Unveiling the length and girth of John’s Millennium,Part 1 (length): Comparing Revelation 20 with the Apocalypse of Weeks

Abstract

Commentators have searched in vain for a Jewish precedent for the 1,000-year length of the Millennium in Revelation 20. There are well-known Jewish parallels for the concept of such an interim eschatological period. Although unrecognized in earlier scholarship, the earliest of these parallels, the Apocalypse of Weeks (1 En. 93:1–10; 91:11–17), also provides the precursor for the 1,000-year length of the Millennium. This conclusion follows from various findings concerning the Apocalypse of Weeks: that the ten šhabuʿîn (conventionally, “weeks”) have a literal meaning as a heptadic period (one divisible by seven); that each of these ten periods have equal lengths of 490 years; and that the resulting 20-jubilee (980-year) interim eschatological period symbolizes legal recompense and restoration for earlier periods of Israelite history. The additional 20 years in Revelation’s Millennium may have resulted simply from the author’s approximation or, alternatively, from his use of 50-year rather than 49-year jubilee periods.

Homological versus analogical comparison: length versus girth

Prior scholarship has struggled to account for the length of the Millennium in the book of Revelation (Rev 20:1–7). By use of comparative method, I seek to demonstrate that this 1,000-year period is dependent on an earlier Jewish text, the Apocalypse of Weeks (henceforth ApocWks). To be sure, ApocWks has frequently been acknowledged as a source for the concept of an eschatological period of peace that precedes eternity—consistent with the way that Revelation presents the Millennium. Yet ApocWks has not hitherto been recognized as the textual precursor for the 1,000-year duration of John’s Millennium.

Identification and analysis of a potential precursor constitutes, of course, the bread-and-butter of biblical scholarship: the detection of possible sources and influences and the assessment of how their utilization might alter our interpretation of the target text. Yet I am also interested in the limitations of this very type of comparative work. The genealogical or homological comparison undertaken in the present article will therefore itself be compared with a mode of comparison far less common in biblical studies, that of analogous comparison. The distinction of homology versus analogy, as Egil Asprem outlines, involves the presence or absence of a salient genealogical connection between comparanda. Homology requires either a relevant genealogical link between source and target texts or a common precursor text, whereas analogy requires a merely structural or functional/ergonic similarity. ¹ The companion article in this Special Issue constructs and analyses an analogical comparison between Revelation 20 and book 6 of Virgil’s Aeneid, without positing any direct influence or dependence between the two texts. ² In this way, I not only seek to provide, if each article is read separately, two distinct contributions to the analysis of the Millennium in Revelation, but also aim to compare the comparisons: that is, to make a case for the potentially superior productivity of analogical comparison for biblical studies, despite its widespread underutilization in the field. While both forms of comparative work offer their distinct advantages for critical analysis of the Millennium—and I do not suggest the neglect of either—I make the case that analogy tends to offer the greater thickness or girth of comparative material and on most occasions, therefore, would also furnish greater interpretive insight.

Jonathan Z. Smith emphasized the centrality of comparison to any form of analytical inquiry, positing that “the process of comparison” constitutes “a fundamental characteristic of human intelligence.” ³ Smith equates the mental act of bringing two or more concepts together “for the purpose of noting either similarity or dissimilarity” with nothing less than “the omnipresent substructure of human thought,” without which, he grandly claims, “we could not speak, perceive, learn, or reason.” ⁴ In his recent book Apples and Oranges, Bruce Lincoln offers comparable panegyrics on the act of comparison. Recalling that both Heraclitus and Saussure treat comparison, in particular contrastive comparison, as essential to the task of meaning making, Lincoln declares that “[a]ll knowledge, indeed all intelligibility, . . . derives from consideration of data whose differences become instructive and revealing when set against the similarities that render them comparable.” ⁵

Comparison is thus accorded a privileged role in the scholarship of both Smith and Lincoln, each scholar returning to the subject in multiple studies covering many decades. ⁶ Each scholar also repeatedly makes the point that the importance of comparison to critical endeavor is belied by the widespread under-theorization of what comparison entails. ⁷ To be methodologically sound, comparative work requires something more than the joining of phenomena by arbitrary categorization or contiguity—with the noted resemblance of such a procedure to sympathetic magic. ⁸

I employ the terms length and girth to compare homology and analogy, as useful and accessible synecdoches for these two modes of comparison. In homologous comparison, we are always tracing influence or dependence along a diachronic path between comparanda, or alternatively between two (potentially contemporaneous) comparanda and their shared precursor. In homology, therefore, a particular temporal length necessarily becomes the focus for analysis. In the present article, the comparison of length examines the duration of the Millennium in Revelation alongside the duration of a similar eschatological period in ApocWks. Most of the analytical work is focused on the temporal path between these two texts, of establishing either a direct path of dependence of one text on the other or an indirect path to shared precursor(s). Although analysis of the significance of the comparison follows, as is often the case in this type of comparative work, it takes a back seat to the extensive historical-critical work required to demonstrate textual dependence. By contrast, in analogous comparison, it is the suitability of the comparison, the density and significance of its structural or functional overlap—its girth rather than any temporal length—that is the immediate focus of analysis. Girth is of primary and central importance in determining the analytical productivity of analogical comparison. The comparison of girth undertaken in the companion article examines how John and Virgil employ similar literary techniques, borne of similar developments in the conception of the afterlife, in their formulations of the Christian Millennium and Roman afterlife, and how analogical comparison brings into sharper focus those techniques. Synecdochally, therefore, homological comparison is typically focused on the temporal length between related texts or contexts, whereas analogical comparison—finding its justification in the girth or productivity of comparison—tends to be focused more on significant implications for interpretation. Even if these tendencies were not in play, we would argue that the primary purpose for undertaking comparative analysis should be to advance interpretation and critique. As we will contend, interpretive-critical gains are usually more likely achieved via comparisons of girth than by comparisons of length.

It would of course have been possible to explore other types of comparison, other ways to classify various comparisons than along the homological-analogical axis, or other grounds for analyzing how comparisons may be made. Yet by limiting the studies to these two well-known types of comparison, I aim to demonstrate the benefits and limitations inherent to each, at least insofar as they contribute to our understanding of John’s Millennium. I also hope to demonstrate why it is usually the case—in matters of interpretation—that girth is more satisfying than length.

“When we come we always come too late . . . Millennium” ⁹

An extensive and sometimes fanatical reception of John’s Millennium has now persisted for almost twice as long as its prophesied duration. The enduring enthusiasm for the Millennium is no doubt a function of its desirable picture of a future in which peace and justice prevail on earth, combined with the pesky yet paradoxically intriguing fact that, contrary to expectations, the Millennium seems to be always just around the corner, continually failing to arrive. I restrict analysis, however, to John’s own description of the Millennium, which occurs near the culmination of his many melodramatic portrayals of the End Times. In Revelation 20, John somewhat lackadaisically describes the coming of this 1,000-year foretaste of later eternal bliss, which will apparently be enjoyed only by righteous martyrs, brought back to earthly existence ¹⁰ following their earlier soulish resurrection to the throne-room of God (Rev 6:9–11; 20:4). ¹¹ Throughout this period, Satan will be bound in “the bottomless pit,” unable to “deceive the nations” (Rev 20:1–3). Once released, at the end of the 1,000 years, he will return to his nation-deceiving ways, mustering an innumerable army for the final eschatological battle against the “camp of the saints” in Jerusalem (Rev 20:8–9). Yet fire from heaven will consume Satan’s army even before it is able to commence battle (Rev 20:9). Then the devil will be thrown into the eternal Lake of Fire (Rev 20:10), all the dead will be judged according to their deeds (Rev 20:11–15), and a second and everlasting period of reward will commence in the New Jerusalem, to be enjoyed by all the righteous resurrected dead (Rev 20:5, 12–15).

Commentators have searched in vain for a Jewish precedent for the 1,000-year term of the interim eschatological period of righteousness. ¹² As something of a last resort, some commentators produce a list of classical references involving 1,000-year periods associated with the afterlife. The list typically includes items such as Virgil’s description in Aen. 6.748 of underworld souls who had “rolled time’s wheel for a thousand years” (mille rotam volvere per annos) and thereby became purified for rebirth; Plato’s description in the “Myth of Er” (Resp. 615b, 621d) of the “thousand-year journey” experienced by purged souls; Pindar’s reference to a great cycle of reincarnation, consisting of three 1,000-year periods (Ol. 2.68–70); and Plato’s reference to the same in Phaedrus (249b). ¹³

As is usually concluded, these alleged classical parallels provide little or nothing of relevance for understanding the Millennium in Revelation. The parallels—in particular the afterlife context and the 1,000-year periods—are superficial, while the contextual differences are stark. Comparing John and Virgil, for example, John presents an entirely positive portrayal of the 1,000-year reign given to righteous Christian martyrs (Rev 20:4–6), which is remote from Virgil’s conception of a 1,000-year purgation of souls in the underworld. At the end of the Millennium, John’s martyrs join with all the righteous in the New Jerusalem, while the majority of Virgil’s purged souls receive reincarnation into another earthly life. In Revelation, the souls of the righteous martyrs were already pure before the Millennium commenced, as implied by their portrayal in white robes before God’s altar in the heavenly temple, at the opening of the fifth seal (Rev 6:9–11). ¹⁴ Their millennial reign therefore provides the martyrs with compensatory reward for their unjust suffering, which is the opposite consequence to the deserved 1,000-year purging of souls in Virgil. This listing of classical sources as possible parallels to the length of the Millennium risks what Samuel Sandmel notably decried, in his 1961 Presidential Address to the Society of Biblical Literature and Exegesis, as “parallelomania.” ¹⁵ Sandmel’s address critiqued the tendency of some biblical scholars to overemphasize similarities between sources, often by taking small excerpts out of context or by making overblown claims of literary dependence. We could compare the critique by classicist Gian Biagio Conte, who offers a parallel term to “parallelomania”: “comparisonitis”—a regrettably prevalent philological fetish, which Conte defines as “collecting for the sake of collecting.” ¹⁶

What also should be observed is the scholarly stasis in producing such comparative lists, which affects the feeling of having exhausted possible alternatives, and so of having traveled as far as we can down a particular avenue of inquiry. As such, the scholar’s stereotypical “cf. eg . . .” listing of possible and less probable comparisons constitutes an example of what Robert Pfaller terms “interpassivity” ¹⁷ —exemplified by the case of the person who photocopies a journal article, and consequently has the feeling that they have thereby absorbed its content. The benefits of reading are felt to be achieved by delegation—in this case, to the photocopier. In respect of the scholar’s “cf. e.g. . .” list, the feeling of having achieved a satisfying academic resolution to a problem is delegated to an ideal reader who is assumed to be satisfied by the formal structure of a sequence of citations. Smith was thus right to observe that, in very many academic utilizations of comparanda, we encounter activities much closer to magical thinking than to scholarly endeavor. ¹⁸ For Smith, much of what passes for scholarly comparison bears too close a resemblance to the magical practitioner’s belief in sympathetic connections between otherwise unrelated phenomena, based on such superficial shared characteristics as color, smell, or juxtaposition. We require much better grounds for undertaking comparative work in academia.

While the search for a convincing Jewish or non-Jewish antecedent for the length of the Millennium has eluded commentators, the function of the period is reasonably clear: its role is to compensate martyrs for the injustice of their premature deaths. ¹⁹ In John’s vision of the opening of the fifth seal, the martyrs clothed in white robes cry out to God to avenge their deaths and are told to rest until the number of martyrdoms is complete (Rev 6:9–11). The martyrs appear again immediately before the Millennium, when the messiah Jesus (19:11–13), ambiguously either accompanied by or assisted by martyrs dressed in white linen (19:7b–8; cf. 19:14), slaughters the armies of the nations in violent exercise of divinely mandated vengeance (19:15). The army of martyrs then dine on the flesh of kings and the flesh of their armies (19:18) at the bloody “marriage supper of the Lamb” (19:9, 17–18). In much the same way that the marriage supper of the Lamb fulfills the martyrs’ earlier cry for vengeance, so too the millennial reign with Christ should be viewed as providing the appropriate reward to compensate the martyrs—for their obedience that exceeded that of the other righteous humans who will later be raised at the final resurrection of the dead. The transition in identity and reassignment of roles is captured well by Mangina, who observes that “the great reversal has come at last… [t]hose who were judged are now the judges!” ²⁰

In addition, there are well-known Jewish parallels for the concept of such an interim eschatological period. The earliest clear example occurs in ApocWks (1 En. 93:1–10; 91:11–17), which plausibly dates to the second-century BCE. ²¹ The central device that ApocWks utilizes is a revelation received by the antediluvian Enoch near the beginning of human history that encompasses all of future human history. The revelation schematically divides all of world history into ten so-called šhabuʿîn (commonly translated “weeks,” although the nature of the events that take place in each “week” make clear that the “weeks” traverse entire epochs). In the first seven of these šhabuʿîn, ApocWks briefly summarizes history up until the time of the actual author (apparently in the second-century BCE or not long afterwards). In the last three of the ten šhabuʿîn, ApocWks outlines the anticipated eschatological future. This future involves an initial period of increasing righteousness throughout the world, before the final cosmic transformation. In the predicted eighth and ninth “weeks” of world history, ApocWks predicts that the righteous will defeat the wicked and ultimately impose their righteous law throughout the earth (91:12–14). Finally, at the end of the tenth “week,” the old heaven will pass away, a new heaven will appear, and a period of eternal righteousness will commence (91:15–16).

Two other works make reference to similar interim eschatological periods of righteousness, both of them apocalypses composed about the same time as Revelation: 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch. Although the term “Millennium” is often thought of as synonymous with the term “Messianic Age,” a Messiah only arrives during this time in 4 Ezra 7 and 2 Bar. 29–30, 40:1–4, 70–74. A Messiah is completely absent from ApocWks. In Revelation, the Messiah is not so exclusively associated with the interim eschatological period: much more significant in the book is the account of the commencement of the Messiah’s reign in heaven, which occurred from the time of his earthly death (Rev 5). By contrast, the Millennium inaugurates only the earthly phase of the reign of the Messiah, moreover alongside other martyrs, whose responsibility for judgment implies the more active role (20:4). When we assess which element is consistently central to the interim eschatological period, what stands out is not the sudden arrival of a Messiah, but the establishment and ascendance of righteousness on earth. The Apocalypse of Weeks had introduced this period of ascendant righteousness as an attempt to account for the delay of Daniel’s sudden and catastrophic eschaton, in which it was expected that the righteous would very soon receive their eternal reward. The period therefore affirms the eschatological victory of righteousness, yet only as the result of a gradual increase in righteousness until the end of this present age. Rather than refer to the “Messianic Age,” I employ the term “interim eschatological period of righteousness” to refer to the key quality of eschatological righteousness shared by all four texts.

As we would expect from the creative genre of apocalyptic revelation, there are other variations in the sequence and content of this period across the four texts. For example, the length of the period is a šhabuʿa in ApocWks, but remains unstipulated in 2 Baruch, and is fixed as 400 years in 4 Ezra 7. The benefits received by the righteous during this period are alternatively primarily spiritual (ApocWks, Revelation) or primarily material, in the latter case featuring a return to Edenic conditions of perfect health (4 Ezra 7; 2 Baruch 50–52), and in 2 Baruch 29, long life or perhaps immortality and plentiful food. The beneficiaries may alternatively be righteous survivors of the End Times tribulations (4 Ezra 8:14–24) or resurrected martyrs (Rev 20:4).

Yet the variations do not detract from the extensive unity of conception of the interim eschatological period of righteousness. Across all of these texts, a group of righteous humans is established on earth (not in heaven nor in a transformed cosmos). The period transpires immediately prior to the future cosmic transformation, presenting an earlier future period involving the vindication of righteousness on earth, established against all wickedness. It is hardly a rejoinder to John’s dependence on this Jewish eschatological tradition to point out differences in its expression, which are all well within the bounds of the creativity expected from apocalyptic and other revelatory texts. To assess John’s version of the period as “unique,” as do Craig R. Koester and Mark B. Stephens for example, owes considerably more to apologetic partiality than critical analysis. ²² Completely unfounded is Gerhard Krodel’s contention that the differences are evidence for John’s deliberate “polemic” against an interim eschatological period—a position maintained in the face of John’s description of just such a period. ²³ Rather, we should view each of the four apocalyptic texts as providing original and imaginative vision-infused “takes” on this curious eschatological prelude to eternity.

So, for example, while 2 Baruch applies lavish descriptions of a restored Paradise to the interim eschatological period of righteousness, Revelation applies such lavish paradisiacal descriptions to the New Jerusalem in the eternal age to follow (Rev 21–22). While 4 Ezra limits the rule of the kingly messiah to the interim eschatological period, and kills him off at its culmination, Revelation’s messiah Jesus first rules in heaven, begins to rule unopposed on earth during the interim eschatological period, but continues ruling in the New Jerusalem for all eternity. Although I would replace his phrase “messianic reign” with “eschatological period of righteousness,” Richard Bauckham strikes the right balance by summarizing that “John has taken from the Jewish apocalyptic tradition the notion of a temporary messianic reign on earth before the last judgment and the new creation…, but he has characteristically made something different of it.” ²⁴

The length of John’s Millennium: its source in Jewish Apocalyptic

Given the creative variations around the core common tradition of an interim eschatological period of righteousness, should we regard Revelation’s 1,000-year length simply as one such creative innovation? To do so would miss what has been hidden in plain sight. The length of John’s Millennium was already present in the only earlier surviving Jewish precedent for the interim eschatological period of righteousness, ApocWks.

The first step in my argument for such a precedent is to demonstrate that each of the ten šhabuʿîn (conventionally, “weeks”) in ApocWks denotes a fixed period of time with a literal meaning. As Klaus Koch recognized, a šhabuʿa is more accurately understood as “a time unit that is ‘divisible’ by seven,” whether a week of days, a sabbatical year (every seventh year), Daniel’s 490-year period, or some other heptadic period. ²⁵ The descriptions of the historical šhabuʿin in ApocWks, when correlated with the biblical chronologies, make it clear that we are dealing in each case with what Koch termed “a heptadic period of a higher order,” that is, a period spanning many centuries with total years divisible by seven. ²⁶

Koch further proposes that each of the first seven (historical) šhabuʿîn can be mapped to the internal chronology of the biblical texts from Adam to the Maccabean crisis of the 160s BCE. Few would disagree with his demonstration that the length of the seventh šhabuʿa in ApocWks corresponds to Daniel’s calculation of seventy heptadic periods (490 years) in Dan 9:24–27. Both periods begin with the exile and end with the Maccabean revolt against the Seleucids, and both are characterized as the final period of Jewish sinfulness (Dan 9:24; 1 En. 93:9–10; 91:11). These close correspondences strongly indicate a common conception of the šhabuʿa as one lasting 490 years. It is no objection to Koch’s theory that modern historians calculate the period as significantly shorter than 490 years. Ancient Jewish authors consistently overestimated periods encompassing the time between the exile and the Maccabean revolt, as evident for example in the three variant calculations found in Josephus’ historical works and in another over-cooked chronology provided by Demetrius the Chronographer. ²⁷ Daniel’s and ApokWks’s estimation of 490 years from exile to Maccabean crisis each therefore fall within the range of years calculated by broadly contemporary Jewish chronologies, which implies that contemporary readers would have accepted that the 490-year period’s termination in the Maccabean crisis was chronologically accurate.

Koch argues further that each of the other heptadic periods in ApocWks were also 490-year periods, and proceeds to show how they can be correlated with biblical chronologies. Some of Koch’s correlations are convincing, but some much less so. Beginning with the third šhabuʿa, Koch notes that the first year after the Flood (Gen 10:10) to the year that Abraham fathered Isaac (1 En. 93:5) is exactly 490 years. ²⁸ The combination of 430 years in Egypt (Exod 12:40) plus 60 years of Isaac (before the conception of Jacob/Israel; Gen 25:26) produces a further 490 years in the fourth heptadic period (1 En. 93:6). ²⁹ Koch treats heptadic periods five and six (1 En. 93:7–8) in combination, to produce 980 years (2 × 490 years), which he correlates with the periods from the Exodus to the beginning of the construction of the temple (480 years: 1 Kgs 6:1), the reign of Judean kings (430 years), and the exile (70 years). ³⁰ Much less convincing is Koch’s attempt to explain the first two šhabuʿîn as each lasting 490 years. Faced with 1,656 years from Adam to the Flood in the Masoretic chronology (additional years in LXX), Koch is forced to posit variant chronologies based on hypothetical traditions, in order to reconcile extant biblical chronologies with his posited 2 × 490-year schema. ³¹ The difficulty in maintaining a single value for each šhabuʿa in ApocWks had already prompted R.H. Charles to conclude that the ten šhabuʿîn must possess varying lengths. ³²

Yet if the šhabuʿîn consist of periods based on different multiples of seven (as defended in detail, for example, by Roger T. Beckwith), ApocWks would be remarkably obscure—even for the revelatory genre. ³³ Apocalypse of Weeks would then use the same term to denote different lengths of time, but never provide any indication of those different lengths, never indicate that the term refers to periods of different length, and never indicate how it calculates their lengths. This result speaks in favor of seeing the repeated use of the same term šhabuʿa as referring to the same unit of time, despite the insuperable difficulty in aligning all the šhabuʿîn with biblical texts. Christoph Berner comes to the same conclusion, supported by his analysis of the mirror symmetry of the ten šhabuʿîn. ³⁴ Berner demonstrates how each of the first five heptadic periods are centrifugally fulfilled by each of the last five heptadic periods. Accordingly, all of human history is shown to be divinely ordered by (to describe it from the two middle periods of history outwards): temple building/destruction; the giving of the Law/giving of wisdom to the righteous; election of Israel/judgment of the wicked in Israel; wickedness of all humankind/judgment of all humankind; and the opposition of righteous Enoch and wicked Watchers/the judgment of Watchers and a New Heaven for the righteous. The resulting structure, argues Berner, implies a providential “salvation-historical process” underlying the entire period of human history. ³⁵

Another point to add is that, despite its explicit revelatory/mantic framing, the mirroring scheme of sin and its reversal is ultimately based on principles of legal interpretation. Daniel’s derivation of his 490-year period is based on Jeremiah’s prophecy that 70 years of exile were required for Jewish restoration (Jer 25:11; 29:10). Yet Daniel reinterprets Jeremiah’s 70 years as the much longer period of 70 sevens (šhebuʿîm) of years of atonement, which he views as necessary to reverse the former period of wickedness in Israel and Judah. Daniel’s calculation of 70 sevens has been influenced in turn by Leviticus’ formulation of the jubilee period as “seven sevens of years” (25:8), that is, seven sabbatical years. The jubilee in Leviticus was a legal requirement for the complete rest of the land (from harvesting), and thus its restoration, every sabbath or seventh year. Daniel’s reinterpretation has a further precedent in 2 Chron 36:21, where Jeremiah’s predicted 70 years of exile is figured as a type of Sabbath rest for the land. Idiosyncratically though, as Devorah Dimant has demonstrated, Daniel treats each of the 70 years in which Jeremiah claimed Judeans were absent from the land as requiring a full sabbatical cycle for restoration: 70 years of 7-year Sabbath cycles, or 490 years. ³⁶ Daniel was, therefore, engaged in halakha. The 490-year period is not merely prophetic or figurative, but driven by what Daniel viewed as a literal requirement of Torah for the period of restoration for Israel. For Daniel, Torah required 490 years to be fulfilled for the sabbath rest of the land, and only that period would justly compensate for the past sins of Jewish occupants of the land. Daniel’s 490 years equates to ten jubilees (a sabbath of Sabbaths) of 49 years each. Later texts that refer to Daniel’s 490-year period, such as Jubilees (23:14–31) and 11QMelchizedek (ii 18) explicitly identify Daniel’s period of 70 sevens with the period of 10 jubilees, with reference to Leviticus.

Summarizing a similar logic of legal restitution operative in ApocWks, Berner explains that “after the restoration of Israel in the eighth seventh, another two sevenths are necessary for the judgment of humanity and the watchmen, because the degeneration of the latter took up the first two sevenths.” ³⁷ ApocWks requires precisely equivalent 490-year periods to reverse the corresponding earlier historical “weeks” of degeneration. Berner is right, however, to correct Koch, by emphasizing that this chronology of reversal is not something inherent in biblical texts, but a schema imposed on those texts by the author of ApocWks. The ten-week period of human history constructs “a hidden structure of the biblical history of salvation, which is not derived from the biblical writings but is projected back onto them in an explanatory manner.” ³⁸ Koch’s correlation of ApocWks with biblical chronologies still remains very useful to demonstrate one plausible way in which an ancient author might have justified their imposition of a sevenfold 490-year structure on all of biblical history. Furthermore, as explored above, the 490-year structure is indeed inherent to parts of the Hebrew Bible’s historiography. Yet the tenfold structure in ApocWks remains an imposition on the Hebrew Bible, not something that, as a whole, can simply be derived from biblical texts.

What has not yet been explicitly recognized is that the establishment of righteousness in the eighth and ninth šhabuʿîn delineates a temporal period of 980 years for righteousness to be established in the eschatological future. The eighth and ninth šhabuʿîn in ApocWks therefore provide the overlooked Jewish precedent for the length of Revelation’s millennium of righteousness on earth.

This derivation of the length of the Millennium is confirmed by the remarkably close parallels between the eschatological sequences in Revelation 19–21 and weeks eight to ten in ApocWks. The parallels involve not only their sequence but also their substantive content. The sequence of events begins, in both ApocWks and Revelation, with the dismantling of structures of violence and deceit (1 En. 91:11 [end of seventh week]; Rev 18; 20:1–3). Next, “witnesses of righteousness” who survived the earlier tribulation, or martyrs who died faithfully during the tribulation, receive their due reward (1 En. 93.10 [4QEn^g 1 iv 12–13]; Rev 20:4). Armies of the righteous then execute judgment with the sword (1 En. 91:12 [eighth week]; Rev 19:11–21; 20:4–6). The righteous receive booty or tribute from the rest of the earth (1 En. 91:13a; Rev 21:24, 26). An eternal temple of God is built (1 En. 91:13b; Rev 21:2–27; 22:1–5). All the wicked are dispatched to the pit or Lake of Fire (1 En. 91:14b [ninth week]; Rev 20:11–15; 21:8). Finally, cosmic changes occur in the tenth week or following the Millennium: the fallen angels or Satan are judged (1 En. 91:15; Rev 20:7–10), and the first heaven is said to pass away and a new heaven is revealed (1 En. 91:16; Rev 21:1). While there are also differences between ApocWks and Revelation, in particular the brevity of ApocWks in contrast to the more elaborate descriptions in Revelation, the overlap of distinctive apocalyptic motifs within a common chronological progression is extensive and striking. It indicates John’s knowledge of the complex of traditions present in the earlier apocalypse. The 980 years of the eighth and ninth weeks in ApocWks constitutes an extended period of righteousness on earth, established first within Israel and then throughout the whole world, just as John’s Millennium comprises a long period of righteousness based in the holy city (of Jerusalem) yet resulting in peace with all the nations. The very high level of similarity between the texts indicates, if not direct influence, that the authors of both ApocWks and Revelation shared knowledge of a common end-times schema that incorporated a millennial period of interim righteousness.

Finally, I address the apparent difference between the 980 years in ApocWks and 1,000 years in Revelation. One straightforward explanation would be that John was content to describe ApocWks’ 980 years non-literalistically as τὰ χίλια ἔτη (“the thousand years”: Rev 20:5). The explanation is consistent with the lack of concern in Revelation with the precise calculations and dating schemas that are so central to ApocWks. While the Millennium in Revelation certainly shares ApocWks’ concern for the eschatological restoration of the righteous, as is evident in the closely parallel motifs outlined above, Revelation shows no interest in calculating an elaborate and exact chronology of world history. While that explanation suffices, an alternative explanation is also possible, based on the observation that Daniel’s 490-year period soon came to be interpreted as a period of ten jubilees (ten periods of seven sabbath-years, or 10 × 49 years), the so-called Great Jubilee. ³⁹ For example, 11QMelchizedek refers to “the jubilee that follows the nine jubilees,” that is, a total of 490 years, explicitly quoting either Dan 9:25 or 9:26. Again, 4QApocryphon of Jeremiah C (4Q387a, 388a, 389, 390) places Daniel 9’s final week at the end of the seventh jubilee of ten jubilees. Yet by the time of the writing of Revelation, there was evidently some debate about whether the 50th year of the jubilee (Lev 25:10) coincided with the first year of the next sabbath of years or constituted a separate year before those next seven years. The legal debate led to the formulation of different periodizations of world history, some based on a series of 49-year periods, some based on a series of 50-year periods. ⁴⁰ Arguably, Revelation may have constructed or inherited a reinterpretation of the 20-jubilee period inherent in ApocWks, as 20 × 50 years, an attractively round number, which produced the 1,000-year duration. Rather than assess and decide between the alternatives, I point out that there are (at least) these two plausible reasons why Revelation may have treated ApocWks’ 980-year duration as a round 1,000-year period. As the extensive subsequent reception of the Millennium has shown, fixing the period as a round 1,000 years proved seductive.

Conclusions

As the 490-year schematization is central to ApocWks, and as that text provides by far the closest match to Revelation’s end-times schema in Revelation 19–21, it is probable that Revelation obtained its millennial period directly from it—and if not from a very similar tradition of 2 × 10 jubilees of righteousness established on earth that was probably itself based on ApocWks. The 1,000-year length of the Millennium was, at least by the second or early first-century BCE (when ApocWks was composed), based ultimately on legal principles of recompense and restoration. These principles were already common to Leviticus, Jeremiah, Chronicles, and Daniel, and have been elaborated further in ApocWks, so as to extend their compensatory pattern to all of human history.

Revelation thus inherits a periodization that was already intimately associated with restoration. We may trace the motif of recompense for the extraordinary suffering of Christian martyrs, within Revelation, from the pleas of the martyrs before God’s throne (Rev 6:9–11; cf. 7:9–10, 13–17), to their ambiguous involvement in the Lamb’s bloody vengeance against the nation’s armies (19:7b–8; cf. 19:14), and to their restorative reign with the Lamb during the Millennium (20:1–7). The Millennium compensates Christian martyrs for their extraordinary suffering, by the reversal of all wrongs, so allowing for the commencement of the eternal period of earthly paradise to be enjoyed by all the righteous dead. The genealogical comparison of Revelation with ApocWks offers diachronic depth to the centrality of the motif of just compensation in Revelation, and specifically, unveils the historical development of the concept of an interim eschatological period of righteousness. To be clear, I do not claim that Revelation shows any concern for the legal significance behind the length of the Millennium. There is no evidence for some metaleptic evocation of Leviticus in its calculation of the period as 1,000 years or 20 jubilees. ⁴¹ The full jubilary connotations of the length of the interim eschatological period of righteousness belongs to the history of the development of the notion, and may have simply been inherited by Revelation as a fully formed unit of tradition. In other words, the genealogical comparison in this study enhances our understanding of the history of traditions utilized by Revelation, not all of which would be directly relevant to John’s evident immediate purposes.

A similar conclusion applies to the determination of whether Revelation’s Millennium is literal, given that the interim eschatological period of righteousness in ApocWks was derived literally from legal requirements. The centuries-long debate over whether the Millennium should be understood in a literal or figurative/spiritual sense will not be resolved by the conclusions reached here, although they contribute relevant considerations. ⁴² There are certainly grounds for viewing the development of the interim eschatological period of righteousness, and its earliest known formulation in ApocWks, as a literal period—fulfilling the legal requirement for a fixed period of righteousness to compensate for the suffering of God’s chosen people. Yet legal requirements for fulfillment of fine points of Torah are far from being among John’s own concerns in Revelation. While John adopted a length for his Millennium that had originally been formulated in a literal and fixed sense, based on legal rationales, Revelation itself shows little interest in these legal aspects.

The primary benefit of the genealogical comparison of the Millennium explored here is that it provides a diachronic depth to its interpretation as a period of eschatological compensation and restoration for righteous martyrs. Comparative analysis further demonstrates that the length of the Millennium is derived from a tradition of legal-apocalyptic periodization evident in ApocWks. The other major finding of this study is that, given the considerable commonalities Revelation shares with ApocWks, the Millennium and its 1,000-year length were most plausibly directly derived from ApocWks.