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The Date of John's Apocalypse. The Evidence of some Roman Historians Reconsidered*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2009

Albert A. Bell Jr
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Abstract

One of the thorniest questions in New Testament scholarship is the date of the composition of John's Apocalypse. Majority opinion now assigns that exotic book to the last decade of the first century A.D., ὸ , as Irenaeus says. But there are numerous problems with this date, and it is the contention of this study that the most natural date, the date indicated by the book itself and confirmed by outside sources, especially by the Roman historians of the early second century Tacitus, Suetonius and Plutarch is the period immediately following Nero's death in June of 68, that calamitous time known as the Year of the Four Emperors.

Type
Articles
Information
New Testament Studies , Volume 25 , Issue 1 , October 1978 , pp. 93 - 102
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1978

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References

1 Adv. haer. 5. 30, 3. The Greek is preserved in Eus. HE 3. 18.

2 Caird, G. B., The Revelation of St. John the Divine (New York: Harper & Row, 1966)Google Scholar, p. 4. A case in point is Irenaeus confusion of the apostle James with James, the brother of the Lord (Adv. haer.3. 12, 14).

3 His confusion, e.g., over the interpretation of the number 666. He does not consider any emperor's name a possibility and finally settles on TEITAN as the most likely answer. He also says the book was written ἐὶ ἡ Yet it has been in circulation long enough for the variant 616 to have become common, and Irenaeus must defend 666 as the reading in omnibus antiquis et probatissimis et veteribus scripturis (Adv. haer. 5. 20, 1).

4 Newman, B., The fallacy of the Domitian hypothesis, N.T.S. x (1962 1963), 138.Google Scholar

5 Introduction to the New Testament (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1965), p. 327.Google Scholar

1 Op. cit. p. 6.

2 67. 14. 2.

3 For example, divine annunciation to his mother, 1. 45; teaching in the temple (of Asclepius) while a youth, 1. 11; various healings, 3. 389; revivification of a young girl from , 4. 45.

4 Dio's Roman History, transl. by Cary, E. (Loeb Classical Library; London: Heinemann, 1914), i, xxiii.Google Scholar

5 52. 140.

1 While it is hardly substantial evidence, it is worth a footnote to point out that Clemens' father, Flavius Sabinus, was criticized for being meek, unaggressive and timorous (Tac, Hist. 3. 65, 75). Sons are frequently unlike their fathers, it is true, but just about as often do resemble them. And our man is named clemens, after all.

2 Tac. Ann. 2. 85; Suet. Claudius 25. Cf. Smallwood, E. M. in Oxford Classical Dictionary (2nd ed.), P. 565.Google Scholar

3 Ant. Jud. 20. 195, 252; Vita 16. Josephus calls her . Smallwood (The alleged Jewish tendencies of Poppaea Sabina, J.T.S. x (1959), 32935) has shown that this term is used of devotees of various cults and may mean little more than piousGoogle Scholar. But even that is a surprising quality for a Jew to attribute to Poppaea.

1 Cf. the fates of various wives in Tac. Ann. 6. 18; 15. 71; 16. 20. Whether the wife of an upperclass criminal was executed or banished seems to have depended on the emperor's whim or his assessment of the threat she posed.

2 Knudsen, J., The lady and the Emperor, Church History xiv (1944), 1732.Google Scholar

3 Milburn, R. L., The persecution of Domitian, Church Quarterly Review cxxxix (1944 1945), 15464.Google Scholar

4 Tac. Ann. 15. 44.

5 HE 3. 17.

6 Clement of Rome and the persecution of Domitian, N.T.S. xix (1963 1964), 254.Google Scholar

7 Eus. HE 3. 20.

8 Nero 16. 2.

1 The early persecutions and Roman law again, J.T.S. iii (1952), 202.Google Scholar

2 Christianity and the Roman Government (London: Allen & Unwin, 1925), p. 76.Google Scholar

3 Caird, Revelation, p. 214.

4 Revelation, Interpreter's Bible (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1951), xii, 353.Google Scholar

5 Die Jdische Apokalyptik und die johanneische Tiervision, Recherches de Science Religieuse lx (1972), 17392.Google Scholar

1 Op. cit. p. 354.

2 Dio 66. 19; Suet. Nero 57. 2.

3 Hist. 2. 1.

4 Aug. 26. 1.

5 Ann. 1. 1.

6 Ann. 3. 62, 4. 34, 6. 16, 13. 3, 14. 9; Hist. 1. 90, 3. 68.

7 Suetonius says Nero placed Apollo at the head of his pantheon (Nero 25. 3, 53), and a coin type of 646 has Apollo on the reverse, the first such use of this god on Roman coins since Augustus' reign. Grant, M. (Roman History from Coins Cambridge Univ. Press, 1968, p. 32) says that Nero's too-long back hair on these coins is deliberately Apolline.Google Scholar

1 Irenaeus explains John's silence on this point: nomen autem eius tacuit, quoniam dignum non est praeconari a sancto Spiritu (Adv. haer. 5. 30, 4).

2 A recent example is Miguens, M., Los Reyes de Apc. 17, 9 ss, Esiudios Biblicos xxxii (1973), 524.Google Scholar

3 Galba 27. 6. Cf. Tac. Hist. 2. 37.

4 Brevariarum ab urbe condita, 7. 12, 1618.

5 This practice carried over into the imperial period because it was a convenient way to promote more men to consular rank and thus increase the number of proconsuls available for provincial governorships. But the year always bore the names of the first two consuls, the ordinarii.

1 Rist, op. cit. p. 354.

2 Op. cit. p. 329.

3 Ann. 14. 27.

4 Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum 3935.

1 Sherwin-White, A. N., Roman Society and Roman Law in the New Testament (Oxford Univ. Press, 1963), pp. 35.Google Scholar

2 Rist, Revelation, pp. 3834.

3 Lopuszanski, G., La police romaine et les chrtiens, L'Antiquit Classique xx (1951), 647.Google Scholar

4 Revelation, p. 354.

5 Sherwin-White, art. cit. p. 204.

1 Kmmel somehow translates this to mean that frightful danger threatens all of Christendom (Introduction, p. 327).

2 Hist. 1. 2, II.

3 Hist. 4. 54. The Latin: nihil aeque quam incendium Capitolii, ut finem imperio adesse crederent impulerat.