Abstract:
The book of Revelation relentlessly alludes to Jewish scripture. Linguistic
and thematic material from these works is enmeshed throughout the entirety
of the Apocalypse. The gravid biblicism of this work and its manifest reuse
of scrip-tural traditions raises a foundational question that is often overlooked
in current scholarly discourse: to which form(s) of scriptural works did John
allude?¹ This article examines this fundamental question using John’s
references to Zech 4 as samples. The identification of the Vorlage(n) of John’s
allusions is an open ques-tion which remains debated in current scholarship.
Where this question is dis-cussed, its importance is often underplayed² and,
on occasion, flawed textual assumptions are operative.³ An in-depth analysis
of the Vorlagen of allusions in Revelation based on textual criteria remains a desideratum as no consensus on
this issue has arisen.⁴ The goal of this discussion is to examine the textual evidence
internal to the book of Revelation in order to determine the form of Zech 4
to which the author alluded.
The textual evidence from the Judean Desert suggests that multiple textual
exemplars of certain books of the Hebrew Bible and its early Greek versions (OG/
LXX) circulated concurrently in Jewish and early Christian communities in the
first century CE. Despite the profundity of this evidence, the question of textual
form is often dismissed as unnecessary by many sectors of current scholarship.⁵
However, this concern is essential to any exploration of John’s interpretation
of scripture or the rhetoric of allusion in the book of Revelation. This article
addresses this lacuna in current scholarship, bringing the question of Vorlage to
the fore and indicating its critical importance. Quantitative constraints preclude
a full study of references to Zechariah in Revelation – two test cases are examined
here. There exists no serious scholarly challenge to the assertion that the
primary source material for John’s “seven spirits” (1,4; 3,1; 4,5; 5,6) and the “two
witnesses” (11,1–13) is Zech 4.⁶ This study aims to identify the particular form of
Zechariah that underlies these allusions and suggests areas of enquiry for which
this data is critical.
