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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 thousand years
Several Jewish apocalypses expected an in-between kingdom, a reign of the Messiah or an age of peace between the present age and the final judgment, of varying length. Revelation 20 gives it a thousand years, and Christians have read that span in three main ways ever since.
A long holiday weekend sits between the working week and the next one, and families argue about whether it has started yet. Several Jewish books from this period expected a stretch of time between the present troubled age and God's final judgment, sometimes a reign of the Messiah, sometimes a last time of trouble, and they gave it different lengths. In Revelation 20 Satan is bound, the martyrs come to life and reign with the Messiah for a thousand years, and only then come the last battle and the judgment. Christians have read that thousand years as a future reign after Jesus returns, as a golden age before he returns, or as a picture of the present age, and the sources set out each view without settling it.
Keener writes that "Many Jewish texts pictured an intermediate kingdom between the present and future eternal reign". In some it was an age of messianic peace, in others the last tribulation, later called the messianic travail. Its length varied: forty years, three generations, four hundred years and other figures. A few writers divided history into seven periods of a thousand years, with the last one a time of peace. Keener suggests that Psalm 90:4, a thousand years as a day, applied to the days of Genesis 1, explains the number. The cultural backgrounds article The Millennium adds a Gentile prophecy of Rome falling after 6,000 years, "followed by a 1,000-year period of peace". Some Jews pictured a final thousand years as a Sabbath. Wright and Bird list interim messianic reigns in 1 Enoch 91 and 93, 4 Ezra 7 and 12, 2 Baruch 29-30, 40 and 72-74 and the Sibylline Oracles. Revelation 20 to 22 follows the order of Ezekiel 37 to 48: the dry bones raised, the war with Gog and then the new temple and city. Binding an evil power for a set time was also familiar. Beale points to Jubilees, where the chief evil spirit is bound so that he cannot accuse Israel. He also points to Isaiah 24:21-22, where the host of heaven is shut in a pit and punished after many days. Many early church fathers, Papias, Melito, Justin, Irenaeus and Tertullian among them, expected a literal reign, and amillennialism grew popular only after Constantine (Wright and Bird). Other fathers found the doctrine abhorrent for its supposed Jewish roots and materialism (Carson, Moo and Morris). By Eusebius's day its holders were "apparently an easily dissuaded minority" (the article).
An analogy: the interval in a long play. Everyone agrees there is one in the script, but some think it comes after the final act, some think the play is in it now, and some think it is still to come.
Because Jewish hearers knew of an in-between kingdom before the end, the thousand-year reign of Revelation 20:4-6 would sound like a known hope given a Christian shape, not an invention. Wright and Bird take the martyrs' reign as Revelation's picture of what Ephesians 2:6 and Colossians 3:1 say of all believers, seated with Christ in heaven.
Not a break of fixed length. A play's interval is a set pause that everyone sits through. Jewish writers gave the interim kingdom many lengths and meanings, and Wright, among others, reads Revelation's thousand years as a symbol rather than a measured span.
How to read the thousand years. The ESV Study Bible sets out three main views. Premillennialists expect a future, usually literal, reign after Christ returns. Postmillennialists expect the gospel to transform societies for a long age of peace before he returns. Amillennialists take the thousand years as the present church age. Keener names Augustine, Calvin and Luther among the amillennialists, Irenaeus and Justin among the premillennialists, and Edwards among the postmillennialists. He says the narrative most naturally reads as a future period, though his commentary takes no side. Wright reads the number as symbolic, the martyrs sharing the Messiah's rule now. Beale reads Satan's binding as Christ's restraint of his power to deceive the nations through the church age, begun at the cross. The cultural backgrounds article gives the strongest case each way. For a future reign it cites the logic of the narrative, with Satan plainly unbound in chapters 12-13. For the present age it cites the absence of an interim kingdom elsewhere in the New Testament and Revelation's habit of retelling its judgments in cycles. Heiser's podcast reads the binding as the church age while expecting a literal, unending kingdom on a renewed earth, and refuses both labels.
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- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, introduction to Revelation 20:1-6 and on 20:1-3
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, note on Revelation 20:8
- N. T. Wright and Michael F. Bird, The New Testament in Its World, ch. 34, The Story of the Book of Revelation, box Alternative Ways to Read Revelation
- N. T. Wright, Revelation for Everyone, comment on Revelation 20:1-6
- G. K. Beale, The Book of Revelation: A Commentary on the Greek Text, on Revelation 20:1-3
- ESV Study Bible, study notes on Revelation 20:1-6
- CSB Study Bible, notes on Revelation 20:1-3 and 20:4-6
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, article The Millennium
- D. A. Carson, Douglas J. Moo and Leon Morris, An Introduction to the New Testament, chapter on Revelation, Author (Early Christian Testimony)
- Zondervan Illustrated Bible Dictionary, entry kingdom of God
- Michael S. Heiser, Revelation 19: The Rider on the White Horse, video lecture (Naked Bible Revelation series)
- Michael S. Heiser, Revelation 20: Satan's Final Defeat and the Great White Throne Judgment, video lecture (Naked Bible Revelation series)
- Michael S. Heiser, Naked Bible Podcast, Revelation series, audience question-and-answer episodes (about 401-406)
