The Lamb Christology of the Apocalypse of John

Loren L. Johns analyzes the symbolic meaning of arnion (lamb) in the Apocalypse of John as the central feature of the Christology of Revelation. Examining the symbolic antecedents of arnion in the Hebrew Bible, literary evidence from the ancient Near East and the Greco-Roman era, Homer, and Aesop's Fables, the author argues that the term did not refer to an aggressive, militant ram in extant Greek literature prior to the Apocalypse, nor did it normally denote the expiatory sacrificial lamb. Rather, it symbolized vulnerability.Thus, the Christology of the Apocalypse is not militant. The blood on the lamb in Rev. 19 is not from the defeated enemies of God; it is from the slaughter of the lamb. Loren L. Johns concludes that the Lamb Christology of the Apocalypse has an ethical force: the author develops it to encourage his audience to the kind of faithful witness that he was convinced would result in their death as innocent lambs in much the same way that Jesus' witness did.