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| The Apostle John and the Apocalypse. PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP
Chapter
XVIII.—The Apostle John and the
Apocalypse.
1. It
is said that in this persecution the apostle and evangelist John, who
was still alive, was condemned to dwell on the island of Patmos in
consequence of his testimony to the divine word.713
713 Unanimous tradition, beginning with Irenæus (V. 30. 3, quoted
just below, and again in Eusebius V. 8) assigns the banishment of John
and the apocalyptic visions to the reign of Domitian. This was formerly
the common opinion, and is still held by some respectable writers, but
strong internal evidence has driven most modern scholars to the
conclusion that the Apocalypse must have been written before the
destruction of Jerusalem, the banishment therefore (upon the assumption
that John wrote the Apocalypse, upon which see chap. 24, note 19)
taking place under Nero instead of Domitian. If we accept this, we have
the remarkable phenomenon of an event taking place at an earlier date
than that assigned it by tradition, an exceptional and inexplicable
thing. We have too the difficulty of accounting for the erroneousness
of so early and unanimous a tradition. The case thus stood for years,
until in 1886 Vischer published his pamphlet Die Offenbarung des
Johannes, eine jüdische Apocalypse in Christlicher Bearbeitung
(Gebhardt and Harnack’s Texte und Untersuchungen, Band II.
Heft. 3), which if his theory were true, would reconcile external and
internal evidence in a most satisfactory manner, throwing the original
into the reign of Nero’s successor, and the Christian recension
into the reign of Domitian. Compare especially Harnack’s appendix
to Vischer’s pamphlet; and upon the Apocalypse itself, see chap.
24, below. |
2. Irenæus, in the fifth
book of his work Against Heresies, where he discusses the number of the
name of Antichrist which is given in the so-called Apocalypse of
John,714 speaks as follows concerning him:715
715 Irenæus, Adv. Hær. V. 30. 3; quoted also below,
in Bk. V. chap. 8. |
3. “If it were necessary
for his name to be proclaimed openly at the present time, it would have
been declared by him who saw the revelation. For it was seen not long
ago, but almost in our own generation, at the end of the reign of
Domitian.”
4. To such a degree, indeed, did
the teaching of our faith flourish at that time that even those writers
who were far from our religion did not hesitate to mention in their
histories the persecution and the martyrdoms which took place during
it.716
716 Jerome, in his version of the Chron. of Eusebius (year of
Abr. 2112), says that the historian and chronographer Bruttius recorded
that many of the Christians suffered martyrdom under Domitian. Since
the works of Bruttius are not extant, we have no means of verifying the
statement. Dion Cassius (LXVII. 14) relates some of the banishments
which took place under Domitian, among them that of Flavia Domitilla,
who was, as we know, a Christian; but he does not himself say that any
of these people were Christians, nor does he speak of a persecution of
the Christians. |
5. And they, indeed, accurately
indicated the time. For they recorded that in the fifteenth year of
Domitian717
717 We
learn from Suetonius (Domit. chap. 15) that the events referred
to by Eusebius in the next sentence took place at the very end of
Domitian’s reign; that is, in the year 96 a.d., the fifteenth year of his reign, as Eusebius says.
Dion Cassius also (LXVII. 14) puts these events in the same
year. | Flavia Domitilla, daughter of a
sister of Flavius Clement, who at that time was one of the consuls of
Rome,718
718 Flavius Clemens was a cousin of Domitian, and his wife, Domitilla,
a niece of the emperor. They stood high in favor, and their two sons
were designated as heirs to the empire, while Flavius Clemens himself
was made Domitian’s colleague in the consulship. But immediately
afterward Clemens was put to death and Domitilla was banished.
Suetonius (Domit, chap. 15) accuses Clemens of
contemtissimæ inertiæ, and Dion Cassius (LXVII. 14) of
atheism (ἀθεότητος). These accusations are just such as heathen writers of
that age were fond of making against the Christians (compare, for
instance, Athenagoras’ Adv. Gent. chap. 4, and
Tertullian’s Apol. chap. 42). Accordingly it has been very
commonly held that both Flavius Clemens and Domitilla were Christians,
and were punished on that account. But early tradition makes only
Domitilla a Christian; and certainly if Clemens also—a man of
such high rank—had been a Christian, an early tradition to that
effect would be somewhere preserved. We must, therefore, conclude that
his offense was something else than Christianity. The very silence of
Christian tradition as to Clement is an argument for the truth of the
tradition in regard to Domitilla, and the heathen historians referred
to confirm its main points, though they differ in minor details. The
Acts of Martyrdom of Nereus and Achilles represent Domitilla as
the niece, not the wife, of Flavius Clemens, and Eusebius does the
same. More than that, while the heathen writers report that Domitilla
was banished to the island Pandeteria, these Acts, as well as
Eusebius and Jerome (Ep. adv. Eustachium, Migne’s ed.,
Ep. CVIII. 7), give the island of Pontia as the place of
banishment. Tillemont and other writers have therefore assumed that
there were two Domitillas,—aunt and niece,—one banished to
one island, the other to another. But this is very improbable, and it
is easier to suppose that there was but one Domitilla and but one
island, and that the discrepancies are due to carelessness or to the
mistakes of transcribers. Pandeteria and Pontia were two small islands
in the Mediterranean, just west of central Italy, and were very
frequently employed by the Roman emperors as places of exile for
prisoners. | was exiled with many others to the
island of Pontia in consequence of testimony borne to
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