Before Jerusalem Fell - EntreWave

12 BEFORE JERUSALEM FELL
all, as Reuss observed, “Ideas of the Apocalypse are so widely different
that a summary notice of the exegetical literature, mingling all
together, would be inexpedient. “4 3
Although he never wrote a commentary on Revelation, w that
master theologian and exegete Benjamin B. Warfield proffered the
following observation regarding the book: “The boldness of its symbolism
makes it the most dificult book of the Bible: it has always
been the most variously understood, the most arbitrarily interpreted,
the most exegetically tortured.”4 5
Milton Terry in his 1911 classic,
Biblical He-rm.eneutics (which is still widely employed in seminaries
today), noted that “no portion of the Holy Scriptures has been the
subject of so much controversy and of so many varying interpretations
as the Apocalypse of John.”% Eminent church historian Philip
Schaff cautioned that “no book has been more misunderstood and
abused; none calls for greater modesty and reserve in interpretation.
“4 7
Swete agreed:
To comment on this great prophecy is a harder task than to comment
on a Gospel, and he who undertakes it exposes himself to the charge
of presumption. I have been led to venture upon what I know to be
dangerous ground. . . .
. . . .
The challenge [to unravel the Revelation] was accepted almost from
the first, but with results which shew by their wide divergence the
dilliculties of the task. Schools of Apocalyptic interpretation have
arisen, varying not only in detail, but in principle.w
Isbon T. Beckwith has suggested that Revelation probably stands
without parallel in this regard throughout all range of literature: “No
43. Eduard Wilhelm Eugen Reuss, History of the Sacred Scri@mJ of th New Testammt
(Edinburgh: T.& T. Clark, 1884), p. 155.
44. He did write several important theological treatises on various aspects of Revelation
and Revelation studies, such as his entry under “Revelation” in Philip Schti, cd., A
Religious Emyclofiediu: Or Dictionmy of Biblical, Historical, Doctrinal, and Pra&al Theolo~
(New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1883), vol. 3; his “The Apocalypse” (1886); “The
Millennium and the Apocalypse” (1904); etc.
45. Wartield, “Revelation,” in Scha~ Er@opedza 3:2034.
46. Milton S. Terry, Biblical Herm.meutws (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, [1911] 1974),
p. 466.
47. Schaff, Htstoy 1:826.
48. Swete, Revelation, pp. xii, ccvii.