notes
The Apocalypse of John
Introduction Part 2 of 2
Additional Reading:
Lowery, Robert A. Revelation’s Rhapsody: Listening to the Lyrics of the Lamb. Joplin, Missouri: College Press Publishing Company, 2006
Historical and Cultural Setting: For this bible study, we will be operating under the assumption that John wrote this “letter” to the churches in Asia Minor during the reign of Domitian (AD 81-96). This places the letter after the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple by the Romans. • Christians had been suffering persecution from two areas: • Jewish People: Beginning with the stoning of Stephen, Jewish people have held a certain feeling of hostility and though prohibited by the Romans from killing, they did imprison Christians, take property from them, kick them out of the Synagogues, and run them out of town. • Romans: Though Christianity suffered localized outbreaks of persecution under Nero, true Empire wide persecution did not break out until the reign of Domitian. • Rome’s problems with Christianity: • Atheism: Christians were considered Atheists because they worshiped only one God. In addition, Christians did not have any holy place, or idol. Therefore Christians were viewed as Atheists. • The problem Rome had with this is that they saw Rome’s success as a gift from the gods, so they also saw Christianity as a threat to the stability of the empire. • New Religion: Rome saw new religious movements as being subversive, and so they persecuted Christianity because of the threat they saw them to be. • Cannibalism: Christians were seen as being cannibals because of a misunderstanding about the Lord’s Supper. • Sexually Immoral: This stems from a misunderstanding of the closed love feasts, and identifying one another as brother and sister. • Rome also responded to the fact that they treated Jesus as their Lord and King instead of honoring Caesar as their emperor. (Continued on the next page)
The Apocalypse of John: Introduction
Αποκαλυψις Ιησου Χπιστου • Emperor Worship, the makings for a volatile situation:
• Romans had begun around the time of Augustus Caesar to venerate the deceased Caesar as a god. Accordingly, some cities began to build temples and shrines to Caesar and the religious movement called the Imperial Cult became mainstream. • Domitian is a special case, because he is the first emperor that insisted on being worshiped as a deity and called “Lord and God” before he died. • With his attitude and the growing trends in Roman culture, the Imperial cult which worshiped Caesar as God, and emphasized loyalty and support for the Roman government, began to grow greatly. • In order to avoid punishment (persecution) you had to worship the Emperor by throwing incense on an alter to him, for many in the empire this is not a big deal, but to Christians, this is a form of idolatry. • In addition, to belong to one of the many trade guilds, or civic societies it was a necessity to take part in the Imperial Cult worship. • This would mean that in order to buy and and sell goods as part of the guild you would have to participate in worshiping the Emperor. • Some theorize that the popular “mark of the beast” is identified with participating in Emperor worship to be able to buy and sell goods. • Jerusalem has been destroyed. • In AD 70 the Romans destroyed Jerusalem. • This results in a dispersion of the Jews. • This also means that Jerusalem is no longer one of the central focuses of the church. Type of Literature • Apocalyptic Literature: • The book of Revelation is considered to be part of this literary genre. • Though it is unique among the New Testament books, it is not unique to the Jewish cultural tradition. (Even in the bible, books like Daniel, Ezekiel, and Zechariah share Apocalyptic traits, but none of them are as developed as Revelation.) The Jewish culture, especially surrounding the period of time of the intertestamental period and time of Christ was steeped in Apocalyptic literature. It was something that they would be very familiar with and would understand without much difficulty. • Some of the characteristics of Apocalyptic literature include the following: • Otherworldly beings communicating a message (revelation) to humans. • Awareness of the supernatural and natural worlds. • View of the end of the universe. • God’s people completely delivered from evil. • Dealt with giving comfort to God’s people. • They also use deep symbolism and imagery as a type of hyper metaphor to describe people, places, and events. • Prophetic Literature: • Revelation is also considered a Prophetic book. • Many people look at prophesies as being something that deals exclusively with future events. • There are however examples of prophesies in the old and new testament that break the typically viewed mold as to what they speak about. • Some prophesies speak as God talking about past events looking at them from God’s perspective. • Some prophesies speak as God interpreting and revealing current events from the true point of view. • Others deal with prophesies for the near future. Events that will soon take place • Finally, sometimes God uses the prophetic word to reveal things in the distant future. • When we look at how God typically delivers prophetic words, many of them deal with God forth-telling the present instead of foretelling the future. The difference is that God is revealing the true situation in the present instead of what is coming in the future. • Typically we place Revelation in the category of future fulfillment in the distant future. What if (since John wrote it, and the recipients were 7 churches in the area of Asia minor during the reign of Domitian) it was written concerning events that were happening during that time period. What if people who were reading John’s Apocalypse read his words and saw what was going on around them and made the connection. • We will pursue the study from this perspective. Not that everything in Revelation has already happened, but that those reading it would understand.