30. ASIA
READ: Revelation 1:4 through 1:11.
Revelation 1:4: “John to the seven churches which are in Asia.”
In Revelation 1:11
we read: “What thou seest write in a
book, and send it unto the seven churches…” The words “in Asia” are in the Greek text of verse four but are not in the Greek text of verse eleven.
The KJV in verse eleven inserts “which are in Asia” at the translator’s
privilege. This is an example of a translator assuming that the “in Asia”
of verse four represented the same literal seven churches named in verse
eleven. It is my belief that it did not.
The passage in 1:4 seems
to describe the geographical setting
of the addressees of the book, “in Asia.” Are these churches to be understood as merely seven literal
churches, located in Asia Minor at that period of time? Much time, effort, and
expense have been exerted to find the location of these churches. While some of
their locations are quite well attested, others are vague. Some of these
churches and their locations were so small and insignificant at the time that
there is no certainty as to their location, if they existed at all in the
natural sense.[i]
This suggests that the Revelator used
these seven churches symbolically.
Cosmic Geography
The
ancients used the stars for telling time and for navigation and the intimate
knowledge of the stars was extremely valuable for these purposes. While this
use of the stars was not astrology
neither was it the equivalent of our modern astronomy.
Perhaps other writers have named it more appropriately Cosmic Geography. Today’s Global
Positioning System uses this same concept.
Scholars now
recognize that in ancient times there was a sense of Cosmic Geography or, as
some call it Astrological Geography,[ii] or Zodiacal Geography, (Malina, pp. 103,
190). This system
likens certain geographical areas on earth to certain constellations or
configurations of stars in the heavens.[iii]
The constellations
are pictured as having been engraved by God upon the broad expanse of the
heavens: “Art thou
not it that hath cut Rahab, and wounded the dragon? (Isaiah 51:9). The word Rahab means “proud” as does its
kindred word Rachab, meaning “proud”
in the sense of pride in its broad expanse. The phrase cut in pieces means also “engraved.” In other words, God engraved
the broad expanse of the heavens with the constellations. He “wounded, (pierced, or transfixed), the dragon,” a constellation sometimes
called Draco or The Serpent. Compare Isaiah 27:1:
In that day the LORD with his
sore and great and strong sword shall punish leviathan the piercing serpent,
even leviathan that crooked serpent; and he shall slay the dragon that [is] in
the sea.
The great
constellation called Draco, “the Serpent,” appears to be impaled by the pole star, so that point cannot move,
although both ends of the Serpent
move about the pole; he is pierced, or transfixed, wounded.
So in the Book of
Revelation we have two maps in view, one earthly, and one heavenly. These seven
churches in their proper perspective are the earthly image of a heavenly
reality, just as the Temple was intended to be an image of
the heavens when rightly constructed and used. John, a mortal man, speaks to the literal, earthly churches with a message
that is intended to bring them into conformity to the spiritual heavenly
Pattern which he is allowed to view and
describe in the vision of Revelation 1:12-20. It is God’s will for the Churches
to be like the seven candlesticks in the right hand of Christ in the heavens.
Geographically,
Asia Minor, the location of the seven
literal churches, appears on a map to be shaped like a horse’s head, its nose
extended to the Bosporus, its mouth at Ephesus, (eph-sus in Hebrew, means “mouth of horse”), and its front hoof in a running position at
the Sinai.[iv] This is
an example of how the Revelator used Greek words and played on them with Hebrew
meanings.
The seven literal
churches may have been situated within Asia Minor in a pattern resembling the
prominent stars of the constellation we now commonly call the Big Dipper, but known variously in
ancient times as the Great Bear, or
Biblically, ‘รsh,[v] the
Sheepfold, from whence perhaps we can trace the etymology of the word Asia.
In the Greek text of 1:4 the term is: ฮท̀n tฮท́ ฮsฮน́a, “in the Asia.” This is a dative
phrase. The word Asia here could be the Hebrew word ‘รขsh transliterated into the Greek and given a dative case ending.
It might, therefore, be used symbolically as “the former (or lesser)
sheepfold,” meaning the Churches in Jerusalem. This symbolism is also borne out by Psalm 48:2 where Mount Zion, symbolizing Jerusalem, is said to be “on the sides of the north,” the location
of the seven-starred constellation called ‘รขsh.[vi] Whether
or not this etymology is true, the apocalyptic writer could well have used the
similarity of sounds as a means of play upon words, a known literary device in
the Hebrew Scriptures, especially apocalyptic writings.
The term ‘ayish is used in Job 38:32 but Job 9:9 spells the
same word ‘รขsh. In both cases the RSV
translates “the Bear,” but the KJV as “Arcturus,” (BDB, p.747, 736).[vii]
However, the idea of “the Bear” is a
Hellenistic idea and not the view held by
Old Testament Israel.[viii] There
it was used symbolically variously as the Menorah, the Seed Sower, the Threshing Wain, or the Greater
Sheepfold.[ix] These
names make it imminently appropriate as a symbol of the universal Church. Some scholars believe the vowel pointing should be iyรปsh, meaning “to lend aid, come to
help.” By metathesis this word in verb form would become yeshua`, “he comes to help, or save,” (BDB 747 and 736), the Hebrew form from which we have the English Jesus. Perhaps the writer used this also as a means
for a play upon words. If so, the phrase
would read: “…the churches that are in Jesus.”
The term seven churches should be understood to
mean “the Covenant Church,” for the Church is One Body, the Body of Christ, and therefore one Church, (Eph. 1:23; Romans 12:4, 5; 1Cor. 10:17; 12:12-20).
In the same manner, the seven Spirits
before the throne should be understood to mean “the Covenant Spirit,” for
there is One Spirit, (Ephesians 4:4).
The message of the
Book of Revelation is to the Churches. Since Jerusalem and the nation of the Jews, had
rejected the warnings, it is the Churches that now must be warned, lest they
fall into a similar error and reap a similar judgment. Just as the earthly city
and nation had been images of heavenly realities, so the
Church is now to be the Body of Christ in the earth. And just as
Jerusalem and the nation fell, so, too, does the Church suffer destruction when
she falls away from her Living God.
Eusebius describes the fall of the true
Church in terms reminiscent of the Fall of Jerusalem:
But all marvels pale before the archetypes, the metaphysical prototypes
and heavenly patterns of material things – I mean the re-establishment of the
divine spiritual edifice in our souls.
But when, through the envy and jealousy of the demon that loves evil,
she, [the Church], became by
her own free choice a lover of sensuality and evil, the Deity withdrew from
her, and bereft of a protector, she was soon captured, proving an easy prey to
the inveiglements of those so long bitter against her. Overthrown by the
battering-rams and engines of her unseen and spiritual foes, she came crashing
to the ground, so that not even one stone of her virtue remained standing on
another in her; she lay full length on the ground dead, her natural thoughts
about God gone without trace. As she lay prostrate, made as she was in the
image of God, she was ravaged not by that boar out of the wood visible to us,
but by some destroying demon and spiritual beasts of the field, who inflamed
her with sensual passions.[x]
The Church did not hold fast to the
warning.[xi]
[i]
Bruce J. Malina. On the
Genre and Message of Revelation. Peabody, Mass.:
Hendrickson Publishers, 1995, p. 73: "... socially
insignificant communities."
Hereafter cited in text.
[ii] Bruce M. Metzger, "Astrological Geography",
Chapter VII, Apostolic History and the
Gospel: Biblical and Historical Essays presented to F. F. Bruce
on his 60th Birthday, eds. W. Ward
Gasque, and Ralpha P. Martin, Grand Rapids, Michigan, Eerdman's Publishing Co.,
1970. 123-133.
[iii] See Metzger, Apostolic History,
123-133. Although Metzger discounts the
connection between the list of nations given in Acts 2:9-11 with a certain
astrological treatise by Paulus Alexandrinus who lived in the fourth century AD, he does not disprove the connection. He seems unaware
that the ancient view of the cosmos and the Biblical use of the stars
is not "astrology" but rather a unifying view of the universe.
Metzger, however, cannot deny a connection between geography and
astrology: "It cannot be denied
that in antiquity there may well have been some remote connexion between
geography and astrology, revealed perhaps in the custom of beginning to enumerate
a list of lands and countries starting in the East (at the rising of the sun).
At the same time, however, it is doubtful whether the average cultured Greek and Roman writers
were any more conscious of such a connexion than the modern Englishman is aware
of the astrological matrix from which the word 'disaster' arose," (Note 2,
p. 132).
Metzger seems to be
unaware of the fact that the whole earth was mapped in relation to the heavens,
that cartography and chronology depend upon a knowledge of the heavens, that in
ancient times navigation by land or sea depended upon a knowledge of the
heavens.
Another fact of which many are unaware is
that the Jews in the first century were scattered throughout the Roman Empire, and that there was a very strong, powerful and rich
colony in Babylon. He says of the phrase "Judean Mesopotamian"
that "Why Mesopotamia should deserve to
be called 'Judean' is not easily explained." This shows his total
unawareness of the strength of the Babylonian community of Jews.
As international merchants a working knowledge of the stars was indispensable
to their trades.
[iv] See Strong’s #5906. D. S.
Russell mentions that the
apocalyptic writers sometimes used their own versions of the alphabet for their
writings so that their enemies or the uninitiated could not read them,
(Russell, 109).
The Bosporous
is the strait that connects Asia Minor to Europe between the
Marmara Sea and the Black Sea.
Western Asia Minor is thus often referred to as the Bosporous. The name Bosporous
in Greek may be the words bous, and phoros, meaning a beast of burden. The Greek name Ephesus might have been
used to play upon its Hebrew meaning
"horse's mouth."
[v] See also Joseph A.
Seiss, The Gospel in the Stars, (Grand Rapids, Michigan, Kregel Publications), 178. Hereafter cited in
text.
[vi] The Qumran community
apparently believed that Paradise was situated in
the north, for the alignment of their graves shows that their heads were placed
to the south, contrary to Jewish and Christian practice of
placing the head to the west, so that at the resurrection they would rise
facing the north. See Joseph T. Milik, Ten Years of Discovery in the Wilderness of Judaea, English ed., RB
volume 65, (London, SCM Press, 1959), p. 104
and RB, vol.65, 1958, p. 77.
[vii] The term arctic
is from the Greek arktos, “a bear.” From this has come
also the name of the star Arcturus and the north
polar regions of the earth.
Ges. Lexicon
defines ‘รขsh as "The
constellation of the Bear... Ursa Major... Gk. and Roman, the wain ... a bier...
perhaps nightly watcher ... to go about by night; ... because of its never
setting," (Lexicon pp. 625,
659).
The word Arcturus is composed of artos + ourous, a ward, guard, (watcher).
The star now commonly known as Arcturus
is located by following the curve of the handle of the “Big Dipper.” It is easily located because of its
brilliance, a star of the first magnitude.
It may at times have been considered as part of the constellation of Ursa Major.
[viii] "Epiphanius further recounts
how they possessed a vocabulary of their own in Hebrew for the zodiac and
other celestial beings" (Malina, 74).
[ix] See my Commentary at 1:12 "Seven Golden
Lampstands".
[x] Eusebius, History of the
Church, 10.4.58.
[xi] See Santillana, and von Dechend, Hamlet’s
Mill. See also Thor Heyerdahl, Early Man and the
Ocean, A Search for the Beginnings of Navigation and Seaborne Civilizations, (Garden City, New York, Doubleday and Co, Inc.), 1979.
This lesson is an edited excerpt from my book Revelation In Context.
My Book is available at the Living Word Bookstore in Shawnee, Oklahoma and is also available online at www.amazon.com or www.xulonpress.com
Free downloads are available at www.revelationincontext.sermon.net .
