"Outside are the dogs and the sorcerers …" - Revelation 22:15 - Critical Essay

"Crossing the boundary between sacred and non-sacred space, and between sacred and non-sacred periods of time, is regularly accompanied by bathing" (Buxton: 70). Such washing with water was, of course, "the most widely used and the most basic" means of purification (Parker: 226). Blessing is pronounced by the author on those who "wash their robes." The verb used here, pluno (I wash), is often used in other literature in the purificatory sense, as indeed it is in Revelation 7:14, where those who have come through the great tribulation "have washed their robes" and made them white in the blood of the Lamb."

Kraft (279) sees the reference to entrance "by the gates" in 22:14 as reminiscent of the pilgrimage processions of the Psalms. But this penchant for finding parallels in Jewish literary traditions means that any polemic against the local cults in Revelation will most likely be missed. So here it is necessary to draw attention to the gates and thresholds that all inhabitants of cities in Asia Minor knew so very well: the gates of cities, the doors of temples and shrines, and the doors and thresholds of houses. These gates and thresholds marked the boundaries between sacred and non-sacred space, between private and public, between the clean and the polluted. Crossing such boundaries required rituals of purification and, in some cases, the setting up of images of the powers--such as Hecate--who were believed to have special interest in and control over such thresholds.

It is possible that the focus of Revelation 22:14 is on one particular transition--that of death. It was common practice that after death the corpse was stripped, washed, and dressed in new, white, and washed robes as a prelude to being carried out. The mourners in some regions also wore white robes (Plutarch, QUAEST. ROM. 26). These verses can then be heard as a polemic against the cult of Hecate and her dogs, a cult specifically--but not only--concerned with the spirits of the dead. Revelation is keen to claim the authority of God over the blessed dead and over the abyss, Hades, and death (1:18; 6:9-11; 11:11-12; 14:13; 20:1, 4-6, 13-14). Jesus is "one who died" (1:18), and the Lamb is the one "who was slain" (5:6, 9, 12; 13:8), and the possibility, threat, of closeness of death is a very common theme (2:5; 2:10; 2:16; 2:23; 3:2, 3, 8, 10 and elsewhere). In addition, "blessed" are those who have died "in the Lord" (14:13), those who are "watching" when "I am coming like a thief" (16:15), those "invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb" (19:9), and those "who share in the first resurrection" (20:6). It could be argued therefore that the wearing of washed and white clothes in Revelation commonly symbolizes those who anticipate or have gone through death. In 3:5, it is those who conquer who will be "clad in white garments," and in 4:4, the elders sitting around the throne of heaven are clad in white. In 6:9-11, it is "those who had been slain for the word of God" that are given white robes; and in 7:9-14 it is the great crowd which has "come through the great tribulation" who are also clothed in white. In other words, washed and white robes were the clothes of the dead, and of those in the heavenly world. It is also plausible to interpret the entrance into the city by the gates in 22:14 as a reference to the procession of the dead, since gates and doors are commonly found on Jewish ossuaries and in Jewish literature as symbols of the transition from this life into the next (Figueras).