King of Kings

A PAPER PRESENTATION BY SHAWN CRAIGMILES

NOVEMBER 19TH, 2014

Images and Texts in Revelation

The

Image of the King of Kings in Revelation 4

The

Title King of Kings in Revelation 17 and 19

The Title King of Kings in Revelation 17 and 19

17:14

,

.

19:16

References to the King of Kings

in the Ancient Near East

Biblical and Pseudepigraphal References

Biblical

References

Ezra
2

Maccabees

Ezekiel
Daniel

and Daniel

4:37

Pseudepigraphal
1

Enoch

Reference

References to the King of Kings

in the Ancient Near East

Biblical References
Ezra

Ezra (2 Esdras) 7:12 where

translates the Aramaic ,

, with the referent being
the king of the Persians, Artaxerxes I (,



,
) .

References to the King of Kings

in the Ancient Near East

Biblical References
Ezra

R. Fowler:
This [the title King of Kings] is familiar as an Achaemenid title; it appears
(amongst other titles) in Darius Behistun inscription, as we have seen:
1. I am Darius the Great King, King of Kings, King in Persia, King of
countries, son of Hystaspes, grandson of Arsames, an Achaemenian.
This is used in the Old Persian texts, as also in the Akkadian version.

References to the King of Kings

in the Ancient Near East

Biblical References
2 Maccabees 13:4

[Menelaus]
Then the King of kings raised up the anger of Antiochus against the sinner [Menelaus]

Biblical ReferencesEzekiel 26:7

Biblical ReferencesDaniel 2:37

*

You, O King, [are] a king of kings,*
and to you the Lord of the Heavens gave the rule and the kingdom
and the strength and the honor and the glory

*Translating the Aramaic .

.

Biblical ReferencesDaniel 3:2

In the LXX text of Dan 3:2 we see the addition of the title (with some expansion),
which is not included in the Aramaic text:

.

And Nebuchadnezzar, king of kings and lords
of the whole world, sent to gather together all the peoples

Biblical ReferencesDaniel 4:37

We now turn to Dan 4:37,
in which Nebuchadnezzar himself declares that



I confess and I praise,
because he is God of gods and Lord of lords and King of
kings

Biblical ReferencesDaniel 4:37

It should be noted that the verse begins with a parallel construction, namely

...,
which offers a significant parallel to both Rev 4:11 and Rev 5:12-13. Beale also notes
this in his commentary on the respective verses (pages 334-336 for Rev 4:11, and
pages 364-366 for Rev 5:12-13).

Pseudepigraphal References1 Enoch 9:4-5

Following is English translation of 1 Enoch 9:4-5 by Nickelsburg and VanderKam:
4

And approaching, they said to the Lord of the Ages,

You are the God of gods and Lord of lords and King of kings and God of the ages.
And the throne of your glory (exists) for every generation of the generations that are from of
old. And your name (is) holy and great and blessed for all the ages.

For you have made all things and have authority over all.
And all things are manifest and uncovered before you, and you see all things,
and there is nothing that can be hidden from you.

George W. E. Nickelsburg and James C. VanderKam, 1 Enoch: The Hermeneia Translation (Minneapolis, MN:
Fortress Press, 2012), 26.

Pseudepigraphal References1 Enoch 83:3-4

2

Blessed are you, O Lord, King, great and mighty in your majesty, Lord of all the creation of the heaven,
King of kings and God of all eternity.
Your power and your reign and your majesty abide forever and forever and ever, and to all generations,
your dominion.
All the heavens are your throne forever, and all the earth is your footstool forever and forever and ever.

For you have made and you rule all things, and nothing is too difficult for you;
Wisdom does not escape you, <and it does not turn away from your throne,> nor from your presence.

You know and see and hear all things, and there is nothing that is hidden from you.
And now the angels of your heavens are doing wrong, and upon human flesh is your wrath until the great
day of judgment.

George W. E. Nickelsburg and James C. VanderKam, 1 Enoch: The Hermeneia Translation (Minneapolis, MN:
Fortress Press, 2012), 118.

References to the King of Kings

in the Ancient Near East

Historical References

Parthians

Connections Between the Achaemenid and Arsacid Dynasties

Second and First Century B.C. Historical References

Excursus: Pompey and the title King of Kings

Parthians: Resumed

Historical References--Parthians
Mithridates [most likely Mithridates II] in his later career assumed the title king of kings
rather than great king in all languages, and it is known from Babylonian sources that he
adopted the title king of kings in 111/0 BC, in the early decades of Parthian dominion over
the region.

Richard Fowler, Most Fortunate Roots: Tradition and Legitimacy in Parthian Royal Ideology, in Imaginary Kings: Royal Images in the Ancient Near East,
Greece, and Rome (ed. Olivier Hekster and Richard Fowler; Oriens et Occidens: Studien zu antiken Kulturkontakten und ihrem Nachleben 11; Stuttgart:
Franz Steiner Verlag, 2005), 141, cf. 134136, and Figure 1 on 248.

Historical References--Parthians
After the reign of Mithridates II the inscription is, in the main, stabilized as:
(sic) []
. From the reign of Vologeses I (51-80 A.D.), at first
occasionally and later as a rule, besides the Greek inscription a Parthian one also appears,
which reads in fuller form (on the coins of Vologeses IV): rk wlgy MLKYN MLK. The
name Arshak () is possibly derived from aran man, hero and is connected with the
mythical Kavi Arshan, the archer-hero. Inscriptions of the type of ,
may be translated king of Arsacids.
V. G. Lukonin, Political, Social and Administrative Institutions: Taxes and Trade, in The Cambridge History of Iran. Vol. 3 (2): The
Seleucid, Parthian and Sasanian Periods (ed. Ehsan Yarshater; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 684685.

Historical References--Parthians

Mithridates [most likely Mithridates II] in his later career assumed the title king of
kings rather than great king in all languages, and it is known from Babylonian sources
that he adopted the title king of kings in 111/0 BC, in the early decades of Parthian
dominion over the region.

Richard Fowler, Most Fortunate Roots: Tradition and Legitimacy in Parthian Royal Ideology, in Imaginary Kings: Royal Images in the Ancient Near East,
Greece, and Rome (ed. Olivier Hekster and Richard Fowler; Oriens et Occidens: Studien zu antiken Kulturkontakten und ihrem Nachleben 11; Stuttgart:
Franz Steiner Verlag, 2005), 141, cf. 134136, and Figure 1 on 248.

Historical ReferencesMarc Antonys sons

From Plutarchs Antonius 54.4-6

In the second place, he proclaimed his own sons by Cleopatra Kings of Kings, and to
Alexander he allotted Armenia, Media and Parthia (when he should have subdued it), to
Ptolemy Phoenicia, Syria, and Cilicia. [5] At the same time he also produced his sons,
Alexander arrayed in Median garb, which included a tiara and upright head-dress, Ptolemy
in boots, short cloak, and broad-brimmed hat surmounted by a diadem. For the latter was the
dress of the kings who followed Alexander, the former that of Medes and Armenians. [6]
And when the boys had embraced their parents, one was given a bodyguard of Armenians,
the other of Macedonians.

Historical ReferencesParthians
Defeat of Crassus at Carrhae in 53 B.C.

The result of Crassus fiasco was to place Parthia on an equal if not superior plane with Rome in the minds of
men from the Mediterranean to the Indus. The lands east of the Euphrates remained the boundary between
Rome and Parthia until A.D. 63, when the defeat of Paetus took place.
Among the groups most strongly affected by this increase in Parthian prestige were the Jews. For years they
had looked to this newly risen power in the East as a possible source of support, and the strong Jewish
colonies in Babylonia must have kept their more westerly brethren informed of the Parthian successes. As the
Greeks of Mesopotamia directed their appeals for aid to the rulers of Seleucid Syria, so the Palestinian Jews
turned their eyes toward Parthia for deliverance from oppression.
Neilson C. Debevoise, A Political History of Parthia (Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 1938), 93-94.

Historical ReferencesParthians
Parthians and Jerusalem40-37 B.C.

Parthian forces under Pacorus were able to unseat the Hasmonean

nominal ruler of Jerusalem, Hyrcanus (and with him the powers
behind the power, Herod and Phasael), and replace him with his
nephew, Antigonus, who ruled under Parthian authority until 37 B.C.

Historical ReferencesPompey
From Plutarchs Pompey 67.1-3

While he was thus quietly following the enemy he was loudly denounced, and charges
were rife that he was directing his campaign, not against Caesar, but against his country
and the senate, in order that he might always be in office and never cease to have for his
attendants and guards men who claimed to rule the world. [3] Domitius Ahenobarbus, too,
by calling him Agamemnon, and King of Kings [ ], made him odious.
And Favonius was no less displeasing to him than those who used a bolder speech, when he
bawled out his untimely jest: O men, this year, also, shall we eat no figs of Tusculum? And
Lucius Afranius, who lay under a charge of treachery for having lost his forces in Spain, on
seeing Pompey now avoiding a battle with Caesar, said he was astonished that his accusers
did not go forth and fight this trafficker in provinces.

Historical ReferencesPompey
From Appians Bell. Civ. 2.10.67

Yet, harassed by the whole army, which was unduly puffed up by the victories at
Dyrrachium, and by men of rank who accused him of being fond of power and of
delaying purposely in order to prolong his authority over so many men of his own rank
and for this reason called him derisively king of kings [ ]
and Agamemnon, because that general also ruled over kings while war lastedhe
allowed himself to be moved from his own purpose and gave in to them, being deceived
now by the god that had misled him on other occasions during the whole of this war.

Historical ReferencesPompey
From Appianss Foreign Wars, Mithridatica

Never did any man before Pompey set forth with so great authority
conferred upon him by the Romans.He had twenty-five assistants of
senatorial rank, whom they call lieutenant-generals, among whom he
divided the sea, giving ships, cavalry, and infantry to each, and investing
them with the insignia of prtors, in order that each one might have
absolute authority over the part intrusted to him, while he, Pompey, like
a king of kings [ ], should course among them to
see that they remained where they were stationed

Historical ReferencesParthians
Bivar notes that, following the defeat of Crassus and his forces in 53 B.C. and the
seizing of the Roman eagles belonging to the legions commanded by him and by Publius
(which were retrieved due to negotiation during the reign of Augustus),

Parthian influence began to grow among the Jews of Judaea,

who had long maintained links with their co-religionists in
Babylonia under Parthian rule; and who now saw in the rising
power of Parthia a possible counterpoise to Roman
domination.
H. Bivar, The Political History of Iran Under the Arsacids, in The Cambridge History of Iran. Vol. 3 (1): The Seleucid,
Parthian and Sasanian Periods (ed. Ehsan Yarshater; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 56.

Another issue worthy of mention is the depiction of the Parthians themselves in Jewish sources from
this period. If, as we noted above, Parthians are not depicted with hostility by Josephus in his account of
Anilaeus and Asinaeus, we find in some rabbinic sources messianic hopes actually linked to a Parthian
victory over Rome.
An example is the declaration by the second century rabbi, R. Simeon bar Yohai:
When you shall see a Persian horse tethered to the graves of the Land of Israel,
expect the feet of the royal Messiah.[*]
Although this correspondence between the hopes expressed in Josephus and in rabbinic works is
suggestive and may lead us to granting a greater degree of credibility to the attribution and the date of
certain rabbinic sayings, it is also true that this and other sources enthusiastic of a Parthian victory over
Rome have all come down to us in rabbinic works redacted in the course of the Sasanian era and are not
immune from contamination resulting from the passage of time.
[*]Lamentations Rab. 1, 13 (Buber ed., 77); Cant. Rab. 8, 10.
Geoffrey Herman, The Jews of Parthian Babylonia, in Das Partherreich und seine Religionen: Studien zu
Dynamiken religiser Pluralitt / Zehnder, Markus Philipp. (ed. Peter Wick and Markus Zehnder; Pietas 5;
Gutenberg: Computus Druck Satz & Verlag, 2012), 144.

Historical ReferencesParthians
Seutonius on the death of Germanicus

But the most spectacular proof of the devotion in which Germanicus

had been held appeared on the day of his death and immediately
afterwards.Even the barbarians who were fighting us, or one another,
are said to have made immediate peace as though a domestic tragedy
had afflicted the whole world; some princes shaving their own beards,
and their wives heads, in token of profound grief.
The King of Kings himself cancelled his hunting parties and banquets
with his grandees, which is a sign of public mourning in Parthia.

Suetonius, Lives of the Twelve Caesars (ed. Michael Grant; trans. Robert Graves;
London and New York: Classic Penguin, 2000), 136.

Historical ReferencesParthians
Cassius Dio on Emperor Vespasian

when Vologaesus forwarded a letter to the emperor

addressed as follows:
"Arsaces, King of Kings, to Flavius Vespasian, Greeting,"
the recipient did not rebuke him but wrote a reply couched in
the same terms and added none of his imperial titles.

Cassius Dio, R.H. 66.11.

Conclusion
When John included the title king of kings, both in image and in explicit title, he did not
simply pluck a string to produce a note:
rather, he struck a chord, composed of multiple notes.
The dominant one, to be sure, was that of Daniel 4:37.
But must it be monotone?
I would say that it need not be: this paper has endeavored to show that, in fact, based upon
the evidence from the Parthian historical sources alone, it is not.