a fact which requires for its explanation the assumption that the book emanated from certain literary circles influenced by John.
Date.—There are many indications of the date, which may be summarized as follows: (a) Condition of the Asian churches. (b) Persecution of the church. (c) Attitude of the author to Rome. (d) The Antichrist legend. (e) Primitive tradition and its confirmation through the discovery of references in the text to certain edicts of Domitian. As a result of these considerations we may arrive at the date of the work with almost greater certainty than that of any other New Testament book.
(a) Condition of the Churches.—Christianity appears to have already had a long history behind it. The fact that St Paul founded the church of Ephesus seems to have been forgotten. The earliest zeal has passed away and heathen ways of thought and life are tolerated and practised at Pergamum and Ephesus, and faith is- dying or dead at Laodicea and Sardis. These phenomena belong to a period considerably later than the time of Nero.
(b) Persecution of the Church.—Persecution is the order of the day. Each of the seven letters concludes with praise of those who have been victorious therein. There had been isolated instances of persecution at Ephesus, ii. 3, Philadelphia, 'iii. 8, 10, and at Smyrna, ii. 9, and of an actual martyrdom at Pergamum, ii. 13. But now a storm of persecution was about to break upon the universal church, iii. ro, and in the immediate future. Already the seer beholds the destined number of the martyrs complete, vi. 9–11: the great multitude whom no man could number, clothed in white before the throne of God, vii. 9: he exhorts his readers to patient endurance unto death, xiv. 12, and already sees them as victors in heaven, xv. 2. Over the true witnesses and martyrs he pronounces the hnal beatitude of the faithful: “Blessed are those who die in the Lord, ” xiv. 13.
Such an expectation of persecution is inexplicable from Nero's time. There is not a trace of any declaration of war on the universal church in his period such as the Apocalyptist anticipates and in part experiences. Christian persecution under Nero was an imperial caprice. The Christians were attacked on slanderous charges of superstition and secret abominations, but not as a church. Not till the last years of Domitian is it possible to discover conditions which would explain the apprehensions and experiences of our writer. So far as we can discover, no persecution was directed against Christians as Christians till Domitian's time. In the year A.D. 92 Flavius Clemens was put to death and his wife banished, on the ground that they were adherents of the new faith. Thus the temper of the book on this question demands some date after A.D. 90. It marks the transition, from the earlier tolerant attitude of Rome towards Christianity, to its later hostile attitude.
(c) Attitude of the Author towards Rome.—In earlier times the church had strongly impressed the duty of loyalty to Rome, as we see from the Epistle to the Romans and 1 Peter. This was before the pressure of the imperial cult was felt by the Christian church. But in the Apocalypse we have the experiences of a later date. The writer manifests the most burning hatred towards Rome and the worship of its head—the beast and the false prophet, who are actual embodiments of Satan. Such an attitude on the part of a Christian is not explicable before the closing years of Domitian; for, apart from Caligula, he was the first Roman emperor who consistently demanded divine honours.
(d) The Antichrist Legend.—We find at least two stages of the Neronic and Antichrist myth in the Apocalypse. The earliest form is not attested here, that Nero had not really been slain, but would speedily return and destroy his enemies. The first pretender appeared in A.D. 69, and was put to death in Cythnus. The second stage of this legend was that Nero had taken refuge in the Far East, and would return with the help of his Eastern subjects for the overthrow of Rome. Two pretenders arose in conformity with this expectation among the Parthians in A.D. 80 and 88. This widespread expectation has left its memorial in our book in xvi. 12 and in xvii. 16-17, which point to the belief that Rome would be destroyed by Nero and the Parthian kings. Finally, in xiii. and xvii. 8, 12-14, We have a later phase of the myth, in which there is a fusion of the Antichrist myth with that of Nero redivivus. This fusion could hardly have taken place before the first half of Domitian's reign, when the last Neronic pretender appeared. As soon as the hope of the living Nero could no longer be entertained, the way was prepared for this transformation of the myth. The living Nero was no longer expected to return from the East, but Nero was to be restored to life from the abyss by the dragon, i.e. Satan. This expectation is recounted in xiii., but it appears most clearly in the additions to xvii. Thus in xvii. 8 the reference to Nero redivivus as the Antichrist is manifest: “ The beast that thou sawest was, and is not, and is about to come up out of the abyss and to go into perdition.”[1] Thus again we are obliged to postulate a date not earlier than A.D. go for the book in its present form.
(e) Primitive Church Tradition and its Confirmation through the Discovery of References in the Text to Certain Edicts of Domitian.—The earliest external evidence is practically unanimous in ascribing the Apocalypse to the last years of Domitian; The oldest testimony is that of Irenaeus v. 30. 3: 5L' éKEi1»'OU (iv éppédrj T08 Kal 'rriv, A7FOK(l!.)U§ LLV éwpaxéros oi15é '~/rip 'lrpo 1ro})oU Xpovov éwpddn, 6.})¢iL oxeriov érri T6S fl/.Lerépas 'yel/eds, 'rrpos 'rqfi 'réhei 'TES Aope-nal/oi) dpxris. The rest of the patriotic evidence from Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Victorinus, Eusebius and Jerome will be found in Swete's Apocalypse' of St John2, xcix. seq. Though a few later authorities, such as Epiphanius and Theophylact, assign the book to earlier or later periods, the main body of early Christian tradition attests the date of its composition in the closing years of Domitian. Notwithstanding, on various critical grounds, Baur, Hilgenfeld, Lightfoot, Westcott, Hort and Beyschlag assigned the book to the reign of Nero, or to the years immediately following his death, while Weiss, Dusterdieck and Mommsen assign it to the time of Vespasian. When, however, we combine the preceding arguments with that of the early church tradition, the evidence for the Domitian date outweighs that for any other. And this conclusion receives remarkable confirmation from a recent fact brought forward by S. Reinach in an article in the Revue arehéologique, sér. III. t. xxxix. (1901), pp. 350-74, and reprinted in Cultes, mythes et religions, ii. 3 56-80 (1906). This fact explains a passage which has hitherto been a total enigma to' every expounder, i.e. vi. 6: “ A choenix of wheat for a denarius, and three choenikes of barley for a denarius, and the oil and the wine hurt thou not.” Swete writes here: “ The voice fixes a maximum price for the main food-stuffs. The denarius . . was the daily wage . . and a choenix of wheat
- ↑ Verse 11 postulates either a Vespasianic or Domitianic date: “And the beast that was, and is not, is himself also an eighth, and is of the seven; and he goeth into perdition.” In verse 10 it is stated that five of the seven had fallen, “the one is and another is not yet come, and when he cometh he must continue a little while.” If we reckon from Augustine and omit Galba, Otho and Vitellius, each of whom reigned only a few months, we arrive at Vespasian. The vision, therefore, belongs to his reign, A.D.. 69–79. Verse 11, with the exception of the words “ which was and is not, " leads to the identification of the eighth with Nero redivivus. But what then is to be made of the above reckoning when it was taken over by the Apocalyptist who wrote in Domitian's reign? Some scholars are of opinion that this writer identified Domitian with the eighth emperor, the Nero redivivus, the beast from the abyss. But this is unlikely, notwithstanding the fact that even some pagan writers, such as juvenal, Pliny and Martial (?), traced a resemblance between Domitian and Nero. On the other hand, if we refuse to accept this identification, and hold that the beast from the abyss is yet to come, any attempt at a strict exegesis of the text plunges us in hopeless difficulties. For Domitian in that case would be the sixth, and the preceding five would have to begin with Galba-a most, improbable supposition. But furthermore, since this new reckoning would exclude Nero, how could the eighth be said to be one of the seven, i.e. Nero? Bousset thinks that the Apocalyptist, knowing not what to make of this reckoning, left it standing as it was and attempted a new interpretation of the seven heads by taking them to refer to the seven hills of Rome in the addition he made to verse 9.
