Jonathan Edwards (mis-?)quoting Revelation 16:5

One of my favorite Christian philosophers is Jonathan Edwards. In this instance, however, Edwards seems to have made a slight error that is significant primarily to someone like myself, with an intense interest in the text of Revelation 16:5. The misquotation is found in one of Edwards’ sermons, the short title of which is shown below:

(Sermon: Wicked Men Useful in their Destruction Only, Works, Vol. VIII, p. 146)

Notice that in this sermon, Jonathan Edwards cites Revelation 16:5-6 but provides a wording that substitutes “art to come” for either “Holy” or “shalt be”, depending on what his base text was. I wanted to be sure that this was not the printer’s error, so I tracked down the manuscript copy of this sermon, which sadly did not exculpate Edwards:

(Jonathan Edwards Collection. General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. https://archives.yale.edu/repositories/11/archival_objects/204574 Accessed December 30, 2024.)

The Yale archive dates this sermon to July 1734. Although there was at least one printed edition before 1734 that used the Greek equivalent of the verb “to come” at Revelation 16:5, my suspicion is that Edwards wrote the quotation from memory and mentally conflated the text.

My suspicion seems to be confirmed from Edwards’ notes on the Apocalypse, where he seems to have copied out the KJV English text with the “shall be” reading:

(Jonathan Edwards Collection. General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. https://archives.yale.edu/repositories/11/archival_objects/205543 Accessed December 30, 2024.)

The edited transcript of Edwards’ famous “Blank Bible” (source) does not itself address the issue, although the notes direct us to the portion provided above and few other places in Edwards’ notes:

Revelation 16.] Concerning the seven vials, see “Revelation,” no. 86.Ibid., 198–99. See ibid., “Extracts from Lowman,” beginning with “The First Vial.”This sentence and the following sentence are later additions. Works, 5, 232–50. Concerning the three first vials, see “Miscellanies,” no. xx;Works, 13, 195–96. [“Revelation,”] no. 23.Ibid., 2, 134–35.

The digital image of the notes is this:

Jonathan Edwards Collection. General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. https://archives.yale.edu/repositories/11/archival_objects/205524 Accessed December 30, 2024. (image 1687)

And the image of the text itself is this:

Jonathan Edwards Collection. General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. https://archives.yale.edu/repositories/11/archival_objects/205524 Accessed December 30, 2024. (image 1686)

So, this seems to rule out that Edwards had some alternative printing of the English text from which he was working. It cannot absolutely rule out the possibility of him having a Greek text, but considering that the quotation comes from Edwards’ sermon on Ezekiel 15:1-2, it seems more probable that it is simply an error of memory.

We see similar errors after him in the late 1700s and early to mid-1800s.

Specifically:

(Sinclare Kelburn, The Divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ Asserted and Proved … in Five Sermons, Etc. United Kingdom, p. 24.)(1792)

(William Hale, Synopsis, A synopsis of the signs of the times, past, present, and future, attempted to be traced from the chronological prophecies in the original Scriptures. Ireland, p. 32)(1817)

Two further examples come from a book published by the Brethren movement. No individual author is identified (or at least, was identifiable to me):

The Time of the End Not Yet. (1850). United Kingdom: James Nisbet and Company. (p. 269)

The Time of the End Not Yet. (1850). United Kingdom: James Nisbet and Company. (p. 278)

Then there is this odd mashup:

Samuel Eyles Pierce, An Attempt on the Behalf of the Called and Believing People of the Most High God, to Set Before Them the Fountain of Everlasting Consolation in Christ Jesus, So that They May be Perfectly Relieved from All Fears Concerning Death and Dying. United Kingdom, p. 97 (1815)

I have no reason to suppose that any of these subsequent misquotations of Revelation 16:5 are influenced by Edwards or his sermon. Instead, I would simply attribute these quotation errors to similar lapses in memory.

This post, I hope, underscores the limitations of relying on patristic quotation alone as evidence of the text in front of a particular church father. This limitation is heightened when the quotation is like the one provided by Edwards above, or even more so when an author does something similar to Pierce, in creating an amalgam from various texts, all at once.

This post should also serve as a reminder to be careful about putting any theologian on a pedestal. Everyone, even a genius like Jonathan Edwards, makes mistakes.

Finally, I hope this post serves as an anecdote against the idea that the KJV’s reading at Revelation 16:5 was somehow “received” by the church since 1611. Even Edwards, who was a famously brilliant scholar with an intense personal interest in the book of Revelation, did not so receive the text as to accurately remember it on every occasion. Likewise, other English-speaking folks made similar lapses in memory over the years. It’s true that Edwards probably did not consciously reject Beza’s emendation of the text, but nevertheless it remains the case that there was not a careful, thoughtful decision to accept one reading of the text over another by Edwards and many others over the centuries. These are simply folks who used what they had at hand.

N.B. This post was sparked by Pastor Matthew Everhard’s fascinating brief documentary on Edwards’ notetaking system (link to video).