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Earthquake (2)

Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament

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(σεισμός, from σείω, ‘to shake’)

In the ancient East all abnormal phenomena were regarded as supernatural, and any attempt to explain them by secondary causes was discouraged as savouring of irreverent prying into hidden things. Being at once so mysterious and so terrible, earthquakes and volcanoes were traced to the direct activity of One ‘who looketh upon the earth and it trembleth; he toucheth the mountains and they smoke’ (Psalms 104:32). Minor tremors were not, indeed, always interpreted as signs of the Divine displeasure; sometimes quite the contrary. When a company of disciples were praising God and praying after the release of St. Peter and St. John from prison, the shaking of the room was regarded as a token that the Lord Himself was at hand to defend His cause. But more severe shocks ware always apt to cause a panic fear, which was naturally greatest in the breasts of those who were conscious of guilt. When St. Paul and Silas ware praying and singing in a Philippian gaol, the place was shaken by an earthquake violent enough to open the doors and loose every man’s bands (Ramsay’s explanations [St. Paul, 1895, p. 221] are interesting); but terror prevented the prisoners from seizing the opportunity of escaping, and the chance was past before they had recovered their wits.

Earthquakes play a great rôle in prophetic and apocalyptic literature. God’s last self-manifestation, like the first at Sinai, is to be in an earth-quake, and His voice will make not only the earth but also the heaven tremble. While the things that are shaken will be removed, those that are unshaken (τὰ μὴ σαλευόμενα) will remain, the temporal giving place to the eternal (Hebrews 12:26-28; cf. Haggai 2:6 f.), When the sixth seal of the Book of Destiny is opened, there is a great earthquake (Revelation 6:12). When the censer filled with fire is cast upon the earth, there follow thunders and an earthquake (Revelation 8:5). In another earthquake the tenth part of a great city falls (probably Jerusalem is meant, though some think of Rome) and 7000 persona are killed (Revelation 11:13). When the last bowl is poured upon the air, the greatest earthquake ever felt cleaves Jerusalem into three parts, and entirely destroys the pagan cities (Revelation 16:16 f.).

The writer of the Revelation may himself have experienced many earthquakes, and at any rate he could not but be familiar with reports of such visitations, for in Asia Minor they were frequent and disastrous. In a.d. 17 ‘twelve populous cities of Asia’-among them Sardis and Philadelphia-‘fell in ruins from an earthquake which happened by night’ (Tac. Ann. ii. 47). In a.d. 60 ‘Laodicea, one of the famous cities of Asia,’ was ‘prostrated by an earthquake’ (ib. xiv. 27). Palestine and Syria were very liable to similar disturbances; regarding earthquakes in Jerusalem see G. A. Smith, Jerusalem, 1907-08, i. 61ff.

The religious impression made by earthquakes in pre-scientific ages was profound (see e.g. Matthew 27:54). They were regarded as judgments or warnings, it might be as signs of the approaching end of the world, ‘the beginning of travail’ (Luke 13:8=Matthew 24:8). Even Pliny, the ardent student of Nature, asserts that they are invariably precursors of calamity (Historia Naturalis (Pliny) ii. 81-86). The just man of the Stoics was undismayed by them: ‘si fractus illabatur orbis, impavidum ferient ruinae’ (Hor. Car. III. iii. 7f.). Jesus assured His disciples that amid all the ‘Messianic woes’ not a hair of their head should perish (Luke 21:18).

It was not till the middle of the I9th cent. that a careful investigation of the phenomena of earthquakes was begun. Seismology is now an exact science, in which remarkable progress has been made in Japan, a land of earthquakes. But while man rationalizes such calamities, and can no longer regard them as strictly supernatural, he is practically as helpless as ever in their presence. In the earthquake of 1908 which destroyed Messina and Reggio (the Rhegium of Acts 28:13) the loss of life was appalling.

James Strahan.