Questioning Irenaeus

In a 2003 article in Biblica , Thomas Slater gives reasons for re-thinking the common assignment of Revelation to the reign of Domitian. He begins with questions about Irenaeus’ accuracy. Irenaeus claims to have known Polycarp who knew John, but Slater argues that Polycarp would have been too young when John died to receive much training from him, and Irenaeus too would have been quite young at the time of Polycarp’s martyrdom. Slater does not believe that the evangelist John wrote Revelation, and so he takes that as another strike against Irenaeus.

More telling are his criticisms of Irenaeus’ claims about persecution during the reign of Domitian. There was no empire-wide persecution at the end of the first century, and he cites historians who have shown that “the writings of the Roman historians who were Irenaeus’ primary sources had themselves intentionally given a poor depiction of Domitian in order to ingratiate themselves to Trajan and his new imperial family.” The pressure to conform to Roman imperial religion was not noticeably stronger in the late first century than it was at the beginning of the empire. Cities of Asia Minor competed for recognition as the official site of the imperial cult, and “members of the imperial family received divine honors during Augustus’ reign. Dio Cassius writes that during Augustus’ reign Roman citizens in Asia were required to worship the divine Julius Caesar; the provincials, Augustus. Pausanias writes that there was a temple to Octavia, Augustus’ sister, in the first century BCE. By 14 BCE, Aphrodisias had a temple dedicated to Augustus.”

In short, “pressure to conform to religio-political traditions could have occurred in the region at any time in the latter decades of the first century BCE and the first century CE, not only during the rule of Domitian.” Slater concludes that “a Domitianic date is not the only option for dating the Apocalypse.”

Slater also responds to the argument that “Babylon” was a code name for Rome during the first century by pointing to texts where “Babylon” is a code name for any enemy of Israel. Sibylline Oracle 3 says, for example, that the Babylonians destroyed the second temple, though we know from other sources that the Syrian Seleucids were the real culprits. Thus, it is entirely possible that “the Apocalypse could be using the code name Babylon to represent the political presence of Satan in the world and its eventual downfall. This is precisely what one finds in Rev 12,1–13,18 and 17,1–9,4: Babylon is the enemy of God that must be punished in the end-times. Using Babylon in this way is consistent with the use of such names to symbolically refer to an enemy of the elect community, in some instances using Kittim, in others, Egypt.” Indeed, “It is just as conceivable that Revelation is reading Daniel and re-applying the meaning of Babylon for a pre-70 date prior to the destruction of the temple.”

If this is what Revelation does, it is perfectly consistent with the way other Jewish writers of the time re-deployed images from Scripture and Israel’s history to new situations: “Jewish apocalypses regularly adapted and transformed traditional materials for their own times. The Apocalypse to John clearly follows suit. For example, Davidic messianic expectations (Rev 5,4-12; cf. 4 Es 11,36-46), the one like a son of man (cf. Dan 7,13 and Rev 1,7-16) and the Leviathan-Behemoth myth (Rev 13,1-18; cf. 4 Es 6,49) are all recast in John’s Apocalypse.”

The references to emperors in Revelation 13 and 17, moreover, fit with a date in the late 60s. Interpreters have often taken the Domitian date as a given, and worked backward when dealing with the kings mentioned in these chapters. If one works in the other direction, however, we have a different picture: “After Nero’s death in 68 CE, Galba, Otho and Vitellius all ruled briefly as emperor until Vespasian eventually took control in 69 CE. Bell, Rowland and Wilson have all shown that ancient writings, including Sibylline Oracle 5 and writers such as Suetonius, Tacitus and Eutropius, included these three men in their respective lists of emperors. If John included Galba, Otho and Vitellius, and there is no reason to think that John’s list would differ significantly from others, Revelation 13 and 17 would indicate, based upon the rules of exegeting ex eventu prophecy, that the book was written between 68-70 CE.”

Slater then summarizes the work of several scholars who have argued that the book was written somewhere in that time period, between 68 and 70 AD. The argument is largely from Revelation 13 and 17, the reference to the kings who have come and gone. Nero, they all agree, is the fifth emperor, and they argue that Revelation includes Galba, Otho, and Vitellius in the list; since the book is written in the reign of the sixth emperor, it is written in the reign of Galba. These calculations all depend on beginning the list with Augustus rather than Julius, which is questionable. If we start with Julius, that pushes everything back a notch and the sixth emperor who “now is” is Nero.

The argument partly rests on Revelation 11:1-2, which is taken as evidence that the temple is still standing at the time the book is written. One scholar, JC Wilson, claims that there is no ex eventu prophecy in the book, and offers as evidence the inaccuracies of the prophesies in Revelation 11: The Romans took the entire temple, not just the court, and the Romans didn’t take 42 months to overthrow Jerusalem. Those objections rest, it seems to me, on a rigidly literalist reading of the chapter, in a book that is clearly not literal. 42 months is clearly symbolic – 3 1/2 years, half-seven – and the portion of the temple that is measured off seems to be not the architectural temple but the temple of Jesus’ disciples.

Slater himself believes that Revelation 17 includes an ex eventu prophecy in that it “predicts” Nero’s death that has already taken place. But of course this rests on the misidentification of the beginning of the king list mentioned above.

He concludes with a couple additional pieces of internal evidence for an early date. According to his reading, the use of the word “Jew” in 2:9 and 3:9 is “honorific”; the problem with the Jews being criticized is that they are not faithful Jews. John implicitly claims the title of “true Jew,” a self-identification that makes better sense in the 60s than in the 90s. He also suggests that an early date explains “why the book is so Jewish.”