IV. The Venerable Bede Enters the Field of Interpretation
BEDE, or Beda (c. 673-735), commonly called “The Venerable,” and also the “Father of English History,” was doubtless the most conspicuous British character of his time. He owes his reputation to the sheer excellence and thoroughness of his writings. Bede was born at Yarrow, in Durham. At the age of seven he was placed in St. Peter’s, a Northumbrian monastery at Wearmouth. Here he was brought up under the discipline of the Benedictine cloister. Bede was then transferred to the sheltered precincts of St. Paul’s at Yarrow, where he continued to study under Coelfrith. His life was thereafter virtually confined to this one institution—for he remained at Yarrow for sixty-three years, or until his death. He was ordained a deacon at nineteen and a priest at twenty-nine, devoting his entire life to teaching and writing. He was said to be master of all the learning of his time. At that time both Wearmouth and Yarrow specialized in the new Gregorian chant, the Roman style of church music. PFF1 609.2
Bede seemed, however, to blend the evangelic passion of the Celtic missionary with the disciplined devotion of the Benedictine Catholic monk. He was an English scholar with Celtic learning, and with broad ecclesiastical sympathies. His name is closely associated with the history of the English Bible, and he was devoted to Bible study. But above and through all he was a monk; monasticism colored all Europe at this time, and Bede’s very life epitomized the period in which he lived. He was a prolific writer, and is said to have produced perhaps 150 works. There are thirty-six volumes known to us, published in seventy-eight books. He was unquestionably the most eminent scholar of the West, and the great early historian of the Anglo-Saxons. His studies covered theology, prophecy, natural science, history, and language—Greek and Hebrew, as well as Latin. Bede was the first chronicler to reckon his dates from Christ’s birth, thus introducing the Dionysian Era into the usage of Western Europe.PFF1 609.3
Picture 1: THE VENERABLE BEDE DICTATING TO HIS AMANUENSIS
His was the most notable exposition of prophecy of his century pointing to a clearer understanding.
Page 610PFF1 610
” ‘In chronology,’ says Charles Plummer, ‘Bede has the enormous merit of being the first chronicler who gave the date of Christ’s birth, in addition to the year of the world, and thus introduced the use of ‘the Dionysian era into Western Europe.’” PFF1 610.1
Between 691 and 703 Bede devoted his writing to theology. About 703 he produced his De Temporibus (Concerning Times), which contains chapters on the division of time and the calculation of Easter, and ends with the six ages of the world. About 716 he wrote his exposition of the Apocalypse. His most noted treatise was, of course, his Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum (Ecclesiastical History of the English People), which he finished at the age of fifty-nine. This comprises five long books—with every scrap of evidence analyzed and verified. As to his standing, A. L. Maycock states:PFF1 610.2
“In the age of Charlemagne, his works were to be found in every cathedral and monastic library in Western Europe. Historians and theologians relied on him implicitly, incorporating large sections of his writings in their own works.... As a commentator he came to possess an authority inferior only to that of the four Fathers of the Western Church.” PFF1 611.1
He also adds that Bede’s works are to be found in most of the great libraries of Europe. PFF1 611.2
1. INFLUENCED BY TICHONIUS AND AUGUSTINE ON THE APOCALYPSE
Bede’s Explanatio Apocalypsis (The Explanation of the Apocalypse) is the earliest British exposition of the Revelation (c. 716) that is known. It is prefaced by a letter to Eusebius, abbot of Yarrow, at whose urgence it was written. Bede conceives the several visions of Revelation to be contemporaneous, not successive. At the outset he cites the rules of Tichonius approvingly, twice stressing recapitulation, and frankly presenting the millennium as the spiritual view pro pounded by Augustine. Bede understands the burden of the Apocalypse to be to reveal the conflicts and triumphs of the church. He divides the book into several natural sections: 1) the seven churches, with the coming of the Lord at the end; (2) the seven seals, the future conflicts and trials; (3) the seven trumpets, various events; (4) the woman as the church; (5) the seven last plagues; (6) the great whore, or ungodly city; and (7) the Lamb’s wife, the New Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven. PFF1 611.3
2. SEVEN CHURCHES, SEALS, TRUMPETS PARTLY HISTORICAL
Bede holds that John, banished to Patmos under Domitian, sent messages to the seven churches of Asia which “are figures of the whole sevenfold church,” for “in the number seven consists all fullness.” Yet there is a hint of historical sequence, for the sixth church, Sardis, is taken as referring to the time of Antichrist, and the seventh, Laodicea, to the scarcity of faith at the time of the second advent. PFF1 612.1
Of the seven seals he says:PFF1 612.2
“In the first seal therefore, [he sees] the beauty of the primitive church; in the following three, the threefold war against her [persecutors, false brethren, and heretics, respectively]; in the fifth, the glory of the victors under this war; in the sixth, those things which are to come in the time of Antichrist; ... in the seventh, the beginning of eternal rest.” PFF1 612.3
Bede characterizes the first five trumpets as (1) the destruction of the wicked with hail and fire; (2) the devil, cast from the church into the sea of the world; (3) the falling away of heretics; (4) the defection of false brethren; (5) the devil falling from heaven, opening the hearts of the heretics with his blasphemous doctrine and teaching them to rise like smoke to speak their wickedness in high places, and the members of the dragon multiplying as locusts, which torment men like the future persecutors of the last days; this woe is past. The last two are future, in the time of Antichrist and the judgment: (6) the ancient enemy, and his satellites bound since the death of Christ in the hearts of the wicked, will be loosed by the four angels, and will be permitted to persecute the church every moment; the Euphrates, the river of Babylon, is the persecuting power of the earthly kingdom; and (7) the preaching will be finished when both good and evil are rewarded; the seventh announces the eternal Sabbath and the kingdom of God, whereas the first six trumpets, compared to the present ages of the world, announce the wars of the church. PFF1 612.4
3. FOUR KINGDOMS NAMED, THREE AND A HALF TIMES LITERAL
Bede makes four angels (chap. 7:1) the four principal kingdoms, namely, of the Assyrians, and of the Persians, and of the Greeks, and of the Romans. PFF1 613.1
To him the three and a half times were literal years. And the triumph of the church of Christ is “to follow the reign of Antichrist.” Then Bede refers to Daniel 7, and the four beasts which came up out of the sea. After Antichrist, will come rest for the church—after Daniel’s 1335 days, or 45 days beyond the 1290, when our Saviour is to come “in His own Majesty,” after the destruction of Antichrist. PFF1 613.2
4. WOMAN, CHURCH; DRAGON, DEVIL; TEN HORNS, KINGDOMS
The woman of chapter 12 is the church, the dragon is the devil, and the ten horns are “all the kingdoms.” A time, he repeats, is a year; and three and a half times therefore equal three and a half years. The “lioness” is Chaldea, the “bear” is Persia, and the “leopard” represents the Macedonians in the application of Daniel 7 to the composite Beast of the Apocalypse. The 666 he bases on Teitan (Greek spelling) as the fateful name. PFF1 613.3
5. AUGUSTINE’S VIEW OF MILLENNIUM AND Two CITIES
Bede sets forth the 144,000 as a finite number for an infinite—those who are completely consecrated to God. Not only is the Holy City trodden down in the time of Antichrist, but this is done by the whole body of the wicked. The leopard beast is also the corpus diaboli, the wicked, headed by earthly kingdoms, the Man of Sin of 2 Thessalonians 2; the wounded head seems to be the Antichrist; the image to the beast represents people who worship and imitate the beast in its Antichrist phase. In Revelation 17 the harlot, the multitude of the lost, sits on the beast, whose heads are the kings of the world, and whose eighth head is Antichrist reigning at the end of the age. The ten kings are rulers who will divide the world among themselves, three of whom will be slain by the Antichrist, rising from Babylon, whom he identifies with the Little Horn of Daniel 7. Bede also gives the Augustinian view of the two cities, one from heaven, and one from the abyss. PFF1 613.4
Bede holds that the Augustinian thousand years of Revelation 20 represent the rest of the sixth thousand-year day in which Christ was born, in which the church reigns and judges with power of binding and loosing in this present time. He sees the first resurrection as brought about through baptism. In Revelation 21 the New Jerusalem is established by heavenly grace. After the ruin of Babylon the Holy City will be placed on a mountain, for the stone cut out of the mountain has broken in pieces “the image of worldly glory” (Daniel 2), and has become the great mountain filling the earth. Bede frankly states in the preface that he draws on Tichonius and Augustine, and here he discusses Tichonius’ Seven Rules. Still tied to the past, Bede is nevertheless far in advance of his contemporaries.PFF1 614.1
6. SEVENTY WEEKS OF “ABBREVIATED” YEARS
Bede reckons the seventy weeks like Africanus, as 490 uncorrected or “abbreviated” lunar years (twelve lunar months, or 354 days, each), the equivalent of 475 solar years. He counts this from the twentieth year of Artaxerxes to Christ. He places the baptism in the fifteenth year of Tiberius, in the midst of the last week, which covers John’s and Jesus’ ministry, and ends “in the seventeenth or eighteenth year of Tiberius.” In this last date he follows Eusebius rather than Africanus. PFF1 614.2
7. Six AGES OF WORLD PARALLEL CREATION DAYS
Bede, who is very enthusiastic about the seven ages of the world, probably follows Augustine on this point. He draws parallels between the events of the six days of creation and the ages of the world, which he enumerates:PFF1 615.1
(1) Adam to Noah.PFF1 615.2
(2) Noah to Abraham.PFF1 615.3
(3) Abraham to David.PFF1 615.4
(4) David and Solomon to the Babylonian Captivity.PFF1 615.5
(5) Babylonian Captivity to Christ.PFF1 615.6
(6) Christ to the end of the world with the persecution of Antichrist in the evening of this age.PFF1 615.7
(7) The rest of the blessed souls, beginning with Abel but ending in the eternal Sabbath of future blessedness. PFF1 615.8
Bede stands at the beginning of the Middle Ages, and in his study on the Apocalypse he undertakes the same work as Primasius did 150 years earlier. Therefore we find another ecclesiastical acceptance of Tichonius. Bede is, however, about the first to discover that the number seven is at the base of the structure of the Apocalypse. His influence is far reaching, for he became the standard authority up to the twelfth century. PFF1 615.9
