The Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls: The ... - josephprestonkirk

276 THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS AND THE APOCALYPSE OF JOHN
witness, as Rev 3:21; 12:11; and 19:8 make clear. This washing is a piece
of symbolism drawn from the holy war tradition (1QM 14.2–3).
However, what in the scrolls is a washing of the robes to remove sinful
Gentiles’ blood is in the Apocalypse the (white-)washing of robes in the
blood of the Lamb. This explanation “achieves, by its startling paradox,
a decisive reinterpretation of the holy war motif.” 66 The Qumran scrolls
also use garments in a symbolic way (1QS 4.8; cf. 1QM 14.2–3), but not
to the same effect.
The Angelic Liturgy (4Q400–407; 11Q17) provides some interesting parallels
with Revelation. Besides its fragmented view of a heavenly temple,
the expressions of praise in the Liturgy are somewhat similar to the expressions
of praise in Revelation—especially in chapters 4–5. In both writings
the temple itself is animate, and both speak of silence in heaven. 67
There are also many “false parallels” between the scrolls and
Revelation. For instance, the detailed description of the woman in labor
who bears a male child in Revelation 12 may invite consideration of the
woman in labor who bears a male child in 1QH 11.7b–18. However, in
1QH the woman and her labor serve as symbols of the writer’s own distress,
and the male child plays a rather insignificant role. Nevertheless,
both the mother in distress and the child who is born safely through distress
serve as symbols of salvation through tribulation.
CONCLUSION
There are many points of similarity as well as many points of difference
between the scrolls and the Apocalypse of John. The Apocalypse perhaps
more consciously creates and develops the symbolic world, and it has the
“advantage” of being a single work written or edited in a short period of
time. We see such conscious symbolism in the apocalyptic narrative of
the throne room scene in Revelation 4–5. There a lion is introduced, but
what appears is a standing, slaughtered lamb with seven eyes and seven
horns. This lamb then goes to the One seated on the throne and takes
out of his right hand a scroll sealed with seven seals. This is all a highly
creative and self-conscious use of symbolism in a style seldom
approached in the Qumran scrolls, except, perhaps in the Angelic Liturgy.
cf. also 19:8). Probably the latter idea is not that their deaths atone for their sins, but
that the moral probity of their lives as faithful witnesses is sealed in their martyrdom
and is their active participation in the redemption won for them by Christ (1:5b)”;
Bauckham, Climax of Prophecy, 229.
66. Bauckham, ibid., 227.