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The Ancient World Behind the Text: Ideas
The customs, offices and ideas a first reader knew without being told, what each meant then, and the nearest thing you already know.
The Parthians beyond the Euphrates
The empire east of the Euphrates, Rome's most feared enemy, famous for mounted archers who could shoot backward as they rode. Its armies had destroyed a Roman army and once marched into Judea to put their own man on the throne.
Everyone in a border town knows which river the raiders would come across. East of the Euphrates lay the Parthian empire, Rome's most feared enemy. Its horsemen shot arrows from the saddle, even while riding away, and had destroyed Roman armies. The Euphrates was the border everyone knew, and Romans dreaded what might cross it. Revelation's archer on a white horse, its long-haired riders and its armies from the Euphrates draw on that fear; how literally Parthia is meant is read in more than one way.
The Euphrates was common knowledge as the traditional boundary between the Roman and Parthian empires (Keener). Wright adds that everyone from Jerusalem to Rome knew what a release beyond the Euphrates meant. The Parthians were the only mounted archers known in the Mediterranean world and Rome's most formidable enemy. "Romans admitted that they could not defeat the Parthians to the east", says the cultural backgrounds article on Parthia. The old Persian armies, whose heirs they were, kept sacred white horses. The Parthians could feign retreat up a hill and shoot backward at the legions that followed. They used flaming arrows and relied on cavalry, where Rome drew its horsemen from auxiliaries. Unlike most men of the empire, they wore their hair long. Rome had felt their power. Josephus writes of Crassus that "when he had passed over Euphrates, he perished himself, and his army with him" (War 1.8.8). He also tells how the Parthian prince Pacorus, promised a thousand talents, set out to restore Antigonus to the throne of Judea (War 1.13.1). The atlas dates the invasion to 40 BC, when the Parthians made Antigonus king and high priest. Many Jews lived in Parthian territory, and in the war of 66-70 many expected Parthia to step in. Josephus says that "the Jews hoped that all of their nation which were beyond Euphrates would have raised an insurrection together with them" (War, Preface 2). Jewish texts kept the fear alive. The Similitudes of Enoch imagined a Parthian invasion (Keener), stirred up by angels in 1 Enoch 56:5-8 (Beale). King of kings was the Parthian ruler's title. Rumor, echoed in the Sibylline Oracles, had Nero returning at the head of Parthian armies.
An analogy: a frontier town in a Western that knows the raiders live across the river. One word about riders at the ford is enough to send everyone to bar the doors.
Because the Euphrates was the border with Rome's most feared enemy, an archer on a white horse in Revelation 6:2, and angels released at the great river three chapters later, would make a Roman province shudder before any further meaning was found. Acts 2:9 lists Parthians first among the Jews of the dispersion in Jerusalem at Pentecost, a reminder that many Jews lived under Parthian rule.
Not a band of raiders. Parthia was an empire, the one power Rome admitted it could not defeat. It had destroyed Crassus's army and once put its own king on Judea's throne. Many Jews lived under Parthian rule, and in the war of 66-70 some hoped it would help them. Nor were the kings from the east modern nations.
How literally Parthia is meant. The cultural backgrounds notes say the details of Revelation 9 evoke the Parthians whether or not literal Parthians are in view, and that few of the locusts' features are specifically Parthian. Beale grants that many see the first horseman of chapter 6 as at least partly an allusion to the Parthians, but reads the rider as an evil power. Wright treats the armies as symbols drawn from the readers' worst nightmares, and the CSB Study Bible takes the army of 9:16 as more likely demonic than human, perhaps both.
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- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, on Revelation 6:2, 9:8, 9:10, 9:12-21, 9:14, 9:16 and 9:17-18
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, Introduction to Revelation (Interpreting Revelation), and notes on Revelation 6:2, 9:3-11, 9:8, 9:12-21, 9:14 and 9:19, and note on Acts 2:9-11
- N. T. Wright, Revelation for Everyone, comment on Revelation 9:13-21
- G. K. Beale, The Book of Revelation: A Commentary on the Greek Text, on Revelation 6:2 and 9:14
- CSB Study Bible, note on Revelation 9:14-16
- Josephus, The Wars of the Jews, Preface 2, 1.8.8 and 1.13.1, trans. William Whiston
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, notes on Revelation 17:14 and 19:16
- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, on Revelation 17:14 and 19:16
- N. T. Wright and Michael F. Bird, The New Testament in Its World, ch. 34, The Story of the Book of Revelation, section 10
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, article Parthia
- Carl G. Rasmussen, Zondervan Atlas of the Bible, Early Roman Rule in Palestine
