Summary:
Ruiz does a comparison of Rev 10:4 where John hears the message of the seven thunders but then is told not write them down, and 2 Cor 12:4 where Paul discussion his own vision where he is taken to paradise and see things and hears words that "which a man is not permitted to speak." Ruiz argues that both of these function to create authority for the writers. Both Paul and John of Patmos are engaged in threats to their authority. Paul is threatened by the "Super Apostles" who apparently argue that Paul is insufficiently spiritual. John is being threatened by competing prophets who it calls "Jezebel" and "Balam". While their exact message is unclear, it appears that these prophets argue for an accommodation with Rome, a perspective that John rejects and denounces.
The two cases are different as well. Paul reports a vision of Paradise and the Third Heaven in general terms, while John's vision is given in detail. Paul merely states that revelation of his vision is simply forbidden, while John gives his readers a scenario in which he endeavors to write down what is said and then is told to "seal up" those things and not to write them down. In both cases then the prophet (Paul/John) becomes the container of revelation. They have heard and seen that which cannot be communicated by divine order and thus have a special authority as a result. Ruiz sees that enhanced by the scroll that John eats. Ruiz states it clearly,
"The difference between the absolute nondiscolusre of the seven thunders' utterance and the message of the open scroll is that this embodied text remains accessible in the person of the prophet and in his proclamation. However even that authority is decentered by the distance between the prophet on Patmos and the churches of Asia, a distance that is bridged only by the text of the Apocalypse."(109)
I would focus on a couple of things. First, John is told to "seal up" the things that he is told. That language is reminiscent of Daniel 8 when Daniel is told to "seal up" his vision, "for it concerns the distant future." Note the important thing is that while Daniel is told to "seal up" his vision, he in fact writes it down. Contrast this with John who is told to "seal up" the words of the seven thunders and does not write them down. The difference is of course with the ex eventu nature of Daniel's prophecy. Written long after the Babylonian Exile, the book of Daniel is actually written about contemporary events, the authority comes from invoking Daniel as the messenger of the vision. In the Apocalypse of John on the other hand, the authority is instilled in the messenger precisely by secret knowledge. Secret knowledge does nothing for the author of Daniel as his narrator is long since dead, but because John of Patmos still lives his secret knowlege gives him authority precisely because he alone holds it. The allusion to Daniel functions to equate Daniel with the apocalypse' author.
We might also contrast the "seal up" command in chapter 10 with the command "Do not seal up the words of prophecy in the book because the time is near"(22:10). The sealing of the words, as in Daniel, is dependent upon the proximity of prediction to fulfillment. For the book of Revelation, the words must not be sealed up since their fulfillment in imminent. On the other hand Daniel's prediction is to be fulfilled in the distant future and thus the words are to be sealed up. Which makes Rev 10 command different than 22 and the Danielic allusion it appears to reference. Here the focus is on the prophet. He alone has the words, he alone eats the scroll, and he alone is given the command "you must prophecy" in v. 11.
Ruiz argues that "Neither text allows attention to remain focused on the author-prophet or author-apostle for very long. In both instances authority is redirected from the narrator to the narration."(111) Yet here it seems that Ruiz has stretched the comparison between Corinthians and Revelation too far, because it is precisely the focus on the prophet in v.11 that makes Ruiz larger point that the nature of the secret knowledge imparted to John is to function to bolster his status with the community. The move to secret knowledge works precisely because that knowledge is contained within in one living source and no other.
Ruiz, Jean-Pierre. 2006. Hearing and Seeing but Not Saying: A Rhetoric of Authruority in Revelation 10:4 and 2 Corinthians 12:4. In The Reality of Apocalypse: Rhetoric and Politics in the Book of Revelation, Ed. David Barr, Symposium Series, 91-112, Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature.
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