Days of Vengeance - The Preterist Archive

APPENDIX A
APPENDIX A
The Levitical Symbolism in Revelation
Philip Carrington
The liturgical character of sections in Revelation has
often been pointed out; but I have seen no attempt to
study and elucidate the liturgical scaffolding into which
the visions are built. Archbishop Benson came very
near to it when he treated the book as a drama, and
printed it so as to display the choric structure. But
Revelation is not a drama; it is a liturgy. A drama deals
with the unfolding of personality, and the actors in it
must use their own personalities to interpret it. In
liturgy the hierophants must submerge their
personalities and identities in the movement of the
whole composition. It is a real literary triumph that a
sustained poem like Revelation should grip the attention
as it does without the assistance of human interest in
character; and that triumph is liturgical in character.
The author of the Revelation frequented the temple
and loved its liturgy; when he shut his eyes in Ephesus,
he could see the priests going about their appointed
tasks at the great altar of burnt-offering. That vision
forms the background of the whole poem.
I am astonished to find so few discussions on the temple
ritual, not only in connection with the Revelation, but
also in connection with the Palestinian background of
the New Testament generally. The recent advance in
this study has concerned itself with the eschatological
literature, and the oral teaching of the Rabbis; it has
neglected the temple, its priesthood, and worship. But
in the New Testament period the temple system was
central; after its destruction the Rabbis organized a new
Judaism on enlightened Pharisee lines. But it was a new
religion, not the old. The old religion died in the year
A.D. 70, and gave birth to two children; the elder was
modern Judaism without temple or priest or sacrifice;
the younger was Christianity, which was proud of
possessing all three.
What links Hebrews with Revelation is its insistence on
this fact. Christianity is the true heir of the old faith. To
it have been transferred the priesthood and the
sacrifice.
The New Universal Worship
When St. John came to the work of publishing his
visions twenty years after Jerusalem had fallen, one of
his main tasks was to provide a scheme or pattern for
Christian worship. There can be no doubt that he set
himself to do this consciously and deliberately; what is
more, he was successful. The “Anaphora: as the
consecration prayer of the Eucharist is called in the
East, follows the pattern he laid down. The “Canon” of
the Roman Mass and the Consecration Prayer of the
English Prayer Book do so, though less faithfully.
It seems reasonable to suppose that his liturgical work
was not done at random or in a spirit of theory. It must
have borne some sort of relation to the way Christian
worship was actually conducted at the time; analogy
suggests that if the older part of the book reflected the
worship of the old religion that had passed away, the
newer part would reflect that of the new religion which
had taken its place. Now the opening chapters 4 and 5,
though they belong to the later period of St. John’s
inspiration, do seem to be built upon a foundation of
older work, in which the following changes appear to
have been made: (1) a Throne takes the place of an
Altar, and (2) Twenty-four Elders on Thrones are
added. (See Charles, ad. loc.) But these changes
correspond to the picture of the Christian congregation
of the period suggested in the writings of St. Ignatius
(see Rawlinson in Foundations, on “The Origins of the
Christian Ministry”). The Throne of God represents
the chair of the bishop, and around him are grouped
the Elders. The number is chosen because of the
Twenty-four courses into which the Hebrew Priesthood
(and even the Levites and people) had been divided;
we may compare the picture of the High Priest Simon
in Ecclesiasticus 1 with his “garland” of priests.
We may therefore feel some confidence that we have
before us the actual arrangements of the Christian
liturgy, which was in its turn dependent on Hebrew
origins.
I have dealt in the text with the parallelisms between
the Four Zoa [living creatures], the Seven Lamps, the
Glassy Sea, etc., and the Cherubim, Candlestick, and
Laver of the Temple. In St. John they are variously
applied to the universal worship of all creation. This
universal worship finds expression in the Sanctus
(Holy, Holy, Holy), which is also used in the morning
prayers of the synagogue, where it is associated with the
thought of creation; in the Revelation the praise of God
for his creation is uttered by the Elders, who prostrate
themselves at the sound of the Sanctus.
This is the “first movement” of the Anaphora, of the
Christian Eucharist, in which men “join with angels
and archangels and all the company of heaven.” Most
of the Greek liturgies show traces of the “Axios” or
“Axion” (worthy) of Revelation; at rather a long remove
Reprinted from Philip Carrington, The Meaning of the Revelation (London: SPCK, 1931). I cannot recommend all of Carrington’s opinions – for instance his ridiculous
JEDP-style “documentary hypothesis” of Revelation’s authorship, and his views on the supposed evolution and late date of the text – but I believe that his overall
contribution to our understanding of St. John’s meaning is very valuable and more than compensates for his shortcomings. Instead of registering my disagreement
every time Barrington makes an objectionable statement, I shall take the risk of expecting the reader to think for himself.
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