Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

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Image:Duerer-apocalypse.png The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are mentioned in the Bible in chapter six of the Book of Revelation, which predicts that they will ride during the Apocalypse. The four horsemen are traditionally named War, Famine, Pestilence, and Death. However, this is slightly at odds with the conventional interpretation of the Bible, which actually only names one: Death.

Consequently, it is not possible to definitively state the intended interpretation of the horsemen; in fact, interpretations frequently reflect contemporary values and issues.

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Horses and their riders

In summary, the horses and their riders as described in the Bible are as follows:

Horse Horse Represents Rider Power Rider Represents
White False innocence/peace Carries bow; wears crown Conquers Antichrist, The False Christ, False Religion, Pestilence
Red Blood spilt on the battlefield Carries sword Brings war War, Destruction
Black Black, barren fields Carries scales Scarcity of food Famine, Unfair Trade
Pale Paleness of skin in death, decay 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.

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.

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Original text

From the King James Version of the Bible, Revelation chapter 6, verses 1 to 8 (emphasis added):

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. And when he had opened the second seal, I heard the second beast say, Come and see.
  4. 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.
  5. 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.
  6. 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.
  7. And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth beast say, Come and see.
  8. 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.
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Interpretations

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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.

Liberal 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.

Also, pestilence may be said to "conquer" the body, particularly viral disease.

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Red Horse

The rider of the second horse is generally held to represent War. The red color of his horse represents blood spilt on the battlefield. He carries a sword, which represents battle and fighting.

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Black Horse

The third horseman, riding the black horse, is popularly called 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, 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.

The "a measure of wheat for a penny" from the King James Version might not sound like a famine to modern ears, but in the NIV we read "a quart of wheat for a day's wages", which is a little clearer.

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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.

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Alternative interpretations

An alternate interpretation, likely based on differing translations, holds the first Horseman to represent War 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.

Some Christian scholars do not 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 conquering 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 conqueror. 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.

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Zechariah's Horses

Four sets of horses were also mentioned in The Book of Zechariah. The coincidence of the location of the passage, Chapter 6 verses 1-8, is notable to some commentators. (The original writers, of course, did not use the chapter and verse designations of modern Bibles.) The text is as follows, drawn from the King James Version.

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Text

  1. And I turned, and lifted up mine eyes, and looked, and behold, there came four chariots from between two mountains; and the mountains were mountains of brass.
  2. In the first chariot were red horses; and in the second chariot black horses;
  3. And in the third chariot white horses; and in the fourth chariot grisled and bay horses.
  4. Then I answered and said unto the angel that talked with me, What are these, my lord?
  5. And the angel answered and said unto me, These are the four spirits of the heavens, which go forth from standing before the Lord of all the earth.
  6. The black horses which are therein go forth into the north country; and the white go forth after them; and the grisled go forth toward the south country.
  7. And the bay went forth, and sought to go that they might walk to and fro through the earth: and he said, Get you hence, walk to and fro through the earth. So they walked to and fro through the earth.
  8. Then cried he upon me, and spake unto me, saying, Behold, these that go toward the north country have quieted my spirit in the north country.
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Links to the Four Horsemen

Zechariah is quoted in the Book of Revelation more than any other book in the Old Testament. The first nine chapters are considered apocalyptic (although the book itself is not) like the Book of Revelation. It is also quoted frequently by many other New Testament authors. These verses must be used to determine whether or not the white rider is the Antichrist. In Zechariah all of the horses are spirits of the heavens, meaning that the white horses cannot be set against God.

In the King James version, all of the horses are possibly the same color. The fourth set, grisled and bay, are the ones seeing debate. Other translations use the word dapple (or bay) to describe their color. The word grisled is not in the dictionary, however the closest word to it is grizzled, defined by the Cambridge Dictionary as having hair that is grey or becoming grey, Closer to the "pale" mentioned in Revelation 6:8.

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Cultural references to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

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Literature

  • The Spanish author Vicente Blasco Ibáñez wrote a bestselling novel in 1916 called The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. 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 But Secretly No Alcohol Lager, and Really Cool People).
  • 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. They are opposed by the protagonmist Par.
  • 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 fourth 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. This novel later inspired the Showtime series Dead Like Me.
  • Mystery author James Patterson, referenced the Four Horsemen in the book "Pop Goes The Weasel". The main antagonist plays a game called "The Four Horsemen" as Death where he murders random people depending on a roll of the die. The other players are known as War (the red horseman), Famine (the black horseman), and lastly Conqueror a.k.a Pestilence (white horseman). Conqueror comments that the protagonist, Alex Cross, is also in the game. In legend it also hints at a fifth horseman which is played by Alex.
  • *In Toni Morrison's 1987 novel, Beloved, "the four horsemen came--schoolteacher, one nephew, one slave catcher and a sheriff" to recapture Sethe and her children, perhaps signifying the Death, War, Famine, and Pestilence, in that order. She promptly commits infanticide and slaughters her second-youngest: a girl and the title character.
  • In the Prophesies of Nostradamus the usage of the quatrain form of writing could represent each of the four horsemen per each individual quatrain. One example given is as follows:
  1. Five and forty degrees, the sky shall burn: White horse: Antichrist, The False Christ, False Religion
  2. To great ‘New City’ shall the fire draw nigh: Red Horse: War, Destruction
  3. With vehemence the flames shall spread and churn: Black Horse: Famine, Unfair Trade
  4. When with the Normans they conclusions try: Pale Horse: Death
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Films and television

  • On The West Wing the President played by Martin Sheen is trying to remember a quote from the book of Revelation, when Lord John Marbury played by Roger Rees speaks it: "and I looked and I beheld a pale horse, and the name that sat upon him was Death, and Hell followed."
  • An episode of the second season of Charmed, "Apocalypse Not", dealt with the Four Horsemen, who affected the image of corporate CEOs with business suits with colored ties, overseeing a vast global operation to bring about the end of the world from an office headquarters. The Horsemen depicted differ from the traditional lineup in that Pestilence is replaced with Strife.
  • In Highlander: The Series, the Four Horsemen were four Immortals who 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".
  • The sitcom The Young Ones features an episode "Interesting" in which the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse discard a large ham sandwich from up high, which half-demolishes the student house and is eventually used as a couch.
  • In the fifth season of Scrubs, episode 508 "My Big Bird", Dr. Cox refers to Turk, Carla, J.D. and Elliot as "The Four Horsewomen of the Apocalypse".
  • In the Simpsons episode "Bart Gets an Elephant" (Season 5, Episode 98), Ned Flanders is awakened in the wee hours of the morning by an elephant stampeding down the street. He sees the animal from his bedroom window and wails, "It's the four elephants of the apocalypse!" His wife reminds him, "That's four horseman, dear." Ned shrugs and says, "Well, gettin' closer!"
  • In the end of the episode "Simpsons Bible Stories" (Season 10, Episode 18) from the Simpsons the world comes to an end. Four skeletal horseman can be seen riding on a cloud.
  • In one segment of the animated film anthology The Animatrix, a robotic horse of a pale color is shown riding across the field before a decisive battle, foretelling that many humans are about to perish.
  • A TV pilot was made called "Waiting Four Horsemen" which was screened at Channel 102, which was a sitcom where the four horsemen shared an apartment and were waiting for God to give them the green light to start the Apocalypse.
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Music

  • Metallica's 1983 album Kill 'Em All features a song called "The Four Horsemen". The horsemen referenced in the lyrics are Time, Famine, Pestilence, and Death.
  • Outkast references the horsemen on "Da Art Of Storytellin', Part 2" from their 1998 album Aquemini.
  • The Dead Milkmen, a punk rock band from Philadelphia, whose symbol was a guilty looking bovine, named their greatest hits collection [[Death Rides a Pale Cow.
  • The Halo video game soundtrack features a track entitled "On a Pale Horse."
"The Four Horsemen have started their ride / Can you see them in the sky / Glaring down at the ground / Smile on their face / As they commence / The end of the human race"
  • In the song "Mr. Crowley", on Ozzy Osbourne's 1980 album, Blizzard Of Ozz, Ozzy sings "Mr. Crowley, won't you ride my white horse?". This is thought by some to be a reference to the white horse. This is a subtle way of the prince of darkness to affirm his title as the "Anti-Christ".
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Comics

  • In the Marvel Comics universe, the mutant supervillain Apocalypse is an enemy to the X-Men, and whenever he resurfaces he typically converts four mutants into his Four Horsemen, including Death, War, Famine, and Pestilence. The most notable of these was Warren Worthington III, the X-Man once known as Angel, who became the horseman Death until he threw off Apocalypse's influence and rejoined the X-Men as Archangel, although he is sometimes still called Angel. Several other X-Men have also been drafted as Horsemen (willingly or otherwise), including Wolverine, Sunfire and Gambit.
  • 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.
  • The Dark Judges, enemies of Judge Dredd, seek to impose their rule on Earth from their Dark Dimension where they have "judged all life, and found it wanting" and killed everything. Judge Death, Judge Fire, Judge Fear and Judge Mortis are obviously inspired by the Four Horsemen, though they do not ride horses or follow the colour scheme or organization chart exactly: they dress as judges of Dredd's time, suggesting their clothing and accessories change with the times, or more likely, their victims' perception.
  • In the first series of Billy: Demon Slayer, the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse assist the Devil in his plans to evade Heaven but acquiring passes through the Pearly Gates. Pestilence is said to be on holidays with Pollution filling in active duties.
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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. They are fought in the order of Famine, Death, Pestilence (who rides a large warthog) and War.
  • In the RPG game Shin Megami Tensei: Lucifer's Call, the main character must fight the four horsemen of the Apocalypse to get candelabrums and get through to Third Kalpa. He can later fuse demons together to create the horsemen and make them fight by his side.
  • In the role-playing game Rifts, the Four Horsemen are powerful Demons who, when brought to a world, immediately seek each other out, where they will merge and form a monster who will bring about the end of that world. They appeared in Africa, where heroes had been summoned from all over the world to battle them.
  • In the PlayStation 2 version of Spy Hunter, the plot centers around the Nostra Corporation's "Four Horsemen" which are four missiles that, if launched, will bring the world back to the stone age.
  • A canceled video game was entitled Four Horseman of the Apocalypse, and featured a story revolving around an angel protecting people from the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse.
  • If the player fails to build a working Heaven and Hell in the computer game Afterlife, both realms receive a visit from "The Four Surfers of the Apocalypso," who surf over everything to destroy the afterlife.
  • In the PlayStation game Apocalypse (1998), Trey Kincaide (portrayed by Bruce Willis) must save the world from the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, who were unleashed on the world by a dark shadowy figure known as The Reverend.
  • In the video game Quake 4, the four EMP weapons sent to destroy the Strogg Nexus are codenamed War, Famine, Pestilence and Death.
  • In the PlayStation role-playing game Final Fantasy VII, one of the attacks used by the final form of Sephiroth is named Pale Horse; he was to be the harbinger of Death via his summoning of Meteor and attempted absorption of the planet's life force.
  • Part 1 of the last level of Halo, The MAW, is entitled "…And the Horse You Rode In On." This is a double-layered reference. It nods first to the swath of destruction Master Chief has carved through the Covenant and Flood all the way to the end of the game, having figuratively "become death" to them. It's also a "sanitized" allusion to a well-known saying—an indulgently mean-spirited retort to the now-doomed enemies that have been opposing Chief, a stab specifically at the Monitor's assumption of superiority, and a victorious barb playing off the defiant (and flagrantly pyrotechnic) manner in which Master Chief finally triumphs. That idiom in its entirety, of course, is "Fuck you and the horse you rode in on."
  • In the PlayStation 2 game Champions: Return to Arms, the Four Horsemen Of Death, Famine, Pestilence, and War appear in a level called "Blood Bath" after the player finishes the plane of war.
  • In the game Final Fight: Streetwise, once the player has uncovered the plot behind the drug that's running rampant throughout Metro City known as Glow, he comes across the brother of the now-deceased boss of the old Mad Gear Gang, Belger. Belger's brother, who goes by the name Father Bella, is a priest that feels that he must purge the world of sin and chaos through his own sick and twisted means. He takes some of the people that live in Metro City that Kyle Travers (Cody Travers's brother and main character of the game) comes across in his search for his brother Cody. The final bosses run like a gauntlet almost with the first boss being War (Weasel that runs the Blue Baller gang), the second being Famine (Vito's assassin and eventual killer Blades), the third being Pestilence (this one is it's own entity taken orders from the doctor that helped to create it and the other Four Horsemen), and the final boss being Death (Cody Travers).
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Miscellaneous

  • 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").
  • NBA star Lebron James' group of close friends is referred to as the Four Horsemen
  • Three of the Rahkshi in LEGO's Bionicle saga have powers that can be interpreted as Pestilence, War and Famine (Lerahk having poison, Kuhrahk having Anger, and Vohrahk having Hunger).
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See also

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External links

fr:Les Quatre Cavaliers de l'Apocalypse (Bible) he:ארבעת פרשי האפוקליפסה nl:De vier ruiters van de Apocalyps pl:Czterej Jeźdźcy Apokalipsy fi:Apokalyptiset ratsastajat

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