Jesus
Was Not Created
The first singular that offers the
clearest example of a Christological in 3.14. Here our scribes alter the
universality attested title for Jesus as the 'beginning of the creation of God'
(κτισεως του θεου) to the otherwise unattested 'beginning of the church of God'
(εκκλησιας του θεου)—a move that eliminates the possibility of placing Jesus
within the created order. What makes this change so conspicuous is the fact
that it occurs in a fourth-century manuscript—a manuscript produced during a
period that was defined by its pitched theological battles over the precise
nature of the Son. Moreover, it is remarkable how dangerously close the
original language of the Apocalypse is to Arius's own musings about the Son. In
the fragments of the Thalia, one of the few primary sources judged by
Rowan Williams to contain direct quotations from Arius, the putative
arch-heretic declares: 'The one without beginning (i.e. God) established the
Son as the beginning of all creatures . . . (Rowan Williams, Arius: Heresy
and Tradition [Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, rev. edn., 2001], p. 102). This
Arian formulation is nearly indistinguishable from the original text of the
Apocalypse. The fact that our scribes eradicated such language from the
manuscript appears to indicate that the Apocalypse's wording was perceived to
be pregnant with heterodox possibilities. In response, our scribes harmonized
this passage in the direction of the higher Christology of Colossians 1, where
Jesus is the head of the church (For a full discussion see Hernández, Scribal
Habits and Theological Influences in the Apocalypse, pp. 90, 172-78).
The Lamb Receives the Blessing,
Honor, and Glory 'of the Almighty'
In 5.13, we encounter an
interesting change to the doxology offered to both the One who sits on the
throne and to the Lamb. Here the majority of the Greek tradition reads: 'To the
One who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing, honor, glory, and power
(και το κρατος).' Our scribes, however, rewrite και το κρατος as παντοκρατορος,
so that the doxology now asserts that both God and the Lamb receive 'the
blessing, honor, and glory of the Almighty . . . ' What the singular reading
does is to transform four individual qualities into three and unites all
of them under the banner 'of the Almighty'. In other words, the singular
reading appears to indicate that the qualities attributed to both the One who
sits on the throne and to the Lamb proceed from the Almighty (παντοκρατορος),
possibly without distinction.
It is difficult to exaggerate the
significance of such a change. Turing to Arius's own words in the Thalia
fragments, we find that he differentiates between the degrees of glory ascribed
to each member of the Godhead. Without equivocation Arius states: 'there exists
a trinity in unequal glories, for their subsistences [sic] are not mixed with
each other. In their glories, one is more glorious than another in infinite
degree' (Williams, Arius, p. 102). In contrast the language of our
singular reading clearly precludes such distinctions with the Godhead. The fact
that formulations like Arius's were circulating in the fourth century may have
prompted our scribes to inoculate their text from similar Christological
misapprehension (Hernández, Scribal Hants and Theological Influences in the Apocalypse,
pp. 180-82). (Juan Hernández Jr., “Scribal Tendencies in the Apocalypse:
Starting the Conversation,” in Jewish and Christian Scripture As Artifact
and Canon, ed. Craig A. Evans and H. Daniel Zacharias [Library of Second
Temple Studies 70; London: T&T Clark, 2009], 256, 257)
Other theological singulars that
can only be mentioned in passing include readings that reflect an aversion
to ascribing material corporeality to God (7.15; 10.1), as well as the
denial that anyone can actually hear God’s voice (21.3a) (Ibid., pp. 93-94,
183-85). Such singular readings are perfectly at home in a fourth-century
context that spoke of God as αθανατος,
αορατος, αψηλαφητος, and αχωρητος (‘immoral’, ‘invisible’,
‘untouchable’, and ‘incomprehensible’). . . . Could it be that the changes
found here represent an early, although incomplete, attempt to make the
Apocalypse theologically palatable for a wider audience, especially in light of
fourth-century concerns about its usefulness for the church? (Ibid., 257, 258, emphasis in bold added)