Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
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Contents |
Horses and their riders
In summary, the horses and their riders as described in the Bible are as follows:
| Horse | Rider | Power | Represents |
|---|---|---|---|
| White | Carries bow; wears crown | Conquers (and brings peace) | Antichrist |
| Red | Carries sword | Brings war | War |
| Black | Carries scales | Scarcity of food | Famine |
| Pale | Death | Kills by war, hunger, etc. | Death |
It should be noted that, while the rider of the white horse is often interpreted as Antichrist, he is not named as such in Revelation. In fact the word 'antichrist' never appears in that book.
The word used to describe the color of the 'pale' horse is the Greek word chloros or green. It is meant to convey the sickly green tinge of the deathly ill or recently dead. Since the literal translation 'green' does not carry these connotations in English the word is rendered 'pale' in most English translations.
Original text
From the King James Version of the Bible, Revelation chapter 6, verses 1 to 8 (emphasis added):
- And I saw when the Lamb opened one of the seals, and I heard, as it were the noise of thunder, one of the four beasts saying, Come and see.
- And I saw, and behold a white horse: and he that sat on him had a bow; and a crown was given unto him: and he went forth conquering, and to conquer.
- And when he had opened the second seal, I heard the second beast say, Come and see.
- And there went out another horse that was red: and power was given to him that sat thereon to take peace from the earth, and that they should kill one another: and there was given unto him a great sword.
- And when he had opened the third seal, I heard the third beast say, Come and see. And I beheld, and lo a black horse; and he that sat on him had a pair of balances in his hand.
- And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts say, A measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny; and see thou hurt not the oil and the wine.
- And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth beast say, Come and see.
- And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.
Interpretations
White Horse
Opinions differ on whether the first horseman, riding the white horse, represents Christ, the Antichrist, or the False Prophet, but the general consensus of conservative biblical scholars is that he is the Antichrist. One argument against this horseman representing Christ is that each horseman is released due to the opening of a seal, and the seals represent God's curses upon the world, it is unlikely that the author would consider Christ's return as a curse. (However, it could be conceived as a curse by those who oppose Christ.) Moreover, interpreting this seal judgment as Christ's return is at variance with the unambiguous description of his return in Revelation 19:11-16.
Mainline Christian scholarship does not interpret this figure as either Christ or Antichrist. M. Eugene Boring's commentary on Revelation suggests that the image is drawn from the current events of the first century which the Christians in the Roman Empire would have recognized. In 62 AD the Parthians had beaten a Roman army in the Tigris valley and people throughout the empire viewed them with the same unrealistic dread as westerners in modern times had for the yellow peril. The Parthians were the only mounted archers of the 1st century and white horses were their mount of choice. The passage can thus be interpreted as 'conquest from without' without assigning any specific identity to the rider.
Red Horse
The rider of the second horse is War. The red color of his horse represents blood spilt on the battlefield. He carries a sword, which represents battle and fighting.
The second horseman of the apocalypse is spoken of in Revelation 6:4, "Then another horse came out, a fiery red one. Its rider was given power to take peace from the earth and to make men slay each other. To him was given a large sword." The second horseman refers to terrible warfare that will break out in the end times.
Black Horse
The third horseman, riding the black horse, is Famine. The black color of the third horse could be a symbol of death and famine. Its rider was holding a scale, which means scarcity of food, higher prices, and famine. The third horseman is described in Revelation 6:5-6, "...and there before me was a black horse! Its rider was holding a pair of scales in his hand. Then I heard what sounded like a voice among the four living creatures, saying, "A quart of wheat for a day's wages, and three quarts of barley for a day's wages, and do not damage the oil and the wine!" The third horseman of the apocalypse refers to a great famine that will take place, likely as a result of the wars from the second horseman. Food will be scarce, but luxuries such as wine and oil will still be readily available.
Pale Horse
The fourth horseman (on the pale, or sickly horse, which may be the source of the notion of "pestilence" as a separate horseman) is explicitly named Death. The pale greenish color of the fourth horse means fear, sickness, decay, and death. The imagery of the horses and riders is similar to a passage in Zechariah.
Alternative interpretations
An alternate interpretation, likely based on differing translations, holds the first Horseman to represent War and/or the Antichrist, the second to represent Pestilence (sometimes called Plague), while the third and fourth riders remain Famine and Death, respectively. Yet another interpretation is that the Four Horsemen are the Four Beasts mentioned in the visions of The Book of Daniel, representing four kings (or kingdoms), the last of which devours the world. The more conventional integration of this portion of Daniel with Revelation, however, is that the eleventh king (arising in the fourth kingdom) is the Antichrist.
Mainline Christian scholars tend not to interpret Revelation as prophecy of future events so much as a revealing of God's presence in the current events of the first century. While Rome appears to be all powerful and in control, the images of the horsemen are a grim reminder that even the powerful persecutor is helpless before the power of God.
In this light the white horseman is a symbol for a conquoring force from without. This is symbolized using the image of the feared Parthian mounted archer on his white horse and given the crown of a conquorer. The red rider who takes peace from the earth is the civil strife that ended the pax romana. The black rider is the famine that follows anytime there is foreign invasion or civil war. The final rider is the death that accompanies conflict and famine and the pestilence that springs up in the aftermath of these other tragedies.
While these images, and especially the Parthians, are specific to the Roman Empire of the early Christian era, there is a universality about them. Each new century, Christian interpreters see ways in which the horsemen, and Revelation in general, speaks to contemporary events.
Cultural references to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
Literature
- The Spanish author Vicente Blasco Ibáñez wrote a bestselling novel in 1916 called The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse<b>. The novel was so successful that it was published in over 200 editions and in almost every language. It tells the story of two related families divided by war. One of the films made from this story starred Glenn Ford and featured a score by Andre Previn.
- The novel Good Omens, by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, includes an appearance by the four horsemen - Death, War (technically a horsewoman here), Famine, and Pollution (Pestilence having retired after the advent of penicillin). In deference to the changing times, the horsepeople form a motorcycle gang, supported by bikers with other adopted names (Grievous Bodily Harm, Cruelty To Animals, Things Not Working Properly Even After You've Given Them A Good Thumping, No Alcohol Lager, and Really Cool People).
- Terry Pratchett's Discworld series also features the Four Horsemen, most notably in Sourcery and Thief of Time. The latter introduces the fifth horseman (Kaos (or Chaos), a.k.a. Ronnie Soak), who left before they became famous (akin to a Fifth Beatle). Like Death, the other horsemen have a personality beyond the job; War, for instance, is married with three kids: Panic, Terror and Clancy.
- A reference to the Four Horsemen is made in The Talismans of Shannara, a 1993 fantasy novel by Terry Brooks. The Four Horsemen are personified by creatures called Shadowen, and instead of horses they ride serpent-like creatures.
- In a novel by Timothy C. May , child pornographers, terrorists, money launderers and racists are called the "Four Horsemen of the Infocalypse". The Government and public fear of the four horsemen stops powerful encryption for public use
- In Piers Anthony's Incarnations of Immortality series, the Horsemen are incorporated in a different way. Death, War, Fate, Nature, and Time are all actually humans who are taking on the powers of their respective office. The first book, On a Pale Horse is about a man who takes over the office of Death and, while he works with War as a fellow incarnation, they are not full-time associates (though Death does indeed ride a magical pale horse). In the third book Wielding a Red Sword, a man becomes the Incarnation of War. He is garbed in a golden cloak, rides a golden horse, and (as the title suggests) wields a red sword. He's also assisted full-time by four horsemen (lesser incarnations): Conquest, garbed in white with a white horse; Slaughter, in red; Famine; in black; and Pestilence, in brown.
Films and Television
- There is a silent 1921 movie The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (see [1]).
- Clint Eastwood's Pale Rider (1985) alludes to the fourth horseman in its title. The film, like Eastwood's earlier High Plains Drifter, is a vaguely supernatural western.
- Charmed had an episode about the horsemen.
- In the TV series The Highlander, The Four Horsemen were four immortals that murdered and looted in the ancient world.
- In the X-Files episode Millennium, a crossover with the television show Millennium, the Four Horsemen are men who have killed themselves as part of a plot to bring about the end of the world at the turn of the millennium. They rise as zombies when a preacher chants the verse John 11:25, and when one is prematurely destroyed, a new Horseman must be created before midnight on New Year's Eve.
- Stargate SG-1, Season 9, "Fourth Horseman, Part 1", deals with a plague let loose on humanity by the Ori. While the fourth horseman is traditionally interpreted as Death, it appears that the writers intended to refer to Plague/Pestilence.
- The film Tombstone (1993) has the Wyatt Earp character (Kurt Russell) representing the fourth horseman, Death, in the events leading up to the shootout at the O.K. Corral and subsequent Cochise County War. Early in the film the gunslinger Johnny Ringo recites the line, "…and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him," foreshadowing Earp's imminent arrival on the railroad, the "iron horse" of the West. After a gunfight with assassins of the Cowboy faction, Earp shouts the threat "You tell them I'm comin', and Hell's comin' with me!" In the film's finale, Earp, Doc Holliday and two allies wage war against the Clanton/McLaury cowboy gang while riding four horses side-by-side with matching saddles and collars – a perfect visual to complete the "Four Horsemen" allusion.
- The sitcom Red Dwarf includes four horsemen named after the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse as characters in a western themed artificial reality representing a computer virus in the episode "Gunmen of the Apocalypse".
Music
- The Johnny Cash song "The Man Comes Around" quotes relevant lines from the Book of Revelation (lyrics).
- Metallica's 1983 CD Kill 'Em All features a song called "The Four Horsemen". The horsemen referenced in the lyrics are Time, Famine, Pestilence, and Death.
- Aphrodite's Child's "The Four Horsemen" from their album 666.
- The Clash also recorded a song entitled Four Horsemen on their album London Calling.
- The Bollock Brothers named their most known album The 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse, released 1986.
- Bruce Dickinson focuses on the Four Horsmen in his song "Darkside of Aquarius" on his 1997 solo-album Accident of Birth.
- The Electronic Collage band Noble Gas did a graphic based upon the Four Horseman, called "The Legend of Johnny Spray."
Comics
- In the universe of Marvel Comics, Apocalypse is a supervillain, an enemy to the X-Men, and whenever he resurfaces he typically converts four mutants into his Horsemen, including Death, War, Famine, and Pestilence. The most notable of these was Warren Worthington III, the X-Man once known as Angel. After Worthington's wings were cut off in the Mutant Massacre, Apocalypse surgically grafted mechanical wings to his body and dyed his skin blue, transforming him into the horseman Death. Worthington soon threw off Apocalypse's influence and rejoined the X-Men as Archangel. He has since returned to the name Angel.
- The webcomic End Times by Bailey "Horse Cock" Piling and Philip "the Suck Master" Rigby portrays four young girls who died on the same day as becoming the four horsewomen. Each of the girls died in a way that pertains to the name she acquires; for instance, the girl who becomes Famine died of anorexia, and the girl who becomes Pestilence died of an exotic disease.
Games
- The computer game Nethack features Famine, Pestilence and Death as the final enemies of the player character. Owing to the violence committed en route to the end game, the player himself has become War.
- The computer game HeXen II features one of the four horsemen at the end of each of the four continents through which the player travels.
- The videogame Xenosaga Episode 2: Jenseits von Gut und Bose has references in which a few of the main characters are the embodiment of the horsemen.
- In the RPG game titled Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne, the main character must fight the four horsemen of the Apocalypse to get candelabras and get through to Third Kalpa.
- There is also a video game named The Four Horseman of The Apocalypse, which stars Bruce Willis and is available on the Playstation
- In the Playstation 2 version of Spy Hunter, the plot centers around Nostra Corporation's "Four Horsemen" which are four missles that, if launched, will bring the world back to the stone age.
Miscellaneous
- The "Four Horsemen of Notre Dame" were the legendary backfield of Notre Dame's 1924 football team, namely quarterback Harry Stuhldreher, fullback Elmer Layden and halfbacks Jim Crowley and Don Miller. They were so dubbed by sports writer Grantland Rice in his account of the Notre Dame-Army game October 18, 1924, at the Polo Grounds in New York City: "Outlined against a blue-gray October sky, the Four Horsemen rode again. In dramatic lore, they are known as famine, pestilence, destruction and death. These are only aliases. Their real names are Stuhldreher, Miller, Crowley and Layden."
- Students at the Georgia Institute of Technology often refer to the "Four Horsemen" as four calculus instructors who have achieved a level of infamy in distributing abnormally low, often failing, grades to their students. The "Four Horsemen" have become somewhat of an elite order whose members are inducted involuntarily by student consensus and retain the dubious distinction as long as they continue to teach calculus.
- During the 2004 U.S. presidential election, the Bush/Cheney campaign argued that American leadership should not "change horses in midstream." Opponents played upon the idiom by referring to the four horsemen ("don't change horsemen in the middle of an Apocalypse").
- The Four Horsemen were a professional wrestling stable from National Wrestling Alliance and World Championship Wrestling, featuring varying wrestlers including Ric Flair and Arn Anderson.
- The British computer magazine Amiga Power featured "The Four Cyclists of the Apocalypse" in their later issues. The Cyclists mainly appeared advertising Amiga Power subscriptions and small ads.
