reply to post by WarJohn
Hi WarJohn
The Apocalypse of Yohanon the Levite (aka the Book of Revelation) is written in very very poor Greek (full of 'Greek grammatical howlers') and much
of the received garbled texts can only make sense if they are translated word for word back into Hebrew and Aramaic (i.e. grammatical syntax and
vocabulary); when this is done, it becomes clear that this is a Holy War Document, very very close to the tone of much of the Dead Sea Scroll material
(in fact most of the quotations the book cites are taken from Dead Sea Scroll versions of the Hebrew & Aramaic texts and not the later Masoretic
Hebrew 'pointed' (voweled) text used by Protestants and Rabbinic Jews today as 'holy scripture'.
See this discussion which goes into more detail
www.abovetopsecret.com...
We see HOLY WAR teminology throughout the book ('sing unto YHWH a NEW Psalm' for example comes from the OT of which there are 9 of them in the
Hebrew Psalter opening with the same words - all of them are antiGentile War thumping chants against occupiers (e.g. Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians,
Greeks & Romans, all of whom invaded Palestine and forced a military style occupation on 'eretz Yisroel') - and there are a number of key parallels
with the images in the Book of Revelation and the socalled War Scroll (1QMilkhama) found among the Dead Sea Scrolls (locked up into time capsules in
caves 1-11 at Qumran in June of 68 CE)
The original UrText of the Book of Revelation seems to have been written in 3, 6 and 12 line Lament Qinah Meter stanzas (the 12 line groups are often
doubled into 24 line groupings, the number of the 24 Priestly Levitical families that took turns weekly during the year to serve in the Temple of YHWH
at Jerusalem)
The text (i.e. contents) come from various apocalyptic holy war Messianic 'kill the gentiles' verbiage compiled from OT/apocryphal Hebrew prophetic
literature i.e. reworked and re-cast, since the 'age of the prophets was over' and therefore only interpretations of the older established writings
was allowed, aka Midrashic Expansion methodology
The sources included rare versions (e.g. following Theodotion's or the Targum versions) of key selections from e.g. proto and trito Isaiah, the
Hebrew and Aramaic sections of the Book of Daniel, Joel, the Daily Tamid Psalms (which are the morning and evening daily sacrificial ritual of the
Jerusalem Temple in the late Second Temple period i.e. Psalms 24, 48, 82, 94, 81, 93, 92) Zechariah chapter 4, and 9-12 etc.) and were woven together
into a new text around 69 CE, the 'year of the 4 Emperors' when it was thought that Rome would collapse in upon itself after the 'suicide' of Nero
Caesar (NRVN QSR in Hebrew - whose gematrical name is 666; the alternative spelling NRV QSR (nun resh vav + quph samek resh) comes out gemmatrically
to 616, the OTHER number of the beast of Rev. chapter 13 according to Codex Bezae and several early papyri.
The Judaeans revolted against Rome in 66CE, 70 years (symbolic for them) after the death of King Herod in 4 BCE and believed that a new Jerusalem
would descend from the heavens, purified of all the ritual impurities of the occupiers (i.e. the Romans, who invaded Palestine in 63 BCE under Pompey
initiating the 'Times of The Gentiles' aka the Times of the Amorites) - one CANNOT understand the 'book of Revelation' outside of the context of
the 1st Revolt against Rome (66-72 CE) - and was written at a time when they reallly really really believed that they could overthrow the 'kittim'
i.e. the goyim-Roman invaders and inaugurate the Kingdom of David on earth which was to last 1000 years.
Here is a brief extract
And I looked & behold, I saw standing on Mt Zion: The Slain Ram of EL
And standing by him were the 144,000
Dressed in ritually pure white linen Lebushim :
And lo, these were all Celibate Males ('parthenoi' lit. Male Virgins i.e. ready for battle)
Each unpolluted by the filth of female's flesh..
Both spotless in word and also in deed.
For lo, these are all the Slain First-Fruits of EL
In whom was found no Guile
Each of them Worthy to stand before the Throne of EL :
The same who who followed the Ram wherever he leads them
Who all had the Seal of the Living EL
Even engraved upon their Foreheads.
And the 144,000 is not without its WAR connotation either.
We see the number listed as 144,000 is divided evenly into 12 Tribes, almost in the manner of an Perfected Military Census or Roll Call of Warriors
(see 1 Chronicles chapters 4 through 7, where the Masoretic Text gives a similar Roll Call of Warriors by Tribe – with a few more than 144,000 -
roughly 152,000 ‘fighting men ready and fit to do battle’ if you add up all the various numbers). In Chronicles, the numbers are NOT even per
tribe – so the list in Revelation seems to be idealized in some way.