The Apocalypse of St John, I–III: The Greek Text with Introduction, Commentary, and Additional Notes

99 Pages·2010·1.64 MB·Greek

by  Fenton John Anthony Hort

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The Apocalypse of St John, I-III
Fenton John Anthony Hort (1828–1892) was a scholar of the Bible, Patristics
and theology who served as Hulsean and Lady Margaret’s Professor
of Divinity at Cambridge. Among his scholarly contributions are the
foundational critical edition of the Greek New Testament as well as portions
of the magisterial The Ante-Nicene Fathers. This short book is a posthumous
edition of Hort’s lectures discussing the authorship, dating and introductory
chapters of the Book of Revelation. While the 1908 publication represents,
as the preface notes, ‘scholarship in undress’, it does so with skill. Positing
an earlier date of authorship than traditionally held and asserting authorial
unity with the rest of the Johannine corpus, this compact work is an
important example of focused historical criticism. The commentary on the
first three chapters of the Apocalypse further underscores the contribution of
this notable scholar at the height of his prowess.
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The Apocalypse
of St John, I-III
The Greek Text with Introduction,
Commentary, and Additional Notes
Fenton John Anthony Hort
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore,
São Paolo, Delhi, Dubai, Tokyo
Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York
www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781108007573
© in this compilation Cambridge University Press 2009
This edition first published 1908
This digitally printed version 2009
ISBN 978-1-108-00757-3 Paperback
This book reproduces the text of the original edition. The content and language reflect
the beliefs, practices and terminology of their time, and have not been updated.
Cambridge University Press wishes to make clear that the book, unless originally published
by Cambridge, is not being republished by, in association or collaboration with, or
with the endorsement or approval of, the original publisher or its successors in title.
THE APOCALYPSE OF ST JOHN
i—in
THE GREEK TEXT
WITH
INTRODUCTION, COMMENTARY, AND
ADDITIONAL NOTES
BY THE LATE
F. J. A. HORT, D.D., D.C.L., LL.D.
SOMETIME HULSEAK PROFESSOR AND LADY MARGARET'S READER IK DIVINITY
IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON
i 908
(ffamftrfirge:
JPKINTED BY JOHN CLAY, M.A.
AT THE UNIVEKSITY PRESS.
PEEFACE
X CONSIDER it an honour and a privilege to be invited to
-•- bear any part in furthering the publication of a work of
Dr Hort's; and in the present case the privilege seems to
become also a duty. I am aware that there is a feeling abroad,
which is general in its character but not without particular
application, that injury is done to the reputation of the great
men who are gone by publishing works, and still more fragments
of works, which they had themselves in no sense prepared for
publication. The feeling is natural enough; and it is doubtless
true that there are not many scholars who would bear to have
such a test applied to them. But Dr Hort was just one of these
few; and if the devotion of his friends and the public spirit of
his publisher move them to incur the labour and expense of
giving such fragments to the world, it is incumbent upon those
who benefit by their action to do what in them lies to obtain
for it a just appreciation.
It is worth pointing out that the "reputation" which is
supposed to suffer is that somewhat vague tribute which the
world at large bestows upon the memories of those of whom
it has perhaps known little during their lifetime. It is very
natural that this tribute should be based—and based by
conscious preference—upon finished work,
"Things done, that took the eye and had the price."
But the working student is able to go behind this; and it is
the working student whose interest is consulted in such publi-
ii PBEFACE
cations as those of which I am speaking, and who is called upon
to show his gratitude for them. It is the working student to
whom Dr Hort specially appealed as the very princeps of his
order. What he owes to him is not only an immense mass of
really trustworthy data for his own studies, but a model—an
unsurpassed model—for the method in which his studies ought
to be conducted. Dr Hort was an " expert," if ever there was
one. In this respect I should not hesitate to place him first of
the three great Cambridge scholars. He had Lightfoot's clear-
ness and soundness of knowledge, with a subtly penetrating
quality to which Lightfoot could hardly lay claim; and if
Westcott had something of the subtlety, he had not the sharp
precision and critical grip. There are grades of excellence in
the way in which a scholar handles his evidence. To the
average man evidence is like Peter Bell's primrose:
" A primrose by a river's brim
A yellow primrose was to him,
And it was nothing more."
In the case of Dr Hort, each bit of evidence as he comes to it
seems to have a life and an atmosphere of its own; and this
life and atmosphere is compelled to yield up its secret just as
much as the material evidence. In addition to this Dr Hort
had a powerful judgement; but I am not quite sure that the
judgement was equal in degree to this peculiar faculty of which
I have been speaking; it was perhaps biased a little in the
opposite direction to that in which most of us have our judge-
ment biased, against the obvious and commonplace. Just this
last reason made it of special value as corrective and educative.
Under these heads I am not sure that I know any example
of Dr Hort's work that is more instructive than the fragment
before us. It is no doubt scholarship in undress—utterly in
undress, but perhaps on that account all the more impressive.
It is all absolutely bare and severe; there is not a word of
surplusage. One seems to see the living scholar actually at
work; his mind moving calmly and deliberately from point to
point, testing each as it comes up by the finest tests available
PREFACE m
and recording the results by a system of measurements equally
fine. To understand the patience, thoroughness and searching
quality of such judgements, is to understand what the highest
scholarship really means.
I am not in the secrets of those who have seen through the
press the long series of posthumous books with so much loving
care, and I do not know on what principle their choice of
precedence has been based. Probably it had reference to the
degree of preparedness in which the material was left by
the author. With a single very small exception—the little
volume Ante-Nicene Fathers, in which however there are a few
sentences scattered through it that I value highly—I should
fully endorse their decision to publish. We could not afford to
lose the dry light and careful circumspect method ofJudaistic
Christianity and The Christian Ecclesia. But in positive value
for the student I should be inclined to place first of all the
exegetical fragment on I. St Peter, and the present fragment
very near it. For criticism as distinct from exegesis, and for
the insight that it gives into the workings of a scholar's mind,
I doubt if the present fragment can be placed second to any-
thing.
It is true that, as I have said above, the pages that follow
were in no sense prepared for the press by their author. Those
who know his fastidious judgement might well believe that he
had no immediate or near intention of publishing them. And
yet they had the advantage of a somewhat thorough revision.
I am given to understand that the volume represents notes of
lectures delivered first in Emmanuel College in 1879 and then
revised for a course of Professor's Lectures in the May Term
1889. Attention may be invited to these dates and to the
prescience of coming questions which they seem to indicate;
e.g. to the remarkable care which is shown in every allusion to
the beginnings of systematic persecution, and the anticipation
of the discussions about the early death of St John which a
well-known tract by E. Schwartz brought into prominence some
fifteen years later. But for the conclusion to which the