202 CHAPTER VIII CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE APOSTOLIC CHURCH. about 170, assigns the exile to the end of the reign of lypse itself, and a comparison with the fourth Gospel, Domitian, who ruled from 81 to 96.581 He was the second favor an earlier date, before the destruction of Jerusalem, Roman emperor who persecuted Christianity, and ban- and during the interregnum which followed the death of ishment was one of his favorite modes of punishment.582 Nero (68), when the beast, that is the Roman empire, was Both facts give support to this tradition. After a prom- wounded, but was soon to be revived (by the accession of ising beginning he became as cruel and bloodthirsty as Vespasian). If there is some foundation for the early traNero, and surpassed him in hypocrisy and blasphemous dition of the intended oil-martyrdom of John at Rome, self-deification. He began his letters: “Our Lord and or at Ephesus, it would naturally point to the Neronian God commands,” and required his subjects to address persecution, in which Christians were covered with inhim so.583 He ordered gold and silver statues of himself flammable material and burned as torches. The unmisto be placed in the holiest place of the temples. When takable allusions to imperial persecutions apply much he seemed most friendly, he was most dangerous. He better to Nero than to Domitian. The difference between spared neither senators nor consuls when they fell under the Hebrew coloring and fiery vigor of the Apocalypse his dark suspicion, or stood in the way of his ambition. and the pure Greek and calm repose of the fourth GosHe searched for the descendants of David and the kins- pel, to which we have already alluded, are more easily men of Jesus, fearing their aspirations, but found that explained if the former was written some twenty years they were poor and innocent persons.584 Many Chris- earlier. This view has some slight support in ancient tratians suffered martyrdom under his reign, on the charge dition,586 and has been adopted by the majority of modof atheism—among them his own cousin, Flavius Clem- ern critical historians and commentators.587 ens, of consular dignity, who was put to death, and his We hold, then, as the most probable view, that John wife Domitilla, who was banished to the island of Panda- was exiled to Patmos under Nero, wrote the Apocalypse teria, near Naples.585 In favor of the traditional date may soon after Nero’s death, a.d. 68 or 69, returned to Ephealso be urged an intrinsic propriety that the book which sus, completed his Gospel and Epistles several (perhaps closes the canon, and treats of the last things till the final twenty) years later, and fell asleep in peace during the consummation, should have been written last. year of Trajan, after a.d. 98. Nevertheless, the internal evidence of the ApocaThe faithful record of the historical Christ in the 581 Irenaeus, Adv. Haer., V. 30, says that the Apocalypse whole fulness of his divine-human person, as the emwas seen πρὸς τῳ τέλει της Δομετιανου ἀρχης. So also Euse- bodiment and source of life eternal to all believers, with bius, H. E. III. 18, 20, 33; Chron. ad ann. 14 Domitiani; and Je- the accompanying epistle of practical application, was rome, De vir. illustr., c. 9. This view has prevailed among com- the last message of the Beloved Disciple at the threshold mentators and historians till quite recently, and is advocated by Hengstenberg, Lange, Ebrard (and by myself in the Hist. of the Ap. Ch., § 101, pp. 400 sqq.). It is indeed difficult to set aside the clear testimony of Irenaeus, who, through Polycarp, was connected with the very age of John. But we must remember that he was mistaken even on more important points of history, as the age of Jesus, which he asserts, with an appeal to tradition, to have been above fifty years. 582 Tacitus congratulates Agricola (Vita Agr., c. 44) that he did not live to see under this emperor “tot consularium caedes, tot nobilissimarum feminarum exilia et fugas.” Agricola, whose daughter Tacitus married, died in 93, two years before Domitian. 583 Suetonius, Domit., c. 13: “Dominus et Deus noster hoc fieri jubet. Unde institutum posthac, ut ne scripto quidem ac sermone cujusquam appellaretur aliter.” 584 Hegesippus in Eusebius, Hist. Eccl., III., 19, 20. Hegesippus, however, is silent about the banishment of John, and this silence has been used by Bleek as an argument against the fact. 585 Dion Cassius in the abridgment of Xiphilinus, 67, 14.
586 So the title of the Syriac translation of the Apocalypse (which, however, is of much later date than the Peshitto, which omits the Apocalypse): “Revelatio quam Deus Joanni Evangelistae in Patmo insula dedit, in quam a Nerone Caesare relegatus fuerat.”Clement of Alexandria (Quis dives salv., c. 42, and quoted by Eusebius, III., 23) says indefinitely that John returned from Patmos to Ephesus after the death of “the tyrant” (του τυράννου τελευτήσαντος), which may apply to Nero as well as to Domitian. Origen mentions simply a Roman βασιλεύς. Tertullian’s legend of the Roman oil-martyrdom of John seems to point to Nero rather than to any other emperor, and was so understood by Jerome (Adv. Jovin. I. 26), although Tertullian does not say so, and Jerome himself assigns the exile and the composition of the Apocalypse to the reign of Domitian (De vir. ill., c. 9). Epiphanius (Haer. LI. 33) puts the banishment back to the reign of Claudius (a.d. 4153), which is evidently much too early. 587 Neander, Gieseler, Baur, Ewald, Lücke, Bleek, De Wette, Reuss, Düsterdieck, Weiss, Renan, Stanley, Lightfoot, Westcott.
