Sárospataki Füzetek 15. (2011)

2011 / 4. szám - TANULMÁNYOK

HOUWELINGEN, P. H. R. VAN

In this article I would like to investigate which motifs from the story of creation in the first book of the Bible recur in the last book, and what role these motifs play there.3 I intend to cluster the relevant textual material into seven such motifs, and discuss each separately. In every case, the book of Revelation will be the starting point, from which lines are traced back to the book of Genesis. This article does not aim at offering various new exegetical insights, but at presenting a biblical-theological overview of paradise motifs in Revelation.4

These motifs are:

1. The paradise garden of God

2. The new heaven and the new earth, where there is no sea

3. God and the Lamb as the eternal source of tight

4. Servants who reign as kings

5. Free access to the tree of life

6. A river of living water, with deposits of precious stones

7. The removal of the dragon-snake: the paradise curse lifted.

In the discussion of these seven motifs, the similarities between Revelation and Genesis will, of course, be highlighted. And at the end if this article I will, by way of conclusion, also identify the differences between them.

By ‘paradise motifs’ I understand those elements of John’s visions which, to trained readers of the Bible, are reminders of the creation story of Genesis 1-3. The world to come (with the new Jerusalem as its world capital) stands fully in tine with the world of paradise as it was in the beginning. In line, that is, seen from a redemptive-historical perspective.5 And by ‘trained readers’ I mean in the first place John himself, the human author of a book full of heavenly visions; then his first audience in Asia Minor, near the end of the first century AD; and finally people such as ourselves, readers from the First World at the beginning of the 21st century.

1. The paradise garden of God

There is only one place where the book of Revelation explicitly refers to paradise. It is not where we might expect it: in the description of the new Jerusalem (chapter 21-22) where most of the paradise motifs are found. We find it where Christ concludes his personal letter to the church at Ephesus with the promise of life: “To him who overcomes, I will give the right to eat from the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God” (Rev. 2:7).6 The reference in this text to the tree of life — another paradise motif, to be discussed separately in section 5, below — shows that this must be a reference to Genesis 2-3.

3 On the question: ‘did lohn really see things?’, see the balanced exposition of De Silva, Seeing Things

John’s Way, 121-124. ’

4 See also my previous article “The Book of Revelation: Full of Expectation,” Sárospataki Tűitek 15

(2011): 11-19.

5 Yarbrough has pointed again to the lasting relevance of this perspective: Robert W. Yarbrough, The

Salvation Historical Fallacy? Reassessing the History of New Testament Theology (Leiden: Deo Publishing, 2004).

6 All Scripture quotations and references in this article are taken from the New International Version of

the Bible (NIV), 1984. The apocryphal books are cited from the New American Bible (NAB), 1970.

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