Historical Background to the Book of Revelation

Historical Background to the Book of Revelation 

Introduction 

In the history of the Church the Book of the Revelation to John has gotten mixed reviews. There have been those who, with the reformer Martin Luther, would relegate the book to an appendix to the New Testament, asserting that it is too violent, and that it does not emphasize the central message of the Gospel. Some insist that it is too difficult to understand, or that its content and message are irrelevant to the Church in our own generation, and that it should be avoided because its content appeals too much to the “lunatic fringe.” Others would insist that this book and the Book of Daniel, its counterpart in the Hebrew Bible, are the most important books in the Bible. 

But there are still others, including myself, who simply believe that, when interpreted in its proper historical and literary context, the late first century CE, the Revelation provides a message relevant to Christians in any generation. With patience, common sense, and careful use of the tools of Biblical scholarship the Revelation can be appreciated, not only as a carefully crafted literary work of art, but also as a book that provides a meaningful message for Christians today. 

It is not surprising that the Book of the Revelation, with its narratives of visions and its elaborate symbolism, has been interpreted in differing ways. Our approach will be to assume that the original readers understood its central message and most of its details with little difficulty. We will assume that the original readers found its message relevant to their own circumstances in the Roman Province of Asia (modern Turkey) in the last decade of the first century CE. 

We will assume further that Christians today can find the Revelation relevant in the same way that they would find a letter of Paul or a Gospel passage relevant. In those cases they would examine the text itself to understand just what is, and is not, being said. They would learn about the circumstances that caused the work to be written. They would learn about the writer’s background of thought and experience, and the circumstances of the original readers that called forth the writing. 

They would then ask if there are any parallels to the experiences of those early believers to their own contemporary experiences. Insofar as such a match can be made, the Revelation will be as relevant as any other writing in the Bible. As we approach the Revelation, we will assume that, for any contemporary interpretation of the Book to be acceptable, it must have had that same meaning for the earliest readers. We will assume, as Haddon Robinson, a great conservative scholar of an earlier generation, once said, “The Bible can never mean [today] what it never meant [in the writer’s own time].” 

Revelation 1: Historical Background 

In his opening sentence the author identifies the class of literature to which his work belongs: it is an “apocalypse,” a work of “revelation literature.” The author also tells his readers in general terms just what his work is about. It has to do with the current events in his own generation, and with events that he understands will take place “soon” (Revelation 1:1, 3; cf. 3:11; 22:10, 12, 20). The writer understands that God has instructed him to warn his fellow Christians about an impending crisis in his own generation. 

Just what was the crisis that the writer expected to happen so soon? The traditional view has been that the writer was expecting the End of this Present Age, the final crisis of world history, along with the “parousia,” the return of Christ in victory and judgment. In this view, everything else in the writer’s visions—the plagues, the catastrophes, the emergence of an “anti-Christ” figure, the fall of a great city/empire, the eschatological battle (“Armageddon”), and the “millennium,”—are the “signs” in world history heralding the great “Day of the Lord.” 

But we cannot do justice to the writer’s plain opening statement by suggesting, as many “dispensationalist” writers do, that the writer was describing the entire course of history until the “End” as being imminent only because these events were to begin “shortly.” Whatever earthly realities might correspond to the writer’s symbols, it is clear that he expected these things “soon” to be accomplished in their entirety in the generation of his own lifetime and that of his original readers. 

But there are increasing numbers of Biblical interpreters who are concluding that the End of the present age was only part of the writer’s concerns, and by no means the most important part. The writer’s primary concern was his expectation of the imminent persecution of Christians in Asia by the Roman Empire, in response to Christian rejection of the practice of Emperor-worship. In this view all the varied imagery and symbolism has no other purpose than to set that crisis into perspective. They disclose that the anticipated sufferings of Christians are held in the eternal purpose of God, Who controls history, and Who will, in God’s own good time, bring it to its proper End. 

Such a view does not necessarily deny the idea of a “second” coming of Jesus. In fact, the idea of the “parousia” was never very far from the view of most first century Christians, including all of the New Testament writers, except, perhaps, the writers of the Gospels according to Luke (with Acts) and John. They did believe that the “parousia” of Jesus was a genuine possibility within their own lifetimes. Yet the more immediate crisis that the writer of the Revelation anticipated, in this view, was the persecution that Christians in Asia at that time either were then experiencing, or were expecting to experience “soon.” 

It is not necessary for the present-day reader to form a final opinion at the beginning concerning one of these views. It will be more helpful to read the book with a mind open regarding both possibilities. It is clear, however, that if the “parousia” was the primary thing the writer was expecting “soon,” then it certainly did not happen. That fact has tended to weaken some of the relevance of the book for later generations of the Church, causing interpreters in those later generations to keep re-figuring the numbers and the symbols to make them apply to a much later time. 

On the other hand, if the main subject of the book was a “second coming” that was not supposed to take place until twenty or more centuries after the writer’s own time, then that idea alone certainly would have held little or no relevance to the needs of the earliest readers. Indeed, it would have had no relevance to the needs of any of the succeeding generations of readers, except those who would live in the final generation, in which the events of the End were destined to occur. Yet our writer clearly seems to be writing with the needs of his own generation in mind, especially the needs of the seven specific congregations to which his book is addressed. 

Traditionally the Book of the Revelation has been assigned to a date late in the reign of the Roman Emperor Domitian, who died about 96 CE. The descriptions of historical circumstances given in the book, even in symbolic form, seem to fit the years 90-96 CE. Some portions of the book may have originated as early as the reign of Vespasian, shortly after the death of Nero in 68 CE. The book seems to suggest that some of the anticipated persecutions were already being experienced by some of his readers, and that he believed a much greater series was about to begin. 

Persecutions of Christians certainly had taken place during the reign of Nero, beginning about 64 CE, but they were confined primarily to the vicinity of the city of Rome itself. In the last few years of Domitian’s reign, c. 90-96 CE, it appears persecution of Christians had begun to occur in other areas of the empire, especially in the province of Asia. The persecutions under Domitian were directly related to the practice of Emperor worship. But wholesale, Empire-wide persecution of Christians, simply because they were Christians, did not occur as the writer of the Revelation expected. Probably this was because Domitian was assassinated before the full-scale persecution got underway, although, of course, they did take place under succeeding Emperors. But it is clear that some knowledge of the reigns of Nero and Domitian is essential for an understanding of the Book of the Revelation. 

NERO 

No one ever started life with a worse heritage than the Emperor Nero. His father, Ahenobarbus, was notorious for his wickedness. He killed one man for no other crime than refusing to drink more wine; he deliberately ran over a child while driving his chariot along the Appian Way; in a brawl in the Roman Forum he gouged out the eyes of a Roman nobleman. 

Likewise Nero’s mother Agrippina was also one of the most terrible women in history. When Ahenobarbus became aware that he and Agrippina were to have a child, he cynically said that nothing but a monstrous abomination could come from himself and her. After Ahenobarbus’ death, when Agrippina later married the Emperor Claudius, she had only one ambition—somehow to make her son Nero Emperor. She had been warned by soothsayers [who always tell the sooth, the whole sooth, and nothing but the sooth!] that if Nero became Emperor the result would be disaster for her and for the Roman Empire. After five years of marriage Agrippina had Claudius poisoned, and she bribed the army to support Nero as Emperor over Claudius’ own son Brittanicus, who was soon assassinated. 

Rome was never better governed during the first five years of Nero’s reign. While Nero busied himself at painting, sculpture, music, and drama, the wise stoic philosopher Seneca and other upright men governed the Empire for him. But then Nero embarked on a career of vicious crime. He would roam the streets with other vicious young men, attacking all whom he encountered. He murdered his rival Brittanicus. No young man or woman was safe from Nero’s lust. He publicly married a young man named Sporus in a state wedding, and took him on a bridal tour of Greece; then he took the wife of his best friend as his mistress, and he eventually kicked her to death after she became pregnant. 

He forced the philosopher Seneca to commit suicide. His mother Agrippina made some attempts to control him, and he then turned against her. He made repeated attempts to murder her—once by poison, once by causing the roof of her house to collapse, once by sending her to sea in a leaky boat. Finally he sent someone to stab her to death. When she saw what was about to happen, it is said she exclaimed, “Strike my womb first, because it bore a Nero!” 

One of Nero’s great passions was building. In 64 CE there was a great fire in Rome that burned for weeks. There was not the slightest doubt that Nero had the fire started, and that he hindered every attempt to extinguish it. The people recognized this, but Nero tried to shift the blame to the Christians. Then the most sadistic of persecutions broke out. He had Christians sewn up into the skins of wild animals and set savage hunting dogs on them. He had Christians enclosed in sacks with heavy stones and flung into the Tiber River. He had them coated with tar and set afire as living torches to light the gardens of his palace at night while parties were going on. It was probably during this period that he had Peter executed by crucifixion and Paul by beheading. 

The Roman historian Tacitus describes Nero’s persecution in the first mention of Christians by a source outside the New Testament, in his Annals of Imperial Rome (15:44): 

. . . But all human efforts, all the lavish gifts of the Emperor, and all the propitiations of the gods did not banish the sinister belief that the conflagration was the result of an [Imperial] order. Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt, and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called “Christians” by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, had suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our Prefects, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition broke out, not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their center and become popular. 

Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty [i.e., to being Christians]; then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much for the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against humankind. Mockery of every sort was added to their deaths. Covered with the skins of beasts, they were torn by dogs and perished, or were nailed to crosses, or were doomed to the flames and burnt, to serve as a nightly illumination when daylight had expired. Nero offered his gardens for the spectacle, and was exhibiting a show in the circus, while he mingled with the people in the dress of a charioteer or stood aloft on a chariot. Hence, even for criminals who deserve extreme and exemplary punishment, there arose a feeling of compassion; for it was not, as it seemed, for the public good, but to glut one man’s cruelty, that they were being destroyed. 

It could not last. Not long after this the dissatisfaction with Nero’s rule became so strong that his generals began to lead armies in rebellion. The Senate got up its courage and declared Nero a public enemy. In the end he was forced to commit suicide, and his last words are said to have been, “What a great artist is perishing in me!” 

The year was 68 CE. Writings from this period indicate that a belief soon arose that Nero was not really dead, but was hiding in the East, among the Parthians [Persians], and that he was raising armies to return and to destroy Rome itself. Eventually several pretenders even appeared, who were claiming to be Nero. The Roman historian Suetonius, in The Lives of the Twelve Caesars (Nero, 7) reports: 

He met his death in the thirty-second year of his age, on the anniversary of [his] murder of [his wife] Octavia, and such was the public rejoicing that the people put on liberty caps and ran about all over the city. Yet there were some who for a long time decorated his tomb with spring and summer flowers, and now produced his statues . . . and now his edicts, as if he were still alive and would shortly return and deal destruction to his enemies. Nay more, Vologaesus, king of the Parthians, when he sent envoys to the Senate to renew his alliance, earnestly begged this too, that honor be paid to the memory of Nero. In fact, twenty years later, when I was a young man, a person of obscure origin appeared, who gave out that he was Nero, and the name was still in such favor with the Parthians that they supported him vigorously and surrendered him with great reluctance. 

Another form of this belief in the myth that Nero was not actually dead was the Nero redivivus myth, the concept that Nero had in fact died in 68 C.E. but would rise again. Many apocalyptic writers of this period, including the Book of the Revelation, identified this “Nero resurrected” with the concept of an “anti-Christ.” For example, we read in the Sibylline Oracles (5:361 f.): 

There shall be at the last time, about the waning of the moon, a world-consuming war, deceitful in guilefulness. And there shall come from the ends of the earth the man who murdered his mother, fleeing and devising sharp-edged plans. He shall ruin all the earth and gain all power and surpass all men in cunning. That for which he perished he shall seize at once. And he shall destroy many men and great tyrants and burn all men as none ever did. 

We need only recall the persistent belief in some quarters that Adolf Hitler and his henchmen Martin Bormann and Dr. Joseph Mengele survived the fall of Berlin to the Russians at the end of World War II, to recapture some of the same kinds of feelings those first century Christians must have had about a possible return from the dead of the Emperor Nero. 

Domitian 

Can the Emperor Domitian reasonably be identified with the evil force personified in the Nero redivivus myth? According to the Roman historian Suetonius, Domitian was, like Nero, an object of terror and hatred to all. Suetonius tells of Domitian at the beginning of his reign spending hours in seclusion every day doing nothing but catching flies and stabbing them with a keenly sharpened stylus. Any psychologist would find that to be a curiously revealing picture. 

Domitian was insanely jealous and suspicious. He formed an attachment to a famous actor named Paris. One of the pupils of Paris so resembled his teacher that many supposed the pupil was Paris’ son. Domitian promptly had this man murdered. The historian Hermogenes wrote things Domitian did not like; Domitian had him executed, and even had the scribe who copied the manuscript crucified. Senators were slaughtered right and left. 

Early in Domitian’s reign he appeared wearing a golden crown with the figures of the god Jupiter and the goddesses Juno and Minerva on it, and he claimed to be the god Jupiter. He began all of his official edicts with the words, “Our Lord and God (Latin: Dominus et Deus) commands that this be done: . . . ” Soon that was the only way Domitian could be addressed. Domitian was the very first Roman Emperor to make Caesar-worship compulsory, and thereby he became responsible for unleashing the flood-tides of persecution on the Christian Church. 

With the exception of the Emperor Gaius “Caligula,” Domitian was the first Emperor to take the idea of his divinity seriously, and to demand that he be worshipped. The difference is that Caligula was definitely insane. Although there also may have been traces of insanity about Domitian, the general consensus of the historians is that Domitian was sane, and that may be an even more terrifying thought. 

It may well be that the writer of the Revelation saw in Domitian the re-incarnation of Nero. Others did precisely the same thing. The Roman poet Juvenal, who once said that to speak with Domitian about the weather was to take your life in your own hands, spoke of Rome being enslaved to a “bald-headed Nero” (Domitian was bald). Juvenal was exiled and eventually murdered for his opinions. The early Christian writer Tertullian called Domitian “a man of Nero’s type of cruelty” and a “sub-Nero,” a verdict echoed by the early Church historian, Eusebius of Caesarea. 

So here is the historical background to the Book of the Revelation, especially chapters 13 and 17. All over the Roman Empire in 95 CE people were being commanded to call Domitian “God”—or die. There was no escape. Christians were being confronted with a choice: Caesar or Christ! 

Based on commentaries by George B. Caird in Harper’s/Black’s NT Commentaries and William Barclay in the Daily Study Bible Commentary.