RT Article
T1 Why Does the Lion Disappear in Revelation 5? Leonine Imagery in Early Jewish and Christian Literatures
JF Journal for the study of the pseudepigrapha
VO 17
IS 1
SP 37
OP 74
A1 Strawn, Brent A. 1970-
LA English
PB Sage
YR 2007
UL https://ixtheo.de/Record/1777018757
AB Despite the extensive literature on the lamb image in the Apocalypse, the reasons why the seer shifted from a lion (Rev. 5.5) to a lamb (5.6) have not been fully addressed. The present study presents an overview of the lion image in various corpora of Early Jewish and Early Christian literature. From these materials, it is shown that the lion qua lion is too ambivalent and thus potentially ambiguous of an image to serve as the primary metaphor for the Messiah-Christ figure given the precise nuances that the metaphor needed to connote for the rhetorical purposes of Revelation. Hence, it is not only the various and sundry connotations of the lamb that prompted the switch, but also the various and sundry connotations of the lion. Attention to the latter proves insightful, then, in addressing the former.
K1 EARLY Christian literature
K1 Early Jewish Literature
K1 Revelation 5
K1 Messiah-Christ figure
K1 lamb
K1 Lion
DO 10.1177/0951820707083881