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Why Does the Lion Disappear in Revelation 5? Leonine Imagery in Early Jewish and Christian Literatures

Candler School of Theology, Emory University, Atlanta, GA 30322, USA

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.

Key Words: Lion • lamb • Messiah-Christ figure • Revelation 5 • Early Jewish literature • Early Christian literature

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