When reading the Book of Revelation, a question occurred to me (I mean, besides: “What was John smoking and where can I get some?”): Where the hell is Pestilence? According to popular opinion and Terry Pratchett, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are Death, Famine, War and Pestilence. Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but my King James Bible seems to think that the Four Horsemen are, in that order, Conquest, War, Famine and Death. (Rev 6, 1-8).
So here’s my question: When and why did Pestilence take Conquest’s place?
Probably when someone realized that ‘Conquest’ is just a facet of ‘War’.
I’ll bet the change happened around the 14[sup]th[/sup] century, when one third of the population of Europe died from the black plague. Pestilence is disease.
Not that this helps much, but I believe the idea is that the fourth horseman is Pestilence, due to the “pale horse” thing. It is sometimes given as “pale green horse” or “pale sickly horse”, presumably due to translation issues from the Greek (or whatever language the original was in).
OTOH, this is the only one that is actually named (as “Death”), so this seems a bit iffy to me.
I think the relavent passage is Revelation 6:7:
It looks like war, famine and pestilence were always Death’s henchmen, though why the “wild beasts of the earth” are left out of the four horseman imagery is unknown, other than the image of wild beasts riding horses might be too hard to believe (!).
Actually, I think you need to quote the whole passage to get the full effect and question:
The horsemen other than Death are not named, but you do have their methods in that passage. Famine and War are very clearly defined as such even if they are not named. That first horseman however does not say that he is actually conquoring but rather that he “he rode out as a conqueror bent on conquest”.
The bow is an image that’s been associated with disease at least as far back Homer (and I’m sure someone is going to pop in with an earlier reference) and the other two unnamed horsemen have much more clearly defined roles. It seems a reasonable jump to mark him as Plague.
Oddly enough, I can see the rider on the black horse representing “avarice” or “Enron” as easily as it could represent “famine”. The means of the common men (wheat and barley as wages) suffer but the means of the wealthy (oil and wine) do not.
By the way, the book is Revelations, not Revelation.
[sub]heh heh heh… I get such a kick out of saying that[/sub]
Am I being whooshed, or is Bryan Ekers just being contrary? The book in question is properly called the Revelation of John.
Did you know the word “gullible” doesn’t appear in the Bible?
Quick question - Could someone describe why a Bow would be a image of disease?
It strikes down from a distance.
Just a nit pick but in the Terry Pratchet book Good Omens the 4th rider is now Pollution not Pestilence 
I always thought pestilence meant hordes of rats and locusts and other vermin.
The Greek god Apollo was the god of both healing and disease; the arrows he shot from his bow infected the victim with plague.
pestilence
\Pes"ti*lence, n. [F. pestilence, L. pestilentia. See Pestilent.] 1. Specifically, the disease known as the plague; hence, any contagious or infectious epidemic disease that is virulent and devastating.
The pestilence That walketh in darkness. --Ps. xci. 6.
- Fig.: That which is pestilent, noxious, or pernicious to the moral character of great numbers.
I’ll pour this pestilence into his ear. --Shak.
Pestilence weed (Bot.), the butterbur coltsfoot (Petasites vulgaris), so called because formerly considered a remedy for the plague. --Dr. Prior.
Source: Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, © 1996, 1998 MICRA, Inc.
Actually it’s called "The revelation of Jesus Christ ". John is the guy is was revealed to.
Actually, my KJV labels it “The Revelation To John” - 1:1 starts with “The revelation of Jesus Christ…”