The Reference to a Second Resurrection of the Rest of the Dead in V. 5 is Not Found in the Earliest Manuscripts (ℵ 2030 2053 2062 MajK syrp)
The parenthetical statement at the beginning of v. 5, “(The rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were ended),” is now believed to have entered the text of Revelation sometime between the third and fourth centuries AD. Thus, the first half of Revelation 20:5 is no longer believed by modern scholarship to have been present in the original manuscript.
It is now believed that the statement “οι λοιποι των νεκρων ουκ εξησαν αχρι τελεσθη τα χιλια ετη (“the rest of the dead did not come out from the dead until the thousand years finished”) is a scribal gloss. A scribal gloss is a note written on the margin of a page as a personal commentary which accidentally makes its way into subsequent copies by a well-meaning scribe who mistook the marginal statement for a textual omission discovered after the fact. In other words, a scribal gloss is a statement improperly added into the Bible after a scribe saw a note in the margins and believed the original copyist wrote that missing portion of the text in the margin when the omission was discovered.
There are several reasons why Revelation 20:5a is no longer believed to have been present in the original text. First, this introductory sentence is missing from thirty-five other early Revelation manuscripts including the earliest extant manuscript of Revelation 20:5. In other words, this sentence is absent in roughly half of the manuscripts dating from the fourth to the thirteenth century (ℵ 2030 2053 2062 MajK syrp). Similarly, Revelation 20:5a is never mentioned or alluded to in any of the earliest Christian writings like the writings of Justin Martyr, Hippolytus, Irenaeus and Tertullian. Writing toward the end of the third century, Victorinus is the first to mention this pericope.in the third century AD. Then after Revelation 20:5a makes its appearance it does not show up consistently: Revelation 20:5a then appears in 16 different variations thereafter. Also, once this parenthetical statement about the rest of the dead being raised at the end of the thousand years is removed the text flows better and seems more coherent: “They came to life and reigned with Christ a thousand years. This is the first resurrection.” The fact that “the rest of the dead did not come out from the dead until the thousand years finished” interrupts the flow of the text also implies that this sentence is a scribal gloss.
Perhaps a scribe or commentator seeing the mention of a “first resurrection” (vs. 5 and 6) inferred to himself that it is safe to assume there must be a second resurrection. And since the martyrs are said to reign with Christ the full thousand years (v. 4), this might imply to this scribe that this second resurrection would occur a thousand years after the first. The commentator might then assume this resurrection must also consist of everyone else who was not a martyr hence the reference to “the rest of the dead” as a general resurrection of the righteous and wicked is mentioned elsewhere in the New Testament but never specifically mentioned in Rev 20. All of the information in this statement about the rest of the dead being raised would seem to be safely assumed from the immediate context suggesting that this statement was a personal commentary improperly added to later manuscripts as a scribal gloss.
But how might this statement have ended up in the Bible? It is my belief that when this parenthetical statement about the second resurrection is added to the text, the millennium in a way becomes less problematic from a futurist perspective. This fact increases the likelihood that this phrase would be added to the text later as a scribal gloss. Futurists tend to believe the entire world was to be destroyed at the general resurrection so the possibility of many resurrections after a first resurrection–a staple belief among full preterists–is a big problem for the futurist view. Therefore the mention of a second general resurrection after the first might be more palatable to at least some futurist scribes than just a simple mention of a “first resurrection” of what seems to just be Christian martyrs without any clear mention of a resurrection for everyone else. Futurist Christian scribes would look forward to the resurrection and not wish to be left out simply because they were not martyred. Also the Bible only previously mentions a general resurrection and never a resurrection that at first glance seems exclusive to martyrs. These three issues are all resolved by this parenthetical statement, a fact that accounts for how this statement might have been added to later copies of the text.
The opposite is true from a preterist perspective. Preterists often believe there are successive individual resurrections immediately after death following the resurrection of A.D. 70. Thus the mention of a first resurrection seems to vindicate the preterist perspective whereas mention of a second resurrection one thousand years after the first would appear to be a hurdle for this view. Since most scribes were futurists this pericope might be more eagerly inserted into the text as a scribal gloss because of its perceived friendliness to the futurist view. Conversely if most copyists were preterists this marginal note might more likely be interpreted as a commentator’s note and kept out of the text because of the eschatological problems it could raise to the preterist. And since the overwhelming majority of scribes would have been futurist to varying degrees it is difficult to confidently assert that the original manuscript of Revelation included the statement “[t]he rest of the dead did not come out from the dead until the thousand years finished.”
This omission of the second resurrection at the end of the millennium implies more clearly that the first resurrection and Great White Throne of Judgement was in A.D. 70 (and not separated by 1000yrs) making the millennium so much easier to grasp. It also vindicates the preterist belief that each person is resurrected at the time of death and that the resurrection of A.D. 70 was JUST the “FIRST” among many individual resurrections after individual death!
It was originally thought that Revelation 20:5a’s omission in the earliest manuscript was an early copying error. It was previously believed that a scribe’s eyes jumped to the next mention of a “thousand years” thus unintentionally omitting the statement of the resurrection at the end of the millennium since the previous verse ends with the same last two words: χιλια ετη (“thousand years”). (See What if Revelation 20:5a was, in fact, in the Original Manuscript?)