Saturday, January 13, 2024

John Day on the Depiction of Michael in Revelation 12

  

. . . it is significant that in Rev. 12 it is the angel Michael who defeats the seven-headed and ten-horned dragon, the ten horns clearly deriving from the fourth beast of Dan. 7. Since in Dan. 7 it is implicitly the one like a son of man who overcomes the fourth beast, and since it is very probable, as various scholars have argued, that a Jewish source underlies Rev. 12 - it is striking, for example, that it is Michael and not Christ who is said to defeat the dragon - we appear to have here evidence of an underlying Jewish tradition which equated the one like a son of man with Michael. It is possible that further evidence for the equation of the one like a son of man with the angel Michael in sources underlying the Apocalypse is provided by Rev. 10;1ff. and 14:14. In the former passage, we have a description of what is clearly the most important of the seven archangels who appear in Rev. 8:2ff, and ought therefore to be the angel Michael, yet the description of him 'wrapped in a cloud . . . his face was like the sun, and his legs like pillars of fire' (Rev. 10:1) recalls the 'one like a son of man . . . his feet were like Burned bronze . . . and his face was like the sun shining in full strength' (rev. 1;13-16), and who customarily comes with the clouds of heaven (cf. Rev. 14:14). This suggests an equation of the angel Michael with the one like a son of man, but since the one like a son of man in Rev. is Christ, it may be argued that the equation pertains to a source underlying the book. Similarly, in Rev. 14;14f. the one like a son of man is alluded to in terms which suggest he is simply another angel (cf. vv. 17-18), and since six other angels appear, the addition of the one like a son of man would make seven, the number of the archangels. Since, however, in the book as it stands, the one like a son of man must be Christ (cf. Rev. 1:13), it is arguable that, as in Rev. 10:1ff., we have here further attestation of the archaeological identification of the one like a son of man with the angel Michael in a source underlying the work. (John Day, God's Conflict With the Dragon and the Sea: Echoes of a Canaanite Myth in the Old Testament [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985], 172-73)