Jesus’ title in Revelation is only enhanced by our improved knowledge of astronomy.
Sometimes the biblical writers speak better than they know. They say things and use pieces of imagery that are profound and illuminating on their own terms but become far more profound and illuminating as we learn more about the world.
Take, for instance, a well-known passage from Psalm 8: “When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them?” (vv. 3–4). Reading it today, we marvel that there are billions of times more stars than David realized and that humanity is immeasurably smaller in the cosmos than he understood. Or consider John’s statement that God is light. We see more layers to it than John ever fathomed: the range of colors in white light, the wave-particle paradox, the invisible reaches of the spectrum, and so forth.
One beautiful example is in the last chapter of Scripture, when John records Jesus saying, “I am the Root and the Offspring of David, and the bright Morning Star” (Rev. 22:16). The first half of that statement is clear, albeit paradoxical. Jesus, as Isaiah had prophesied, is simultaneously the product of the messianic line (“the Offspring of David”) and the source of it (“the Root”). But the second half contains depths of which John was entirely unaware.
Nobody in the ancient world could fail to notice the morning star. Its brilliance has made it a common reference point in human history, from Sumerian myth to Greek poetry to Vincent van Gogh’s The Starry Night. As the brightest celestial body in the sky after the sun and moon, the morning star was an obvious symbol for anything or anyone that shone brighter than their companions. That …Continue reading… www.christianitytoday.org
