the witnesses as biblical figures who will
return
According to Hippolytus, the Antichrist will rebuild the city of
Jerusalem, restore the sanctuary, remove the two witnesses and forerunners of
Christ (Rev 11:3), make war upon the saints, and desolate the world (in W.
Bousset 1999: 44–6; cf. Prigent 1972: 396; Daley 1991: 39). For Lactantius a
sign of the end of this age is God’s sending of a great prophet (Institutes vii.17 in McGinn 1979: 61–2).
A long tradition of interpretation has the two witnesses as Enoch and Elijah,
neither of whom tasted of death (Tertullian, On the Soul l.5; Daley 1991: 153, 179–80, 203; cf. W. Bousset 1999:
203–9). Hildegard of Bingen (Scivias
xi) mentions Enoch and Elijah (Hart and Bishop edn 496, 505; cf. Bauckham 1976
and 1978: 186; Newport 2000: 83). Victorinus sees one witness as Elijah, whose
preaching will lead to the conversion of many Jews, and the other as Jeremiah:
Many think that either Elisha or Moses is with Elijah, but they both
have died. Jeremiah’s death, however, is not found [in Scripture].… For the
very word which was given to him bears witness to this: ‘Before I formed you in
the womb, I knew you, and I made you a prophet to the nations’ [Jer 1:5]. But
Jeremiah was not a prophet to the nations; therefore since both words [Jer 1:5
and Rev 11:3] are divine, [God] must keep his promise and make Jeremiah a
prophet to the nations. (1916: 98. 10–17, tr. J. Kovacs; cf. ANF vii.354)
In Islamic interpretation one of Muhammad’s companions expected that
he would return as ‘a prophet like Moses’ (cf. Deut 18:15). While it is
unlikely that the Islamic material is directly dependent on the Apocalypse,
this may reflect a belief common in late antiquity that Moses had not died and
would return as one of the two unnamed witnesses of Revelation 11:1–13 (in
VanderKam and Adler 1996: 181; cf. Arjomand in McGinn 2000: 247).
contemporary actualizations
Altogether more contentious and daring is the way certain interpreters
saw these figures appearing in their own day. For some this reflects a
conviction that the last days have come, for others (for example, Blake) a
conviction that these images have an ongoing capacity to interpret the world.
The Moses and Elijah link, which arises out of allusions in the text itself, is
echoed by Joachim and extended to ‘stand for two religious orders’ (Expositio fols 106r, 146r, 148r in
Wainwright 1993: 51; cf. McGinn 1998: 164–5). A particularly interesting
illustration in this Franciscan tradition is found in the commentary of
Alexander Minorita (Cambridge University Library MS Mm.V.31): two white-robed
friars (described as ‘predicatores’) preach from their rostrums to ordinary
people about the parable of Dives (the rich man) and Lazarus (Luke 16:19–31)
(see plate 6). This parable of reversal challenges the conventional hierarchies
and the rich of Alexander’s world, whose heedless opulence is contrasted with
the rigours of the Franciscan order (in Carey 1999: 83–4; cf. James 1931: 67).
The Beguin Na Prous Boneta (c.1297–c.1325) interpreted the two
witnesses as her Franciscan mentors, Francis and Peter John Olivi. Although
Olivi’s work was condemned, and his memory vilified, he was highly regarded
among popular movements like the Beguins. Na Prous sees Pope John XXII as the
Antichrist and thinks Olivi’s condemnation means the destruction of the gospel
of Jesus Christ, as the following testimony to her views indicates:
In that terrestrial paradise [probably a reference to Rev 20–1] Christ
placed Elijah and Enoch, and that Elijah was Saint Francis while Enoch was
Brother Pierre D’Jean [Peter John Olivi], both of whom bore witness to Jesus
Christ. Saint Francis bore witness to the life of poverty instituted by Christ,
while Brother Pierre D’Jean bore witness to the divinity in holy scripture, in
which he discovered all the words of the saints and conveyed them in his
writings through the power of the Holy Spirit given to him. Again, Christ told
her, so she claims, that Antichrist killed Elijah and Enoch, that is, Saint
Francis and Brother Pierre D’Jean, in the middle of the street, which street
she said was holy scripture. (Paris Bibl. nat., Collection Doat, tome 27, fols 51v–79v
in May 1965; cf. Burr 2001: 230–6; Potesta in McGinn 2000: 119)
In the fourteenth century Konrad Schmid and his closest associate had
perished at the hands of the Church of Rome. Their followers were convinced
that they would return again, this time to overthrow the Antichrist and preside
over the Last Judgement (in Cohn 1957: 141–6). An illustration in the
sixteenth-century Wittenberg Bible reflects Luther’s own day. The measuring of
the temple by the two witnesses takes place before the Beast, who wears a papal
tiara. The background is the Castle Church at Wittenberg with Luther’s pulpit,
and the witnesses are Protestant preachers with the fiery word of God
proceeding from their mouths (in Scribner 1994: 175).
The German theologian Melchior Hoffman saw in the early Anabaptist
preachers in Strasbourg ‘the true Elijah who is to come before the last day’,
specifically identifying Enoch with Cornelis Poldermann or Caspar
Schwenckenfeld. Hoffmann’s apocalyptic ideas inspired those who set up the
Anabaptist kingdom in Münster. Leaders such as Jan Matthijs thought the time
had come to assemble the 144,000 of Rev 7 and 14, who would oppose the
Antichrist, and Matthijs saw himself as the Enoch of the last days (in Deppermann
1987: 257, 336; cf. Cohn 1957: 261–70).
In the seventeenth century, during the English Civil War and its
immediate aftermath, Mary Cary thinks the rising of the witnesses from the dead
is realized in the creation of the New Model Army (in Capp in Patrides and
Wittreich 1984: 112–13; cf. Capp 1972; Hill 1989: 51), and Ludowick Muggleton
and John Reeve regard themselves as the witnesses who would oppose the Beast
(in Hill 1990: 132–3; Underwood 1999). According to Benjamin Keach, the
witnesses’ resurrection is the reversal of a perilous situation, when in 1688
William of Orange, a ‘glorious Instrument’ in the hands of God, saved England
from Roman Catholicism (Distressed Sion
Relieved (1689) in Newport 2000: 40).
Similar in its interpretative method is Blake’s identification of the
witnesses with Wesley and Whitefield, the founders of Methodism. The
Nonconformist Blake saw in these two religious figures kindred spirits, one
symbolizing divine wrath, the other divine pity: ‘But then I [apparently a
reference to the Lamb] rais’d up Whitefield,/Palamabron rais’d up Westley [sic]/And these are the cries of the
Churches before the two witnesses’ (Milton
22 [24]:55–62 in Paley 1999: 75). While neither Wesley nor Whitefield would
have shared Blake’s political views, like him, they protested against the
religion they considered oppressive.
The French Revolution provides the backdrop for Joseph Towers’
interpretation of various images of chapter 11 (in Burdon 1997: 98). Another
view of events in France is offered by Alexander Pirie, who denounced the
Republic as ‘the beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit’ of 11:7 (The French Revolution in Paley 1999:
22). (Judith Kovacs, Christopher Rowland, and Rebekah Callow,
Revelation: The Apocalypse of Jesus
Christ [Blackwell Bible Commentaries; Malden, Mass.: Blackwell Publishing,
2004], 127-30)
