Revelation is Real
The War Between the Two Beasts and the Two Witnesses:
A Chiastic Reading of Revelation 11.1-14.5
Library of New Testament Studies-LNTS 283
by Antoninus King Wai Siew
T & T Clark, 2005 ix + 331 pages, EnglishCloth ISBN: 0567030210
List Price: $140.00Your Price: $98.00
www.eisenbrauns.com/wconnect/wc.dll?ebGate~EIS~~I~SIEWARBET
Dear Friends,
A number of people and church members have enquired about my book. Sorry I can't do much about the pricing; you have to ask my publishers why it was priced so steep. I understand scholars get 50% discount. Please insist on airmail if you order from my publishers. Some have called me and said they haven't received the book they ordered since last November. Maybe it is still somewhere in South China Seas! No one in Malaysia except a few of my closest friends have read the book since its publication in Oct 2005.
I would love your comments. You can either email me or leave your comments at my blog.
My book is about the events of the last 3 1/2 years before Jesus' second coming. I want to say that writing the thesis and later revising it for publication has taken the best part of 5 years. For 3 1/2 years, I received great inspiration to study the book. Before it was a closed book, but by early 1999 to July 2002 until I finished my first draft I can testify that I learnt something new about Revelation everyday. In preparation I studied the Greek text for 4 months; the original texts of Daniel especially the Theodotion version; the Hebrew and Septuagint of major parts of Isaiah, Psalms and Zechariah are crucial too and many books besides. My book discusses 29 OT books and 13 NT books as possible sources for John in writing Rev 11.1-14.5. The Hodayot and the Qumran messianism are also significant sources.
I argue for the building of a literal temple in Jerusalem before the final 3 1/2 years. I also look at the identity of the two witnesses and the two beasts. My main thesis as per title is that the war in heaven between Michael and the dragon results in the the war between the two witnesses and the two beasts on earth. May you be blessed as you read. There is yet more light in His Word. I am a student of God's Word and may He continue to lead us into all Truth by His Spirit. Come, Lord Jesus!
Thursday, June 01, 2006
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2 comments:
Certain important details of the text of Revelation indicate that the mission of the two witnesses actually precedes the reign of the beast, and that the author is therefore describing a final 7-year period.
The popularity of the idea that the two witnesses are active at the same time as the beast, in a final 31/2 year period, may be due to the persistence of the so-called Enoch and Elijah tradition carefully elucidated by Richard Bauckham in 'The Martyrdom of Enoch and Elijah: Jewish or Christian' (JBL 95/3 [1976] 447-58). This tradition appears to have been elaborated from the fourth century AD, from a combination of Rev 11 with various pre-christian elements, but it differs from Rev 11 in having the two witnesses active at the same time as the Antichrist figure (the beast): “The point of most consistent divergence is the purpose of the mission of Enoch and Elijah. The two witnesses in Rev 11:3-13 are preachers of repentance; they are not represented as preaching against Antichrist specifically; they encounter Antichrist only when their witness is completed. In the Enoch and Elijah tradition, almost without exception, the two prophets are sent against Antichrist, after his reign has begun. This may mean that they are the instruments of his destruction (…) but it most commonly means that they expose him as an imposter” (ibid. 453). It is quite possible that this tradition constitutes a pre-understanding (Vorverstandnis) of Rev 11,3-13 that influences its interpretation in ways that are not strictly faithful to the text.
Dear John,
Thanks for your comment. I do think that the chiastic structure that I propose for Rev 11:1-14:5 does go some way to explain that the two periods of 1260 days and 42 months can be viewed as contemporaneous and not consecutive. The two witnesses are not primarily preachers of repentance but the wearing of sackcloth suggests that they are in mourning over the desolation of the rebuilt temple and that must coincides with the beast's ascent to trample the holy city in the last 42 months before the kingdom of the Lord and his Christ dawns on earth (Rev 11:15).
Tony.
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