Tuesday, May 12, 2020

Allusions in the Book of Revelation to the Old Testament


Currently, I am studying the last book of the Bible, the "Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave Him to show to His bond-servants, the things which must soon take place; and He sent and communicated it by His angel to His bond-servant John."

After I worked through the text in my first round, I wanted to return and work through it while studying all its allusions and verbal parallels to the Old Testament. I started looking for a complete list of allusions, but I couldn't find a complete list. In the 404 verses of the Book of Revelation, it has several hundred allusions and verbal parallels to the Old Testament, more than any other New Testament book. I found a list here and here. I still wasn't convinced that these two lists were complete. Greg Beale makes frequent reference to these allusions to the Old Testament in his "Revelation: a shorter commentary." He also mentions in his John's Use of the Old Testament in RevelationSheffield Academic Press Ltd, Sheffield, England, 1998, p60, that the UBS3 Greek text has 394 references of allusions and verbal parallels to the Old Testament. I checked in my copy of the UBS5 Greek text; it has over 600 allusions and verbal parallels in the Book of Revelation to the Old Testament (Aland, Barbara & Aland, Kurt & Karavidopoulos, Johannes & Martini, Carlo M. & Metzger, Bruce, THE GREEK NEW TESTAMENT, Fifth Revised Edition, Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart, Germany, 2015, pp864-882).



Unfortunately, the allusions are ordered by Old Testament canonical book order in the UBS5, but I wanted it to be by Revelation chapter, verse order. So, I sat for a couple of nights after work retyping it all in the order that I wanted it. Below are the fruits of my labour, and I want you to benefit from it too.



Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...