Dondi,
Very nifty! (And certainly fits well enough into the role of the redeemed at the tail end of RevJohn.)
I suspect, though, kingship also means proper lordship over Nature; whereas much of the point of a priest is that he (or she) has personal access to the deity. (Assuming we don’t go back to the older meaning of the word as ‘elder’. Which eventually would certainly fit as well.)
So being priests and kings need not indicate a necessarily standing relationship to rebel persons (whether angelic or otherwise) we are ruling over and interceding for.
On the other hand, there are hints in the scriptures that God intends to extend personhood to as much of Nature as possible (at least in the long run); we may find we are ruling and interceding for the next round of sentient creatures!
(Which then introduces interesting observations about those who were supposed to be, and apparently are, ruling and interceding over us, for which there are also various hints in scripture…! But I wouldn’t hang anything on those speculations.)
Gabe,
As a couple of others have noted, the phraseology is actually crucially different: the villainous kings are not kings-and-priests-of-God; and they are of the earth, rather than being described as reigning on the earth. Considering that RevJohn has some kind of special authorial connection with the Johannine works (which is demonstrable on other internal grounds, not just tradition suggesting so, even though the actual grammar is significantly different from GosJohn on the balance across the texts), that distinction is probably thematically important: those who are of the earth in GosJohn are not (or not yet) born from above, and there’s a running contrast between them and people who are loyal to God.
If it wasn’t for the end of Rev 21, this wouldn’t be controversial at all. The problem (well, post-mortem salvationists don’t think it’s a problem ) is that the kings going into the city there, are described one way instead of the other. Which way? As “kings of the earth”.
So either the author forgot his previously established distinction; or for some reason he has started using a term previously reserved for villains, for people who are clearly not acting as villains in that scene; or those are the previous villains (the “Quirky Miniboss Squad” as they might be called in modern story trope terminology ), leading in fulfilling the evangelical call to those still outside the city (later in chp 22).
Sonia,
There doesn’t seem to be any textual indication of an inadvertent scribal doublet. So I’m inclined to read it as a special repetition for emphasis, probably for contrast to (what we call) the final verse of that chapter where it talks about who can’t come in.
This is even more likely when the Greek of the transition of the second half of that final verse (27) is checked. Because even the Textus Receptus agrees that the transitional phrase there is {ei me_ hoi}.
Which doesn’t mean “but only the ones”, though that’s how it’s often translated. It’s a conditional phrase; literally “if not the ones”, or as we’d put it in English, “not unless they”.
So! The final two verses actually translate out:
26: And [or a strong conjunctive ‘now’, perhaps] they will bring the glory and the honor of the nations into it *;
27: yet [or a strong conjunctive ‘now’, perhaps] all those who are profaning may not enter into it at all, and [or ‘nor’] those making an abomination and a lie–not unless those have been written in the Lamb’s Scroll of Life!
And what is chapter 22 largely about, which immediately follows? It’s largely dedicated to explaining how it is, by God’s grace (which the redeemed are expected to continue participating in the evangel of), those who continue to fondle their sinning, outside the city, may in fact obtain permission to enter and be healed!!
As for the differences in the TR for verse 24: unfortunately the UBS text and its notes list no textual variations there at all; and my copy of the TR didn’t come with a textual apparatus. (It mentions one, but didn’t supply it in my copy.) So I have no idea what the rationales are either way (though on the balance I’m inclined to think the problem is that the variants are so late and few as to be utterly irrelevant for reconstruction purposes). But the word order is rather different, along with the extra word in the TR:
UBS: and will-walk the nations by/through the light of it
UBS: kai peripate_sousin ta ethne_ dia tou pho_tos aute_s
TR: kai ta ethne_ to_n so_zomeno_n en t(i)o_ pho_ti aute_s peripate_sousi
TR: and the nations of the saved in the light of it will-walk
(Edited to add: sorry, my original post did, and still does, contain extra spaces up there for helping match English to Greek. But the forum software considers them extravagant, or something, so it doesn’t print them. Except in the original text which can still be edited! Weird…)
The TR treats the light of the city more literally as a mere (though important) environmental condition (even if that’s to be understood metaphorically so).
But the standard text compilation grammatically suggests that the light may have some causal effect on the nations–which totally fits with the end of the immediately preceding verse (including in the TR) where the illumination is expressly identified to be the Lamb and the Glory of God: i.e, the light is Christ. The metaphor thus means that the nations are walking thanks to the agency of Christ. Which hugely fits what happens in chapter 22 (with the river of life, also a symbol for Christ, going out through the never-closed gates; which those still outside the city are exhorted to wash themselves in and drink freely without cost, so that they may obtain permission to enter the city and eat of the leaves of the tree of life–another image for Christ–and be healed.)
It isn’t that the TR’s version doesn’t fit the surrounding context; it’s okay. But the standard text version fits very much better while also being grammatically simpler (yet perhaps more challenging, conceptually, to natural expectations).*