THE MYSTICAL WOMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE

BY WALTER F. ADENEY

AMONG the weird scenes of the Book of the Revelation we come upon the mystical figures of women who are represented as playing important parts in the terrible drama. Lit up by the lurid flames of judgment, they scarcely appear as human beings. We seem to be in the presence of vast, mythological personages like the Graces and Furies and Maenads of classical antiquity, and quite of another order from the wives and daughters, the mothers and sisters, of our homely world. In some cases it may be that actual women, known to the readers of the book and noteworthy for their prominent character and influence, are brought into the picture in more or less symbolical guise, like Dante's subjects from contemporary history in his Inferno^ or Michael Angelo's portraits in his great picture of " The Last Judgment." In others, however, these mystical women are but shadowy wraiths suggestive of ideas, or metaphorical types of powers and institutions. The book was addressed to people who were familiar with the materials from which it drew its imagery, and doubt less, therefore, quick to interpret its dark allusions. It is a puzzle to us, because we have lost the key of contem porary knowledge. At best we can but grope our way through the labyrinths of this catacomb of buried ideas by the dim and fitful light of conjecture. i. Tlie Woman Jezebel. 1 In the Epistle to Thyatira the angel of the Church is warned against "the woman Jezebel," and blamed for tolerating her. She calls herself 1 Rev. ii. 20-23. 255

256 WOMEN OF THE NEW TESTAMENT

a prophetess, and she is found teaching Christ's servants. But her teaching is corrupt, encouraging immorality, A time is given her for repentance. If she does not avail herself of it, but continues her evil practices, she will suffer severe punishment, and the people whom she has seduced into her wickedness will die of pestilence. It is not easy to see whether an actual woman is referred to here, or whether the name is a personification of some corrupting doctrine or of some mischievous party in the Church. There is an ancient manuscript reading that gives "thy wife Jezebel." If this could be adopted, and if the " Angel of the Church " were taken for the bishop, then, it is suggested, Jezebel might be the bishop's wife. Then the passage read in bald literalism would be descriptive of a gross scene of debauchery in the church at Thyatira, carried on under the influence of the depraved wife of the pastor, whom her miserable husband was too weak to re strain. But the variant reading is not considered by most reliable critics to be sufficiently supported to claim a place in the text instead of the usual reading; 1 and the sym bolical character of the book throughout, together with the fact that it frequently introduces angels, who in no other instances can be taken for bishops or men at all, compels us to decline that interpretation here. Going to the opposite extreme from this literalism, a daring view is to take Jezebel for a personification of the Pauline doctrine which St. John is supposed to be vehemently assailing. "Eating things sacrificed to idols" is here associated with the lowest debauchery, as though the two practices were about equally vicious. This could only come from a Jewish way of regarding things. It is an echo of the decree of the Jerusalem Church on the reception of Gentiles. 2 St. Paul, on the other hand, saw no harm in eating food that might have been offered in sacrifice to idols, though he advised consideration for those who thought it an offence, and whom therefore he held to be the weaker 1 The Revisers only note it in the margin. 8 Acts xv. 29.

MYSTICAL WOMEN OF APOCALYPSE 257 brethren. 1 Still it is outrageous to regard this passage in the Apocalypse as an attack on Paulinism. There is not a hint of any allusion to the great Apostle of the Gentiles, Perhaps on the whole we should incline to the con clusion that the very definite way in which "the woman Jezebel " is described and the ascription of certain effects to her action indicate an actual woman and not the mere personification of a tendency or a party. If we take that view we have a representation of a heathen prophetess teach ing in Thyatira ; or, inasmuch as she seduces the Christians there, a woman teacher of some incipient gnosticism, antinomian in its tendencies, and even leading to shameful immorality. This Jezebel may have been to St. John what Simon Magus was to St. Peter, but with a more corrupt influence. Like the wife of Ahab, after whom she is mystically named- in the Apocalypse, she was a centre of moral corruption. We read in the ancient Hebrew history, " But there was none like unto Ahab, which did sell him self to do that which was evil in the sight of the Lord, whom Jezebel Ms wife stirred up" 2 Such was the heathen prophetess of Thyatira. We jaust not compare her with the noble, high-minded Hypathia of Alexandria, the charm of whose eloquent lectures in philosophy so provoked the fierce Cyril and his monks. A terribly degrading influence goes with this second Jezebel. Her name is of evil odour. It has been revived more than once as an epithet of oppro brium. John Knox hurled it at Queen Mary, whose light manners, imported from the gay French court, the stern Scotch reformer reckoned a source of corruption for his people. Woman has the gift of influence as one of her principal endowments. When she uses it for good she may be as Beatrice to Dante, the very centre and focus of sanctifying grace ; but when she turns it to evil ends, it is the most baleful star of man's sad destiny. Women whose "eyes," as Milton says, "rain influence," have here a spell and a charm often more potent than the obvious authority and the power of brute strength possessed by

1 1 Cor. viii. ' 1 Kings xxi. 25,

258 WOMEN OF THE NEW TESTAMENT men. Woe to the wretched victims who have been enslaved by it in the person of a Jezebel. Woe, too, to the dreadful Jezebel herself. Perverted in her own nature and a corrupter of others, the milk of human-kindness in her turned to gall, what should be womanly sweetness become a deadly poison such a woman out-Herod s Herod in her cruelty. Theologians discuss the direful nature of Adam's fall; but the more fearful and fateful fall is the fall of Eve. 2. The locusts from the pit. 1 In the gloomy description of the scene following the sounding of his trumpet by the fifth angel after a star has fallen from heaven, the angel receives a key with which he opens the bottomless pit, when with the smoke belched forth as from a furnace there comes out also a swarm of locusts. Infernal locusts they are, commissioned to act quite contrary to locust nature, sparing the vegetation and torturing, but not killing, those men who have not the seal of God on their foreheads. These fiendish locusts sting like scorpions. The description of them suggests might and terror, but among the warlike attributes a very singular feature is inserted " and they had hair as the hair of women." 2 Arabic poetry comparing the antennae of natural locusts to hair has been pointed to in illustration of this passage. But all the rest of the imagery in it goes beyond the most fanciful description of the insects. These are supernatural locusts, and the mention of women in the description of their hair is the more remarkable because of its contrast with the next clause, which introduces the association of lions, "Their hair is like the hair of women and their teeth are like lion's teeth." The gentleness and grace of womanhood, her beauty, and the softer feminine influence, come in to be opposed by the lion's fangs, typical of savage ferocity. A certain insinuating charm is here suggested, and its pre sence immensely heightens the effect of the other images,

all of which imply power and terror. The one womanly feature is intended to add to the 1 Rev. ix. 1-12, * Rev. ix. 8.

MYSTICAL WOMEN OF APOCALYPSE 259 horror. The tenderness of womanhood becomes the very crown of the curse of sin when it is degraded into the hideous partnership. 3. The woman clothed with the sun. 1 Happily the images of good in the Apocalypse are as brilliant as those of evil are repellant. One of these begins with the last verse of the eleventh chapter, where we are introduced to the heavenly temple, after the opening of which, followed by thunder, lightning, hail, an earthquake, and the sound of voices, a great wonder appears in heaven. This is the coming of a woman clothed with the sun, having the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head. She is per secuted by a great red dragon, a monster with seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns on his head. The woman's child is destined to rule all the nations with a rod of iron. To save him from the dragon he is caught up to the throne of God, while his mother flees to the wilderness, to a place prepared by God. There follows a war in heaven, the result of which is that the dragon, who it now appears is the old serpent Satan, is flung out. Banished to these nether regions he again persecutes the woman. But she receives two great eagle wings with which she flees to her place in the wilderness. The serpent attempts to drown her with a flood of water that he pours out from his mouth. Then the earth appears as the woman's champion, opening her mouth and swallowing the flood. It is far from easy to interpret the imagery of this mystery. Perhaps, as some think, the writer here makes use of a fragment of some earlier Jewish Apocalypse. Whether that be so or not, it is generally agreed that the child who is destined to be a world- wide ruler, and who is

divinely delivered from the malignity of Satan, must be the Christ, either originally the Jewish Messiah, or from the first the Christian Messiah, Jesus. Then who is the woman 1 One interpretation takes her for the Virgin Mary. Even if this be correct she is so greatly idealised, and the story is so different from the actual facts of her 1 Rev. xii.

260 WOMEN OF THE NEW TESTAMENT life, that the real personality is lost in the fantastic picture. But it is more in accordance with the profuse imagery of the book to take the " woman clothed with the sun " as altogether a symbolical figure. Then may we regard this mystical woman as represent ing the Church? The difficulty of that interpretation is that then the Church would appear as the mother of the Christ, which is simply impossible if we are thinking of the Christian Institution of which our Lord is in every sense the Founder. But it is quite within the limits of reasonable supposition to take the woman for Israel, the Israel of God, the ancient Jewish Church, from which, in a human and historical way, it may justly be said that the Christ has come. In accepting this view, provisionally and tentatively for lack of a better, we must regard the Jewish Church in its ideal aspect rather than as it was actually seen in the world ; and we must limit it to the spiritual Israel, that line of the pious remnant represented of old by the prophets, and later by the devout of the type of Simeon and Anna. There is a real living continuity between this faithful Israel and the Christian Church. The members of the humble, loyal Church of God in. the olden times such as the 7000 in the days of Elijah, who had not bowed the knee to Baal were continually persecuted, and that to hard straits ; nevertheless they were under the shelter ing care of God, and cherished, especially with this great providential destiny, that out of them should come the Redeemer of Israel. Outwardly of no account, obscure in the eyes of men, the true Israel of God has to the eye

that discerns the spiritual a splendour unsurpassed by any earthly magnificence. This persecuted woman, destined to be the mother of the Christ, is clothed with the sun. She walks in a garment of light, a dazzling celestial radiance shining out from her. She is indeed exalted, and the lesser luminary may be imagined as beneath her feet. 4. The Scarlet Woman. 1 In the visions of horror that follow the angels with the seven vials, the prophet carried 1 Jicv. xvii., xviii.

MYSTICAL WOMEN OF APOCALYPSE 261 by the Spirit into the wilderness sees a woman arrayed in purple and scarlet and decked with gold and precious stones, while on her head she wears a fillet with her name, after the fashion of abandoned women in ancient times, from which we learn that she is Babylon the great, and of vilest character, and also that she is "a mystery" that is to say, not, in our modern sense of the word, an inscrutable enigma, but a symbol. Then it is not the geographical Babylon by the Euphrates that is intended. The Scarlet Woman has seven heads and ten horns. The seven heads represent, in the mystery, seven hills, while the ten horns are ten rulers. This and other indications clearly point to Rome, the city of the seven hills. The imperial and commercial splendour of this city is gorgeously described; but at the same time the depth of her depravity is vividly represented. Rome under the Caesars had become a pit of all the most abominable vices. The shameless Messalina was even about this very time openly degrading the very name of woman in the higher circles. And in the person of her ruler, Nero, Rome had recently become the cruellest persecutor of the Christians. This second Babylon, cruel to the spiritual Israel as old Babylon was cruel to the Jews in bygone ages, drunk with the blood of the saints, is warned of coming divine vengeance. There is no perspective in prophecy. This threat was not fulfilled immediately. More than three centuries were allowed the Scarlet Woman in which to fill up the cup of her iniquities,

and then Alaric, the scourge of God, swept down on the doomed city, and slaughter and pillage reduced her to a ruin, the significance of which may be understood by the reader of Augustin's City of God. It is necessary to notice another interpretation of the mystery, as this has long been a favourite idea in some circles of Protestant readers. The Scarlet Woman is identified with the woman clothed with the sun. Both are the Church. In the first case the Church is in her earlier purity and fidelity. Then she is unfaithful, falls, becomes the abomination of Babylon in the apostate

262 WOMEN OF THE NEW TESTAMENT Church of Rome under the Papacy. In favour of this view, it is pointed out how frequently apostacy is described by the Hebrew prophets under the image of adultery. But, on the other hand, it is to be noted that worse is said of the Scarlet Woman, so that her still lower character of abandoned wickedness is scarcely at all if ever ascribed to the apostate Israel in the Old Testament. Moreover it is a fanciful stretch of imagination to suppose that the later historical development would be contemplated by the seer of Patmos in the first century. It is safer to keep to the simpler interpretation that sees in the Scarlet Woman Imperial, not Papal, Rome. 5. The LamVs Bride. 1 With some sense of relief we may turn, in the last place, from this picture of shameless wickedness to its very opposite, the vision of the spotless bride of the Lamb. The marriage feast of the Lamb is about to be celebrated, and while the cry goes out to sum mon the guests, the bride appears arrayed in fine linen, bright and pure; and it is expressly explained that this spotless raiment represents "the righteous acts of the saints." 2 Under another image the Lamb's bride becomes the holy city, the New Jerusalem, of which there follows the well-known glowing description. The Lamb's bride, the holy city what can this be but the community of

Christ's people, united to Him as by the close sacred tics of marriage, loved by her Lord and adoring Him, sheltered by His strong protection, gladdened by His Divine presence? From the point of view that our present line of thought furnishes us for approaching this subject, the significant fact is that the Church of Christ appears as a woman. Her relation to the Saviour is the dependent and tenderly guarded relation of the wife to the husband; and at the same time it represents the closest possible union. It sug gests to us that there must always be something like a feminine element in faith. The idea that is here set forth in richest imagery appears under a more sober guise in the teaching of St. Paul, who regards the earthly marriage of 1 Rev. xix. 7-9 ; xxi, 9-xxii. 5. 2 Rev. xix. 8.

MYSTICAL WOMEN OF APOCALYPSE 263 husband and wife as a mystery, as a symbol of the heavenly union of Christ and His Church. 1 Just in proportion to the warmth of the affection that is here suggested must be the elevation of the spirit of this mystical marriage, if it is to preserve the reverence and lowliness that befit the behaviour of Christians to their Lord. A free and indis criminate appropriation of the luscious imagery of the Song of Songs to the union of Christ and His people is perilously near endangering those most necessary qualities of Christian devotion. When reading St. Bernard's works and Samuel Rutherford's letters we cannot but be struck with ideas and phrases that would be sickly in any but the saintliest experience. It is safer not to go beyond the austere severity of Scripture in treating this most sacred theme. Still keep ing within the lines of the simple phrases of the apostles we have enough to fill our hearts with an amazing vision of Divine condescension that is there set forth in the description of the union of Christ and His Church. 1 Eph. v. 22 -33.

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