort on 1 Peter 1:19) to Jesus from the messianic interpretation of Isaiah 16:1 or Isaiah 53:7, though the allusions elsewhere to the Exodus (Exodus 15:2 f.) and the Johannine predilection for the paschal Lamb suggest that the latter was also in the prophet's mind. The collocation of lion and lamb is not harder than that of lion and root (Revelation 5:5), and such an editor as Vischer and others postulate would not have left “lion” in Revelation 5:5 unchanged. Christ is erect and living (cf. Revelation 14:1 and Abbott's Joh. Vocabulary, 1725), ὡς ἐσφαγμένον (as could be seen from the wound on the throat), yet endowed with complete power (κέρατα, Oriental symbol of force, cf. reff. and the rams' horns of the Egyptian sun-god) and knowledge. For ἀρνίον and ἀμνός, cf. Abbott, 210 f. In Enoch lxxxix. 44 f. (Gk.) David is ἄρνα prior to his coronation and Solomon “a little sheep” (i.e., a lamb). ὀφθαλμοὺς κ. τ. λ., the function ascribed by Plutarch (de defectu orac. 13) to daemons as the spies and scouts of God on earth. The naïve symbolism is borrowed from the organisation of an ancient realm, whose ruler had to secure constant and accurate information regarding the various provinces under his control. News (as the Tel-el-Amarna correspondence vividly shows) was essential to an Oriental monarch. The representation of Osiris in Egyptian mythology consisted of an eye and a sceptre (cf. Revelation 2:27), denoting foresight and force (Plut. de Iside, 51), while the “eyes” and “ears” of a Parthian monarch were officials or officers who kept him informed of all that transpired throughout the country. Elsewhere the seven spirits are identified with seven torches, but John is more concerned to express from time to time his religious ideas than to preserve any homogeneity of symbolism (seven eyes similarly varied in Zech. cf. reff.). The inconsistency cannot, in a writing of this nature, be taken as evidence of interpolation or of divergent sources, though it may be an editorial gloss. An analogous idea underlies Plutarch's explanation of the “travelling” power of Isis (Iside, 60), for which he adduces the old Greek etymology (= knowledge and movement, θεὸς from θέειν “to run”); and this etymology in turn (cf. Otto on Theoph. ad Autolyc. i. 4) reaches back to a star cultus. N.B. In the Apoc. ἀρνίον, which is opposed to θηρίον and is always (except Revelation 13:11 f.) used of Jesus, denotes not only the atoning sacrificial aspect of Christ (Revelation 5:6; Revelation 5:9 f., Revelation 5:12; Revelation 12:11) but his triumphant power (horned) over outsiders (Revelation 17:14) and his own people (Revelation 7:16 f.). Neither the diminutive (cf. below, on Revelation 12:17) nor the associations of innocence and gentleness are to be pressed (cf. Spitta, Streitfragen der Gesch. Jesu, 1907, 173 f.). The term becomes almost semi-technical in the Apocalypse. As a pre-Christian symbol, it is quite obscure. The text and origin of the striking passage in Test. Ios. xix. do not permit much more than the inference that the leader there (a μόσχος) becomes an ἀμνός, who, supported by Judah the lion, ἐνίκησεν πάντα τὰ θηρία. The virginbirth is probably a Christian interpolation. No sure root for the symbolism has yet been found in astro-theology (Jeremiah 15 f.). For attempts to trace back the idea to Babylonian soil, cf. Hommel in Exp. Times, 14:106 f., Havet, 324 f., and Zimmern in Schrader, 597 f. One Babylonian text does mention the blood of the lamb as a sacrificial substitute for man, which is all the more significant as the texts of the cultus are almost wholly destitute of any allusion to the significance of the blood in sacrifice. But no influence of this on pre-Christian messianism, or of contemporary cults on this element of Christian symbolism, can be made out from the extant evidence. In any case, it would merely supply the form for expressing a reality of the Christian experience.