Why Are the Dragon & Woman in Revelation 12? | Ian Paul

In this episode of Exploring the Language of Scripture on Revelation, Daniel Mikkelsen is joined by Ian Paul—Anglican minister, New Testament scholar, and author of the Tyndale Commentary on Revelation—for a wide-ranging conversation on the meaning and message of Revelation 12.

From the strange imagery of the pregnant woman and the dragon to the central question of the problem of evil, Revelation 12 offers both a cosmic drama and a message of hope. Ian Paul explains why this chapter is often seen as the heart of Revelation, unpacks its use of myth and symbol, and shows how it speaks to fragile first-century life and to our world today.

Whether you’ve wrestled with apocalyptic literature before or are new to Revelation, this episode explores what makes this text unique, how it fits within its historical context, and what it means to trust Christ in the face of evil.

Don’t Miss the Next Episode:
A conversation with Steve Walton on whether Acts contains eyewitness accounts.

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Chapters:
00:00 – Coming up...
01:04 – Meet Ian Paul: Scholar of Revelation
02:43 – How Biblical Languages Change the Way We Read Scripture
11:36 – What Exactly Is Apocalyptic Literature?
21:09 – Why Revelation 12 Is the Heart of the Book
27:18 – The Pregnant Woman and the Dragon: Decoding the Imagery
36:54 – Reading Revelation Through Its First-Century World
39:52 – Exile, Exodus, and the Journey from Tribulation to Hope
41:14 – The Woman’s Offspring: A New Kind of Family in Christ
44:48 – Fragile First-Century Life and Revelation’s Message
50:17 – Revelation 12: Past, Present, and Future
57:31 – How Revelation Shapes Our Lives Today

Music Credits:
Music from #Uppbeat
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Podcast Keywords:
biblical languages, New Testament, Old Testament, Christ, bible study,  Relationship with God, learn biblical languages, Biblical Theology, Christianity, Covenants, New covenant, old covenant, language acquisition, Biblical Greek, Biblical Hebrew.

Transcript

0:00

Can I just point out what's going on here? You got a pregnant woman, she's about to give birth and in front of her is a dragon who's going to eat the baby. All right. Now this is just a bit weird. It is very weird, but In the last episode, you mentioned that all interpreters agree that chapter 12 is central to the Book of Revelation. Why is that the case? There's chapter 12, you get this vision of this, the climactic vision really of what is the problem of evil in the world? And instead of seeing the phenomena of evil, you actually see the agent of evil here, this primordial figure, the red dragon. The emperor says, I am the Apollo figure. I am the one who will destroy those chaos monster who will keep you safe. The narrative of Revelation is, we're going to pantomime mode here where we say, no, he isn't, he's behind you. No. The one who has defeated the chaos monster is Jesus. So life in the first century was very brutish, very short. It was a very, very fragile world. And in that fragile world, here's the question. Who do you trust? Who do you look to for salvation? Welcome back to another episode of Exploring a Language of Scripture, brought to you by NT Greek Tutoring, the place for personalized Greek learning in your spare time. I'm your host, Daniel Mikkelsen, the founder of NT Greek Tutoring and a PhD candidate, New Testament University of Edinburgh. This podcast exists to make gems from biblical studies accessible to everyday Christians and show how the biblical languages opens up scripture. Our aim is to increase your love for God and his word so that we become more joyful witnesses for his mission. And today I'm delighted and honored to have Ian Paul back on the podcast. Ian is an Anglican minister, em New Testament scholar, and who is associated with Fuller Theological Seminary, Kirby Laing Center in Cambridge. He also runs the blog Psephizo, em which is a blog about biblical studies, contemporary issues relevant to the church. Ian, as mentioned in the first episode, that he has published extensively em on Revelation. em In our previous episode we discussed how can we read Revelation without any fear. And if you haven't seen it, I would suggest you go back and watch that over before watching this, because this episode was built on it. Because today we will also be talking about Revelation, but with a little more narrow focus as we will be discussing some interesting remarks Ian made in the first episode about the dragon and pregnant woman in Revelation 12. which I would like to go deeper into. So you're excited to learn more about chapter 12 of Revelation and how that is central to the book of Revelation, then stick around for that. This time we couldn't do it in person, but it's no less of an honor to have you back on the podcast, Ian. Welcome here. very much, Daniel, really good to join you. Wonderful. Do we have anything else you want to add before we jump into some questions? coffee here. I know you've got your glass of water. So if folks want to get their coffee and you know, put it on pause and then draw up and relax and enjoy what's going to unfold. Brilliant, yes that sounds like a very good suggestion. em So, as we already discussed in the first episode, you were on how you got into biblical languages, I don't want to ask that question again, but I want to ask you to elaborate a little bit on how you experienced knowing the biblical languages, how that opened up the scripture for you without necessarily using the same examples as you used last time. sure. I just think it's really helpful and really important. mean, it does a number of different things for us. I mean, the first thing it does is remind us that whenever we open scripture, we're actually going on a cross-cultural journey. ah And you know, someone who's living in their second language, that when you inhabit the forms of another language, you begin to understand something of a slightly different way people approach things, the way people talk about things and the agenda. So that's an important reminder, an important kind of discipline for us. I think the second thing that it does is it makes us slow down. Unless you become completely fluent in another language, always have to... So there's a barking behind that's my dog Barney there, he's always greeting visitors. So he sometimes makes an appearance on my podcast. It makes you slow down and read more carefully as well because it's, I think something I've become more and more aware of and more and more wants to communicate in my teaching. with just ordinary readers of the Bible is to say, look, we live in a very different world in relation to texts from the world of the first century. So, you know, I've got lots of books behind me, but even if you're not in a particular book culture, you'll be overwhelmed with words and have access to books. And that makes us sort of skim through stuff really quickly. If you're on the internet, you scroll through things all the time. Scroll is quite a poignant word, actually. In the world of the first century, people actually had access to very few manuscripts. And when you think about the writers of the New Testament, for most of the writers of the New Testament, they wrote one thing in their entire life. So they took care about it. And I think one of the things we need to do in our reading of scripture is to slow down and pay attention. You know, when you've got a finite number of words to fit on your parchment, you choose those words really carefully. And we need to just sort of stop and think, have, why has Paul, why have the gospel writers, why have they chosen, why in the book of Revelation, why has John chosen? to use these particular words. I think the other aspect for me is just constantly I'm seeing new connections and new emphasis that you just miss in the English. I think I mentioned before that a friend of mine, James and I, do a YouTube video on the readings, lecture readings for the week. And we've just been looking at Luke 12 and just a couple of examples from there. ah two weeks ago, we looked at Luke 12.35. So in most English translations it says something like, stay dressed for action or be ready for action, be dressed ready for service. But the Greek text says, and you can see this in older translations like the authorized version or other ones which are more word for word, but I'm just looking at the ESV which is normally quite word for word. But again, the ESV translates the metaphor, be dressed for action. What Jesus actually says is, have your loins girded, wrapped around. And your loins are, you know, this middle part of your body. And two things help us with that or that does two things for us in recognizing that language. Number one, it takes us into the culture of the first century, where men generally would have worn long robes and uh those were good for walking slowly around in a hot climate. If you were going to either be ready to do work or if you're going to fight as a soldier, what you need to do is gather up your long uh garment, put it up between your legs and then wrap it around and tuck it into your belt which meant your legs were then revealed and you could either work or you could run or fight or whatever. that's quite, it makes the image quite a lot more vivid and on the video I actually put up a picture of somebody girding their loins. The second thing it does is that you suddenly realize from the Greek text that this is actually a phrase, in the Greek text I'm looking at it's in italics to show you this is a quotation from the Old Testament and it's particularly a old uh quotation from the Exodus narrative where at midnight they had to gird their loins, be ready for action. And it says also have your lamps lit. because it was at night. So actually Jesus is saying here you are you have been delivered from the slavery of sin. You're on your way to the promised land. You need to be ready for action. Just as the Israel was ready for action in the Exodus narrative. So you get a whole nother series of connections there made to the text just by looking at the Greek. And it gives the passage You know, huge amount, much more depth than we would do if we were just reading in English. In English it just says, hey, be ready for action. In Greek it says, look, this is what it's all about. And this is why it really matters theologically as well. So that's just an example of how reading the Greek text makes such a difference. One other little example in the following passage that we've just looked at, we're looking at this week, the really strange saying of Jesus in Luke 12, 49, I have come to cast fire on the earth. Now there's a whole series of things we could say about that. But just notice in Greek, in Greek the first word is, πῦρ (pur), it's 'fire'. Fire I have come to cast. And it just again shifts the emphasis. So whereas English looks like Jesus is talking about he's coming and then he's casting fire, right up front in Greek it says, 'Fire I've come to cast on the earth.' So again, you just get a just a better insight into what Jesus' emphasis is and what a startling and puzzling. and striking saying that is. Yeah, that's a bit strange and what does it actually mean then? What? It means to him to cast fire. Yeah, okay, sure, sure, no problem. Yeah, maybe one more example before we dive into Revelation. gosh, I've given you lots already, haven't I? The other thing that I find as well, apart from Greek, is actually reading in another language. I don't know if I mentioned this example before of reading Acts chapter one in French. I don't think I mentioned this to you. You did mention reading in French before, but I don't know if it was Acts. Well, it's just interesting that in Acts 1 I noticed that Jesus taught for 40 days, taught the disciples about the kingdom in the power of the Holy Spirit. And again, either reading in Greek or reading in another language is not your first language, slows you down. I'd read that passage so many times and never noticed that even after his resurrection Jesus needed the power of the Spirit to teach the disciples. So it's another example of how just slowing down and reading more carefully helps you see what's in the text. And you can easily... um there's another example actually from preaching. Here's another one which many people are really struck by. In Acts 13, Paul delivers a woman possessed of a young girl, slave girl possessed of a spirit. And again, in English text it says she had a spirit which enabled her to predict the future. In Greek it says she has a Python spirit, which is going to connect with Revelation 12 today. That's really significant. Yeah, she has a Python spirit. So what... What that helped me tease out when I was preaching is to say, look, yes, there was personal deliverance here. Yes, there was deliverance for the girl from the oppression because she was possessed by the slave and that meant she was possessed by the spirit which enslaved her. And therefore the men enslaved her to make money from her foretelling. But also it was something about releasing her from the assumptions of her culture because the the mention of a python spirit takes you to the... the priestess of Delphi, the oracle of Delphi, and a whole belief system about good fortune and about the python spirit and all the stuff that comes out, the fissures, the smoke coming out of the fissures and the fact that the python was behind the oracles of the priestess. So it was actually opens a whole door into the way that the gospel not only set people free individually, not only had an economic impact, Luke makes a lot of that in the chapter. and actually all through Acts where the gospel has an economic impact, it affects people's finances, but actually challenge some basic assumptions of the culture as well. And actually that was something that I could mention in my preaching and people were, well, number one, they were fascinated by the detail. Number two, it made them really think about it, so the gospel actually is gonna come and challenge some assumptions of our culture, not just liberators within our culture, but liberators from our culture and the way that our culture can oppress and enslave people. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's an excellent point. And I think that that's a good way to like, drive into Revelation. But maybe just before we get into the like more detailed questions on chapter 12, you maybe want to recap, could you recap what apocalyptic literature is just if people don't have that in there just quickly? there's there's a lot of debate. I'm just getting the Greek text up in front of me here so we can talk about it. Or Greek and Italian. I'm trying to learn Italian at the moment too for holidays. It's good to read, read it in. Because you do find it's really interesting when you've got a uh that example of the Python spirit is interesting looking at other language translations. And in fact, uh I think it was Italian translation did did mention the Python spirit, whereas most English translations don't. But I don't think there are any English translations that mentioned the Python spirit there. Yeah. I mean, there's been quite a lot of debate about exactly what apocalyptic literature is, what are the marks, hallmarks of apocalyptic. One of the dangers of the conversation has always been to kind of what I would say, reify genre, as if genre is this thing on the shelf that we lift off and we take down when we want to speak. In fact, the genre is about convention, number one. And when you talk about a particular genre, there isn't that that's not defined in any objective way. What happens when we speak or when we write is that we choose a style of writing, we choose conventions in our writing which reflect A, what we want to communicate and B, what our relationship is between ourselves as the writer or the speaker and our audience. So for instance, if I want to write a love poem to my wife, I will use language which matches the conventions of love poems as I know them. My love is like a red, red rose. How do I love thee, let me count the ways. And typically, that will use particular kinds of quite dense metaphor. ah If I want to communicate some of the urges in an email, I'll write it in a business-like and a direct way. And again, there are particular conventions within that. So we need to recognize that genre is about identifying the kinds of common conventions that similar literature has. And therefore, when we define a genre, it's a bit of an artifice, it's a reflection on that. It's not something that we take off the shelf. And this is where I think scholars have really struggled with the genre of the Book of Revelation and what apocalyptic literature is, because of course we've got lots of Jewish apocalyptic and typically if you look at four Ezra, one or two Ezra's, you'll see certain conventions, you'll see the um often it'll be pseudonymous so that it'll be in the name of an uh ancient figure. This figure will go on a what looks like a heavenly journey. Often they'll have an angelic accompanier and the angel will be an angelus interpreter, an angel who can interpret these visions for them. Very often in Jewish Apocalypse they're quite mundane. They really are about the contemporary political issues. And Revelation has some of those features. There's lots of angels going on. John appears to go on some sort of heavenly journey, although I have real questions about whether that's true or not. I think John reconfigures space and time in a particular way. ah And of course, the one thing that John doesn't have is an interpreting angel. It's very striking, although it means he kind of sets up to expect it. He starts off by talking about God sent his angel to his servant John and the angel never appears. At the end, mentions an angel well. Actually, once or twice, John has one of the elders who explains things to him. The elder explains things in chapter seven and he has an angel who's guiding him around the city in chapters 21 and 22. But he doesn't fall into that kind of expectation of Jewish literature. So. It's bit like the writing of James Joyce, if anyone knows their Irish literature. James Joyce writing Ulysses really kind of broke the mold in terms of expectations of genre and genre change. And there is a sense in which John also breaks the mold in terms of generic expectations. So sometimes it looks like conventional apocalyptic. You've got a lot of marks at the beginning and end that look like it's a letter. It describes itself as a prophecy. And of course, there's that saying in the text that the spirit of the Testament of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy. So it looks like testimony as well. That was another recognized kind of writing, ancient testimony. And the other thing which I think is underrated in terms of the genre of revelation is this hymnic material, which we have in the middle of chapter 12. And so one of the things that's distinctive about Revelation is that it includes the hymnic alongside the apocalyptic, the prophetic and the epistolic, epistolary. But also the other thing that he does is switching from one genre to another. And that has a particular effect on the reader as Yeah, that makes very good sense. And it's also quite interesting, for example, if you compare it relation to other like apocalyptic genres that it, think Paul Foster was mentioning to me that it's actually not quite as like, you can say, gurry as, and, and kind of like, it's split it not in the sense that it's sometimes used, but it's very vivid language, very dramatic language. That's probably the better word. is and I mean, I've published articles on this specifically that he uses a very particular kind of metaphor. Well it comes back to my original PhD was on Revelation 12 and 13. And I was using the work of the French philosopher Paul Ricœur to understand metaphorical language and how it functions. And in fact, a comment from one commentator in 19th century, which I've borrowed, and that's it's hypercatastatic metaphor. And that's a lovely long word. What it means is that There are, metaphors and similes function in different ways, in different levels, in different degrees of impact. So you could say, I could say, my friend eats like a pig. Well, that's just a simile. I mentioned my friend. I do a comparison with it. By the way, what's interesting is that when you say someone eats like a pig, you don't actually mean they eat like a pig because pigs are actually quite clean and tidy. and they're not known for having a big appetite. But when you say my friend eats like a pig, it's conventional to say, okay, he's very hungry and eats a lot and he's very messy. That's what generally that simile means. But then you could say, my friend is a pig. So you then moved, strictly speaking, from a simile to a metaphor, because my friend is not a pig. One of the things that Ricœur helps us with is saying that when you use a metaphor, the predication in the metaphor, A is B also tells you at the same time A is not B. Unless you're a farmer and one of your best friends is one of the pigs you keep, in which case it's not a metaphor, it's literal. But that's the whole point. When you say A is B, how do know it's a metaphor? You only know it's a metaphor because it's not actually true. That A is not B, my friend is not a pig. And that's why A is, and my friend is a pig, makes sense as a metaphor. So metaphors assert something and deny something at the same time. But then you could, then I could simply say, that pig came around for dinner. Now that is what I'll call a hypercatastatic metaphor, which is that the subject is hidden underneath the vehicle of the metaphor. So the fact that I'm referring to my friend, you would not know that unless you knew the context. When I say that pig is coming for dinner, well, if I was a farmer and I did have a pig coming around, then that would be literal. But most people assume it's metaphorical. here's the thing, two dynamics of this, and this is how revelation functions. When I say that pig is coming for dinner, You can see that going straight to the vehicle pig and hiding the subject makes it much more emotive and much more powerful. But the second thing it does is allows the phrase to be reused by other people in other contexts. So someone else could say, that pig came around for dinner and they could mean, we'll be referring to their friend because I haven't specified who it is. So it gives it much more emotional power on the one hand, but also, means it could be transferred from one context to another. And both of those things are really characteristic of Revelation. It's uh a highly emotive text and that's why it's both useful but also people are very suspicious of it because it seems very dangerous, very emotive. But it means that it can be applied from one context to another. in chapter 12 we have the dragon and then we have the beast from the sea and the beast from the land and of course people have identified the beast with all sorts of things in their own world. They said that Ronald Reagan in American politics, the president of America was the beast. They said that Adolf Hitler in Germany was the beast. Luther implied in his translation of Luther's Bible that the Pope was the beast. So one of the illustrations in an early Luther Bible is of the woman in chapter 17 riding the beast with a papal tiara on, a papal crown on, showing that for Luther. So what Revelation is able to do is people are able to reapply it in their own context and try to rip it away from its original context. And that's why reading the book of Revelation in its first century context is vital, because we have to ask the question. When John talks about the woman, when he talks about the dragon, when he talks about the beast, What is that a hyper-catastatic metaphor for? You when I say, that pig came for dinner, which friend am I talking about? You need to ask that question to understand the power of the text. So in the last episode you mentioned that chapter two, all interpreters agree that chapter 12 is the central, em essential to the book of Revelation. Why is that the case? Learning New Testament Greek can be a real challenge. If that's been your experience, I've put together a free PDF guide called Why Learning Greek Could Be a Struggle and How to Move Forward. Inside you'll find the most common pitfalls and my simple three step framework to help you start reading Greek with more confidence. Get your free copy today by clicking the link in the description below or the pinned comment. Now back to the episode. So in the last episode you mentioned that all interpreters agree that chapter 12 is the central, em essential to the book of Revelation. Why is that the case? There's two main reasons one is simply a grammatical reason and the other really is the structural reason structural theological reason the grammatical reason is that All through the sort of as it were strictly visionary section from chapter 4 so chapter 1 he has the He turns to see the voice as Jesus chapters 2 & 3 you have these Messages which apparently are from the risen Jesus though of course at the end of each message It says here what the spirit says to the church which shows that revelation theologically is trinitarian the words of Jesus are carried by the Spirit to God's people. But in that section from chapter 4, have this vision of worship in heaven and you have the vision of the one on the throne and then it turns out there's not one on the throne but the one on the throne and the lamb. what we would call the father and the son united there, reigning. All the way through that section, maybe a slight exception of chapter 11 where there's a long verbal account from an angel of the two witnesses. But every vision is structured by and I saw, and I heard, and I saw, and I heard. These often go together as well. I think I might have mentioned last time about 43 % of what John writes is things he hears, not just what he sees. So it's not just a vision, it's also an audition. Again, I think that's distinctive compared with other Jewish apocalyptic. So these are these typical markers, and I saw, and I heard, and then I saw, and I turned, and I saw, I turned, and I heard, then I, so on. And then suddenly you get to chapter 12. And all that language disappears. And a great sign appeared in heaven. So the verbal markers have changed. And that sets this section apart. And that's why I think every commentator says that when you get to 12 verse 1, obviously chapter divisions are not always reliable indicators of section divisions, but here in 12 verse 1, there's a distinct change. You've got at end of chapter 11, you've got, I saw and I heard, and then you've got the hymnic material, now has come. at a time when the king of this world is the king of our God and his Christ. So you've got a hymnic material. So you've got to change your genre and a change of language. But the other real observation is that here you're at the narrative and the theological heart of the text. And you can see part of the reason for that, because we have this sequence of sort of movements from heaven and earth, movements from light and dark all the way through the text. Revelation is like one of those paintings. um Chiara Scura is the technique, particularly in Renaissance painting where you have light and dark contrasting and that's what you have all the way through Revelation. And you have the contrast, for instance, in the vision of worship in heaven in four and five and then the sort of vision of the four horsemen in chapter six and you have the vision of the people of God in chapter seven. Then again, you have the series of trumpets in chapter eight and so on. So you get this movement always between the disaster that is life on earth on the one hand and the amazing vision of what God is doing in heaven on the other. And as you make progress through that, the question is, you know, what is God going to do? The souls onto the altar in chapter 6 cry out, you know, how long, O Lord? And then you have a beginning of an answer there in chapter 7. And then again, this question is begged in chapters 8 9. And then you have a bit of an answer in chapter 10. God has raised up a prophet and a prophetic people. And then you get chapter 12, you get this vision of this, the climactic vision really of, you know, what is the problem of evil in the world? And instead of seeing the phenomena of evil in the earlier chapters, you actually see the agent of evil here. This primordial figure, the red dragon, who we are then told is the Satan, the deceiver of the whole world, the devil, that ancient serpent. we're now, the curtain has been pulled back and now we see the heart of the problem. It's not just the world has gone wrong, is there someone behind that? And then you also then get to the heart of the solution. So if I'm right, I think the majority of interpreters now would say, In chapter 12, when we get to this poetic section, in the hymnic section 12 verse 10, then I heard a loud voice in heaven say, now have come the salvation and power and kingdom of our God and the authority of the Messiah for the accused has been thrown down. So here at the central turning point of the text, you actually understand what is the key here? What is the answer? How does this make sense of what we've seen, the previews of, as it were, God's answer previously? And how is it then going to make sense as we head towards the victory that's proclaimed in chapters 19; 20; and 21. And the answer is it all hinges on this. That now, this is the victory of God. This is the defeat of Satan. And what is it? It is the blood of the lamb, the cosmic victory of Jesus and his death, and the word of their testimony, how that cosmic victory in Jesus is made real in the lives of those who are followers of the lamb. So that's, think those are reasons. So there's a linguistic reason, there's a sort of structural reason, there's a theological reason really why this sits at the center of this. that makes very good sense. But as you mentioned in last episode, this chapter is pretty weird. eh Yes, yes. So one of the strange features is actually like in verse one and two, is that the first thing we ever happen is that we have a pregnant birth-giving woman who appears clothed with the sun and has the moon on his feet and then 12 stars on her head. Why is that? Well, should actually, Daniel, I should have already mentioned that all the answers can be found in my Tyndale commentary on the book of Revelation. But also, I've addressed particular questions on my blog. I've got a tag there, which is uh Revelation, so you can look at all the articles I've written. Because they often work together. So sometimes I flesh things out or I've had further thoughts after the commentary and I'll post research I've done there. So recently I've been doing work on ah automata and... uh robotics in the first century in connection with Imperial Cult, which actually is useful background for reading Revelation 13, when we get this animated statue that appears to have come to life. I posted material about that. So it's partly stuff behind stuff springing out of the commentary and also my current research people can find there as well. The first thing is for people to realize what a weird narrative this is. So again, when I'm talking about this, I'm teaching, I say to people, hang on a second, just look. Can I just point out what's going on here? You've got a pregnant woman, she's about to give birth, and in front of her is a dragon who's going to eat the baby. All right? Now, this is just a bit weird. It is very weird. But... last year I had a fascinating experience because I was teaching a class, again, uh mostly ordinary um folk, Christians reading the Bible themselves. And when I said this is a really weird story, and I explained where it came from, one woman at the back put her hand up and said, That's not weird, I know that story. And then she proceeded to tell me the story. She was a woman who lived in Cyprus and she was over in the UK, for, she was visiting, she'd come to do the study. And she said, we know this story in our culture. She was a Greek Cypriot. So we still tell the story. And again, this illustrates how texts look strange when they come from another culture and when that's not your culture and you don't know the basic stuff. I mean, You when, when are you pretty, I'm sure you're a fan this as well. I mean, there's stuff that we do in UK culture, which if you come from another culture, people just find it weird and inexplicable. There'll be stories that we tell which, are unfamiliar. And, know, some of them, some of our stories, some of our folk tales, for example, do come from Europe. So they're shared within a European context. But I mean, the story of Little Red Riding Hood or the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, you know, other of these sort of proverbial tales, they belong to certain cultures. If you don't come from that culture, then if I tell the story, I think it's really bizarre. Why on earth have you got an obsession with little girls going into the woods and meeting wolves and carrying baskets of apples? It's all a bit, you know, odd really. Hansel and Gretel, why is the house made of gingerbread or whatever it is when other people tell the story? These are odd stories, but if they're part of your own folklore, then you don't really think about them. So I think what John is doing here... is he's doing something again, which actually within our culture we see all the time. So if you open a newspaper, you pick up the Times newspaper, Peter Brooks is the cartoonist there, and he does this sort of thing all the time. What he does is he depicts, he draws pictures where he takes one story and he exchanges the characters. Instead of having the original character in the story, he keeps the plot, he keeps the shape of the story, but instead he puts in political figures to make a particular point. Just you can just have a look at look online for Peter Brooks cartoons and you'll see that straight away And again when I've shown these on and on in slides and I put them up Anyone who's not from British culture finds these stories these cartoons incomprehensible because they don't know The story that Peter Brooks assumes we know and they might not even recognize the characters either and this is a very interesting double test for us in Revelation 12 because It relies on two really key things about Revelation number one that it's embedded in first century culture, particularly first century mythology, excuse me, and particularly mythology and imagery and ideas that are used in the imperial cult. Number one, and that's strange to us. Second thing Revelation does is it constantly is drawing on Old Testament imagery in depth and extensively. And again, if we're not familiar with our Old Testament, we'll find that strange as well. And Revelation 12, I think is the clearest example of bringing those two together. So when we look at the characters in the story, we've got the woman who's in the agony of childbirth. Where do we find that? We find that in Isaiah 66, we find it in Micah 4, Micah 6. This is the people of God in exile, oppressed and longing for deliverance from God. Ba dum tsh, do get the joke? A pregnant woman is waiting for deliverance to be delivered. God's people in oppression are waiting to be delivered by God. I discovered when I went and taught this in Kyrgyzstan that in Kyrgyzstan, in Kyrgyz, that pun doesn't work. But it works in Greek and it works in English and it works in quite a lot of Western languages. We use the same language to rescue someone from oppression and to deliver a woman or a child. The same, we use the same language, deliverance. And that's how the metaphor works here. Then you've got a male child, slightly odd phrase, who will rule the nations with a rod of iron. What we know from Psalm 2, that's this... son of David, that's a future Messianic figure who's to come, anointed by God to set his people free and to rule them, to cleanse the temple, to deliver his people, to get rid of sin from the land and so on. Then you've got a third main character here which is the dragon. And actually we're told the dragon is decoded here so we know in verse 9, the great dragon, that ancient serpent, that's going back to Genesis 3, who's called the devil. Temptations of Jesus in Desert, and he's called the Satan. That's from Job and other languages. So we can see these biblical characters. But John has put these characters into the quite a different story. And the story doesn't come from scripture. The story is the Leto Apollo myth. And the Leto Apollo myth is, again, if you're from Cyprus or you live in Greece, you'll know the story quite well. And we know it's circulated all the way around from about the second century BC to the third century AD. It's very well known story. You can look it up online where Zeus has sex with Leto, who's not his wife. Zeus's wife is really cross about that. And she sends Leto into exile so that woman is pregnant, woman is carried away. Apollo pursues her because, sorry, Python pursues her because it's been prophesied that the offspring of Leto will kill Python. So he pursues her, but she's carried away to safety. Poseidon looks after her. gives birth under the sea. And then she's brought up to the surface and the island that she then is on is the island right next to Patmos, where it is the island of Delos next to Patmos, where John is sitting writing Revelation. So again, worth recognizing that this mythology is tied into real places. And of course, I mentioned Python is the person is the one who inhabits the Delphi and is behind the power of the Delphi Oracle and so on. So it is mythology which constructs the actual real world that people are living in. And the reason why this is significant and it connects with Roman imperial power is because a number of emperors, including Domitian towards the end of the first century, would like to tell this story and they would tell the story of the chaos monster, Python being destroyed by Apollo, uh who is the one that Leto gives birth to. Hephaestus gives Apollo arrows when he's four days old and he kills the Python, the chaos monster. And of course, Apollo's sister is Artemis. And of course, in Ephesus, you've got the temple of Artemis. So again, it's completely integrated into John's world here. And the emperor says, I am the Apollo figure. I am the one who will destroy those chaos monster, who will keep you safe, who will make you prosperous. Therefore, you owe absolute loyalty to me. And of course, the narrative of Revelation is, we're going to pantomime mode here where we say, oh, no, he isn't. He's behind you. No. The one who has defeated the chaos monster is Jesus. And in fact, the imagery of the beast in chapter 13 is a way of John saying, no, the imperial power, the beast has come across the sea and colluded with the beast from the land, the local structures of power in the cities. The beast is the Roman imperial power. So the story is completely inverted upside down. And it's Jesus who is the Apollo figure. And it's... actually the emperor and Roman imperial power, which is allied with the dragon and the dragon's power. So it's another way, as always through revelation of John saying, you cannot be a loyal Roman citizen. You cannot simply bow down to Caesar. You cannot look to Caesar as the one who gives you peace and prosperity because the person who actually does that is Jesus. Yeah, that's very powerful when you see the connections here. But you have to go on that detail, that critical detail into the background, understanding it. Because again, it's worth remembering that revelation was not written to us. It might be given for us, but it was actually written to people in the eastern side of the first century Roman Empire. So we've got to, if you want to hear what God's going to say to us through it, we've got to first hear what John was saying to those first Christians, those first followers of Jesus. Yeah, exactly. And when I read about the dragon here, which is obviously, we know that's Satan, old serpent and so on, but it seems like it's also almost intentionally alluding to the Hydra, like the mythological creature, or is it a mixed metaphor? Yes, as possible. I mean, I've not really thought about that and whether the Hydra, because I don't know that much about the role of the Hydra. But certainly when you look at the shape of the narrative in the first part of chapter 12, by the way, interesting, it's worth noting that chapter 12 has got sort of quite distinct generic boundaries to it. So the first six verses tell the story using the Apollo myth. Then in from verse seven, you switch to drawing on language about Michael as the angel of Israel from Daniel. Yeah, exactly. switch in verse 10 into this hymnic material. It's almost as if each section is explaining the last. you know, John is saying, well, look, here is understanding Jesus through the Apollo myth. And then, if you didn't get that, here is understanding who Jesus is through the Michael story. if you didn't understand that, let me just put it out there right out in the open. Okay, let's sing a hymn. It's the blood of the lamb that's won the victory and has defeated Satan and so on. Right, have you got that? Do you understand what it is? And then he goes back into... In verse 13, he then goes back into the first story shape and goes back into the Apollo-Lito myth and pick up this image of the dragon and the woman and so on. it's just got a very fascinating structure to it as well. And again, it's really interesting when I just, when with ordinary readers of the text, I say, well, look, just squint and hold your bio block. You can see the different divisions here. You can see the shape that the editors of your English tradition have put in there. And can you see the connection? So he stitches the two bits of story together because he reiterates. that the woman is going to be in the desert for time times and half a time, which is the same as 1260 days, which equals 42 months. And he's doing something fascinating there with numbers from Daniel, which again, we might not have time to talk about today. But there's a really interesting thing to explore there, how he adapts the time times and half a time from Daniel, Daniel 12. And Daniel has it as 1290 days, but John changes it to 1260 days. And he does that because he wants to say, look, this time of tribulation as it is in Daniel is actually also the time of Exodus and that's why he turns it into 42 months because in Exodus in Numbers 33 the number of places they stop at the Exodus is 42 places so the time of tribulation isn't just a time of despair it's also a time of hope and it's a time of faithfulness and persistence because we know that we have been released from sin and we know that we're on our way to the promised land so we live with hope. Yeah, makes very good sense. I spoke to Seth Postell about this, he mentioned this is that the new Moses has come, like that's Jesus, but the new Exodus has not happened yet, in the sense that he is saying that that is when Jesus comes back and splits the mountain, like Zechariah 12. Yes, ah think Revelation says different. I think Revelation says we are on that journey. I think he does that using the structure of the numbers. We are on that journey to the Promised Land. But of course, the mapping over from to the Exodus from what Jesus has done is inexact. But John is saying that we are in that journey. We're on the journey from freedom to the Promised Land. We're also on the journey from exile, hence he uses the language of Isaiah about come out of her. ah because you're on a journey and you know where you're heading. Yeah, sure that probably is more details that could be explored in that relation em as well. em But maybe I should circle back to the stars and things that woman wears. Is that significant or for like in the is that from the Apollo myth or is it Old Testament visions? that looks to me like uh this is from Joseph's dream, particularly about the origins of God's people Israel, the moon under her feet and the crown of 12 stars. ah So that's going back to sort of foundational Israel imagery of the people of God. ah But I mean, there is something odd in the sense that you've got this woman as the people of God. And I don't think uh in the Roman Catholic tradition, this woman is interpreted as Mary. I don't think that can be the case because this is very clearly a corporate image here. Yes, Mary is the individual from whom Jesus is born, but actually the language from Isaiah 66 and from Micah, this is a corporate picture either of Israel or of Jerusalem as a metonym for Israel. So it's Jerusalem cries out waiting to be delivered. Just as we would say, we would use London often as a metonym for the UK, know, a spokesman from London said blah, blah, blah, speaking on behalf of the government. This is the British view. or sorry, you're in Edinburgh, so I should talk about London as the capital of England, really, not of Britain. Anyway, there we go. I don't want to get into that controversy. And the other really interesting thing is, of course, we get in the second, when we revisit this story, and we get again, some unusual imagery here. Verse 17, then the dragon was furious with the woman and went off to make war on the rest of her offspring. Now, that's an unusual phrase. I think it's an image which is really unique to John in Revelation. Although it's not unique in terms of its theological position. So who are the rest of her offspring? Well, if she's given birth to this male child, the Messiah figure, then her offspring are the siblings of that person. And that ties in exactly with Jesus' language in the gospels, Paul's language in his letters, that we are brothers and sisters. Jesus is our elder brother, Jesus is not only a saviour, Jesus is also our, as it were, older brother. And we cry out Abba Father to God, just as Jesus cried out Abba Father in Romans 8. Or in uh Matthew 12, when people say, your mother, your brother, your sisters are outside, know, he's teaching in the house, it's all crowded, and he says, it's Matthew 12.50, he says, who are my mother, my brothers, my sisters? uh The ones who hear and obey the word of God. And so, I mean, this is just buying into this. I think it's probably the major metaphor for the people of God in the New Testament, which is this kinship metaphor that we are siblings, we are brother and sisters together with Jesus. So I think that in itself, there's no way I'm the offspring of Mary. Yes, exactly. It was part of one of my questions. That's one of the most weird features of the whole thing is that if we think about how people are normally brothers, then this doesn't work. Yeah, no, exactly so. And of course, one of the challenging things, this is, you know, as we're doing some work on the middle sections of Luke, and one of the challenging things Jesus says is that actually the natural kinship bonds, again, we have to read this in context. I mean, I guess for most of us who are individualistic Westerners, family is important, but it's not that important in the Near East context in the first century. your family and your kinship ties were the most important thing. They were the thing that defined your loyalty. They defined your identity. They defined the shape of your financial life. Your first commitment was to provide for your blood family. And yet Jesus comes in and says, do you know what? I've got a loyalty and I'm calling you to a loyalty, which is even more important than the most important loyalty you have in your culture. And that is that your loyalty to me is going to redefine your kinship. this is, then let's see, So in one sense, although Revelation 12 and the book of Revelation generally is written in a very startlingly different genre, and this is the middle of a weird narrative, actually, theologically, it's absolutely central to the theological ideas we find in the rest of New Testament. Yeah. Yeah. And how does it actually helps us to, em first of all, maybe I should just say that that is fascinating. And like when we see that in that light of like kinship. em But like when we go back to the lethal polymyth and how knowing that story. So what does that actually help us in order to understand what John is communicating here? Well, in his context, he is addressing issues around loyalty, power, where we look to for security. I guess people look at the headlines and they look at war in Israel, Gaza and Ukraine, and they look at what's happening in Africa and Yemen and, you know, so and so often say, well, we live in a terrifying time or an unstable world. Well, I mean, honestly, that's nothing compared with the first century world. And that's why it's crazy. see these texts, I mean, just looking for instance at Revelation 6, we see about, you know, burning mountains falling to sea, we see the four horsemen galloping far and wide, and people say, oh, this is all about a terrible future tribulation is about to come. And I say, well, if you think that, you don't know anything about history. And we don't know anything about the first century, how uncertain life was, how high infant mortality was, how brutish and short life was. Just the other week it just really occurred to me, I suddenly put two and two together and the fact that it was very common for older men to marry younger women as husband and wife. So typically for instance a Roman who'd go and join the army, he'd do 20 years service, then he might marry at the end of his 20 years service, so he was in his 40s, and he'd marry someone who's probably a teenager, and then he might die in his 50s or 60s, so you end up with so many widows, young widows, which is why we find in Paul's letters there's such a concern to provide for widows, it's just sort of... Yeah, okay, I can see that now. That's the structure uh of life there. the fact that diseases came. um I think the work by Rodney Stark is fascinating, looking at some of the realities of first century life from a statistical point of view. And that some of these ancient cities like Ephesus, the population density was four times the population density of Manhattan, Ireland and New York. Because you'd have these... multi-level buildings, tenement buildings, and to accommodate more people, to make more money, you'd simply subdivide and subdivide and subdivide rooms. So you'd have a family living in one small room here. And that meant two things. Number one, if a building caught fire, there was no ways of escape. And they didn't have chimneys either, by the way. So when they lit a fire in the room, they'd breathe in the smoke and they'd have all sorts of respiratory problems from the result of that. And the second thing is when plague came, plague came to the city and they would just sweep through the city just like that because they lived in such close quarters that there'd be no chance of insulating yourself from others who'd caught this plague. that's why plagues were so terrifying, diseases were so terrifying, they just swept through these urban centers. And by the way, it was the followers of Jesus who didn't run away, who did look after their relatives and ended up Christians had a much higher survival rate as well and that had a significant impact on the growth of the gospel. So life was in the first century was very brutish, very short. ah If you look at the economics of it, do you know that the, the empire in the first century, the average annual income was something like $750 per year in modern terms. That makes your average resident of the Roman empire poorer than the citizen of the poorest country in the world today. So poverty, disease, was rife and then you've got warfare and conflict and all those sort things going on as well. So it was a very, very fragile world and in that fragile world, here's the question, who do you trust? Who do you look to for security? Who do you look to for salvation? And these are still words that we use. You only have to open the sports page of the newspaper and see the language of salvation. This manager is going to save the particular football club. So I think the question for us now in our narrative, wherever we are, if we're living in the West, then we might get the message, the right government with a particular interest rate policy is the one that's going to give you financial security and going to keep you safe, therefore vote for us. And it is interesting in election time, you do actually hear quite a lot of quasi-religious language. We're the only party that can save you. If you vote for this party, You're going to be faced with disaster. It's going to be a calamitous. It's going to be, you So the question for us is always, how do we critique the narratives of power, of salvation and of security we find all around us in the light of the fact that it's Jesus who's the one who calls us to security. He's the only one who can save us. And therefore, he is the only one who deserves our absolute loyalty. We don't have to buy into a particular socioeconomic system. We don't have to buy into a particular gender political ideology or whatever it is. Actually our security and our salvation come from Jesus and therefore that's the person we need to look to. And therefore we ask fundamental questions of others in our culture who make the kind of claims that we hear the making. Yeah, and that had significance for the people living back then, it has significance for us now, and then the future pointing as well that Jesus will come and restore recreation, which comes later in Revelation as well. And I think it's fascinating the way that this chapter sits in between the past and the future in the sense that this whole section of narrative is set up both by the vision of Jesus in chapter one that John has, but in particular the vision of the lamb on the throne. And the lamb on the throne is the one who has done something. He has redeemed us from every tribe, language, people and nation. Again, we get that revisited in chapter seven, seven verse nine. uh I heard those who were saved, 144,000. I turned to see who they were and I saw a people that could not be counted from every tribe, language, people, and nation. Of course, that just goes back to fulfilling the promise to Abraham. Your offspring, there's the language of offspring again, your offspring will be uncountable as the sands of the seashore of the stars of the sky. So the fulfillment of that covenant promise to Abraham finds its fulfillment to the person of Jesus. and then we're looking to the future because he's the one who has redeemed us he is the one who will renew all of creation new heaven and new earth the language from the end of Isaiah 65 and 66 that we find in Revelation 21 and new heavens and new earth for the old has passed away because Jesus is the one who in dying for us has done something new for us and that future is brought into the present that's why Paul 2 Corinthians 5 verse 17 says when anyone is in Christ there is new creation That new creation of Revelation 21 actually starts now as we begin to live resurrection life in Jesus. Absolutely. That's fascinating how things connect. Yeah. It's an interesting phrase. probably shouldn't look at it in 2 Corinthians, like how it's phrased in Greek and how it's translated, but that's another story for another time. But I did want to think a little bit about this meaning of the waging war with Michael, the throwing from heaven, but also the war that the dragon is then doing on the children, how that connects to what we've just been talking about. Yeah, I think it's drawing on that Michael language from Daniel where Michael is the prince of Israel and he's fighting against the other forces. And here, course, Revelation 13 does this explicitly, whereas it takes the imagery in Daniel 7 of the four successive empires. And we've seen those four empires already in chapter two, where you have the statue in Nebuchadnezzar's dream in four parts and the last part, the fetus, mixed with iron and clay. In Daniel 2, those specific empires, now there's scholarly debate about exactly which they correspond to, whether the last two are Greece and Rome, or whether the last one is Greece, and the Antiochian crisis in 167 (BC). But you have the four empires, and then the stone not cut with human hands rolls down, and that's the kingdom of God. And this phrase not cut with human hands is one that signifies the divine act. And then you have the equivalent in the visionary section in chapter seven, where you get the four beasts coming out from the sea and the sea signifies the peoples of God ah in turmoil and the empires arising from them. Now in both those examples, so then the one like a son of man comes to the ancient todays in chapter seven and is given an everlasting kingdom. So you can see the correspondence with chapter two. What Revelation 13 does is it takes those four ah beasts and it rolls them into one super beast as it were. And for John, this is Roman imperial power. But because he's using this hypercutastatic metaphor, I practice saying that word, by the way, hypercutastatic. So I can say it with like trips off the tongue. Because he doesn't say Rome is a beast, he simply says that beast. Then of course, it means that yes, this is Rome for John and his readers. But actually, it is any global autocratic dominating power. So he's actually having used a specific examples of the empires in Daniel, he's actually drawing them together. So he says, yes, on the one hand, this is Rome, but on the other hand, it's the archetype of all human imperial power. And then it's characterized by economic control, obsession with image. the use of technology. This is the whole stuff that I'm doing research on about the animated statue and how people are dazzled by the use of technology. So here's an interesting thing. This is the human tendency to imperial domination, which is that people acquire power. As a result, they acquire dominance. And that is the acquisition of economic power, of power of communication, of image, dominance of images. If you think about the May Day parades in Moscow, particularly under the Soviets, the communist regime, they'd have both huge banners of images of their leaders, Stalin, but they'd also then parade all the armaments and so on. And this is what happens with human empires. Human empires flex their muscles in terms of combat, in terms of economics, in terms of control of imagery and communication. And so in a sense, Rome was just doing the thing that empires do. And of course, you then get blending in at the end and so the judgment scenes in Revelation, you get the specific defeat of Rome, because chapter 18 is all about the cargos of Rome and the sea merchants, the sea traffic in Rome, the kings of the earth, the client kings, the Roman Empire. So there is something very specific about judgment there, but it's then blended in in chapter 19 into a cosmic victory. So this isn't just the end of this empire, it's the end of all empires, because Jesus is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. and he defeats any pretense to human imperial power and any human pretense to demand the absolute loyalty that we only give to God. So I would say it's always the particular for John, but also the cosmic as well. And the way he uses metaphorical language serves that perfectly. Yeah, I think that's quite powerful way of looking at it. And then Revelation makes and even as our times maybe gets — it feels more unstable than maybe we're, then this makes more sense to us as well. Yeah. that's why when people say Revelation is about our age, you know, and John was prophesying, I'd say, well, at one level, yes, not because John was writing to us, not because he was referring to things specifically in our age, but because the way he talks about the challenge he's facing in his day is actually the challenge that we will all face, all through, we have faced all through history in this in-between time between Jesus coming. and dying for us and being raised again on the one hand and Jesus returning. So this is the characteristic of this overlap of the ages, this in-between time. Yeah, exactly. And I think that's a good segue into how can we apply this to the viewers and listeners of this episode into their everyday life and walk with Jesus. Yeah, I think it's doing a couple of things. First of all, it's saying, hey, we need to be alert. We need to be alert about what are the narratives that our culture tells? How do we tease them out? When we're watching TV adverts, I mean, it's fascinating, isn't it, that TV adverts say, you will have a really happy Christmas as long as you come and buy your turkey from our shop. It's the only way. I mean, in a sense, that's a mundane way of it, but actually the narratives in much of our, I mean, our culture runs on money. It runs on free market economics in the West. So, for example, social media is saying that if you're not buying a product, you are the product. Social media says to us, hey, I'll give you all these things and you can have all these connections and stuff. As long as you give me your data, which I can sell and make money. In the end, the bottom line is so much of activity in the West is predicated on, I will do this for you provided I can make money out of it. That's the deal. You give me your photos from the holiday, you give me your information. and I will sell you something and I'll make money out of that. People used to say at beginning that Facebook was never going to make any money or Amazon was never getting any money. And now of course they're the biggest, some of the biggest financial entities in our world. we need to, so Revelation alerts us to say, what are the narratives we're being subject to? How are these shaping our thinking? How are they unconsciously pushing us into making certain decisions and behaving in a certain kind of way? Number one, number two, We need to be alert to this very sharp dichotomy that Revelation puts up, which is that you cannot simply be a loyal subject of your culture and the forces that demand your loyalty and be a loyal faithful witness to Jesus. So it's not giving us a formula, I don't think, of saying just do tick this box, but it's the alertness of saying, what are the narratives? What are the dynamics? What are the power claims? Because the fundamental questions are, number one, who is in charge of this world? Hmm. Who do we give our loyalty to? And where do we look for our uh source of security and safety? Who do we trust and who do we give our loyalty to? So it's asking us to ask those critical questions of our culture. Just as we have to ask critical questions to understand the text, the text then invites us to ask critical questions of our culture. Yeah, yeah, that makes very good sense, and I think that that's what the gospel calls us to, is to be part of the culture. Yeah, exactly. Using mammon as a kind of uh language of money as a god, as a rival god. Exactly, yeah. So it's not about using it, but it's about, is that who you devote all your loyalty to? Is that, as Luther would have said, is that the one you seek all your run to and all your anxiety and pain and where you go when you are happy? So that's your God, he says. Revelation is often it's the same challenges, the teaching of Jesus and the Gospels, the same challenges Paul in his letters. What does it mean that we are now, you know, we we're living in a new life in Christ, you know, therefore it's not the works of the flesh, but it's the it's the life of the spirit which needs to animate us. If the spirit is given you life, walk by the spirit. And again, Revelation is doing that in a particularly sharp way, but in a way which we need to do the work to understand the message, which, of course, is why people need to get hold of. not that I'm making lots of money out of this but I want to bless your viewers Of of course. Yeah, I think that's a very good way of ending the episode as well, is that, yeah, what does it mean? Like, Jesus is the one we should devote 100 % of the loyalty to. How does that shape the way we live? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for joining me on the podcast, Great to be with you, Daniel, and thank you very much. I look forward to seeing you again sometime soon. Thanks. God bless. Bye. But before you go, if you enjoyed this podcast and you want more people to see it, please subscribe and leave a like. It really helps us create more episodes like this one. I really appreciate it. Thank you. Have a great day and I'll see you in the next one.