Unveiling the length and girth of John’s Millennium, Part 2 (girth): Comparing Revelation 20 with book 6 of Virgil’s <i>Aeneid</i>

Although comparison is central to biblical scholarship, it is usually carried out only where genealogical relationships exist between texts. Analogical comparison has traditionally been less central to biblical studies. The two modes of comparison, homology and analogy, may usefully be thought of as centered either on length or on girth. In the absence of genealogical connection, analogical comparison remains justifiable by being anchored in structurally similar causal processes. A comparison of the way John has employed eschatological precursors in constructing the Millennium in Revelation 20 with Virgil’s handling of afterlife traditions in book 6 of the Aeneid demonstrates the benefits of analogical comparison over homological comparison in terms of its thickness or girth of explanation. Although the focus is on Revelation, analogical-synchronic comparison of Revelation 20 with book 6 of Virgil’s Aeneid mutually illuminates their techniques and rationales for combining and reformulating earlier Jewish eschatological traditions. Analogical comparison provides a girth of insight into ancient techniques to harmonize tensions in earlier tradition; the importance of existential needs for preserving earlier conceptions of the afterlife at the risk of remaining inconsistencies and tensions; the strong reading of precursors driven by the profundity of the subject matter; the distinction of Revelation’s transformative-mantological intertextuality from the device of allusion; and the importance of elite political ideology (for both elites and wannabe elites) in tracing the construction of the afterlife. Girth thus potentially offers hermeneuts far greater satisfaction than length.