Reformation Readings of the Apocalypse: Geneva, Zurich, and Wittenberg. .

Irena Backus. Reformation Readings of the Apocalypse: Geneva, Zurich, and Wittenberg.

(Oxford Studies in Historical Theology;) New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. xx + 182 pp. index. bibl. $49.95. ISBN: 0-19-513885-6.

In her study Irena Backus examines commentaries on the Apocalypse produced in three centers for religious reform during the sixteenth century; Her purpose is to analyze "their methods, and their views of the status of the Apocalypse and its place in the religious and cultural context of the Reformation" (xix). She is motivated both by the inaccessibility of the texts she studies and her hope to make the content of such commentaries better known, and to determine "whether there was such a thing as a single Protestant approach to the Apocalypse or whether varying social, linguistic, and political conditions determined the way that different writers read the text" (xix). Her study enjoys somewhat greater success in the former aim than the latter.

She begins with an introduction that goes over the origin of the genre of apocalyptic writing and the history of exegesis of the book of Revelation from the ante-Nicene fathers up to the Reformation. She follows this discussion by looking at the debate about the canonicity of the Apocalypse that marked the early Reformation. Backus deals first with the views of Erasmus and Luther and their well-known skepticism about the inclusion of the Apocalypse in the canon. She then moves to the more positive evaluations of a number of authors from the various religious camps, some of whom will be the object of her focus later in the study. The rest of the book is organized as a succession of discussions of individual authors and their commentaries from each of the identified locales. Her subjects range from rather obscure figures, such Antoine du Pinet and Augusrin Marlorat, to somewhat snore prominent personages, such as Heinrich Bullinger and Nikolaus Selnecker. The main criterion for her selection is simply whether a n author produced a commentary on the Apocalypse. The book moves from Geneva to Zurich to the Lutheran lands of north Germany. In discussing these various texts she focuses in particular on how each author approaches the key passages of Revelation 12 and 20 in order to have a common point of comparison. A number of interesting perspectives result from her discussion. For one, it is noteworthy the degree to which each author had to justify the very activity of commenting on the Apocalypse. The renewed consciousness of early Christian sources made learned commentators of the sixteenth century aware of the debates in the ancient church about the authorship and canoniciry of the Apocalypse. That, coupled with the standoffish attitude toward the Apocalypse of Luther early in his career, and of Calvin throughout his life, made it necessary to justify a commentary on the text (and explains why there were relatively few). In addition, all of the authors avoid, not surprisingly, any hint of chiliasm tainting their tex t. The millennium is consistently understood to have already to have occurred. This is a natural outgrowth ofthe association ofmillenarian perspectives with insurrection and heresy. The authors associated with Geneva and Zurich deny as well that their age of reform represents the final days before judgment, though the Lutheran authors explicitly embrace this perspective. In general the Genevan and Zurich interpretations avoid associating the imagery of the text with any concrete personages or events of their own time. All the authors, without exception, associate the Antichrist with the institution of the papacy, and it is this theme that lends the Apocalypse much of its attraction as a text which speaks specifically to the age in which they wrote. Otherwise the general emphasis is on the degree to which the Apocalypse reveals a God who is in control of time and who directs it with a purpose, providing spiritual consolation to his flock. In general Backus draws no major implications from the comparison of the various commentaries she discusses.

The most interesting material that Backus discusses are the works of the two Lutheran commentators, David Chytraeus and Nikolaus Selnecker. Their interpretation of the text contrasts strongly with those of Geneva and Zurich. Both Lutheran commentators emphasize the place of the Reformation in signaling the coming of God's judgment. Chytracus is the only one willing to speculate about the actual date of the Last Judgment. Selnecker is the only commentator willing to associate the imagery of the text with events and figures of the time, finding Luther and other preeminent personalities prefigured in the text.

One of the limitations of Backus' work is the lack of interpretation of the social and political context within which the texts functioned. The contrast between the Swiss and Lutheran treatment of the Apocalypse is striking. But aside from noting Luther's generally more apocalyptic interpretation of the age, she doesn't look at the political context or the audience into which these texts were projected in any comparative fashion. Selnecker's commentary, in particular, since it was directed toward a popular audience, and exhibited such idiosyncratic interpretations (the woman of Rev. 12 is pregnant with Luther!), suggests interesting possibilities for interpreting the cultural setting it addressed.

So while the work provides a great deal of background on the content of Protestant interpretations of the Apocalypse, it hasn't fully fulfilled the task that it set our in the introduction. Still, Backus is to be commended for the care and thoroughness that she brings to the interpretation of the material, and the erudition she brings to the project. One looks forward to a larger study that might draw this material into the orbit of other expressions of apocalyptic sentiment in the Reformation era as expressed in pamphlet literature, sermons, and other expressions of the popular mood.