New Testament

2022-05-12

The 7 Kings of Revelation 17 — part 2

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Neil Godfrey

The question to which Roman emperors the κεφαλαι ἑπτά [=seven heads] are to be referred has been and continues to be the subject of extraordinary controversy among scholars. This is not least due to the fact that the apocalypticist does not give his readers any real clue regarding the historical attribution of the [emperors] in the enigma Rev 17:10, unlike, for example, the author of 4Esr 11f and the author of Sib V 12-51. (Witulski, 326)

“Does not give the readers any real clue”? Let’s read the [not real] clues:

17: 9 “This calls for a mind with wisdom. The seven heads are seven hills on which the woman sits. 10 They are also seven kings. Five have fallen, one is, the other has not yet come; but when he does come, he must remain for only a little while. 11 The beast who once was, and now is not, is an eighth king. He belongs to the seven and is going to his destruction.

We saw in the previous post that “seven kings” means “seven emperors”. Five “are fallen”. The verb επεσαν (a form of πίπτειν) suggests a violent death. W. cites Lohmeyer,

. . . und επεσαν als „sie starben“ zu fassen, ist sprachlich und sachlich unmöglich. = and to take επεσαν as “they died” is linguistically and factually impossible. (Lohmeyer, 141)

and Aune,

10a οί πέντε έπεσαν, ό εις έστιν, ό άλλος ούπω ήλθεν, “of whom five have fallen, one is living, the other has not yet come.” έπεσαν, “have fallen” (from πίπτειν, “to fall”), does not simply mean “died” but carries the connotation of being overthrown or being killed violently (Lohmeyer, 143; Strobel, ATTS 10 [1963-64] 439). “To fall” is commonly used in the euphemistic metaphorical sense of a person’s violent death, usually in war, in both Israelite-Jewish and Greek literature (Exod 32:28; 1 Sam4:10; 2 Sam 1:19,25,27; 3:38; 21:22; Job 14:10 [LXX only]; 1 Chr 5:10; 20:8; 1 Macc 3:24; 4:15, 34; 2 Macc 12:34; Jdt 7:11; Gk. 1 Enoch 14:6; 1 Cor 10:18; Barn. 12:5; Iliad 8.67, 10.200; 11.157, 500; Xenophon Cyr. 1.4.24; Herodotus 9.67; see Louw-Nida, § 23.105) . . . .

Many of the Roman emperors died violent deaths: Julius Caesar was assassinated by being stabbed twenty-three times (Plutarch Caesar 66.4-14; Suetonius Julius 82; Dio Cassius 44.19.1-5); Caligula was stabbed repeatedly with swords (Suetonius Caligula 58; Tacitus Annals 11.29; Jos. Ant. 19.104—113; Dio Cassius 59.29.4-7; Seneca Dial. 2.18.3; 4.7); Claudius was poisoned (Suetonius Claudius 44-45; Tacitus Annals 12.66-67; 14.63; Pliny Hist. nat. 2.92; 11.189; 22.92); Nero committed suicide (Suetonius Nero 49; Jos. J. W. 4.493); Galba was stabbed to death by many using swords, decapitated, and his corpse mutilated (Tacitus Hist. 1.41.2; Plutarch Galba 27); Otho committed suicide with a dagger (Plutarch Otho 17; Suetonius Otho 11); Vitellius was beaten to death (Suetonius Vit. 17-18; Tacitus Hist. 3.84-85; Jos. J.W. 4.645; Cassius Dio 64.20.1-21.2); and Domitian was assassinated with a dagger (Suetonius Dom 18). (Aune, 949 – my bolded highlighting in all quotations)

W. adds Strobel as another witness:

1. Caligula (-41 AD). Assassinated.

2. Claudius (-54 AD). Poisoned.

3. Nero (-68 AD). Suicide.

4. Vespasian (-79 AD). Died of a fever [Suetonius Vesp. 24.8]. Later, the rumour spread of his poisoning by Titus [Dio Cassius lxvi, 17. . . ].

5 Titus (-81 AD). Died of a fever [Suetonius, Tit. 10]. The suddenness of his death also gave rise to the rumour that he had been violently assassinated [10 Allegedly at the instigation of his brother Domitian. On the matter cf. Paulys R .E . VI, Sp. 2722.].

(Strobel, 439)

So that makes ten, not five, having “fallen”.

But return to where I left off in the last post. We were about to compare Revelation with other apocalyptic literature of the time: 4 Ezra and the Sibylline Oracle V.

The point W. makes is that both of those texts offer the reader numerous clues on how to interpret the metaphorical imagery.

In contrast, the 4Esr 11f surviving eagle vision and its interpretation, for example, offers numerous clues to the identification of the Roman emperors meant in each case. However, for all the literary-critical and redactional-historical problems that this text may raise, it is undisputed among scholars that the second wing, which reigns longer than any of the others, is Augustus, and the three heads are the Flavian emperors Vespasian, Titus and Domitian. This makes it possible to relate a large part of the other wings listed in the vision to Roman emperors or rebellious princes and troop leaders. This unanimity among exegetes, as can be seen in the interpretation of the eagle vision 4Esr 11f is lacking in view of the interpretation of Apk 17:10f, precisely because in these verses the apocalypticist offers no clear indications of the historical classification of the seven or eight βασιλείς.

(Witulski, 327)

The same assessment is made in relation to the Sibylline Oracle V,

Even within the discussion of the individual Roman emperors from Julius Caesar to Hadrian’s adopted sons in Sib V 12-51, there are sufficiently clear references in each case to allow readers to clearly identify the individual emperors.

Compare 4 Ezra 11. Although the identifications of many of the details are open to dispute, there is enough description provided for readers to have little doubt about the identity of Augustus being the second ruler after Julius Caesar (the second wing who reigned for a very long time) and again, enough details are offered to enable readers to identify Vespasian and his two sons, Titus and Domitian (three heads, after the death of the first, one of the remaining two “devoured” the other — as Domitian was rumoured to have killed Titus),

11:1 On the second night I had a dream, and, behold, there came up from the sea an eagle, which had twelve feathered wings, and three heads.
11:2 And I saw, and, behold, she spread her wings over all the earth . . .

1:12 And I looked, and, behold, on the right side there arose one feather, and reigned over all the earth;
11:13 And so it was, that when it reigned, the end of it came, and the place thereof appeared no more: so the next wing following stood up, and reigned, and had a long reign . . . [Augustus ruled longer than any other emperor]

11:29 And when they were planning, behold, there awakened one of the heads that were at rest, namely, the one that was in the middle; for that was greater than the other two heads.
11:30 And I saw how it allied the two heads with itself . . . .

11:32 Moreover this middle head gained control of the whole earth [Vespasian], and with much oppression dominated its inhabitants; and it had greater power over the world than all the wings that had gone before.
11:33 And after this I looked, and behold, the middle head suddenly disappeared and was no more, just as the wings had done.
11:34 But there remained the two heads, which also ruled over the earth and its inhabitants.
11:35 And I looked, and behold, the head upon the right side devoured the one that was upon the left side. [Domitian thought to have assassinated Titus]

Similarly with the Sibylline Oracle V, 10-50:

. . . after the man of the race and blood of Assaracus, who came from Troy, and broke through the raging fire, and after many kings and warlike men, and after the babes whom the wolf took for her nurslings, shall come a king first of all, the first letter of whose name shall sum twice ten [twice ten = K, Caesar]; he shall prevail greatly in war : and for his first sign he shall have the number ten [ten = I, i.e. I/Julius];

so that after him shall rule one who has the first letter as his initial [first letter =A, i.e. Augustus]; before whom Thrace shall cower [battle at Philippi, 42 B.C.] and Sicily [defeat of Pompey’s son who had controlled Sicily with his fleet], then Memphis, Memphis brought low by the fault of her leaders, and of a woman undaunted [i.e. Cleopatra], who fell on the wave (by the spear ?). He shall give laws to the peoples and bring all into subjection, and after a long time shall hand on his kingship to one who shall have the number three hundred for his first letter [300 = T, Tiberius], and a name well known from a river [= Tiber River], whose sway shall reach to the Persians and Babylon : and he shall smite the Medes with the spear.

Then shall rule one whose name-letter is the number three [3 = G, Gaius] ; then one whose initial is twenty [20 = K, i.e. Claudius]: he shall reach the furthest ebb of Ocean’s tide [i.e. Britain], swiftly travelling with his Ausonian company. Then one with the letter fifty shall be king [50 = N, i.e. Nero], a fell dragon breathing out grievous war [i.e. war against the Jews from 66 CE], who shall lift his hand against his own people to slay them, and shall spread confusion, playing the athlete, charioteer, assassin, a man of many ill-deeds [Nero participated in chariot races, assassinated his mother and others]; he shall cut through the mountain between two seas and stain it with blood [isthmus canal of Corinth, 6000 Jewish slaves sent to work on it]; yet he shall vanish to destruction (?) ; then he shall return, making himself equal to God : but God shall reveal his nothingness.

Three kings after him shall perish at each other’s hand [civil war and successive emperors Galba, Otho, Vitellius]; then shall come a great destroyer of the godly, whom the number seventy plainly shows [70 = O, Vespasian, in Greek, Ούεσπασιανός]. His son, revealed by the number three hundred [300 = T, Titus], shall take away his power [Rumour was that Titus poisoned his father]. After him shall rule a devouring tyrant, marked by the letter four [4 = D, Domitian], and then a venerable man, by number fifty [50 = N, the aged Nerva who reduced harsh penalties on Jews] :

but after him one to whom falls the initial sign three hundred, a Celt, ranging the mountains [300 = T, Trajan, from Spain, conquered mountainous Armenia], but hastening to the clash of conflict he shall not escape an unseemly doom, but shall fall ; the dust of a strange land shall cover him in death, a land named from the Nemean flower. Following him a silver-haired king shall reign : his name is that of a sea [Hadrian, cf Adriatic Sea]; he shall be a man of excellence and all discernment. . . . [written before the Bar Kochba war at a time when it was hoped he would restore the temple?]

Contrast the seven kings in Revelation 17. Readers are left guessing without sufficient clues to identify any of them with certainty. Here is Strobel’s summary of the problem (translated from the German):

If we begin the ‘five’ with Augustus and ignore the interregnum emperors, the ‘one’ is Vespasian (69-79) and the ‘other’, who may only remain for a ‘short time’, is Titus (79-81). If we count from Caesar onwards, Nero would be the ‘one’, currently reigning emperor (54-68) and Vespasian the ‘other’, who nevertheless held the throne for 11 years. If we include the interregnum emperors (beginning with Augustus), a writing under Galba in particular suggests itself as the ‘One’ who is. He still ruled from Jun 68 to January 69 and also found some recognition in the Orient. . . . In addition, one also remembers those early church testimonies which claim to know of a death of the apocalypticist under Nero or of a death of the Zebedaid John in the years before the destruction of Jerusalem. Insofar as the undoubtedly important old Christian tradition of a writing under Domitian is considered relevant, one considers the processing of a source originating from the time of Vespasian . . . (433f)

A remarkable solution, despite its idiosyncrasy, is offered by E. B. Allo among the modern interpreters. Beginning the count with Nero without sufficient reasons and including at least two of the three intermediate emperors, he succeeds in proving Domitian to be the ‘one’. . . . (436)

But why not begin the count with Tiberius? The rationale for this starting point is that it marks the crucifixion of Jesus and hence the “real” turning point of history:

His imagined point in world history is neither the beginnings of the Principate nor the rebirth of Rome in the golden, Augustan age, of which Virgil, for example, sings. Rather, it is unquestionably identical with the term of the cross and the exaltation of Christ as ‘Lord of lords’ under Tiberius. In other words: for the apocalypticist, the cross and the exaltation signify the telos of the old aeon in an eminently historical sense . . . . (437)

But no, there is even a reason to exclude Tiberius and begin with Gaius Caligula:

. . . the Roman emperors after Tiberius are typical representatives of the final anti-Christian phase of world history. Tiberius, whose reign began long before the appearance of Christ (= 14 A.D.), was naturally not included in the series of ‘anti-Christian’ emperors who had risen since the Messiah. The exclusively post-teleological aspect necessarily led to the restriction to those emperors who came to power only after Christ. They were introduced by Caligula. . . . since the apocalypticist undoubtedly had in mind only the Roman emperors of the post-Messianic period. (440)

No doubt there are other starting points, omissions and inclusions, that can only add to the confusion or at least to the uncertainty of any proposal that attempts to align the heads with a sequence of historical emperors.

So why is the author of Revelation so opaque? So indecipherable in relation to the history of the Roman emperors?

Continuing…..

Aune, David E. Revelation 17-22. Word Biblical Commentary, Volume 52C. Nashville: Thomas Nelson Inc, 1998.

Bate, Herbert N., trans. The Sibylline Oracles, Books III-V. Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1918. http://archive.org/details/sibyllineoracles00bateiala.

Lohmeyer, E. Die Offenbarung des Johannes. Tübingen, J.C.B. Mohr (P. Siebeck), 1926. http://archive.org/details/dieoffenbarungde0000unse_n5x5.

Strobel, A. “Abfassung Und Geschichts Theologie Der Apokalypse Nach Kap. XVII. 9–12.” New Testament Studies 10, no. 4 (July 1964): 433–45. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0028688500001880.

Witulski, Thomas. Die Johannesoffenbarung Und Kaiser Hadrian: Studien Zur Datierung Der Neutestamentlichen Apokalypse. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2007.

2022-05-10

The 7 Kings of Revelation 17 — part 1

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Neil Godfrey

Thomas Witulski steers the reader from Rev 13 back to the letters to the seven churches to demonstrate what was facing the various churches at the time of Hadrian. But since the question of how W. interprets the seven heads, five fallen, one is, etc. has arisen, I have chosen to skip ahead to W’s analysis of chapter 17. But I’ll cover it in a series of small posts, one bite/byte at a time. That gives me the opportunity to consult the various citations and any additional material of relevance as I go.

Revelation 17:1 One of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and said to me, “Come, I will show you the punishment of the great prostitute, who sits by many waters. 2 With her the kings of the earth committed adultery, and the inhabitants of the earth were intoxicated with the wine of her adulteries.” 3 Then the angel carried me away in the Spirit into a wilderness. There I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast that was covered with blasphemous names and had seven heads and ten horns. . . . .

9 This calls for a mind with wisdom. The seven heads are seven hills on which the woman sits. 10 They are also seven kings. Five have fallen, one is, the other has not yet come; but when he does come, he must remain for only a little while. 11 The beast who once was, and now is not, is an eighth king. He belongs to the seven and is going to his destruction.

In Revelation 17 we read of “the great whore”, interpreted in verse 18 as the city of Rome, sitting upon a scarlet-coloured beast, full of names of blasphemy, and having seven heads and ten horns.

. . . and I saw a woman sitting upon a scarlet-colored beast, full of names of blasphemy, and having seven heads and ten horns

The seven heads of that beast are interpreted as the legendary seven hills of Rome:

17:9 And here is the mind which hath wisdom: The seven heads are seven mountains on which the woman sitteth.

But there is a double meaning because the next verse points to seven kings:

17:10 And there are seven kings

Kings are not necessarily emperors but the word here for kings, βασιλείς, was used for emperors by the time of Hadrian:

The term βασιλείς, usually translated “kings,” and the most elevated tide of Hellenistic monarchs, can equally well be translated “emperors.” However, βασιλεύς is not widely used as a Greek translation of the Latin term imperator, “emperor,” until the second century A.D. — (Aune, 946 — quoted in part by W., 323).

In the above quotation, Aune is referencing Greek Terms for Roman Institutions: A Lexicon and Analysis by Mason. Here is the more complete account by Mason:

By the second century A.D., αύτοκράτωρ as a general word for “emperor” came under challenge, especially in literary works, from βασιλεύς. Although Dio, for example, always used αύηοκράτωρ and never βασιλεύς, in other writers both terms are used indiscriminately, as in a phrase in Philostratus (VS 1.24 fin.), Άδριανός αντοκράτωρ . . . enιτηδειότατος των βασιλέων. Both words are found in such authors as Appian, Aristides, Dio Chrysostom, Galen, Herodian and Lucian. . . . .

βασιλεύς is applied to the emperor in verse as early as the time of Augustus, in a poem of Antipater of Thessaly (AP 10.25). But in prose, βασιλεύς is not employed before the second century. . . .

But derivatives of βασιλεύς are in use by the time of Plutarch, βασιλεύω occurs in the case of Vespasian ([Plu.] Amatorius 25.771), βασιλικός is used for the gardens of Lucullus (Plu. Lucull. 39.518). Josephus twice employs βασιλειάω to describe would-be emperors (BJ 1.5, 4.546), and speaks of the βασιλεία of Vespasian (BJ 5.409).

βασιλεύς and related words begin to occur in inscriptions, though not yet in formal titulature, about the time of Hadrian. Notable examples are a dedication to Σαβεινα βασίλισσα from Megara (IC 7.73), a decree of the Panhellenes dated to 131-138 A.D. which reads (line 9): [ὑπ]ό re βασιλέων αίιτοκρατόρων and a dedication naming Hadrian δεσπότης βασιλεύς Επιφανέστατος νεός ‘Ασκληπιός (IGRom. 4.341). (Mason, 119f)

Most easy to follow, however, is Roloff’s comment:

Two quite different interpretations are given for the seven heads of the beast (v.9b-ll). The first equates the heads with seven mountains and thus refers to Rome, the capital city situated on the famous seven hills. The sitting of the harlot on the hills is a striking image for the fact that the city of Rome is the centre and power centre of the empire. The second interpretation equates the heads with “kings”. This can only mean Emperors, for in the East of the Empire “king” was the common name for the emperor (cf. 1 Pet 2:13-17; 1 Tim 2:2). – (Roloff, translation from pp. 169f)

The author of Revelation in this chapter places the time of his writing during the reign of the sixth emperor.

And there are seven kings: five are fallen, and one is, and the other has not yet come; and when he cometh, he must continue a short space.

“he is the eighth and is one of the seven and is headed for destruction.” . . . . There is widespread agreement that this king does indeed represent Nero and reflects the Nero redivivus legend . . . . The symbolic significance of the number eight is relevant since the beast is called the “eighth.” In early Judaism and early Christianity, eight has eschatological significance since it represents the eighth day of the new creation after the seven days of the old creation have concluded (2Enoch 33:1-2; Bam. 15:9), and Sunday in early Christian tradition is occasionally called the eighth day (Barn. 15:9; Justin Dial. 24.1; 41.4; 138.1; see Bauckham, “Nero,” 396-97). . . . — Aune, p. 950

The final beast to arise, the one to be destroyed in the final cosmic battle, is the eighth — which, curiously, is said to have once before ruled in the past.

And the beast that was, and is not, even he is the eighth, yet is one of the seven and goeth into perdition.

We met this eighth beast, the one to arise in the end time, in chapter 13. We have seen the reasons for believing that the author intended readers to interpret that beast, Hadrian, as the restored Nero from the past. There, however, the author spoke of that beast in the present tense while in chapter 17 he is said to yet come.

The apocalyptic visionary is caught in a bind. While in chapter 13 he spoke of the end-time beast as present and known to his readers, in chapter 17 he strives to claim he belongs to the prophetic future. We will return to this back-dating in a later post.

W. observes another comparison between the two descriptions of 13 and 17. In both chapters, the visionary begins by presenting a figure representing the Roman empire as a whole (13: the seven-headed beast arises from the sea; 17: a woman riding the seven-headed beast thus signifying their unity as the one empire) but in each case narrows the focus so that we come to read of an individual emperor.

What do we make of the ten horns?

Here the ten kings represent Roman client kings. Roman generals in the Greek east, particularly Pompey and Antony, developed an elaborate system of client kingship. Various kings and dynasts were sanctioned or elevated in order to serve as an inexpensive and effective means for controlling their regions, some of which were reorganized as provinces. – Aune, p. 951

The ten horns, following Dan. 7,24, are interpreted as ten kings (v. 12-14). These are not . . . Roman emperors, but vassal kings, or more precisely: political leaders and rulers who initially do not yet have kingship, but who receive it together with the beast, i.e. Nero redivivus, because they support him and place their power and influence at his disposal. We are dealing here with a variant of the idea of 16,14, according to which the beast wins the kings of the earth circle as comrades-in-arms for his goals through the demonic art of seduction. . . . Of course, the helpers of the beast will only have power “for an hour”, i.e. only for a very short time, because Jesus will defeat them. – Roloff, translation of p. 171

Some scholars have thought otherwise and interpreted the ten horns as ten Roman emperors. W. disputes this view. Though in Daniel 7 the number 10 may be applied to supreme kings, it is evident that the author of Revelation creatively modified the various sources that he drew upon. We cannot assume that the interpretation in Daniel 7 should apply to Revelation. The same principle applies to another possible apocalypse known to the author of Revelation, 4 Ezra 11. In 4Ezra the 12 wings are explicitly stated to be the 12 Roman emperors. In Revelation one reads that the seven heads are clearly seven emperors so we should not interpret the ten kings as ten Roman emperors.

We have begun here to compare Revelation with other apocalyptic writings of the time. I’ll go into details in the next post.

Aune, David E. Revelation 17-22. Word Biblical Commentary, Volume 52C. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1998.

Mason, Hugh J. Greek Terms for Roman Institutions: A Lexicon and Analysis. Toronto: Hakkert, 1974. https://archive.org/details/greektermsforrom0013maso

Roloff, Jürgen. Die Offenbarung des Johannes. Zürich : Theologischer Verlag, 1984. http://archive.org/details/dieoffenbarungde0000rolo.

Witulski, Thomas. Die Johannesoffenbarung Und Kaiser Hadrian: Studien Zur Datierung Der Neutestamentlichen Apokalypse. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2007.

2022-05-08

666 : Hadrian as Nero Redivivus

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Neil Godfrey

There was one little detail I forgot to add in my earlier post: Hadrian as Nero Redivivus. I set out the ways Hadrian emulated the popular Nero but a commenter has brought to my attention that I have not yet explained the 666 link between Hadrian and Nero that the author of Revelation called on readers to identify and reflect upon.

Here is wisdom. Let him who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man: His number is 666. — Revelation 13:18

Now everyone knows the name of “the man” Nero equals 666. Some manuscripts make his number equal 616. (See the linked article for details.)

But Revelation 13 speaks of a revival of the beast, a healed head-wound — a “second Nero” — if you will. Recall from our earlier post Corssen’s words:

So the apocalypticist says: the number of the name of the beast is the number of a human name. Does he mean to say: the name of the beast is the name of a human being, it is not an animal at all, but a human being, of whom I have so far only spoken allegorically as of an animal? That is the opinion of many commentators. But number and name are not necessarily identical, the same sum can consist of completely different summands and so the same number can give rise to different names.

When the apocalypticist says: “He who has understanding, calculate the number of the beast,” this is an impossible demand. For this calculation cannot be carried out without knowledge of the name. But in the demand lies the prerequisite that the animal as such has a name. If then the apocalypticist gives the number himself, which even the most intelligent could not have found in this way, it follows that the cleverness demanded does not consist in finding the tacitly presupposed name of the beast, but in deriving from its numerical value the name of a man of the same numerical value. In other words : the animal has a name x = 666, but 666 is equal to the name of a man, both names are, as it was called, ίςόψηφα [=isopsephy]. Thus the γάρ in άριθμός γάρ ανθρώπου ἐστίν [=it is the number of a man] comes to its meaning: one should calculate the number of the beast to find the equivalent name of the man.

(Noch einmal die Zahl des Tieres in der Apokalypse, p. 240, own translation and bolding. Cited by Witulski, p. 183)

With that in mind, notice that Hadrian’s name amounts to the same number as Nero’s:

The interpretation of the number 666 (Rev 13:18) on Hadrian was already considered by D. Voelter, [In his book published in 1885: Die Entstehung der Apokalypse] who adds the letters of the written Hebrew and on coins documented name Trajanus Hadrianus as 666: “Hadrian officially carries as emperor on coins and inscriptions the name Trajanus Hadrianus. If now these names are written in Hebrew and the individual letters are converted into the corresponding numerical value, then exactly the number 666 comes out:

Now another Hebrew name form for Trajan is

If one puts this name form together with the name אדרינום and sums up the numerical values 285 + 331, then one receives that other number 616 handed down by Irenaeus.

So that would explain the comment by Irenaeus that some manuscripts claimed the number 616 instead of 666.

Thus, both the Hebrew-spelled name of the reigning emperor Hadrian and the Hebrew-spelled name of the figure of Nero redivus, קסר נתרן, can be calculated from the number 666, consistent with the isopsephic approach evidently underlying Rev 13:18. Thus, the apocalypticist implicitly identifies the currently reigning princeps Hadrian in Rev 13:18 with the figure of Nero redivivus and can at the same time prove to his addressees that in the figure of this emperor the expected Nero redivivus has truly appeared. (Die Johannesoffenbarung, p. 52 – translated)

Witulski, Thomas. Die Johannesoffenbarung Und Kaiser Hadrian: Studien Zur Datierung Der Neutestamentlichen Apokalypse. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2007.

Revelation’s Second Beast, the False Prophet

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Neil Godfrey

Revelation 13:11 And I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth; and he had two horns like a lamb, and he spake as a dragon.

Thomas Witulski identifies this other beast that arises from the earth with the sophist Antonius Polemon. We introduced him in the post on emperor worship and Revelation. We know about him today from his own writings, from his ancient biographer Philostratus and from various inscriptions in Smyrna and Pergamon. Polemon was the descendant of the last king of Pontus, Polemon II. He trained as a sophist and rhetorician in Smyrna, became a diplomatic envoy on behalf of Smyrna in Rome, taught rhetoric himself and sometimes acted as a court orator. His school for rhetoric attracted some fame for his city and youth from Asia, Europe and the islands crowded Smyrna to learn from him. He was made a guardian of temples and a priest of Bacchus (Dionysus) and made head of the running of the games in honour of “Hadrian Olympus”. He accompanied Hadrian on his journeys through Asia and appears to have acted as a highly valued and influential advisor to the emperor.

Revelation 13:12 It exercised all the authority of the first beast on its behalf, and made the earth and its inhabitants worship the first beast, whose fatal wound had been healed.

The author of the apocalypse introduces him as a speaker in the service of the first beast. The classicist G. W. Bowersock wrote of Polemon’s renown:

Hadrian, another admirer of Polemo, extended that privilege [of free travel wherever he wished] to the sophist’s posterity and added others; his great-grandson, Hermocrates, is found fully equipped with privileges of all sorts. Hadrian’s relations with Polemo are well illustrated by the emperor’s own admission that his final statement on the affairs of the whole empire (a breviarium totius imperii, one supposes) was prepared with Polemo’s advice. Nor is this the only indication of Hadrian’s regard: his invitation to that sophist to deliver the oration at the consecration of the Olympieum at Athens was perhaps an embarrassing repudiation of the obvious person for the occasion, Herodes Atticus. Polemo’s enemies at Smyrna had once tried to compromise him by allegations that he was spending on himself funds transmitted by the emperor for the good of the city, but Hadrian replied firmly with a letter declaring that Polemo had rendered him an account of the moneys which he had given the city. Not that the great sophist did not spend extravagantly for his own ostentation. He could be seen travelling along the roads of Asia in a chariot with silver bridles and an elaborate entourage of pack-animals, horses, slaves, and dogs. But Philostratus rightly observed that such a display gave lustre to a city no less than a fine agora or a splendid array of buildings, ‘for not only does a city give a man renown, but a city itself acquires it from a man’. (Bowersock, 48)

Witulski writes in Die Johannesoffenbarung Und Kaiser Hadrian, p. 228,

Moreover, it is quite likely that Polemon, in his festive speech on the occasion of the consecration of the sanctuary of the Zeus Olympus in Athens, to some extent as a replica of Hadrian’s favour, possibly also previously coordinated with the latter, called for altars dedicated to Hadrian Olympus to be erected in private homes in the cities and areas around the Aegean. Numerous evidences can be cited for these altars in the provinces of Achaea, Macedonia, Thracia, and especially Asia. (my own machine assisted translations of all Witulski quotes)

In Kaiserkult in Kleinasien, Witulski explained in a little more detail the reason for concluding that household altars were ordered in association with the occasion of the inauguration of the Athenian temple to Zeus Olympus: pp. 130ff

With reason, it is to be noted that the consecration of the Athenian sanctuary of Zeus Olympus and the associated foundation of the institution of the Panhellenion also led to altars524 being erected in private houses525 to the reigning emperor Hadrian in the Greek-influenced east of the imperium Romanum. The geographical focus of the erection of these altars was obviously in the Greek motherland and in the western Asia Minor, i.e. in the Roman province of Asia.526 It is remarkable that the inscriptions carved on each of these altars have essentially the same wording: The reigning emperor Hadrian is given the title ‘Ολύμπιος [=Olympos] and worshipped as σωτήρ καί κτίστης [=Saviour Founder]. The regularity of the form of the altar inscriptions, expressed in the parallelism of wording and phrasing, and the large number of altars erected “imply the official nature of the occasion on which the altars were dedicated to Hadrian Olympios, Savior, and Founder“. In view of the Ολύμπιος title attached to Hadrian in these inscriptions, it is difficult to deny a connection between the content of the corresponding altars and the statues of the emperor erected in the temenos of the Athenian sanctuary of the Ζευς ‘Ολύμπιος, on the bases of which the Όλύμπιος title is also found within the imperial titulature. Therefore, the occasion that led to the erection of the house altars dedicated to Hadrian can be assumed to be the consecration of the Ζεύς Όλύμπιος sanctuary in Athens or an event closely related to this consecration, such as the founding of the institution of the Πανελλήνιον [=Panhellenion].

Anna Benjamin in 1963 documented as many as 269 altars to Hadrian in Greece-Asia so no doubt that number has increased since. The maps below identifying the sites where these altars have been found are copied from Benjamin’s article:

It is worth going beyond Witulski’s own words and reading what Benjamin herself had to say about the worship of Hadrian in this region (pp 58-60): Continue reading “Revelation’s Second Beast, the False Prophet”

2022-05-07

Emperor Hadrian as Revelation’s Beast from the Sea

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Neil Godfrey

Zeus Meilichios (See below for the relationship of the serpent to the worship of Hadrian)

We have seen how emperor worship directed towards Hadrian in Greece and the Roman province of Asia surpassed anything before known: Emperor Worship and the Book of Revelation. The “advent” and “presence” of an emperor, a divine figure, meant salvation for all in the region. As Horace wrote of Augustus:

Great guardian of the race of Romulus
Bom when the gods were being good to us,
You have been absent now
Too long. You pledged your word
(The august Fathers heard)
To swift home-coming. Honour, then, that vow.

Restore, kind leader, to your countrymen
The light they lack. For, like the sunshine when
It’s springtime, where your face
Lights on the people, there
The weather turns to fair
And the day travels with a happier pace.

, , , ,

When Caesar’s here the ox plods safe and sound;
Ceres and gentle Plenty feed the ground
With fruitfulness; across
The uninfested seas
Men speed with bird-like ease;
Honesty is afraid of its own loss;

No immoralities contaminate
Domestic faith, for custom and the State
Have purged the taint of sin;
Proud wives in children trace
The true inherited face;
Crime hears the tread of Justice closing in.

Who fears the swarms that Germany brings forth
From her rough loins ? Let Scythians in the north,
Or Parthians rearm,
Or the wild tribes of Spain
Rally to war again,
We sleep as long as Caesar’s safe from harm.

. . . . (Michie translation, Odes of Horace, Book 4, 5)

As Pliny wrote of Trajan’s return:

20. Now did the longing wishes of Rome recall you, and the more fond affection, you bore your Countrey, oversway’d that love, you had shewn your Souldiers. So that now you return, yet with so strict a Discipline, with so little of forrage, plunder or other abuse, as if you came from a regular peace, rather than from a tumultuous War: And, though it seem too trifling to add to your commendation, I cannot but observe, that no Father, no Husband fear’d the injurious effects of your return. . . . . There was no grievance in the pressing of Carriages, no nicety in the taking up of lodgings, no trouble in the catering of dainties for your entertainment. . . .

22. How long hop’d, how wish’d for was that day when at your return you past in publick through the City? Nay the very manner of your solemn March how gratefull, how obliging? . . . . No age, no infirmity, no different Sex was debar’d from the common benefit of glutting their eyes on that welcome and unusual sight. Children were taught to know you, young men pointed, old men admir’d, and even those, whose sickness had confin’d ’em to their beds, or chambers, contrary to the advice of their cautious Physicians, came forth, and seem’d confident, that the bare influence of so blest an object would complete their recovery. Some were content now to dye, since they had liv’d to see, what they had so long prayed for: Others were the more eager to have their lives prolong’d as knowing it would be some comfort to live under the Protection of so excellent a Government. Women thought it now some joy to be made Mothers, since they saw to what Prince they brought forth Subjects, and what a long prospect of happiness was thereby entail’d on their Children. The tops of houses were all cover’d with spectatours, who climb’d and hung over at that venturous rate, as if they were just falling, yet for crouds of company below were not likely to come to the ground. The streets were throng’d on either side, and scarce a narrow lane left for your passage. The multitude from all quarters discharg’d loud peals of joy, and thundred from every part in shouts and acclamations: While this rejoycing at your return, being as universal, as the benefits of it, grew still greater, as you march’d farther, and advanc’d along with every step you made. (From https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A55147.0001.001/1:5?rgn=div1;view=fulltext)

The presence of the emperor was the only decisive requisite for security, material prosperity, even rightly restored nature, the rule of morality and ethics in public and private life, proper reverence for the gods, justice and peace (paraphrased from Witulski, Kaiserkult in Kleinasien, p. 163). To translate the words of Jean Beaujeu in Religion romaine (p. 203) quoted by Witulski in Kaiserkult (p. 138)

The official institution of the double cult of Hadrian-Zeus Olympios (Panhellenios) in Greece [und mutatis mutandis also in Western Asia minor], considered within its framework, constitutes a creation as powerful and calculated as that of the cult of Rome and Venus in Rome; unexpected, but part of a long tradition, original, but composed of pre-existing elements, the formula, launched with great festivities and monetary orchestration, aims in both cases to provoke a psychological shock, to shake up routine, to increase confidence, euphoria, creative energy, by opening the doors to a new era, by promising and arousing prosperity and solidarity.

Hadrian did not merely “pass through” Asia.

This reconstruction [of Hadrian’s three journeys through Asia] proves first of all that Hadrian travelled the province of Asia – like the entire Roman Empire – far more intensively than any of his predecessors. In addition, the intention of Hadrian’s three stays in the province of Asia must be fundamentally distinguished from that of Vespasian’s and Trajan’s stays there: while the latter two merely visited the province of Asia in transit, for Hadrian the focus of interest was on the Asian cities themselves, their welfare and the internal stabilisation of the imperium Romanum that this welfare provided. (Kaiserkult, p. 155, own translation in all quotations of Witulski.)

When Hadrian did depart he left reminders of his abiding presence in the coinage stamped as reminders of his “adventus” (compare the Greek “parousia”) and “praesentia”.

Recall that Hadrian’s cult was, unlike those of his predecessors, tentacled throughout the cities of the province with organized intent as part of the new institution of the Panhellenion. His temple was for the worship of Hadrian alone without being coupled with the greater Zeus and his altars were to be set up in every private home.

Hadrian was propagated as a universal saviour throughout the entire Roman province of Asia and far beyond by 132 AD (Kaisekult, 169)

The Revelation of John

It is against the above background that Thomas Witulski dates Revelation between ca 132 and 135 CE. Continue reading “Emperor Hadrian as Revelation’s Beast from the Sea”

2022-05-06

The Two Beasts of Revelation 13; and the Image, Mark and Number of the First Beast

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Neil Godfrey

Before Thomas Witulski informs readers of the details of events in the time of the Roman emperor Hadrian and how they enable a contemporary interpretation of Revelation 13 he analyses the meanings of different parts of the chapter itself. I cannot possibly cover every detail of his exegesis (especially the grammar and usage of certain Greek words) but will try to cover the main highlights. Keep in mind that these highlights are only preparatory to a discussion of the historical events Witulski identifies as the real subject of the apocalypse.

Revelation 13 introduces two beasts that act as representatives of a dragon who, having failed to destroy the “woman who brought forth the manchild” in chapter 12, turns his wrath on Christians.

And I saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy.

2 And the beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion. And the dragon gave him his power, and his seat, and great authority.

3 And I saw that one of his heads was, as it were, wounded to death, and his deadly wound was healed. And all the world wondered after the beast.

4 And they worshiped the dragon which gave power unto the beast, and they worshiped the beast, saying, “Who is like unto the beast? Who is able to make war with him?”

The dragon gives incomparable power and rule to a beast. People show cultic-religious reverence to that beast because of its overwhelming power and possibly also because one of its heads (or the beast itself) was miraculously revived. Readers are probably meant to think of Nero since we know that long after Nero’s death we encounter evidence of hopes (especially in the eastern regions of the Roman empire) that Nero would eventually return and take back his imperial power. (Notice at the same time the antitheses that our author sets up between both beasts and the Christ as the slain but revived lamb.)

The word for “worship”, προσκύνησις, denoted the kissing of a hand along with other bodily gestures that were long reserved only for deities in the western part of the Mediterranean, but after Alexander’s conquests of the east, it came to be offered to human rulers in Greece and finally, Rome. It is also significant that the author describes this worship of the beast in the same context as he has described the heavenly worship of God.

The power of the beast is so great that we read not of its defeating enemies, but of no one even daring to go to war against it.

11 And I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth; and he had two horns like a lamb, and he spoke as a dragon.
12 And he exerciseth all the power of the first beast before him; and he causeth the earth and them that dwell therein to worship the first beast, whose deadly wound was healed.

The second beast appears alongside the first beast. It is the first beast that gives authority to the second so that the second beast acts with the permission of the first. Specifically, the second beast appears in public as a propagandist of the first beast and initiates the public worship of that first beast. Continue reading “The Two Beasts of Revelation 13; and the Image, Mark and Number of the First Beast”

2022-05-05

Logic and the Date of the Gospel of Mark

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Neil Godfrey

Back again! I got waylaid again for a couple of weeks by a swathe of new reading I had to get on top of before writing again. This time it was a few works by Markus Vinzent, his most recent one (Christi Thora =”Christ’s Torah”) and some earlier ones I had let slide for too long; the arrival of Andreas Bedenbender’s published thesis (Der Gott der Welt tritt auf den Sinai = “The God of the World Steps on Sinai”) that seemed required reading given the many references to it in his later works; the arrival via an interlibrary loan of a long-standing request I have had for a Festschrift for Martin Hengel; the arrival of another older double-work by Joseph Turmel (aka Delafosse — works on Revelation and the Gospel of John); and finally the acquisition of Hermann Detering’s Paulusbriefe ohne Paulus? (=Paul’s Letters without Paul?). They are all related to questions concerning our canonical Book of Revelation, the Enoch trajectory of thought in Second Temple Judaism, and the origins and dating of both our canonical gospels and letters of Paul. (Oh, and a publisher of another work even agreed to send me a review copy that retails over $A200 — so it feels like I’ve been overwhelmed with Christmas goodies this past fortnight, though many of them have required some “assembly” — that is, translation. Thank god for DeepL and Google Translate.) — Sadly, the only book I have not had is the one I contributed a chapter for: the editors last year promised me a complimentary copy but it never arrived, not even an electronic version.

After that little bit of bio update, here’s something of more widespread interest for readers here.

How do we know that canonical gospels, or at least those attributed to Mark and Matthew, were written in the first century?

That the Gospel according to Mark was written around 70 CE and in direct response to that war of 66-73 CE is mainstream opinion. The Gospel according to Matthew, it is said, followed within a decade.

How do we know?

The answer usually offered is Mark 13, the “Olivet Prophecy” of Jesus, the climactic verses applying to the armies of Titus stamping through Jerusalem and destroying its temple.

14 “When you see ‘the abomination that causes desolation’ standing where it does not belong—let the reader understand—then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. 15 Let no one on the housetop go down or enter the house to take anything out. 16 Let no one in the field go back to get their cloak. 17 How dreadful it will be in those days for pregnant women and nursing mothers! 18 Pray that this will not take place in winter, 19 because those will be days of distress unequaled from the beginning, when God created the world, until now—and never to be equaled again.

. . . .

24 “But in those days, following that distress,

“‘the sun will be darkened,
and the moon will not give its light;
25 the stars will fall from the sky,
and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.’[c]

26 “At that time people will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory.

We often read that the Gospel of Matthew was written for a different community up to a decade later, clearly after the “Gospel according to Mark” came to their attention, so compare Matthew’s chapter 24:

¹⁵“So when you see standing in the holy place ‘the abomination that causes desolation,’ spoken of through the prophet Daniel—let the reader understand— ¹⁶then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. ¹⁷Let no one on the housetop go down to take anything out of the house. ¹⁸Let no one in the field go back to get their cloak. ¹⁹How dreadful it will be in those days for pregnant women and nursing mothers! ²⁰Pray that your flight will not take place in winter or on the Sabbath. ²¹For then there will be great distress, unequaled from the beginning of the world until now—and never to be equaled again.

. . . .

²⁹“Immediately after the distress of those days

“‘the sun will be darkened,
and the moon will not give its light;
the stars will fall from the sky,
and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.’^[b]

³⁰“Then will appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven. And then all the peoples of the earth will mourn when they see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory.

One can understand a writer opining that Jesus will return “very soon” in the wake of “the abomination of desolation” that he believes is part of the events of around 70 CE, but why does Matthew, up to ten years later, repeat that view? Had he not noticed that Jesus did not return as prophesied in Mark?

But was not Matthew said to be writing for a completely different community half a generation later? So we do have to ask: why does Matthew repeat so much of Mark verbatim? Would we not expect a member of a community removed from that of Mark, and up to quite some years later, to feel compelled to re-write an earlier text for another audience in somewhat different words that reflected the different community of readers at another time?

If so, why, we must ask, does Matthew’s gospel sound so much like it was written in the same workshop where and when Mark’s gospel was written? Where in Matthew’s text are those little indicators that the author was immersed with a quite different group of readers in mind and with a different time perspective?

And where is the independent evidence, the external indicators, that inform us that the Gospel according to Mark was known by anyone before Irenaeus in the late second century?

In response to that question, one can expect to hear a claim that Justin Martyr speaks of Jesus changing the names of Simon (to Peter) and James and John (to sons of Boanerges), and since Justin Martyr was writing in the mid-second century and the Gospel of Mark documents the same name-changes, it follows that Justin was drawing upon his knowledge of the Gospel of Mark. That sort of reasoning is clearly fallacious, however. Justin in the same documents says many other things that are not found in the Gospel of Mark — that Jesus was born in a cave, that fire consumed the Jordan when Jesus was baptized, that Pilate conspired with Herod against Christ — none of which are found in Mark. It follows, surely, that we do not know what Justin’s sources were and that we cannot confirm that he knew the Gospel of Mark on the basis of one limited cluster of overlaps.

In order to sustain a date for the composition of the Gospel of Mark (and Matthew) to the first century, we need to propose hypotheses to explain why that Gospel does not appear in other sources until the late second century with Irenaeus.

By normal viewpoints, one would need to propose that the gospel was composed without any attribution to some kind of authorship in spite of the fact that external witnesses clearly referencing the gospel identify it as “according to Mark”.

One has to propose that (and why) the gospel of Mark was of little relevance or knowledge among Christian communities beyond the immediate community of its author for quite some years — right into the late second century!

One has to propose why the Gospels of Matthew and Luke follow the Gospel of Mark so closely despite their respective readerships having had decades of different inputs and different needs and questions that related to Jesus and the “good news”.

You know where I am leading. There are fewer hypotheses required to justify a second-century provenance of the Gospel of Mark. “Few hypotheses” is a good thing, says Occam.

I’ll cover arguments related to this question of Gospel origins in future posts. The general theme also requires dealing with the Book of Revelation since many leads seem to point to that work being one of the earliest composed by a “Christian”.

Much to write about. Much more to read.

2022-04-18

Emperor Worship and the Book of Revelation

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Neil Godfrey

A reader of the previous Revelation post commented,

But at first glance, Emperor worship seems a pretty minor issue compared to the other shit that was going down in that period.

Detail of cover of *Rituals and Power* by S.R.F. Price. Coin from Ephesus showing temple with statue of emperor inside.

Agreed — “at first glance”. Why would the Book of Revelation make such ado over a cult that had been part and parcel of everyday life throughout the empire since the days of Augustus? Surely Christians could just stay at home or hide themselves behind the latrines when the day came for the city officials to offer their cultic devotions to the emperor. But is there evidence that something about emperor worship changed in a major way at a relevant time?

From the discussion that I outlined earlier Thomas Witulski raises the following question:

When, specifically, in the Roman province of Asia and between 45/50 and 155/160 CE, can we find a massive intensification of cultic-religious emperor worship accompanied by the propagation of the emperor’s divine salvation role?

Emperor worship was introduced into the province of Asia during the principate of Augustus between 30 and 10 CE. Witulski takes the extent and practices of Augustan worship as the yardstick by which to measure subsequent forms of the cult. After Augustus the emperor cult remained fairly much the same for most of the period up to the early years of the second century. During the time of Vespasian (69-79 CE) and his son Titus (79-81 CE) there even appears to have been a waning of the frequency and magnitude of the cult practices associated with emperor worship. Domitian (81-96 CE) took some steps to revive it but he did so by instituting it as the cult of the ruling Flavian family, not that of a sole emperor. This Flavian cult, Witulski notes, did not give rise to any “new cultic-religious situation for the inhabitants of the province of Asia as a whole.” It was confined to Ephesus.

In view of Domitian’s reign, there can be no question of a significant intensification of the cultic-religious veneration of the reigning regent and of his accompanying inappropriate deification in the Roman province of Asia. (Witulski, p. 135, – translation)

Trajan (98-117 CE) established a provincial cult of Zeus Philios in the city of Pergamon with himself, the emperor, to be worshiped alongside Zeus. The intention was to establish a cult in the province of Asia that was peer to Rome’s cult of Dea Roma and Divi filius Augustus. An inscription informs us that Trajan was propagandizing himself as a “new Augustus”. There is no evidence that there was any wider magnification of the cult of emperor worship in the province.

So in the opening years of the second century we find Trajan presenting himself as an equal of Augustus but the emperor cult does not go beyond anything that Augustus himself had inaugurated over a century before.

In view of this and in view of the fact that the cultic-religious veneration of the Roman emperors belonged to the everyday life of the inhabitants in the province of Asia on the provincial, but especially also on the municipal and private level, it is difficult to claim that with the inauguration of the cult of Ζεύς Φίλιος and Trajan in Pergamon a fundamentally new cultic-religious situation arose for those inhabitants of Asia who did not live in Pergamon. (p. 136 – translation)

With Hadrian, everything changes. Continue reading “Emperor Worship and the Book of Revelation”

2022-04-17

The Deer in Acts of the Apostles and the Aeneid

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Neil Godfrey

So I have not been the only one to pick up on the meaning of the name of a woman Peter raised from the dead and associate it with Virgil’s Aeneid. Her name is given as Dorcas, meaning a “deer”, and her healing follows immediately after Peter’s healing of Aeneas. Michael Kochenash has written a chapter on the same intertextual link in Roman Self-Representation and the Lukan Kingdom of God.

We have a different emphasis, though.

In Acts, Peter raises from the dead a well-loved disciple named Tabitha, “Greek name Dorcas”, who had won renown for her caring work of making woven clothes. This scene takes place on the cusp of expanding the Christian mission from the Jews to the gentiles. Since that miracle took place just after the healing of Aeneas, the namesake of the famed mythical founder of the Romans, I was reminded of the dramatic scene in Virgil’s Aeneid where a slain deer is the cause of war between Aeneas’s company and the Latins. It was that war that marked the beginning of a place for the ancestors of Rome in Italy. Like Dorcas, the deer was well-loved by all around her and associated with woven decoration.

Acts 9:

32 As Peter traveled about the country, he went to visit the Lord’s people who lived in Lydda. 33 There he found a man named Aeneas, who was paralyzed and had been bedridden for eight years. 34 “Aeneas,” Peter said to him, “Jesus Christ heals you. Get up and roll up your mat.” Immediately Aeneas got up. 35 All those who lived in Lydda and Sharon saw him and turned to the Lord.

36 In Joppa there was a disciple named Tabitha (in Greek her name is Dorcas); she was always doing good and helping the poor. 37 About that time she became sick and died, and her body was washed and placed in an upstairs room. 38 Lydda was near Joppa; so when the disciples heard that Peter was in Lydda, they sent two men to him and urged him, “Please come at once!”

39 Peter went with them, and when he arrived he was taken upstairs to the room. All the widows stood around him, crying and showing him the tunics and other clothing that Dorcas had made while she was still with them.

40 Peter sent them all out of the room; then he got down on his knees and prayed. Turning toward the dead woman, he said, “Tabitha, get up.” She opened her eyes, and seeing Peter she sat up. 41 He took her by the hand and helped her to her feet. Then he called for the believers, especially the widows, and presented her to them alive. 42 This became known all over Joppa, and many people believed in the Lord.

Dido with Aeneas on the hunt for deer; Dido will become the victim deer (image from *myartprints.co.uk*)

Virgil’s epic poem about the odyssey of Aeneas from Troy to Italy where he founded the settlement that would become Rome sustains the image of deer throughout books 1, 4, 7, 10 and 12. A crisis in the epic occurs when Aeneas is in danger of being diverted from his divine mission by falling in love with Dido, the queen of Carthage. After Aeneas finally breaks free and leaves for Italy, the distraught Dido kills herself with the sword Aeneas had gifted her. Kochenash discusses at some length the deer similes in these episodes and their resonances in the Acts passage that I had completely overlooked. The emotionally wounded Dido is compared to a wounded deer. Her death is caused by Aeneas in two senses: by his leaving her and by her taking the sword he had left her. The metaphor Virgil uses is that of arrows of the hunter slaying the deer, an ironic twist on the arrows shot by Cupid.

There are other deer comparisons in the Aeneid that Kochenash addresses in the same context. One of these is the climactic end of the epic where Aeneas, compared with a savage hunting dog, slays the king Turnus who is likened to a helpless deer.

What does all of this have to do with Acts and Peter’s healing of Dorcas, apart from the fact that Dorcas means “deer”?

First of all, the author of Acts drew special attention to the name Dorcas by presenting it as a translation of the Aramaic Tabitha. Secondly, and I think most significant, is that the healing happens at Joppa, the place known from the story of Jonah who took God’s message to the gentiles of his day. Jonah tried to flee from his task by taking a ship from Joppa but God redirected him back to Assyria. And third, the reader is primed to “think Roman” by the immediately preceding healing of Aeneas.

Or in Kochenash’s words,

The three Petrine narratives within Acts 9:32–11:18 represent a transition in the mission of the kingdom of God: the inclusion of those beyond the margins of Jewish religion and society (i.e., Gentiles). Tabitha lives in the city of Joppa, a detail emphasized by Luke to foreshadow the Gentile mission that begins in the next narrative. The tragedy of Dido reflects a Roman attitude that human life is expendable when it impedes the progress of Rome’s empire. When Luke’s Peter is thus read as contrasting with Virgil’s Aeneas in a pivotal narrative concerned with the expansion of the kingdom of God, the character of God’s kingdom becomes evident by contrast to that of Rome.

This interpretation coheres with a Greco-Roman literary ethos, wherein Greek writers relished the opportunity to encrypt arcane messages within their narratives. While a general readership would be able to read the narrative with sufficient comprehension, those with the appropriate cultural competence would enjoy noticing the subtle references that augment such a reading. According to Dennis R. MacDonald, “In most cases, imitations disguise a rewarding sensus plenior—a fuller meaning below the surface, somewhat like allegory—that is intended for the more sophisticated. Discovering a clever, obscure twist on a popular tale often produces a smile, as though in the cryptic allusion the author has winked.” Luke’s use of the names Tabitha and Dorcas—in proximity to the name Aeneas—can, I suggest, be read as a wink to his readers. (p. 116 – author link is to the cited work in archive.org)

Here is Kochenash’s summary of his longer discussion:

The Romans could not completely obscure the fact that its touted Pax came at the expense of (human) collateral damage. Even Rome’s foundation epic, Virgil’s Aeneid—written under the patronage of Augustus himself—includes two such fatalities: Dido and Turnus. According to Mary Thornton, by comparing these two to deer, “Vergil is guaranteeing that although we see the faults and the responsibilities of Dido and Turnus for their misfortunes, we will not fail to give them our sympathy just as we would do for any wounded deer.” Luke’s narrative constructs a matrix consisting of a man named Aeneas, a dead woman whose name means “deer,” and the theme of the expansion of the kingdom of God, all of which can be read as an allusion to the tragedy of Aeneas and Dido. This allusion prompts readers to understand the kingdom of God through the framework of Roman self-representation. By raising Tabitha from the dead, Peter enacts the expansion of the kingdom of God, performing an action that has the opposite effect of Roman expansion. Whereas the expansion of the Roman Empire brings death, that of the kingdom of God brings life. (p. 118 – author link is to the cited work in Jstor)

Even if many of the early readers of Acts had not read Virgil’s Aeneid the stories of Aeneas and Dido were well known throughout the empire as artworks and papyri remains testify.

There is one detail, however, that I do find myself wondering if Kochenash has overlooked. Why does Acts point out all of the garments that Dorcas had made? Continue reading “The Deer in Acts of the Apostles and the Aeneid”

2022-04-15

Why was the Book of Revelation Written?

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Neil Godfrey

Therefore write the things which you have seen, and the things which are, and the things which will take place after these things. – Rev 1:19

My intent in this post is to give an overview of the key points argued by Thomas Witulski [TW] in Part 2 of The Revelation of John and Emperor Hadrian [translated from the German: Die Johannesoffenbarung und Kaiser Hadrian]. I include links to works that he critiques so you can follow up the other side in their own words.

Most interpreters of the above verse (Rev 1:19) consider it to be the key to understanding what Revelation is all about. But after that, opinions are divided. Does it mean that the first part of the book that introduces letters to seven churches is describing “the things that are” leaving the remaining chapters to cover future events?

In short, though TW takes four pages to say it, the answer is ‘no’. The messages to the seven churches contain prophecies of the future and the main body of the book includes flashbacks to events past. Furthermore, both parts of the book dwell heavily upon what is happening now.

So why did the author write it? TW engages with four main views.

Continue reading “Why was the Book of Revelation Written?”

2022-04-10

The Crucifixion of Jesus as Implicit History of the Jewish War

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Neil Godfrey

The letters of Paul that are understood to have been written some twenty to ten years before the fall of Jerusalem in 70 CE speak about the crucifixion of Jesus as a simple fact. There is never any elaboration of when or where it happened (unless one treats 1 Thess 2:13-16 as genuine). The message of death and resurrection of the son of God by itself is sufficient to lead to conversion. For Mark, though (and for the sake of convenience and convention I’ll call the author of the second gospel Mark), this was not enough. A detailed story involving betrayal, abandonment, a trial, physical abuse and crucifixion with attendant miracles had to be told. I side with those critical scholars who conclude that all of those details are fabrications since the narrative was created out of various passages in the “Old Testament” and none of Jesus’ followers could have witnessed anything that happened once he was in the hands of the Jewish priests and Roman guards. But even if we concede for the sake of argument that the Passion account of Jesus did hold some “historical core” at its base, there can be no denying that the way Mark has shaped the story with its many allusions to OT scriptures is his own creative work.

Why? Why did he write that narrative and why did he write it the way he did?

Some years back I wrote a series about Son of Yahweh: The Gospels as Novels, by Clarke Owens. Clarke Owens was analysing the Gospel of Mark from the perspective of a literary critic and argued that it was necessary to see the gospel as a product of its time, and that time was in the wake of the Jewish War that condemned untold numbers of Jewish victims to crucifixion around the city of Jerusalem.

In the past few months I have caught up with another work, or two of them, by a German New Testament scholar who makes much the same argument from his perspective:

Bedenbender, Andreas. Frohe Botschaft am Abgrund: Das Markusevangelium und der Jüdische Krieg [= Good News at/from the Abyss: The Gospel of Mark and the Jewish War]. Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2013.
Bedenbender, Andreas. Der Gescheiterte Messias [= The Failed Messiah]. Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2019.

Andreas Bedenbender’s view is that the author of the earliest gospel was writing from a place of trauma and was struggling to come to terms with the fate of his people that he had just witnessed. Had not the gospel being preached about Jesus promised the soon-to-arrive Kingdom of God? Now this!? By a “failed messiah” he means a messiah who failed in the same sense that the OT prophets had failed when they preached their warnings about Assyrian and Babylonian captivity if the people of the northern and southern kingdoms did not mend their ways. This position of trauma, Bedenbender believes, explains the dark and confronting features and outright contradictions in the gospel: a messiah who now does, now does not, seem to care for his people, such as when he heals them at one moment but deserts them when they are trying to find him; who terrifies rather than comforts others by wielding his power over demons and the elements; who like a ghost is seen walking on water past his disciples instead of rushing to help them in their distress; who condemns his disciples for an unnatural blindness that they cannot help; who orders silence when a crowd has just heard and witnessed all; and whose story closes with the only witnesses to news of his resurrection fleeing dumb with fear (the earliest manuscripts of the gospel conclude at Mark 16:8).

For Bedenbender the crucifixion of Jesus is a kind of allegory of the fate of Jerusalem. The messiah is made to share in the fate of the Jewish people. From the Jewish historian Josephus we learn that those who did not die from starvation or factional violence or the slaughter of the advancing Roman soldiers or who were not enslaved were crucified:

Scourged and subjected before death to every torture, they were finally crucified in view of the wall. . . . The soldiers themselves through rage and bitterness nailed up their victims in various attitudes as a grim joke, till owing to the vast numbers there was no room for the crosses, and no crosses for the bodies. (Josephus, Jewish War, Book 6: 449-451 – G.A. Williamson translation)

We saw a similar argument in the series on Nanine Charbonnel’s Jésus-Christ, sublime figure de papier. The Gospels created the figure of Jesus in part as a personification of the people of Israel.

Bedenbender goes beyond the events of the crucifixion, though. Right from the beginning of the gospel, we read of “a wilderness place” that is the frequent abode of Jesus. It is easy enough to relate the “wilderness” image to other wilderness scenes in the OT, most especially the “wilderness” through which Moses led the Israelites for 40 years. But Mark repeatedly refers to a “wilderness place” — έρημος τόπος = erēmos topos — and that brings to the minds of readers of the Greek translation (the Septuagint) of Jeremiah, Daniel and the Psalms the desolate ruin of God’s “place”, Zion and where the Temple had once stood. This is one of the ways in which the Jewish War is woven into the Gospel of Mark from its opening chapter.

Place names and names of persons are related to scenes and leaders that became well-known in the Jewish War of 66 to 70/73 CE. In the OT women are very often personifications of nations and cities and Bedenbender identifies the same figurative tradition in the names of Salome, Jairus’ daughter, Mary Magdalene (Magdala is another name for Tarichea, the scene of one of the bloodiest slaughters of Jews described by Josephus) and the others. Simon, of course, is probably the most prominent name in the gospel and here Bedenbender suggests that we see in this figure an encapsulation of the Jewish rebel movement from its beginning with Simon Maccabee through to Simon bar Giora. Simon Maccabee’s son Alexander became famous for his enforced Judaizations and mass crucifixions of his Jewish enemies, and the names of Tiberius Alexander and Rufus are readily associated with the Roman military confronting Jerusalem. (I can’t help wondering — I know this must seem outlandish to many who have more conservative views of Simon of Cyrene, father of Alexander and Rufus, who carried Jesus’ cross — that the Gospel of Mark could have been written as late as the second century in the wake of horrendous Jewish rebellions in Cyrene and when yet another Simon, with the support of a rabbi “James”, defied Rome. The result of that rebellion in the days of Hadrian really was the ultimate end to Jerusalem and any hopes for a rebuilt temple. Would not that timeline place the author far closer to catastrophic events with a greater likelihood of writing in a pall of trauma than if he had been writing a few years after the events of 70?)

Andreas Bedenbender begins with a study of the meaning of allegory and related literary devices and examines why we should think of the entire narrative, and not merely isolated scenes, as containing a reference to the fate of Judea and what that meant for those who believed in Jesus as their messiah. He analyses the narrative to demonstrate, I think successfully, that not only the parable sayings but the miracles themselves are symbolic and take on a special depth of meaning when read in the context of the war. I believe we can go beyond the miracles and understand other narrative features (beginning with the baptism and call of the first disciples) as rich in “allegorical” references. Bedenbender has an interesting interpretation of Jesus’ debating confrontations with the Pharisees, Herodians, Sadducees and scribes after his entry into Jerusalem that focuses on Jesus’ attempt to disabuse them (and readers) of any notion of a messiah who was destined to wage a physical war against earthly opponents.

I look forward to posting more details about these works. In the meantime, I cannot ignore my resolution to address Witulski’s case for a Hadrian-era date for the Book of Revelation; and someone else has recently reminded me that I have yet to finish a series I was doing back in 2018 on the Parables of Enoch and the Jewish concept of a heavenly messiah.

And as Tim pointed out in his latest post, more needs to be said about “the insidious nature of agnotology” that poses a potential threat to our futures. We have to remain optimistic if we are to take the necessary actions and I think there are many reasons to be optimistic: look at what these ninth–graders can do! — this and this!

2022-04-07

Trying to make sense of Simon Magus

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Neil Godfrey

I have always found the account of Simon Magus in the Acts of the Apostles empty of any real significance. It contains nothing to advance the plot. The “magician” wants to buy a bottle of holy spirit from Peter so he can perform miracles, he says, but that leaves me cold: it lacks any sense of psychological realism even by ancient novelistic standards; and besides, I was a baptized member of a church who also had the holy spirit and it didn’t let me do miracles, so what was going on here?

To refresh your memories, here’s the scene: Acts 8:9-25 (NIV)

9 Now for some time a man named Simon had practiced sorcery in the city and amazed all the people of Samaria. He boasted that he was someone great, 10 and all the people, both high and low, gave him their attention and exclaimed, “This man is rightly called the Great Power of God.” 11 They followed him because he had amazed them for a long time with his sorcery. 12 But when they believed Philip as he proclaimed the good news of the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both men and women. 13 Simon himself believed and was baptized. And he followed Philip everywhere, astonished by the great signs and miracles he saw.

14 When the apostles in Jerusalem heard that Samaria had accepted the word of God, they sent Peter and John to Samaria. 15 When they arrived, they prayed for the new believers there that they might receive the Holy Spirit, 16 because the Holy Spirit had not yet come on any of them; they had simply been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. 17 Then Peter and John placed their hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit.

18 When Simon saw that the Spirit was given at the laying on of the apostles’ hands, he offered them money 19 and said, “Give me also this ability so that everyone on whom I lay my hands may receive the Holy Spirit.”

20 Peter answered: “May your money perish with you, because you thought you could buy the gift of God with money! 21 You have no part or share in this ministry, because your heart is not right before God. 22 Repent of this wickedness and pray to the Lord in the hope that he may forgive you for having such a thought in your heart. 23 For I see that you are full of bitterness and captive to sin.”

24 Then Simon answered, “Pray to the Lord for me so that nothing you have said may happen to me.”

I have read Hermann Detering’s and Robert Price’s proposals that second century “proto-orthodox” authors created Simon Magus as a fictional embodiment of the unorthodox side of the “real Paul” at a time when Paul was at the centre of theological disputes. My response to that argument has been to regard such a hypothesis as a curious possibility but nothing more. More to the point for me has been that, quite apart from any purported association with Paul, it has been all too easy to think of Simon Magus as a lampoon-like fiction: he is oafish enough to offer money for spiritual goods, has beside him a woman who is both an ex-prostitute and an “Ideal Creative Thought” of his mind, and in later stories he flies through the air until Peter causes him to fall ignominiously to earth.

How could anyone take such a figure seriously? Certainly not as a historical reality!

But something pulled me up when I was reading Jan N. Bremmer‘s 2020 article “Simon Magus: The Invention and Reception of a Magician in a Christian Context“. His initial point is to “elucidate the gradual emergence of the main features of Simon Magus in the course of late antiquity” and to this end he begins,

The invention of the figure of Simon Magus started in the canonical Acts of the Apostles. In Chapter 8 of the Acts . . . [followed by a quotation of Acts 8:9-13] (p. 248)

Okay…. but there’s a wrinkle in there somewhere. On the next page Bremmer writes,

Our next sighting of Simon is in the First Apology of Justin (1.26.2-3, ed. Munier), dated to the early 150s:

Here was a certain Simon, a Samaritan, and a native of the village called Githon, who in the reign of Claudius Caesar, and in your royal city of Rome, did mighty acts of magic (δυνάμεις ποιήσας μαγικής ) with the aid of the demons operating in him. He was considered a god, and as a god was honoured by you with a statue, which was erected on the river Tiber, between the two bridges, with this Latin inscription: Simoni Deo Sancto (Σίμωνι δεῳ σάγκτῳ). And almost all the Samaritans, and even a few who belonged to other peoples, confess him as the first god and worship him; and a certain Helena, who accompanied him at that time, and had formerly been standing on the roof (i.e., had been a prostitute), they say is the first idea generated by him.

[note: “By curious chance, a statue was pulled from the Tiber in 1574 with the inscription SEMONI SANCO DEO FIDIO SACRUM. It is obvious, as has often been recognised, that Justin’s reference to a statue of Simon is based on a misinterpretation of a statue of Semo, an old Sabine god.”]

No, something is amiss there. Justin clearly had no knowledge of our canonical Acts of the Apostles. He knows nothing of Paul. In his mind it is the twelve apostles (the same twelve whom Jesus appeared to after his resurrection — leaving no room for a lost and replaced Judas) who took the message to all the gentiles. And his account of Simon Magus betrays no awareness of anything in Acts 8.

Jan Bremmer also acknowledges the possibility, even plausibility, of a date later than the early second century:

I realise that the date of the canonical Acts of the Apostles is debated and might even be later than Marcion but no evidence has yet been produced to date it after Irenaeus; cf. Gregory 2003. (Bremmer, p. 247)

Gregory in Reception of Luke and Acts in the Period Before Irenaeus concludes nothing more definite than that our earliest evidence for knowledge of Acts comes with Irenaeus in the late second century (p. 349)

In years past I posted often on Acts of the Apostles and the one conclusion that has endured in my mind is that Acts could not have been written before the middle of the second century. The arguments of those such as Joseph Tyson and the Acts Seminar have posited a date in the early second century, 120s-130s, but that date is the earliest possible date that the data allows. There is no reason it could not be dated a few decades later. But even if we accept the 120s-130s, it was surely written in isolation from Justin who knew nothing of it.

Now when we compare the two accounts of this Simon, the one in Acts and the one by Justin, it is the latter account, Justin’s, that reads with more “realism” than the sparse and strange narrative in Acts. The Acts narrative, as I said, adds nothing to the plot. Today’s readers have to assume that its author was addressing an audience who had some knowledge of this Simon figure that has long been lost to us. The Acts portrayal tells those readers that Simon was greedy to maintain power and influence in the church and crass enough to think money could buy his way into the ranks of the apostles.

Why did the author of Acts tell this story? One would expect that the episode would be followed up at some point with Simon’s fate or other kinds of influence somewhere — at least something to indicate to readers why he was introduced in the first place.

But there is another strange detail: the conclusion, Continue reading “Trying to make sense of Simon Magus”

2022-02-28

Hadrian as Nero Redivivus

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Neil Godfrey

Key points in this post:

Both Nero and Hadrian waged war with the Jews.
Both Nero and Hadrian had a special devotion to enriching and reviving the culture of the Greek world
Nero pursued the cultic-religious worship of his own person, Hadrian that of Antinous (and more to be covered in upcoming posts)
The travel coins minted by Hadrian mirror the Corinthian local coinage reflecting Nero’s visit there.
The rule of Hadrian witnessed a flourishing of Jewish apocalyptic writings, including the identification of Hadrian with Nero redivivus.

Hadrian brought the Temple of Olympian Zeus to completion after it had languished for 600 years. He had four more-than-life-size statues of himself at its entrance and was worshipped along with Zeus. Hadrian also displayed here a giant serpent from India.

–o–

The Nero redivivus myth is a standard interpretative feature in most commentaries on Revelation. Virtually every major commentary on Revelation mentions the myth . . . Kreitzer (1988)

But there is little agreement on exactly how Revelation fits with the history of the Roman empire. Kreitzer lists four scenarios to demonstrate those difficulties:

Rev 11:8 The beast, which you saw, once was, now is not, and yet will come up out of the Abyss and go to its destruction. The inhabitants of the earth whose names have not been written in the book of life from the creation of the world will be astonished when they see the beast, because it once was, now is not, and yet will come.

9 “This calls for a mind with wisdom. The seven heads are seven hills on which the woman sits. 10 They are also seven kings. Five have fallen, one is, the other has not yet come; but when he does come, he must remain for only a little while. 11 The beast who once was, and now is not, is an eighth king. He belongs to the seven and is going to his destruction.

Scenario one:

The five fallen emperors are Nero, Galba, Otho, Vitellius, Vespasian
The “one who is” (at time of writing), Titus
Domitian is the one “to appear” (foreseen by the author) as Nero redivivus.

Scenario two (omitting those who reigned for very short times):

The five fallen emperors are Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Vespasian, Titus.
The “one who is”, Domitian
The seventh and eighth are yet to come

Scenario three:

The five fallen emperors are the Julio-Claudians (Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero)
The “one who is” is then Galba
The one to come and to reign but a short time is then Otho — to be followed by Nero’s return

Scenario four is proposed by the same person who actually proposed scenario three above:

(The author) was writing in the early second century, a refugee, from a later wave of persecutions, and using the events of 64 to 69 in Rome as a cloak for his views of his own times. … To the author of Revelation the cheap and nasty legend of the risen Nero would seem the perfect legend for the anti-Christ, ever opposed to the truly and gloriously Risen Lord of his own faith. (John Bishop, Nero: The Man and Legend, p. 174)

The Nero myth was itself a variable quantity. It is as Kreitzer observes

The fact that ancient Jewish and Christian authors were able to find new and creative means of applying the Nero redivivus mythology to their own situations is particularly interesting. (1988, 95)

Indeed. And as we shall see, the emperor Hadrian who crushed the second Jewish rebellion led by Bar Kochba was also identified as the “Nero returned”.

Before we take on the details, let’s get some context.

Origin and Development of the Nero Redivivus Myth

We might say that there are three conditions necessary for a belief in someone’s return:

1.) A widespread popular affection for the figure by people who regarded the deceased as their benefactor or defender

2.) A general feeling that the figure concerned died leaving his work incomplete

3.) Mysterious or suspicious circumstances surrounding the figure’s death.

(And we might thank M. P. Charlesworth for helping us out with that list.)

All three conditions apply to Nero. But as time went on and Nero didn’t return the hopes took a new twist: Nero was going to come back from the dead and return! As history and reality faded, myth took their place.

Non-Jews had hoped for Nero’s return. Jews, on the other hand, not so much. The idea of his return was good fodder for end-time prophecies such as those in the Sibylline Oracles, however. The Jewish oracles accordingly turned Nero into an end-time enemy of God.

How are these oracles dated? They refer to the destruction of the Jewish temple (70CE); they also refer to Hadrian in favourable terms so we presume that they were written before his war against Judea.

One set of these oracles (book 5) has been dated between 70 and 132 CE.

The oracles identify Nero by the following descriptions:

He initiated the war that led to the destruction of Jerusalem
He murdered his mother Agrippina
He claimed to be God
He loved the Greeks and those in the “east” (including Parthia) and they all loved him.
He cut through the isthmus of Corinth to create a canal joining two seas

Sibylline oracles identified Nero by means of known historical facts about him. And he was depicted there as an evil ruler. So where does Hadrian enter the story?

Hadrian as Nero redivivus

Curiously, Hadrian, though presented in a favourable light, is surrounded by descriptions of the unpleasant Nero. Not only is Hadrian nested within portrayals of Nero, but he also shares some of Nero’s historical identifiers. Given that the author here believes Hadrian is on the side of good and Nero on that of evil, we cannot imagine that Hadrian was understood to be Nero redivivus.

But the oracle was fearful. What of the future?

After all, Nero had brought savage punishment upon the Jews; so had the Flavians (Vespasian and Titus) who succeeded him. The oracle laments the existence of all these rulers. Then came the aged Nerva followed by Trajan. The oracle does not totally condemn those rulers: they had not caused trouble. And Hadrian, at least for now, seemed benign enough, but the past record of emperors still cast its shadow of traumatic memories. So the oracle wrote of Hadrian (5:46-50),

After him another will reign,
a silver-headed man. He will have the name of a sea.
He will also be a most excellent man and he will consider everything.
And in your time, most excellent, outstanding, dark-haired one,
and in the days of your descendants, all these days will come to pass.

Hadrian might be a fine man, but when he dies the end-of-time calamity will come — that was the message.

Still, why was Hadrian associated with Nero at all in these oracles?

Larry Kreitzer has an explanation:

It seems clear that Hadrian consciously adopted many of Nero’s benevolent policies toward the Eastern half of the Empire, deliberately modelling himself on his predecessor in this regard.

One of the important secondary sources of evidence for Hadrian’s preoccupation with the Emperor Nero is the numismatic evidence of the Imperial Roman mints. The fact that Hadrian borrowed some of Nero’s coin types for his official imperial mint issues, and used them as a means of popular propaganda, is indisputable. (1989, 69)

I’ll return to the numismatic evidence soon. For now, though, let’s look into K’s first point about Hadrian consciously adopting Nero’s policies: Continue reading “Hadrian as Nero Redivivus”

2022-02-27

When was the Book of Revelation Written?

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Neil Godfrey

How do we go about finding a date for when the Book of Revelation was composed?

Many have dated the work to just prior to the fall of Jerusalem in 70 CE, others date it to the time of Domitian in the 90s: I set out the main reasons for each of those dates in recent posts (see links in side box). I think there are some strong arguments for dating the work to the 130s but before I go there let’s address the various factors that have been brought into play to date the work.

(By the way, some have suggested that Revelation grew piece by piece as a result of different authors over a period of time adding new sections. For my purposes here I am siding with those who have disagreed and see enough linguistic evidence to think of a single author even though that author drew upon a number of sources.)

The legend of Nero redux or Nero redivivus

Revelation speaks of a return of some sort of monstrous ruler after he had once been thought dead or simply out of the picture for some reason. We think of the many hopeful people in the eastern part of the Roman empire who long believed that their beloved Nero, after news of his suicide, was still alive and would return.

The links here take interested readers directly to the sources that testify to beliefs that Nero would return.

The Nero myth of return was still going strong in the eastern part of the empire into the second century. The historian Suetonius tells us that twenty years after Nero’s death there were many who enthusiastically believed the claims of one claiming to be Nero. Dio Chrysostom, writing between 90 and 110 CE, noted that most people in his region believed Nero was still alive. The satirist Lucian was able to remind readers of his own day, in the 140s CE, that those from their grandparents’ times had believed Nero would return. The Sibylline Oracles contain prophecies of Nero’s return: the relevant passages in book IV describe the eruption of Mount Vesuvius so are understood to have been written between 80 and 90 CE; those of book V as late as 130 CE since they refer to the Jewish uprisings throughout the Diaspora between 115-117 CE. (See also a discussion on the Reading Acts blog for the dating of these oracles.)

Emperor Worship in Asia Minor

The setting of Revelation is the Roman province of Asia (note the opening address to the seven churches). If Revelation is warning the faithful not to succumb to pressure to “worship the beast” (think of sacrifices to the Roman emperor) then it would be good to know what was happening, and when it was happening, with respect to emperor worship in that region. One scholar, Klaus Berger, has claimed that in the years leading up to 70 there was an “intensive blossoming of cultic emperor worship in Asia Minor”. On the other hand, Steven Friesen writes “The period of Nero seems to have been rather quiet with regard to imperial worship.” The evidence cited indicates that a revival of this cult had to await the consecration of a dedicated shrine in Ephesus in 89/90 CE.

666 – the number of the beast

Certainly, the number 666 is known to match the emperor Nero. However, Nero is not the only candidate whose name adds up to 666. Irenaeus himself wrote of different possible interpretations. (We will see in future posts that Revelation 13:18 can be understood to direct readers to two different persons and that one should be interpreted in the light of the other, that the man Nero returned as the beast in another emperor.)

The seven kings of Revelation 17

It appears that everyone has a method to identify these seven kings. That there are so many different interpretations (some starting with Julius Caesar, some with Augustus, some with Claudius; some omitting the three emperors of the year of the civil war, others including all or only one of them, and so forth) pretty well eliminates the possibility of using them as a guide to dating the work.

The destruction of Jerusalem

In Revelation 11 we see the two witnesses active in Jerusalem and the author is told to measure the temple there. Unfortunately, that scenario has not been enough to persuade everyone that it was written before 70 CE. As one commentator on the book wrote, “The 11th chapter [of the Apc] belongs to the darkest pieces of the Rev”.

In touch with early theology (e.g. Paul’s teachings)

Some have noted how close Revelation appears to be in relation to Pauline theology and the older (Q) tradition behind the gospels. It does not follow, though, that the work should be dated as early as those sources; the most we can say is that the author knew of Paul’s writings and the gospels.

The earthquake of Laodicea in 61 CE.

Revelation describes the church at Laodicea as being rich and comfortable. Since Laodicea was levelled in 61 by an earthquake could it have been rebuilt as early as 68/69? Some think so.

Church hierarchies

There is no obvious appearance of hierarchical structures in church governance in Revelation. That could suggest an early date. It could also suggest that hierarchies were taken for granted as they were at a later time.

Time of war and crisis

The author anticipates the fall of Roman power so the “civil wars” of 68/9 seem to fit such a time. However, keep in mind the setting of the Roman province of Asia: those battles had no effect in that region and would hardly have generated a sense of crisis there. The same applies to references to fears of a Parthian invasion. Those fears were extant throughout the period from 45/50 to 155/160 CE so cannot be used as a clear indicator for dating.

Persecutions – Nero and Domitian

Revelation does appear to speak of a time of organized state persecution of Christians. If we accept the accounts of the Neronian persecutions of Christians as historically credible we are still left with the fact that that was a one-off event. It was past history by the time Revelation was written. As for the persecutions of Christians in the time of Domitian, scholars have been obliged to conclude that the evidence there is very thin. There are some late reports of individual cases but nothing to suggest an organized program to suppress Christianity. Besides, we need to be careful about what Revelation actually depicts as historical on the one hand and what it anticipates in the future on the other.

Twelve apostles and Babylon

Revelation presents the twelve apostles as the foundation of the new Jerusalem and uses Babylon as a cipher for Rome.

Critics of a date prior to the destruction of the temple in the year 70 claim that the notion of “twelve apostles” being the foundation of the church is unlikely to have been extant so soon. Similarly, critics have said that Babylon would only have been used as code for Rome after it had destroyed Jerusalem.

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!

Thus says the voice at the appearance of the black horse.

Did Domitian issue an edict that sought to regulate the disproportion between wine and grain cultivation in the empire? Some think there is evidence that he did, but it is far from certain that any such edict was issued. If it had been then it appears to have been only a temporary measure. There is precious little evidence that such an event happened or that it had any appreciable impact in the province of Asia if it did.

Testimony of Irenaeus

Irenaeus is thought to tell us that John wrote Revelation in the time of Domitian. Given that Irenaeus wrote around 180 CE, that testimony can only have historical weight if it can be shown that behind the claim there is an oral or written tradition that dates back close to the time of the writing of Revelation.

The arguments set out on the one hand for the nature of sources used by Irenaeus are lengthy; so are the arguments that examine the grammatical structures used by Irenaeus, the differences between the Greek and Latin versions of the key passages, and discussions on what conclusions we can draw from all of that detail. Bypassing all of that material here, I will only note that it appears certain that Irenaeus had a habit of citing his sources wherever possible to add weight to his work, and that when he did not do so, we have reason to believe that his statements were conclusions he drew from his own reasoning and assumptions.

…o…

Next up, we’ll look at some preliminary reasons for thinking Revelation was a response to Hadrian in the 130s.

Witulski, Thomas. Die Johannesoffenbarung Und Kaiser Hadrian: Studien Zur Datierung Der Neutestamentlichen Apokalypse. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2007. http://www.librarything.com/work/5467644/book/208189148.

https://earlywritings.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=145080#p145080
Neil made a good synthesis of the work without being an “expert” of the field.

-- Enrico Tuccinardi, - October 2022
"These reviews of yours are so bloody weird!"

— James Crossley, – April 2010
"I want to say here that this site is so resourceful and highly on top of the most modern scholarship in the areas discussed here. . . I know of no other site which offers a wide range of topics related to careful critical analysis of historically and scripturally related issues."

-- Martin Lewadny, - March 2009
"Neil Godfrey and Tim Widowfield, who both write at Vridar . . . happen to be some of the most astute and well-read amateurs you can read on the internet on the subject of biblical historicity. I call them amateurs only for the reason that they don’t have, so far as I know, advanced degrees in the subject. But I have often been impressed with their grasp of logic and analysis of scholarship. I don’t always agree with them, but I respect their work."

— Richard Carrier, – March 2014
"Note that I do not use the term ‘amateur’ pejoratively. . . . In fact, Godfrey is extremely well read and his librarian skills have brought many important academic works to my attention."

Raphael Lataster - August 2019
Congratulations, Vridar, . . . I declare, Vridar, your own hard work translating Bruno Bauer will make a major difference in future studies of Bruno Bauer and the evolution of Hegel’s philosophy of religion.

-- Paul Trejo, - April 2023
"Very good. This post is going straight to the March 2016 Biblical Studies Carnival."

—N.T. Wrong, – March 2016
"Thanks for this detailed interaction! I’ll try to offer something more substantial than 'Thank you' in response at some point, but I didn’t want to wait . . . to express appreciation for your detailed interaction with what I’ve written!"

— James McGrath, – June 2009
"I think you have a high quality blog that provides a positive public service by discussing academic topics within a wider audience."

— Russell Gmirkin, – October 2016
"Many thanks for this post, and for the quality of your blog."

— Philippe Wajdenbaum, – November 2018
"I’ve even been cited by atheists with approval (which I really don’t know how to take, so thanks, I think, but I’m not sure, Vrider (even though I feel like I need to take a shower now))."

-- Jim West, – September 2010
"I have found your website really valuable as an interpretive filter for Biblical scholarship, especially the origins of Christianity and historicity of Jesus issue. Your clarity of expression, fair comments and personal insights are much valued. I refer to your site frequently as yet more names and publications pop up requiring an academic critique and helpful recommendations for book purchases. So, please continue to delve deeply and share this intellectual sustenance with your grateful readers."

— Mary Booker, – February 2020 (personal email)
"Here I give an admittedly subjective short list, in random order, of useful, high level and regularly updated weblogs on the study of the Old Testament . . . ‘Vridar: Musings on biblical studies, politics, religion, ethics, human nature, tidbits from science’ (http://vridar.org/) by Neil Godfrey"

-- Klaas Spronk, - Bibliotheca Orientalis LXXI, 3/4 (2014)
"Neil, in my mature judgement (I am now an old man), this fine 4-part study is a brilliant reworking, an instructive restatement of Hayden White’s Metahistory (and his subsequent writings). Your critique of certain historiographic representations as imbedded in the case study of the “scientistic”, “empirical” Richard Carrier provides a solid starting point for the more honest “fictive” reading of the New Testament that you encourage. Your last paragraph is a very intelligent call to sensitive readers of these texts. I suspect a whole generation of biblical students has been educated without the insights provided by the incomparable White. Bravo!"

-- Timothy Bagley, - November 2024
"Neil, this is actually rather useful. Good job."

— R. Joseph Hoffmann, – June 2014
"Vridar is consistently thought-provoking, well-informed, and asking the right questions. There are intelligent, thoughtful comments and commenters regularly offering productive discussion. Books and publications are covered with a range of perspectives with attempts at fair and accurate representation of others’ arguments and content (where there are occasional and inevitable missteps on that I notice Neil making corrections and apologies where warranted, which wins points with me). Please carry on."

— Gregory Doudna, – January 2019
"I still wonder at all the material you turn out for Vridar. The more I read your stuff (and I still do, of course), the more I realize how much we all owe you. Your voice is unique."

— Earl Doherty, November 2013 (personal email)
It is worth saying another word of appreciation here for Neil Godfrey's effort to make Bruno Bauer accessible in English.

-- Peter Kirby, - May 2023
"For an excellent example of generally high-quality scholarship by someone who isn’t a biblical studies professor, see Neil Godfrey’s work posted on the website vridar.org."

— Tom Dykstra, – JOCABS 2015
"I find your blog most interesting and appreciate your ongoing effort to keep to the evidence for the issues discussed!"

-- Thomas L. Thompson, - April 2020
"Neil, You’ve done a clean job in your posting on ‘Jesus the Healer’. It reflects well on you. Best, John"

— John Moles, September 2011 (personal email)
"I’d like to thank you for this very nice representation of what I was trying to show in the book. It’s always gratifying when a reader zeroes in on exactly those aspects I thought were most interesting and most central to my argument. Thank you for this careful and engaged reading of my work – much appreciated!"

— Eva Mroczek, – June 2017
This is superb work, Neil, and reminds me of Albert Schweitzer’s work from a century ago. . . . .

I commend you for being the first to even TRY to translate Bruno Bauer’s brilliant Kritik der Evangelien und Geschichte ihres Ursprungs, which is now more than 150 years old.

. . . . .Thank you for your historic effort.

-- Paul Trejo, M.A., - November 2022
Editor, An English Edition of Bruno Bauer’s 1843 Christianity Exposed
"By the way, my thanks to Neil for an ongoing superb job of exposing Jim’s review for what it is: a farcical and none too effective exercise in mythicism assassination, nothing to do with rational, let alone unbiased, scholarship. I’m also happy to see even Jim giving Neil credit where credit is due."

— Earl Doherty, June 2011
"Thanks much for this book review. I think it expands, and contributes to, the effort in honouring Thomas that we with Lukasz originally had in mind with this volume. Best, Emanuel"

-- Emanuel Pfoh - August 2020
"Neil, for what it is worth it is obvious to me that if you had earlier in life tracked into a graduate program at one of the world’s leading research universities you would be one of the world’s formidable ones. You are doing essentially the same quality now (apart from the philology and languages) except mostly sticking to commenting on others’ work as informed comment/discussion."

— Gregory Doudna, – January 2019
"Fantastic. I’m so glad you’re helping to spread these ideas!"

Nancy Fraser - June 2019 (personal email)
"Thanks for your very elaborate review! I realized that I hadn’t added your blog to our blogroll. This oversight has been corrected. Looking forward to more segments."

— Anthony Le Donne, – September 2009
"I always enjoy reading Neil’s blog because I think that he is careful, thorough, intellectually fair, and honest."

— April DeConick, – November 2007

Neil Godfrey on The Folly of Bayesian Probability in “Doing History”: “Let me try to be more direct than my reply above, and then I want to add one other point.…” Jan 16, 10:45
Neil Godfrey on The Folly of Bayesian Probability in “Doing History”: “Hi Petr and thanks for replying. I thought I had lost you for a moment there. I find the answer…” Jan 15, 21:28
Neil Godfrey on Miracles with Multiple Jewish and Roman Eyewitnesses: “We exist because of the Big Bang. We came to be because of evolution. None of that robs us of…” Jan 15, 20:33
Sean Anderson on Miracles with Multiple Jewish and Roman Eyewitnesses: “Neil – you’re so smart ! and explaining all those purported miracles Please tell me why we exist at all,…” Jan 15, 19:37
Petr Jancar on The Folly of Bayesian Probability in “Doing History”: “So I understand that you can still see as sensible to continue our discussion; I will just not be always…” Jan 15, 19:19
Thomas Worthington on How to Recognize a Trustworthy Consensus: “I would add: 4. Reasoned dissent is met with reasoned rebuttal. “It’s obvious, innit?” is a bad sign, for example.” Jan 15, 15:38
Neil Godfrey on Earl Doherty’s response to Bart Ehrman‘s Did Jesus Exist?: “Thanks. Fixed now. But you deserve an award for putting up with such an ugly looking page with all that…” Jan 15, 05:19
John Hunt on Earl Doherty’s response to Bart Ehrman‘s Did Jesus Exist?: “Chapter on Ignatius missing I think. Link goes to Papias.” Jan 15, 03:31
Neil Godfrey on The Folly of Bayesian Probability in “Doing History”: “No need. The context sets the tone, rarely a single word. I want understanding between us. By the way, with…” Jan 13, 02:50

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

The Revelation of John

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Origin and Development of the Nero Redivivus Myth

Hadrian as Nero redivivus

Share this:

Like this:

The legend of Nero redux or Nero redivivus

Emperor Worship in Asia Minor

666 – the number of the beast

The seven kings of Revelation 17

The destruction of Jerusalem

In touch with early theology (e.g. Paul’s teachings)

The earthquake of Laodicea in 61 CE.

Church hierarchies

Time of war and crisis

Persecutions – Nero and Domitian

Twelve apostles and Babylon

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!

Testimony of Irenaeus

Share this:

Like this: