Mark 3 · The beast from the sea
A Counterfeit Resurrection
A head that seemed slain is healed, and the whole world follows the beast in fascination. John describes it in the very words he used for the Lamb.
✓ Reviewed by Fr. John How this site is made
- Texts
- Revelation 13:3, 12, 14; 17:8
- Figure
- The beast from the sea
- Authority
- Scripture
What the text shows
One of the beast's heads "seemed to have been mortally wounded, but this mortal wound was healed," and the whole world followed after the beast, fascinated (Revelation 13:3). The healing is told twice more: the second beast makes the earth worship the first beast, whose mortal wound had been healed (Revelation 13:12), and calls for an image of the beast that was wounded by the sword and revived (Revelation 13:14). In Revelation 17 the same pattern returns: the beast existed once and exists no longer, will come up from the abyss, and the inhabitants of the earth will be amazed (Revelation 17:8).
The mark has three parts: a wound that seemed mortal, a healing, and a world that follows in fascination and then worships (Revelation 13:3–4, 12).
A mirror of the Lamb
John uses the same words for the wounded head and for Christ. The Lamb stands as though it had been slain (Revelation 5:6); the head seemed slain to death (Revelation 13:3). The beast's healing is a counterfeit of the Resurrection, and its effect is the one St. Paul warns of in the lawless one's false signs: amazement that turns into worship (2 Thess 2:9–10; Revelation 13:4, 12).
For John's first readers
The NABRE note on 13:3 points to the popular legend that Nero, who died in A.D. 68, would come back to life and rule again. Rome itself also seemed to die in the civil wars of 68–69, and rose again under Vespasian.
The Fathers A Father or Doctor
- St. Victorinus of Pettau reads the healed head as Nero raised up (Commentary on the Apocalypse, on chapters 13 and 17).
- St. Hippolytus reads the wound as the empire struck down and restored by the Antichrist (On Christ and Antichrist 49).
- St. Augustine reports that some expected Nero to rise again as Antichrist, and treats the guess as rash (City of God XX.19).
Each reading has a single Father or Doctor behind it; there is no common reading.
The Church Church teaching
The Catechism teaches that the final deception is a pseudo-messianism by which man glorifies himself in place of God and of his Messiah come in the flesh (CCC 675). A counterfeit death and rising is that deception at its sharpest: it imitates the one sign on which the faith rests (1 Corinthians 15:14).
Where interpreters differ Disputed
- Nero's return: St. Victorinus; the NABRE note.
- An empire struck down and restored: St. Hippolytus, and many modern readers.
- The beast's apparent recovery from the blow Christ dealt it on the Cross: some modern scholars.
- A feigned death and rising of the Antichrist himself: some later writers.
The Church has not decided.
The response asked of us
The world is fascinated and follows; the holy ones are not, because they know the true Resurrection. "Whoever has ears ought to hear these words" (Revelation 13:9).
Sources
- Revelation 13 and 17, New American Bible Revised Edition, with notes: bible.usccb.org
- St. Victorinus of Pettau, Commentary on the Apocalypse; St. Hippolytus, On Christ and Antichrist 49; St. Augustine, City of God XX.19 (to be checked against the editions cited before publication)
- Catechism of the Catholic Church 675