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The Apocalypse of John (by Milton Terry) Hardback

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Sub-title: A Preterist Commentary on the Book of Revelation
Edited by Kenneth L. Gentry, Jr., and Jay Rogers
302 pp (HARDBACK)

Available for shipment on 10/18/22

THE AUTHOR

Dr. Milton S. Terry (1840-1914) was a biblical hermeneutics scholar. He served as the chair of Old Testament Language and Literature at Garrett Biblical Institute in Evanson, Ill. from 1884 until his death in 1914. He wrote voluminously on a wide variety of topics. His two most influential books were his Biblical Hermeneutics: A Treatise on the Interpretation of the Old and New Testaments (1993) and Biblical Apocalyptics: A Study of the Most Notable Revelations of God and of Christ in the Canonical Scriptures (1898). Both of these books have been in and out of print for over a century.

THE COMMENTARY

This book is Terry's preterist commentary on the Book of Revelation. It was originally the last half of his much larger work, Biblical Apocalyptics. It is deeply-exegetical, tightly-argued, and clearly-presented. He makes a powerful case for the preterist approach to Revelation. And in doing so, he presents some important angles that are often overlooked even by preterist interpreters of the book. It is time for Terry’s book to gain a contemporary hearing in the ongoing Revelation debates.

Some of the distinctive elements in Terry’s approach to Revelation are the following.

First, his commentary is a distinctively preterist work. Preterism holds that the great majority of the prophesied events in Revelation were future when John wrote them, but now are in our past. The word “preterist,” in fact, means “passed by.” Most modern-day interpreters view Revelation as futurist in orientation. But John was writing to a first-century church which desperately needed Revelation’s message about events “which must soon take place” (Rev. 1:1; 22:6).

Second, he carefully presents the case for the early dating of Revelation. That is, he shows that it was written prior to the AD 70 destruction of the temple by the Romans. This view was the dominant understanding in the 1800s and the opening decades of the 1900s. Though it lost its dominance in the mid-twentieth century, nevertheless in the past thirty years it has started to press its way back into scholarly discussions.

Third, he recognizes that Revelation’s theme verse in Revelation 1:7 speaks of Christ’s judgment-coming against Israel. This is against the view of most commentators today — including preterist ones — who view it as referring to the Second Coming at the end of history. But Terry presents some strong evidence for position, which deserves a hearing today.

Fourth, he highlights the important fact that the phrase “the earth [Gk., tes ges]” may and should often be translated “the land,” i.e., the Promised Land. This observation throws a flood of light on the whole theme of Revelation and highlights its strong Israel-judgment focus. Most preterist commentators hold that John is focusing almost equally on two first-century enemies of God’s people, Jerusalem and Rome.

Fifth, he presents a strong case for the beast of Revelation being the Roman emperor Nero. Nero was the first imperial persecutor of the early church. He was encouraged to attack the church partly due to the instigation of the Jews, who vehemently opposed Christianity.

Sixth, he argues that the Babylonian harlot is an image of corrupt, first-century Jerusalem. He does this rather than applying it to ancient Rome or some distantly future phenomenon. By doing this, he is showing how the theme verse applies to the Jews who rejected Jesus as their Messiah. He believes John picked up the harlot imagery from Old Testament denunciations of Israel’s idolatrous sins.

Seventh, he is postmillennial in his eschatology. Like preterism, postmillennialism was once dominant in the past (1600s-early 1900s). Postmillennialism and the preterist approach to Revelation fit together nicely, thus encouraging the simultaneous rising of the fortunes of both.

Eighth, he recognizes that though Revelation is greatly concerned with first-century events, it is not focused exclusively on those events. He points out that in the last chapters of Revelation John glances to the distant future. This shows the long-term consequences of the first-century events prophesied in Revelation.

Terry presents a powerful preterist interpretation, with which we agree. Though we do not agree with every position that he presents, we will not “correct” him with our own views. So the reader will have the exegetical arguments as Terry originally presented them. Our views can be found elsewhere.

THIS NEW EDITION

The editors, Gentry and Rogers, have not changed any of Terry’s positions. However, we have edited it for a modern readership. In our newly typeset version of Terry’s The Apocalypse of John the reader will find the following improvements.

We are using a modern type-font: AmerigoBT. This makes the text cleaner, being aesthetically more pleasing in appearance as well as easier on the eyes. This is especially an advance over the older, scanned versions of his commentary.

Long paragraphs and sentences have been broken down into smaller sizes according to modern style. When sentences were broken into more comfortable sizes, we sometimes had to add a word or two of transition to make it flow smoothly. We also inserted serial (or Oxford) commas for greater clarity. In addition, we abbreviated parenthetical notes to lighten up the style. This included abbreviating parenthetical verse references (e.g., Matthew to Matt.), using the standard abbreviation “cp.” instead of either the bulkier “comp.” or the full word “compare,” and so forth.

We have also modernized some of the nineteenth-century language, Thus, we replaced some words and phrases with their modern counterparts. This included replacing the following words: “wont to be,” “ye,” “builded,” “must needs.” “wroth,” “sware,” “anon,” “sitteth,” “like unto,” and so forth. However, we did not change his direct quotations from Scripture, which also involved some antiquated language. For often his argument required a direct citation of the verse. According to Terry’s statement in Biblical Apocalyptics (Preface, p. 7), the Bible version he used was “in the main” that of the Anglo-American Revised Version of 1881.

The original commentary appeared as a single chapter of 228 pages in one large book. Thus, it was necessary to break down the material into several chapters to present it as a free-standing book. In the process we have unified the layout style which sometimes shifted in the original.

Antiquated Roman numerals have been replaced with Arabic numbers throughout. We have employed modern style for ancient references such as to Josephus, Tacitus, Suetonius, etc. For instance, we changed Josephus’ “Wars, bk. iv, 4, 5” to “Wars 4:4:5.

To make the commentary more accessible to a broader audience, we added English transliterations to the Greek and Hebrew characters found in the original.

We have made it easier to search for a commentary note, not only by breaking up Terry’s long paragraphs. But by bolding the Revelation quotations being commented on and by adding the Scripture addresses to each newly introduced quote (which was necessary since we broke down the larger paragraphs).

Hopefully our labor will not have been in vain and Terry will be more easily received by a new generation. We trust that you will find Terry as interesting and helpful as we have. He is certainly not inspired, but he is inspiring. He will challenge your thinking.

 


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