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Went from teaching that all of Revelation was fulfilled
in the destruction of Jerusalem, to teaching that the fall of Jerusalem was
a picture of the work of Christ in all hearts in all ages
"Rome
was not in the circle of the prophet's vision, nor is Rome in coincidence
with the symbols and metaphors; but the resemblance to Jerusalem is as
perfect as the case can be supposed to furnish" (Commentary on the Book of
Revelation, p. 153).
"The seven heads of the Beast are said to be
seven mountains; assuming the woman to be a city founded upon seven
mountains. Such was the situation of Jerusalem." (Comm., Herder, p.
156)
WHAT OTHERS HAVE SAID
Friedrich Bleek
"He views the book as a work of the apostle John, but refers the
whole contents, as Abauzit among others did, to the destruction of
Jerusalem, which he also understands by Babylon, and to the disturbances and
wars in Palestine preceding that catastrophe. In his letters on the
Study of Theology (1780), Part ii. Br. 21, he expresses himself to the
effect that he viewed the entire destruction of Jerusalem only as a sign,
pledge, type of the final and greater end of things, and that the proper
object of prophecy is to develop this end in such sign and pledge. Yet
this point of view does not appear definitely in the interpretation itself.
But he gives prominence to the practical particulars whereby the Apocalypse
is a book for all hearts and for all times." (Lectures on the
Apocalypse, p. 59)
Timothy
James
"Armed with a Preterist
perspective of life and history, Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803) was
able to ward off the charge of atheism, and imbued Spinoza's "mechanistic"
monism with the dynamic sense of organic process. Subjectivity and
objectivity were seen as interpenetrating aspects of the whole, with the
idea of becoming the prime category under which nature, reality, reason, and
history were to be understood in this new age. Instead of living in a highly
determined (pre-AD. 70) spiritual reality, we are now part of a reality in
God far more open as a system and far more sensitive to our input or lack of
it; an Age in which good has twice the power than it had before in moral
effect. " (Preterist Eschatology)
Johann Peter Lange
"VII. Historico-Critical and Rationalistic
Period. Fundamental Tone or Key-note: Predominant
Volatilizing of Apocalyptic Eschatology ; especially the Prophecy of the
Millennial Kingdom ; amid a constantly gaining confounding of such
Prophecy with Chiliasm.
The motive or inciting cause of the period which we are at present
examining—a motive whose sketching by Lucke is not distinguished for
clearness—was, negatively, that system of criticism which maintained
that the Apocalypse consisted of purely supernatural predictions of
Church History and church-historical numbers ; and which applied such
exegesis to the support of chiliastic extravagances. Positively, it was
the felt need of a firm historical and psychological basis for the
prophetic glimpses of futurity. The errors of this new critical bent
were the issue, in part, of the delight which was occasioned by the
novel historical stand-point— historical, it was believed, for the first
time in a true sense. For the rest, these errors proceeded from doubt as
to the Spirit of Prophecy, as to the authenticity of the Apocalypse, as
to the demonic forms of the kingdom of darkness, and as to the reality
of Biblical Eschatology.
According to Lucke, Abauzit of Geneva inaugurated this tendency in his
Essai sur l' Apocalypse. "The Revelation, written probably under Nero,
is nothing—according to its own profession—but une extension de la
prophetic du Sauveur sur la ruine de l' Etat Judaique." The German
Wetstein was guilty of a curtailing and stinting of the Apocalypse,
similar to that attempted by the French Swiss. According to Wetstein,
Gog and Magog made their appearance in the rebellion instigated by
Barcochba. Harenberg took sides with Abauzit, submitting, however, that
the last four chapters of the Apocalypse are eschatological. He believed
the Book to have been originally written in Hebrew. Semler thought that
the true original spirit of the Apocalypse was Jewish chiliastic
fanaticism.
On the common basis of a one-sided criticism, Herder formed an
antithesis to Semler in this question as in other and more general
respects. The contrast is exhibited in his work entitled: Maran-atha,
das Such von der Zukunft des Herrn, des Neuen Testaments Siegel. [Maran-atha;
the Book of the Coming of the Lord: the Seal of the New Testament.] The
historical perspective of this book is, like that of Abauzit, barren and
contracted in the extreme: it consists of Jerusalem and the Jewish war.
The formal treatment of the Apocalyptic theme, on the contrary, is
enthusiastic, full of idealization, and appreciation of the figurative
language of the Orient (see Lucke's commendation). Herder called the
Apocalypse : "A picture-book, setting forth the rise, the visible
existence, and the future of Christ's Kingdom in figures and similitudes
of His first Coming, to terrify and to console." Hartwig, though the
disciple of Herder, abandoned the Oriental view for the Greek, holding,
with Paraeus, that the Apocalypse was a drama. This dramatical view was
subsequently fully carried out by Eichhorn. Others, taking a more
general, poetical view of the Apocalypse, made metrical versions of it;
of these the chief were those of Schreiber and Munter, and one by a
follower of Bengel, Ludwig von Pfeil.
The interpretation already advanced by
many, according to which the Apocalypse depicted the downfall of Judaism
and heathenism, and the tranquility and glory of the Kingdom of Christ,
re-appeared in the writings of Herrenschneider (Tentamen Apocalypseos).
Johannsen, in his Offenbarung Johannes, set forth a similar view.
Thoroughly novel and original, at variance both with the ancient
Church-historical and the modern synchrono-historical view, is the book
which appeared under the title of Briefe uber die Offenbarung
Johannis. Ein Buch fur die Starken, die schwach heissen,
Leipzig, 1784. [Letters on the Revelation of John. A Book for the
Strong, who are called Weak]. "The [anonymous] author interprets all
specials as generals, relative to the laws, arrangements and
developments of nature and of the human life in general; amid, and
according to, which laws, arrangements, and developments, God's Kingdom
on earth shall one day be perfected." Kleuker maintained once more the
eschatological signification of the Revelation (Ueber Ursprung und
Zweck, etc. [On the Origin and Design, etc.]). On the other
hand, Lucke mentions as followers of the bent of Herder and Eichhorn,
Lange, Von Hagen, Lindemann Matthai, Von Heinrichs (p. 1055)." (A
Commentary on the Holy Scriptures pp. 68-69)
Moses Stuart
"Herder refers everything, in the body of the (Apocalypse), to the
destruction of Judea and Jerusalem."
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