Unveiling the length and girth of John’s Millennium,Part 2 (girth): Comparing Revelation 20 with book 6 of Virgil’s Aeneid

Abstract

Although comparison is central to biblical scholarship, it is usually carried out only where genealogical relationships exist between texts. Analogical comparison has traditionally been less central to biblical studies. The two modes of comparison, homology and analogy, may usefully be thought of as centered either on length or on girth. In the absence of genealogical connection, analogical comparison remains justifiable by being anchored in structurally similar causal processes. A comparison of the way John has employed eschatological precursors in constructing the Millennium in Revelation 20 with Virgil’s handling of afterlife traditions in book 6 of the Aeneid demonstrates the benefits of analogical comparison over homological comparison in terms of its thickness or girth of explanation. Although the focus is on Revelation, analogical-synchronic comparison of Revelation 20 with book 6 of Virgil’s Aeneid mutually illuminates their techniques and rationales for combining and reformulating earlier Jewish eschatological traditions. Analogical comparison provides a girth of insight into ancient techniques to harmonize tensions in earlier tradition; the importance of existential needs for preserving earlier conceptions of the afterlife at the risk of remaining inconsistencies and tensions; the strong reading of precursors driven by the profundity of the subject matter; the distinction of Revelation’s transformative-mantological intertextuality from the device of allusion; and the importance of elite political ideology (for both elites and wannabe elites) in tracing the construction of the afterlife. Girth thus potentially offers hermeneuts far greater satisfaction than length.

Moving from homological to analogical comparison

In “Unveiling the Length and Girth of John’s Millennium, Part 1 (Length): Comparing Revelation 20 with the Apocalypse of Weeks,” I posited a genealogical connection between the length of the Millennium in Revelation 20 and a Jewish precursor, the Apocalypse of Weeks (ApocWks). Here, I pursue a different comparison, between John’s conception of the Millennium and Virgil’s presentation of the afterlife in book 6 of the Aeneid. The basis for such a comparison, I readily admit, might not seem so apparent. The differences are stark between Virgil’s epic poetry, written to legitimize the ruling Roman dynasty, and John the Revelator’s anti-Roman apocalyptic narrative. Their audiences, in addition, are demographically disparate, primarily educated Roman elites versus sectarians from a small offshoot of Judaism. What then justifies reading Virgil alongside John?

That question in turn prompts a meta-critical question: what disciplinary norms have made the proposition of comparing Revelation with the Aeneid appear unjustified? A major reason is that comparison, in biblical studies as well as classics, is usually only carried out where some genealogical connection exists between texts or contexts. Comparison in biblical studies normally aims to provide literary or social contextualization, which first requires a demonstration that the target text or culture has been influenced by a particular precursor or that two texts or contexts share a common precursor or share common cultural elements. ¹

The usual type of comparison found in biblical studies thus involves a search for a homologous or genealogical connection. ² It is preoccupied with the preliminary task of proof: demonstrating influence, dependence, borrowing, assimilation, or diffusion. Interpretative implications often take a back seat. Homological comparison of necessity traces influence along a temporal path between comparanda, or between comparanda and a common precursor, so that a certain length of time is an essential focus of the comparative task. Homology usually forms a binary contrast with analogy, a mode of comparison much less common in biblical studies. In analogy, perceived similarities are purely structural or functional/ergonic, not involving any salient genealogical connections. ³ Analogies may be made across different time periods, but unlike homology, a length of time separating comparanda, or separating comparanda and their shared sources, is not a necessary component of the comparison. The focus of analogical comparison, instead, is on the interpretive depth or girth derived from the comparative study: the greater the girth, the more productive the analogy will be, both for comparing mutually elucidating texts and contexts and also for furthering the researcher’s theoretical questions and interests. The terms length and girth, therefore, are tangible synecdoches, respectively, for the more abstract concepts of homological and analogical comparison. Homology centrally requires a length of time for its mode of comparison, while analogy, to be productive, primarily requires the building up of descriptive thickness or girth.

In analogy also, the preliminary task of textual analysis and contextualization tends to be more extensive than that required for genealogical comparison, despite the close association of the latter with philology and historical analysis. In large part, this is due to the tendency for salient similarities between analogues to be less clearly delineated in the early stages of research. Theoretical foundations and implications of the comparison may likewise at first be only vaguely perceived. In the case of homology, by contrast, the comparativist knows that the object of investigation is a more or less specific historical chain of influence, in the most straightforward case, a relationship between a text and its putative precursor text. They also have some idea of how and to what extent the target text or culture has made use of that precursor. But in analogy, we often more vaguely perceive, at least at first, that texts from two distinct provenances appear to share a similar conceptual underpinning or a structurally similar social, political, historical, or economic cause, or we might more or less vaguely perceive a similar confluence of cultural ideas for each. Whether the perception of similarity is analytically useful or not will require detailed study of each comparandum and its relevant context, as well as a reflexive analysis of our own methodological approach to the comparison. We need first to establish, that is, if the alleged comparison is merely impressionistic or well grounded. The initial perception of similarity may require radical alteration or refinement, or turn out to be misleading or merely illusory.

Reflecting on a lifetime of work in theorizing comparative method, Jonathan Z. Smith provides a useful summary of the methodological steps required for making analytically useful comparisons. His summary may also be employed as a procedure for transforming a largely intuitive perception of similarity into a robust analogical comparison:

I would distinguish four moments in the comparative enterprise: description, comparison, redescription, and rectification. Description is a double process which comprises the historical or anthropological dimensions of the work: First, the requirement that we locate a given example within the rich texture of its social, historical, and cultural environments that invest it with its local significance. The second task of description is that of reception-history, a careful account of how our second-order scholarly tradition has intersected with the exemplum. That is to say, we need to describe how the datum has become accepted as significant for the purpose of argument. Only when such a double contextualization is completed does one move on to the description of a second example undertaken in the same double fashion. With at least two exempla in view, we are prepared to undertake their comparison both in terms of aspects and relations held to be significant, and with respect to some category, question, theory, or model of interest to us. The aim of such a comparison is the redescription of the exempla (each in light of the other) and a rectification of the academic categories in relation to which they have been imagined. ⁴

Following Smith, it is only after the difficult work of contextualization undertaken in respect of each comparandum, involving centrally a “thick description” of each, together with a similarly careful study of prior scholarship on each comparandum, that we establish a sound basis to employ the comparison—with all its similarities and differences—for some analytical end. ⁵

By comparing Revelation with the Aeneid, my ultimate aim is to show how the benefits of analogical comparison can, in many cases, be more extensive than those offered by genealogical comparison. Analogical comparison has been scandalously underutilized in biblical scholarship—where it is often relegated to the sidelines, wrongly regarded only as “Contextual Biblical Scholarship” or simply as “Reception History,” among other options, always as something adjacent to biblical studies proper. The great benefit of comparisons of girth, as I see it, lies in their potential to stimulate questions and issues not considered or that are underthematized within one’s disciplinary silo. Comparisons of girth offer ways to reclassify and reconceive our ancient data for previously unforeseen academic purposes, providing “a store of answers” found elsewhere in scholarship, for adoption, adaptation, or simply as stimulae for developing related or new insights. ⁶ Andrew Tobolowsky has been a great defender of comparative work between Hebrew Bible scholarship and Classics, and adduces similar arguments in favor of such work. ⁷ By reading the two disciplines together on topics such as ethnicity, genealogies, and origin stories, Tobolowsky’s work offers a rich re-evaluation and expansion of the range of questions that biblical scholars might bring to relevant texts and to related socio-historical contexts. The goal of such comparative work, for Tobolowsky, is not simply to transfer answers reached in classics to biblical studies but, by careful contextualization and comparison, to open biblical scholarship up to a “wide range of different perspectives, utilizing different approaches, and incorporating new recognitions in new ways.” ⁸ Similarly, we may cite Galbraith’s recent comparison of Māori stories about the heroic Tāwhaki with biblical stories of Nephilim and other ancient West Asian hero legends. The comparison seeks “to place them in conversation in the hope of drawing out unnoticed elements in each, to stimulate questions previously unasked, to provide fresh answers to old questions of interpretation, to notice the hitherto unnoticed.” In that study, Galbraith utilizes the absence of firm boundaries between divine, heroic, and mortal categories in Tāwhaki traditions as a challenge to preconceptions concerning the mutual exclusivity of different scholarly identifications of the “sons of the gods” in Gen 6:1–4. ⁹ If Smith is right that “the process of comparison is a fundamental characteristic of human intelligence,” we should expect such productive outcomes in biblical scholarship from shifting our focus to analogical comparison. ¹⁰

In practice, however, genealogical comparisons are the norm. Many scholars of early Christianity have treated homology rather than analogy as the only form of comparison worthy of pursuit. ¹¹ Smith observes an underlying apologetic bias operative here. ¹² Christian texts and historical developments are deemed “incomparable” in order (1) to impute unmatched prestige and superiority to biblical texts in contrast to texts deemed “pagan” or “uninspired,” and (2) to assert the sui generis status of early Christianity in contrast to other ancient religions. ¹³ Homology, at least as frequently practiced, serves a confessional interest in distinguishing Christian texts as the telos of antecedent texts. Homology is thus typically justified by the assumption that the target (Christian) text is inherently of interest. By contrast, analogy requires a prior theoretical justification for carrying out the comparison, one that renders the texts under comparison primarily as useful tools for theoretical goals, albeit in the process offering benefits for interpreting those texts.

We accordingly require a theoretical justification for analogical comparison—and this need is made pressing by the absence of any genealogical justification. In the absence of any such justification, our making of analogical comparison becomes arbitrary or whimsical rather than analytically sound. One commonly adopted solution is to employ a polythetic definition for grouping phenomena, including as comparanda. In his 1978 centennial address to the Society of Biblical Literature, Smith critiqued the monothetic approach to the definition of “religion,” which is especially susceptible to the apologetic tendency to define the confessional scholar’s own religion as “unique” and so incomparable. ¹⁴ Smith’s corrective was to promote the polythetic or “family-resemblance” approach to categorization, which identifies a set of characteristics that the various instantiations the category share to a greater or lesser extent, while not requiring each individual instantiation to share every individual characteristic of the category. In a polythetic approach, the comparison, for example, of forms of Judaism, or a comparison of a form of Judaism with a form of Christianity, would map “a shifting cluster of characteristics which vary over time.” ¹⁵

As Josephson Storm points out, however, polythetic classification sidesteps the requirement for theoretical justification, because “describing something as a family resemblance presupposes rather than explicates a similarity.” ¹⁶ Josephson Storm gives the example of the urinal, which might either share a family resemblance with other bathroom fixtures or with other works of art, depending on the family to which one elects for it to be assigned. ¹⁷ Smith had earlier concluded that polythetic classification in the social sciences differs precisely on this point from its original use in biology: “The phylogeneticist strives, at least in theory, for a ‘natural’ classification; the human scientist must always propose an ‘artificial’ classification. This is because there is, arguably, nothing comparable to genetic processes within the sphere of human culture.” ¹⁸ Josephson Storm’s solution to the justification problem in classification and comparison entails the rejection of Smith’s dichotomy of natural versus social forms. ¹⁹ His solution draws on philosopher of science Richard Boyd’s employment of shared property clusters, which the latter used to define natural kinds (for example, animal species). In these natural kinds, individual members may both change and evolve over time while also differing in manifold ways at a certain point of time. ²⁰ They are grouped together on an intrinsic although not uniform basis. Yet for Boyd, positing common properties or a family resemblance does not in itself provide a justification for grouping and comparison. To be grouped or compared within a certain family, the members of the group must also share some “causal mechanism” that makes them what they are. ²¹ In the case of animals, that causal mechanism is clear: their physical genealogy and inheritance of certain DNA. Josephson Storm takes Boyd’s causal basis for grouping multiple natural phenomena and extends it to what he terms “social kinds.” ²² For Josephson Storm, social kinds are processes within reality rather than essences; their reality is a “patterned activity” where the social pattern is a feature of the real world, not merely constructed by our mental categorizations of that pattern. ²³ Examples of these real social patterns include the money system, governments, universities, and religion, each of whose reality depends on persisting processes of power. Of prime importance in justifying analogical comparison, following Josephson Storm, is for the comparanda to be “anchored by the same causal processes.” ²⁴ Observations about similar social phenomena are grounded in reality if those social phenomena are anchored in some common causal process giving rise to those phenomena. For analogical comparisons, where there is no genealogical anchor, different social realities may still share what Josephson Storm terms an “ergonic convergence”: shared properties that derive from a response to a substantially similar causal anchor, albeit achieved in different ways. As in the case of parallel evolution of species, “social kinds with independent origins can converge,” Josephson Storm explains, “because they have been constructed to satisfy similar needs or goals (practical, ideological, economic, etcetera).” Accordingly, there can still be objective grounds for analogical comparison, in the absence of any genealogical link, if the comparanda are grounded in a functionally similar causal anchor.

Egil Asprem offers a very useful schematization of types of comparison by combining the homological/analogical distinction with a synchronic/diachronic distinction (the latter distinguishing contemporaneous and non-contemporaneous comparanda). ²⁵ He accordingly sets out four types of comparison:

1. Analogical-synchronic comparison, which involves structural analysis in a single time period, such as my comparison here of afterlife concepts in Revelation and the Aeneid;

2. Analogical-diachronic comparison, which involves structural analysis across two distinct time periods, such as Bruce Lincoln’s comparison of Achaemenid authoritarianism with US torture in the Iraq War ²⁶ ;

3. Homological-synchronic comparison, which involves the historical explanation of two contemporary phenomena in terms of a shared cause, such as the shared cause of modern settler colonialism in both the genocide of indigenous Palestinians by the Israeli regime and also of Native Americans by the United States; and

4. Homological-diachronic comparison, which provides historical explanation in terms of direct or indirect influence, such as the influence of ApocWks on Revelation’s description of the Millennium.

Where any of these four types of comparanda are anchored in a salient shared causal mechanism, we have ontological grounds for making the comparison.

The application of Asprem’s categories to a particular case is not, however, automatic. It requires careful consideration and choosing of the focus of the comparison, including whether that focus concerns cultural or textual comparanda. For example, in the textual comparison made here between Revelation 20 and Aeneid book 6, the analogical comparison is necessitated by the lack of any clear textual dependencies between the two. That is not to deny that a homological comparison would also be possible if the focus were not on textual dependencies but on the shared cultural milieu and complex interrelationships between Jewish and Roman cultures in the Hellenistic and Roman eras. If, for example, the comparative work focused on some shared cultural element, such as a particular economic, technological, pedagogical, philosophical, or other factor giving rise to the development of afterlife traditions in the ancient Mediterranean world, the focus would shift to a homological one, as a (partially or overlapping) shared socio-historical basis for the comparability of afterlife traditions in each of Jewish and Roman cultures within that wider Mediterranean world. Yet to compare the textual form and content of Revelation 20 with book 6 of the Aeneid, without choosing to focus on shared socio-political-economic factors, means that the comparison is an analogical one. ²⁷ The task becomes a comparison of girth rather than a comparison of length. Thus, Asprem’s categories are not necessarily prescribed in advance for particular texts and contexts; their applicability will typically also depend on the researcher’s choice of question to be pursued in respect of those resources, that is, how the researcher employs those texts or contexts as data. While the researcher’s choice of comparison is constrained and guided by real social processes, it is also determined by their research questions.

Finally, to avoid descending into over-generalizations or banal conclusions, comparison must “focus on a relatively small number of comparanda that the researcher can study closely.” ²⁸ In the present study, I limit the comparison to a single chapter in Revelation (ch 20) and a single book in Virgil’s Aeneid (book 6). I also focus on a particular aspect: the techniques each employ to utilize textual precursors that have afterlife themes. Focus on the compositional techniques makes other substantive differences between Revelation and the Aeneid less relevant. My aim overall is to show how, in comparative perspective, the form and composition of Revelation 20 may be mutually elucidated by the form and composition of the Aeneid book 6—although my focus here will be on Revelation.

A comparison of girth: combinations of conflicting afterlife traditions in Revelation 20 and book 6 of Virgil’s Aeneid

At the climax of the book of Revelation, every righteous person, both living and newly resurrected, enters the New Jerusalem that has descended from the sky following the cosmic transformation of heaven and earth (Rev 21:1–22.5). There they live for all eternity in a paradisiacal existence in the presence of God and Christ. Oddly however, one thousand years before this cosmic transformation, a select few righteous persons, limited to faithful Christian martyrs, had already received resurrection to live in a long but finite period of righteousness on earth: the Millennium.

As I have argued in “Part 1 (Length),” determination of the duration of Revelation’s 1,000-year period of righteousness draws on Jewish precedent, in particular that found in ApocWks. ²⁹ Yet Revelation’s much fuller description of the period of eschatological reward, compared with ApocWks, has the effect of multiplying duplications in its narrative, resulting in a much more convoluted and sometimes awkward account of the end times. ³⁰ As a result of inserting the Millennium into his end-times schema, John narrates two “final” eschatological wars encompassing all of humankind: first between Jesus and the armies of the nations aided by the Beast and False Prophet (19:11–21), then between the righteous martyrs (τὴν παρεμβολὴν τῶν ἁγίων “the camp of the saints”) who have already reigned on earth for a millennium and the nations aided by Satan. Rather than narrating a second bloody slaughter of the nations by Jesus, the second battle ends before it begins, with fire from heaven (20:7–9). There are also two confinements of Satan to the underworld: to the abyss before the Millennium for the thousand-year period (20:1–3), then to the Lake of Fire after the Millennium for eternity (20:10). There are two judgments of humanity: first by the righteous martyrs reigning with Jesus on earth, implicitly over the defeated nations whose kings and armies they had consumed (20:4; cf. 19:15–16), then by God in heaven over the remaining dead (20:11–12). There are also two resurrections of the dead ³¹ : a resurrection of the righteous martyrs to allow them to reign on earth during the Millennium (20:4–6), then a resurrection of the remainder of the righteous dead, along with the unrighteous dead, following the Millennium (20:12–13; cf. 21:3–4). There are two times of blessed life for the righteous: the Millennium (20:4–6; 14:13) and eternity in the New Jerusalem (21:3). Finally, there are two groups of righteous rulers on earth: Jesus with the martyrs (20:4; cf. 19:15–16), then God with Jesus (21:5; 22:1). ³²

The subtle differences between each of these duplicated elements also demonstrate that we are not simply dealing with a retelling of the same events or with visionary recapitulations, but a succession of distinct events. ³³ Such a conclusion is corroborated by the fact that each event in the overall sequence of Rev 19–21 is unprecedented in Revelation’s eschatological narrative: the messiah and his army defeat the kings and armies of the earth; then the Beast and False Prophet are thrown into the Lake of Fire; Satan is completely restricted from causing any evil on earth for a limited time; the righteous martyrs are resurrected in the “first resurrection;” those martyrs reign with the messiah for the Millennium; Satan is released; fire from heaven destroys the armies of the nations; Satan is thrown into the Lake of Fire for eternity; the Sea and Hades are emptied of the dead, who are raised in what is implicitly a second resurrection; and God judges the resurrected dead. None of these events has happened before; each event lends an aspect of finality to the imagined future unfolding of the End Times.

Yet an awkward overall redundancy remains, and this is symptomatic of a forced combination of two fundamentally different Jewish conceptions of the afterlife. As Albert Schweitzer observed, the interim eschatological period of righteousness was an attempted harmonization of “two quite distinct expectations of the future [that] existed side by side” in Jewish tradition. ³⁴ These he labeled the “prophetic” and the “Danielic,” the latter term now usually referred to as “apocalyptic” expectation. ³⁵ Prophetic expectations envisaged a rebirth of Eden on earth: peace among animals (Isa 11:6–9), plentiful produce (Amos 11:13–14; Isa 65:17–25), good health and long life (cf. Jub 23:27), and an end to war, brought about by the final restoration of the kingdom of Judea. ³⁶ While Schweitzer overemphasized the role of a Davidic King or Messiah in establishing this earthly eschatological kingdom, it may be countered that the figure is marginal to early Jewish eschatology outside early Christianity. In any case, Schweitzer rightly recognized that prophetic passages such as Malachi and Isaiah 24–27 made God rather than Messiah the ruler in the restoration of Paradise. ³⁷ At a later stage, apocalyptic texts added a cosmic dimension to the prophetic vision of eschatological transformation. ³⁸ A further development is evidenced in 1 Enoch, where the righteous Jews who inherit the eschatological kingdom are not simply survivors of the earlier rule by the nations, but include both resurrected martyrs and living Jews. ³⁹ Their kingdom would only arrive after a great conflict between the spiritual forces of good and evil. And their kingdom would not merely be a terrestrial one in which they enjoy long and healthy lives, but a transformed cosmos in which they inherit eternal life. ⁴⁰

So Jewish tradition and scriptures contained two sets of expectations for the future that were not easily reconciled: a flourishing on earth during a time of righteousness versus eternal life and righteousness in a transformed cosmos. As Schweitzer recognized, the interim eschatological period of righteousness was in part constructed as a way of harmonizing the two. The harmonizing method of ApocWks, 2 Baruch, and 4 Ezra succeeds only by “regarding the Messianic Kingdom of the Prophets as something temporary, which is to give place to the eternal Kingdom of God, which latter is to be the consummation of history.” ⁴¹ The interim eschatological period, summarizes Jurgen Roloff, “arose through the coalescence of two views, in themselves irreconcilable,” one of an earthly reign of peace that fulfilled nationalist Jewish hopes and one of a “universal-transcendent notion of the two ages.” ⁴² One of the functions of the Millennium in Revelation, therefore, like its Jewish precursors, is to provide a useful device to explain how Jewish prophetic expectations of a final earthly kingdom, in which humans enjoy long yet limited lives, can possibly be harmonized with Jewish apocalyptic expectations of a cosmically transformed kingdom and eternal life.

Schweitzer’s explanation is convincing and, in its essential details, still widely accepted. ⁴³ Yet comparison with other texts from the ancient Mediterranean, as developed in detail below, shows that Revelation’s blending of inconsistent concepts of the afterlife is hardly unique. The implication is that Schweitzer’s explanation, confined as it is to Jewish and Christian harmonizations of prophecy and apocalyptic, has missed other important explanatory factors and dimensions. I propose that the duplications in Revelation 19–22 should also be viewed as symptomatic of the widespread rupture in the conception of the afterlife that occurred in the middle-to-late centuries of the first millennium BCE across Greek, Roman, and Jewish cultures. ⁴⁴ That broader causal anchor, to employ Josephson Storm’s term, provides theoretical justification for the work of analogical-synchronic comparison attempted here.

Virgil’s Aeneid provides an example of how a broadly contemporary author has attempted to incorporate and to harmonize often disparate afterlife traditions. The Roman epic poet is usually said to draw on two or three distinct categories of sources for his mosaic of the afterlife in book 6 of the Aeneid. Eduard Norden (1906) identified two categories of sources: the largely undifferentiated afterlife of myth and the highly differentiated afterlife of philosophy and morality. ⁴⁵ Others follow Augustin Cartault (1926) by separating out sources supporting a morally differentiated afterlife from philosophical sources that speculate on reincarnation, and so produce three categories of the afterlife in Greek and Roman sources. ⁴⁶ Friedrich Solmsen maps the narrative progression of book 6 against the historical development of these three Greek or Roman conceptions of the afterlife: Aeneas first enters the underworld and observes the dim underworld known from Homeric myth and its largely morally undifferentiated inhabitants; he then sees two paths toward either punishment in Tartarus or reward in Elysium, based on afterlife traditions of morality and honor; finally, the philosophical emphasis takes over when Aeneas’ father Anchises describes the ultimate fate of the soul in purgation, purification, and reincarnation (6.743–747). ⁴⁷ On the other hand, it is evident that Plato and mystery cults such as Orphism had already combined themes of morality and reincarnation. Whether we make two or three divisions, it is clear that the mysteries and philosophy introduced a fundamental rupture to the relatively morally undifferentiated Homeric afterlife. ⁴⁸

The sutures in the Aeneid between different concepts of the afterlife are never more obvious than in the unclear transition, during Aeneas’ underworld tour, from purgation to Elysium. While much debated, the Aeneid arguably appears to envisage a process of purification that continues in Elysium (6.739), in contrast with Homeric depictions of Elysium as a place of unspoilt joy and perfection. ⁴⁹ For in Virgil, the taint of flesh seems to be removed only at the end of the stay in Elysium, when the soul is finally “purged of the last trace of crime ingrained” and attains the “ethereal Power of perception” and purity (6.744–751). As a result, though, Elysium has become considerably less idyllic.

The earlier, Homeric conception located Elysium in the overworld, in the distant Isles of the Blessed. ⁵⁰ In book 6, however, Aeneas accesses Elysium from within the underworld. Based on the model of Odysseus’ katabasis, we might then expect Virgil’s new underworld setting to present an Elysium dim and lacking joy or full human consciousness. ⁵¹ But Virgil tendentiously harmonizes the two by describing Elysium as possessing its own sun and stars in the underworld, which shine there only for Elysium’s inhabitants (6.638–639). This incongruity of a celestial underworld so distressed Franz Cumont that he insisted, following early Neoplatonic interpreters, that Virgil’s underworld Elysium was a mere allegory for the deeper philosophical truth of the heavenly Elysium. ⁵² Norden’s alternative solution was to force the phrase aëris in campis latis (“the wide airy plain”), which Virgil employs to describe the Elysian fields, to refer hyper-literally to “the broad plains of air” of the celestial realms and to the soul’s ascension to them. ⁵³ Both interpretations are forced. Aeneas does not depart from the underworld until the very conclusion of book 6, after his sighting of Elysium. Virgil’s underworld Elysium is only problematic if readers prefer his sources to the narrative world created by his own epic poetry. Cumont and Norden impose a type of consistency on Elysium that is not evident in book 6. Miguel de Jáuregui is representative of the contemporary consensus by observing Virgil does not make slavish use of his sources, “but freely uses, reshapes, reorders, and reinterprets, through bricolage, mosaic, alambicco, or whichever metaphor is preferred, previous materials to accomplish a new creation.” ⁵⁴ In this way, Virgil blends discordant conceptions of underworld and celestial afterlives into an all-encompassing perspective, although one reached only by adjusting the views of the afterlife held both by Homer and an initiate to the mysteries. The result is an afterlife picture recognizable to both, yet not quite belonging to either.

The only humans permitted to enter Homer’s Elysium were semi-divine heroes. ⁵⁵ Virgil’s Elysium is not so restricted (6.647–649, 667–669), but welcomes mortals who died for their country (6.660) alongside poets, seers, and priests (6.662–665). Although Anchises is the character who tells his son Aeneas about reincarnation while in Elysium, Anchises is curiously exempt from its cycle, as one of an underdefined group referred to as pauci (“the few”) who “stay in the Blessed Fields” (6.744), while has omnes (“the many”) convene at the Lethe to be reincarnated into earthly bodies (6.748–751). The distinction of groups provides an explanation of sorts for Anchises’ ongoing existence in Elysium, but not one that makes clear its justification or extent. It represents another forced attempt to amalgamate Homer’s eternal, divine Elysium with the philosophers’ temporary purgation. What is more, given that the process of purgation and reincarnation eliminates imperfections, Virgil’s great parade of famous Romans waiting to be born would seem to be tainted, so undermining the work’s political service to Augustus and the glory of Rome. ⁵⁶ As Solmsen notes, however, Virgil avoids the implication by making reincarnation a matter of the heroes’ individual choices, eager to participate in Rome’s glory, rather than a consequence of their individual faults. ⁵⁷

Virgil did not need to create all of these harmonizations ab initio; many harmonizations had been already devised by earlier writers, just as Revelation had inherited a ready-made harmonization in the interim eschatological period of righteousness from the book’s Jewish precursors. ⁵⁸ For example, while reincarnation interrupts the separation of the dead between Tartarus and Elysium, Virgil could draw on the precedent of Plato in Phaedo (88b–c), which provided two afterlife destinies for worthy humans: those reincarnated into better lives and the philosophers who entered into communion with the gods. ⁵⁹ Virgil had thus inherited a mystery tradition that had already harmonized Elysium with reincarnation. Further examples abound in classical sources. Plato in Phaedo (88b–c), Giovanna Laterza notes, distinguishes

the destiny of good men in two categories: the eudaimonestatoi (the happiest ones), who will become reincarnated in gentle species (such as bees, wasps or ants) or as humans, who are distinguished from the lovers of knowledge (filomateis), the philosophers, the latter of whom, because of their purity, will enter into communion with the gods.

She adds that “the same differentiation also characterises the Myth of Er (Resp. X 614ff.) and Gorgias (525b–526d).” ⁶⁰ Again, Brodd describes how “in Phaedrus 249b, in agreement with Pindar’s Olympian Ode 2, Plato states that the souls of philosophers who have undergone three successive thousand-year rounds and achieved perfect purification are freed from the cycle of rebirths and judgment.” ⁶¹ Further, Bremmer observes

a tripartite structure can also be noticed in Empedocles, who speaks about the place where the great sinners are (B 118–121 DK), a place for those who are in the process of purification (B 115 DK), and a place for those who have led a virtuous life on earth: they will join the tables of the gods (B 147–148 DK). ⁶²

Cicero’s Somnium Scipionis, notes Laterza,

also presents two categories of souls. The men who have served the state are hosted forever in a specific place in the sky (6.13 omnibus, qui patriam conservaverint, adiuverint, auxerint, certum esse in caelo definitum locum ubi beati aevo sempiterno fruantur), and others who will gain a celestial place after several reincarnations (6.29 nec hunc in locum nisi multis exagitati saeculis revertuntur). ⁶³

Nicholas Horsfall summarizes that “the concentration of discrepancies in this book [the Aeneid] reflects the great bulk of pre-Virgilian literature on the Underworld and the variations it inevitably manifests.” ⁶⁴ Virgil inherited then not only conflicting afterlife traditions, but also afterlife harmonization traditions. Any examination of Revelation’s use of conflicting eschatologies should likewise integrate the way it adapts already-existing attempts to harmonize those conflicting eschatologies. The harmonizing impetus of ApocWks in establishing the interim eschatological period of righteousness cannot be wholly imputed to John, who received this harmonizing device ready-made. For John, other purposes (in particular, the period’s facilitation of restoration and compensation to martyrs) were more important.

In comparative perspective, therefore, both Revelation and the Aeneid have devised similar techniques to incorporate contradictory traditions about the afterlife into single, albeit not fully consistent narratives. What follows is an analysis of the implications of their similar techniques, which both preserve and inventively adapt traditional afterlife sources.

Benefits of a comparison of girth: John and Virgil

I briefly outline four benefits from analogical comparison of Revelation and the Aeneid, each of which may have been developed in considerably more detail, if space had permitted. Each of the benefits derives from the observations made above concerning the techniques John and Virgil employed to negotiate, incorporate, and adapt earlier texts. The first benefit from my comparison of girth is the recognition that neither Revelation nor the Aeneid eliminate tensions. They in fact actively sustain tensions by incorporating older conceptions of the afterlife within their own innovative portrayals of the afterlife. For example, both the Aeneid and Revelation preserve an older conception of the underworld—as relatively undifferentiated and lacking the full consciousness of life—but transform it into a mere initial step in afterlife existence. In Virgil’s epic, Aeneas encounters the undifferentiated dead on entering the underworld, to be shown more profound afterlife destinations later on. The Aeneid reports, at this point, an underworld consistent with early Latin conceptions of Dis: as “gloomy” and “dim” (6.126–127). Revelation also retains, among the various regions it identifies as existing “under the earth” (5:3, 13), the area of Hades—the usual Greek translation of the Hebrew Sheol (1:18; 20:13). Yet contradicting the Hebrew Bible on which it nevertheless depends, Hades is no longer depicted as the eternal abode of the shades, but only as an interim holding pen. The older afterlife domain of Hades has become functionally redundant in Revelation, by being cast into a region of the cosmos that emerged only in the newer Jewish conception of the afterlife, the Lake of Fire (Rev 20:14). Hades continues to exist, like the eternally tormented Satan, within this Lake of Fire. In comparative focus, older conceptions of afterlife in the underworld are ironically sustained in the very attempts to replace them with the newer conceptions. The ongoing authoritative status of these older concepts have precluded each author from simply ignoring them.

A second benefit derives from the recognition that both Revelation and Aeneid prefer to resort to duplication and redundancy, at the risk of inconsistency or incoherence, over eradication of older afterlife traditions. While deference to authority plays some role here, it does not fully explain the retention of earlier understandings of the afterlife. In comparative view, what stands out is the demonstrated tendency in both John and Virgil toward inclusion of variant conceptions of the afterlife. Revelation’s Millennium cannot therefore be understood only as a harmonization of conflicting authoritative sources (especially Jewish prophetic and apocalyptic works) under the new conception of the afterlife, but also as driven by the countervailing goal of preserving inconsistent conceptions of the afterlife. For what reason?

Read in comparative view with Virgil, John’s tendency to preserve afterlife traditions may be understood as driven by the existential concerns of author and hearers of Revelation, a point that is obscured when we consider Revelation only in the context of its Jewish precursors and the Millennium only as an attempt to harmonize earlier Jewish conceptions of the afterlife. The older, less differentiated conceptions of Hades or Sheol, and the older conception in the Jewish prophets of an earthly, material and nationalistic restoration of Paradise had so imprinted the popular conception of the afterlife, that the traditions could not simply be removed and wholesale replaced by newer conceptions, as if only to create some perfectly consistent afterlife. The conclusion must be that older conceptions of Hades, Dis, or Sheol were retained because they had to be: they had become a precious part of the popular imagination of the afterlife, of popular hopes and the geography of personal dreamscapes. Traces of earlier afterlives remained a part of people’s hopes, common sayings, dreams, and visions. The desire for rational resolution of contradictions was outweighed by the existential need to retain the variety and often inconsistent traditional ways of thinking of the afterlife. Reading Revelation alongside Virgil’s Aeneid reveals the reluctance of each author to replace wholly the older, more undifferentiated afterlife, and to prefer instead a measure of disunity and duplication to accommodate a deep need to preserve their readers’/hearers’ necessarily vague and unreconciled afterlife hopes.

Third, comparison of the way Virgil and John employ their sources highlights, in each case, their strong reading of precursors and their willingness not only to retain earlier conceptions but also to recast them in the afterlife worlds they have imaginatively created. One example, already noted, is that Virgil’s Elysium is accessed via a path through the underworld, in contrast to its earlier placement on the extreme edges of the overworld. To retain its character as a place of light and plentiful produce, it is said to have its own sun and stars in its own heavens. The reader’s knowledge of the character of Elysium is necessary to understand the Aeneid, and yet it is not sufficient. An appreciation is also required of the way Virgil has transformed those earlier traditions for his own purposes. In a similar way, John’s use of the Jewish tradition of an interim eschatological period of righteousness cannot dispense with the tradition, even as he transfers its restoration of Paradise to the New Jerusalem. Although the origin of the interim eschatological period as a harmonization device was originally driven by the discord between the Hebrew Bible’s pictures of a restored earthly paradise (for example, Isa 11:6–9) and images of apocalyptic transformation (for example, Dan 12:1–3), once that interim eschatological period had become established as an end-times tradition in its own right, its conception was not bound to those earlier harmonizations. Once-harmonizing components of the interim eschatological period, such as the conception of paradise realized on earth, could be transferred to the eternal future. Again, the interim eschatological period in ApocWks is necessary to understand John’s Millennium, but not sufficient, given that John employs it for his own innovative purposes.

How should we categorize this treatment of precursors? Although rich in evocative symbolism, the use of precursors in both Revelation and Aeneid does not, as for the device of allusion, invite the unrestrained and free play of the reader. Despite the cottage industry in identifying scriptural allusions in Revelation, the book’s intertextuality does not typically permit the “simultaneous activation of two texts”—the characteristic widely accepted as key to the presence of allusion, following Ziva Ben-Porat’s influential definition of the term. ⁶⁵ Comparison with Virgil scholarship suggests Revelation scholarship has gone down the wrong track in preferring the device of allusion to analyze the book’s intertextual features. ⁶⁶ There are no scriptural allusions in Revelation. For the book restricts the operation of its intertextual relationships by continually predetermining and constraining meaning for readers. Its re-use of the millennial period is exemplary of the evocative use of a precursor that yet differs from allusion.

Our categorization of Revelation’s use of precursors is assisted by comparing it with Virgil’s poetics. Richard F. Thomas observes that Virgil typically intended his readers to be “sent back to” his sources, “through memory or physically,” before returning to Virgil’s own text. ⁶⁷ Such a device, Thomas insists, is not allusion, being a figure of speech that “has implications far too frivolous” to describe Virgil’s assertion of control over the process. Virgil’s own procedure makes authoritative reference to his precursors, while also defining the more profound meaning that the reader should impute to the tradition. Within Jewish and Christian literature, Virgil’s strong reading of precursors bears some resemblance to authoritative commentary or exegesis, but more accurately to what Michael Fishbane terms “transformative … mantological exegesis,” which recasts older prophecies according to the prophetic text’s own purported revelatory understanding. ⁶⁸ This intertextual relationship does not involve the play or simultaneous activation of two different texts in the manner of generic allusion, but the divinely sanctioned overdetermination of the meaning of the evoked text. ⁶⁹ John is laying out an authoritative revelation, not asking readers to indulge in unbounded play, but to play within his carefully circumscribed yet inventive bounds. This account still leaves ample room for the creative role of the reader, for their seduction by the ambiguous and evocative symbolism and eidetic language that Revelation employs. Yet Revelation’s opening to the reader is of a quite different nature and function to the openness of allusion. We should not confuse the two. John’s knowledge and use of prophetic precursors does not attempt to merely direct his readers to sources, as in allusion, and does not explicate these prophecies in Revelation, as for commentary, but aims to incorporate them, transformed in meaning, within a visionary logic, according to his own authoritative prophetic and divinely sanctioned message. The overall outcome of John’s transformative-mantological narrative is that the reader receives a primarily prescriptive, albeit evocative, understanding of how those precursors should be interpreted. Christopher Rowland came to a not dissimilar conclusion when he observed how, in Revelation, “texts and images have come together in John’s mind … not through exegesis or attention to original context,” explaining that “they are more like dreams, which jump about without any apparent logic, and yet reveal some of our most basic hopes and fears.” ⁷⁰ John’s combination of sources does not give the appearance of being ordered in the way that an exegete carefully assesses and joins their sources. Instead, Rowland argues, “if [John] had been asked why he has combined images from Isaiah, Daniel and Ezekiel in his inaugural vision, John would most likely have replied, ‘I was in the spirit.’” ⁷¹ Reading Virgil alongside John highlights how the evident tensions of their sources and inspirations have been incorporated and even indulged, but put to the service of their author’s visions—to a higher purpose of presenting the unpresentable, including especially our afterlife hopes and dreams.

Fourth and finally, comparison of the Aeneid and Revelation provides a storehouse of options to consider how constructions of the afterlife may be influenced by contemporary political ideology. The political ideologies of the Aeneid and Revelation may at first appear to be mutually exclusive, alternatively valorizing the Empire’s elite versus championing its downtrodden. The Aeneid was written to extol Augustus Caesar and his family line in Rome. Revelation was written to oppose the kingdom of Rome with a kingdom of Christian wannabes, who desired to wield imperial power in Rome’s place. Yet a closer reading also reveals comparable goals.

The political goals of the Aeneid are most clear, of course, in the poem’s description of the Parade of Heroes: Aeneas’ underworld vision (in book 6) of his descendants waiting to be born, comprising the most illustrious figures in Roman history. Brodd notes the incongruity of the “Orphic-Pythagorean-Platonic” presentation of those waiting to be purified and reborn, which in Virgil’s epic blends philosophic virtue with the traditional Roman this-worldly values of dignitas and gloria ascribed to famed Roman elites. ⁷² Virgil thereby elevates the lineage of Roman rulers, culminating in Augustus, to a righteous lineage. Augustus himself is acclaimed as “born of a god,” his feats in traversing and subjugating the world said to surpass even the exemplary hero Hercules (Aen. 6.792, 801). Augustus’ reign was figured as the restoration of the primeval Golden Age (Aen. 6.791-807) during which Roman imperial rule was expected to extend peace to the entire world (Aen. 1.236-237; 4.323; cf. Rev 13:7). The Aeneid’s imperial propaganda was not only disseminated among the educational elite, by its assignment as a school text, but also reached a popular audience through its performance in theaters. ⁷³ A similar popular regard of Augustus is indicated on the famed Priene calendar inscription, found in the Asia Minor city (IK Priene 14; 9 BCE), which decreed the emperor’s birthday should mark the beginning of the new year, as his birth was “the beginning of the good news [εὐαγγέλιον] for the world.”

Revelation, however, radically inverts the official propaganda regarding the Empire and its rulers, the Augusti. For John, the Roman Empire is a beast, its emperors are heads of that beast (plausibly beginning with Augustus himself), who are supported not by divine will but by demons and Satan. ⁷⁴ Revelation’s recasting of earthly politics not only creates a negative valance for Rome’s cosmic claims, but also constructs what David A. deSilva terms a “Christian countercosmos” in which the marginal Christian community is ideologically elevated above their rulers, aligning their worldly domain with the intended cosmic order. ⁷⁵ This countercosmos, as Paul Middleton has forcefully argued, transfers the Empire’s violent execution of justice to Christians, who are presented not only as martyrs but also as the future perpetrators of violence, as heroic conquerors who will act on the model of the first martyr and primary agent of violent retribution and justice, Jesus. ⁷⁶ These elements demonstrate firm commonalities with Virgil’s combination of heroic valor and righteous values. In Revelation, the martyrs first participate in military conquest with Jesus, conquering even death after the firstborn from the dead, and then rule with Jesus, and “participate in the Lamb’s warring judgement.” ⁷⁷ As the letter to the Philadelphians promises, the rulers who now persecute Christians will soon “come and bow down before your feet” (Rev 3:9). Revelation provides the small, marginalized community, fearful of persecution at the hands of Roman rulers, with the image of their own overturning of the Augusti, as righteous-heroic rulers in their own right, appropriating the empire’s own claims of universal reign over all nations. ⁷⁸

Prompted by this comparative perspective, we might consider whether John has also reappropriated an earlier tradition of the righteous dead to elevate his Christian community as the earliest recipients of resurrection (20:4–6). Such a tradition can indeed be found in a number of Jewish texts that distinguish an earlier resurrection for the especially righteous from the later general resurrection for the masses of people judged as worthy of eternal life. ⁷⁹ For example, in 2 Maccabees, Judas has a vision of the already-resurrected prophet Jeremiah in the heavens, who is accompanied by the “noble and good” priest Onias, whose resurrected arms were now continually outstretched in prayer (15:12–16). In the Testament of Abraham (11; 13), Adam is enthroned in heaven, able to weep and to pull at the (resurrected) hair of his head. He is later joined by other resurrected righteous men: his son Abel and the forefather of Israel, Abraham. Other early Jewish and Christian works, such as 1 En 70:4 and Apoc. Pet. 4–6, similarly agree that Patriarchs and righteous Israelites had already arisen in glorious new bodies into the heavens. The eschatological sequence of resurrections is made explicit in T. Benj. 10:6–10, where it occurs first for the righteous Enoch, Seth, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, then for the 12 sons of Jacob, only then followed by all who will rise from the dead. Matthew also follows this tradition, in his claim that especially righteous Jews were resurrected in Jerusalem at the time of Jesus’ death (Matt 27:52–53), before any future general resurrection. ⁸⁰ John’s distinctive variant in Revelation is to identify the elite righteous as the members of his own religious community, who were martyred in the final period of tribulation, and to award them with the privilege of reigning throughout the Millennium and executing vengeance on their former oppressors. The prime exemplar of this cycle of violence is the messiah Jesus himself, figured as the firstborn to resurrection, the first martyr, and so in John’s reversal, the first conqueror. ⁸¹ This privileging of the righteous and Messiah, and indeed Revelation’s double resurrection of the righteous, I contend, has earlier origins in these older Jewish conceptions of the afterlife. ⁸² Comparative reading with Virgil has prompted this consideration of a common righteous-heroic and so nationalist tradition behind the elite groups present in both afterlife traditions. While Virgil and John stamp their own voices on received traditions, and work from their own (Greek/Roman versus Jewish/Christian) sources, comparative reading helps us consider an aspect of the traditions that might otherwise have been less noticeable, in this case, how older ideas of an afterlife preference for the righteous came to be applied in an innovative way.

Conclusion

The genealogical comparison of Revelation with ApocWks in “Part I (Length)” allowed us to gain new insights, for example, into the way the 1,000-year duration of the Millennium was based on a calculation of reward and restitution for martyrs. What I have attempted to show in this article is that analogical comparison—which does not require any search for antecedents or any tracing of the development of textual traditions—offers at least as many, arguably more, insights into the text of Revelation.

A comparison of girth between Revelation 20 and book 6 of Virgil’s Aeneid illuminates its techniques and rationales for combining and reformulating earlier Jewish eschatological traditions. Analogical comparison provides a girth of insight into ancient techniques to harmonize tensions in earlier tradition; the importance of existential needs for preserving earlier conceptions of the afterlife at the risk of remaining inconsistencies and tensions; the tendency for a strong reading of precursors driven by the profundity of the subject matter; the distinction of Revelation’s transformative-mantological intertextuality from the device of allusion; and the construction of elite political ideology (for both elites and wannabe elites) out of earlier afterlife traditions. Although in “Part 1 (Length),” I provided evidence that the duration of the Millennium in Revelation can be accounted for as dependence on ApocWks, the gains were less substantial for the interpretation of Revelation than for understanding its pre-history. By contrast, the analogical comparison made here, while mostly limited to consideration of only one book of Virgil’s Aeneid, offers multiple insights into the composition and resulting textual shape of Revelation.

Although genealogical comparison, investigating influence and dependence, may at first seem to be of immediate and intrinsic relevance to the interpretation of texts such as Revelation 20 or book 6 of the Aeneid, it is arguably not the case in understanding the nature of the afterlife. A significant reason for this outcome is that John and Virgil have each put sources to significantly new uses in their texts, thereby rendering genealogical comparison a necessary but not sufficient basis for interpretation. This study of the Millennium therefore offers one example of how, in comparative analysis, comparisons of girth provide far greater satisfaction than comparisons of length.