About 700 A.D. an anonymous Irish teacher wrote this gloss on the Apocalypse. Here it is reconstructed and translated for the first time. The Latin text with interfacing English translation depicts how the author understood the 144,000 sealed, the beast, the two witnesses, the millennium, the New Jerusalem, and other visions of the Book of Revelation.

The Introduction includes sections entitled Discovery of the Gloss and Observations by Scholars, Reconstruction of the Gloss, Style, Purpose, Audience, and Circulation. Christo-centrism and Historical References, The Use of Tyconius, Irish Features, Theological and Practical Concerns, Eschatology, and Sources and Date.

The book also contains some very informative appendices. These include “Lost Apocalypse Commentaries, 170-700 CE,” listing the many commentaries on Revelation from early Christianity that have been lost and of which only fragments are known; “The Lost Beginning of Tyconius’s Exposition of the Apocalypse,” showing how Tyconius most likely interpreted Rev 1:1-11; and the Latin text with English translation of “A Pseudo-Isidore Prologue to the Apocalypse of the Apostle John.”

If you are interested in interpretation of the Book of Revelation, early and medieval Apocalypse commentaries, or Tyconian studies, I hope you will order a copy.

I was also privileged to contribute an appendix on pages 581-599, which offers first English translations of four short texts from the Pelagian controversy.  They are: The Faith of Rufinus, Testimonies Against the Heretic Pelagius, the Manifesto of Aquileia, and Anti-Pelagian Summaries of the Epistles of Saint Paul. 

If you have interest in this controversy in early Christianity, I hope you will get a copy.  For a link to it, click here.

This belief is found in my book The Day and the Hour, page 3: “One day Christ will return to sum up all things. The dead will arise, Christ will sit as judge, and every human will be examined and consigned to his or her eternal home either in heaven or in hell.” Page 328: “Five Things Every Christian Should Believe About the End of the World. 1. The Second Coming of Christ. 2. The Judgment. 3. The Eternal Reign of Christ. 4. The Resurrection. 5. The Eternal Hereafter.” 

“The Olivet Discourse in Ancient and Medieval Christianity” in The Early Church and the End of the World (p. 111, footnote 13) and New Testament Eschatology (p. 139, footnote 13):  “I bring these translations not as an apologist for preterism, but as a historical theologian whose research interests include the history of Christian eschatology… I profess and firmly believe five points of Christian eschatology: the future bodily return of Christ, the last judgment, the eternal reign of Christ, the general bodily resurrection, and the eternal hereafter.”  

Each week during the Lord’s Supper, I proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes (1 Cor 11:26). 

I also sing along to great hymns like “The Solid Rock,” which reads: 

“When He shall come with trumpet sound 

Oh, may I then in Him be found; 

Dressed in His righteousness alone, 

Faultless to stand before the throne.” 

And “It is Well” which reads: 

“O, Lord, haste the day when my faith shall be sight, 

The clouds be rolled back as a scroll. 

The trump shall resound and the Lord shall descend, 

Even so, it is well with my soul.”

Many of my publications are translations of Latin commentaries on the Book of Revelation from ancient and medieval Christianity. In the process of reading and translating these, I discovered some interpretations and eschatological ideas that are similar to modern partial preterist interpretations of biblical prophecies. I have also found beliefs similar to those who would have the rapture of the saints occurring a significant period of time before the Second Coming. I found these texts enlightening, and I have published them. 

While I have friends and relatives who hold to partial preterist readings of the Olivet Discourse and the Book of Revelation and others who hold to a pre-tribulation rapture, I love these friends and relatives, but do not regard myself as an adherent of either of those eschatological persuasions. On the Olivet Discourse, I hold a “near/far” interpretation and believe that the Second Coming, the gathering of the elect by the angels, and the judgment of the nations by Christ is yet future. I see the fulfillment of the prophecy of the Book of Revelation as extending beyond the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. As for the rapture, I believe that the “catching away” of living saints is part of the one general resurrection at the Second Coming of Christ. 

On full preterism, which does not hold to a physical return of Christ at the end of the world nor the general bodily resurrection accompanying it, for further inquiry by my readers, I listed in one of my chapters (Early Church and the End of the World, p. 119-120/New Testament Eschatology, p. 147-148) fifteen sources critiquing full preterism from biblical and historical perspectives. These include Kim Riddlebarger’s “Did Christ Come Back in A.D. 70?”, Gary North’s “Full Preterism,” and Keith Mathison’s When Shall These Things Be? A Reformed Response to Hyperpreterism. Kenneth Gentry’s Have We Missed the Second Coming? was published later. On historical similarities between ancient heresies and modern full preterist ideas, I wrote, “…opinions resembling full preterism, such as denial of the bodily resurrection and physical return of Christ, historically existed outside of the bounds of orthodoxy, in gnostic and Manichean sects.” (Early Church and End of the World, p. 105/New Testament Eschatology, p. 131), for which I provided evidence from patristic and medieval texts in a large footnote. 

If the Lord grants, I plan to write and publish more on the history of eschatology, including translations of at least two more Revelation commentaries, some early medieval texts on Enoch, Elijah, and the Antichrist, a book on Amillennialism and the Early Church, and another on The Rapture before Darby. Please pray with me that these will come to fruition, that God will be glorified by them, and that His people will be edified by them. Thanks in advance for your prayers. 

I first introduce the text, which is from the early fifth century and is part of a larger work called the Hypomnesticon against Pelagians and Celestians. This work was attributed to Augustine for a long time, but scholarship is unanimous in believing that it does not belong to him. There is a strong case to be made that it is a work of his friend, Prosper of Aquitaine.

After discussing the date and authorship of the text, I examine its contents regarding the fall of humanity into sin, the consequences of that sin (mortality and condemnation), and the fall’s effect the human will. The chapter ends with a translation, never published in English before, of four chapters of that fifth-century treatise on predestination.

The translation was done by Zachary Maxcey, a former student of mine, who now teaches Greek in a classical school in New England.

I hope you will purchase a copy of the book, which you can find by clicking here.