This is a non-debate, non-cabala, non-esoterica, and non-gematria (except as occurs in the text of Rv 13:18) thread.
I specifically request that Geert van den Bos not post in this thread or in any other thread that I may start.
I propose to confine myself to factual information; however, if anyone wishes to take exception to what I may present herein, please do so in a debate thread started for that purpose.
The purpose of this thread is to present excerpts from a commentary that has been out of print for 106 years.
From The Apocalypse of St John I-III: The Greek Text with Introduction, Commentary, and Additional Notes, by the Late F. J. A. Hort, D.D. D.C.L., LL.D. Sometime Hulsean Professor and Lady Margaret's Reader in Divinity in the University of Cambridge (London: Macmillan, 1908):
To be continued...
I specifically request that Geert van den Bos not post in this thread or in any other thread that I may start.
I propose to confine myself to factual information; however, if anyone wishes to take exception to what I may present herein, please do so in a debate thread started for that purpose.
The purpose of this thread is to present excerpts from a commentary that has been out of print for 106 years.
From The Apocalypse of St John I-III: The Greek Text with Introduction, Commentary, and Additional Notes, by the Late F. J. A. Hort, D.D. D.C.L., LL.D. Sometime Hulsean Professor and Lady Margaret's Reader in Divinity in the University of Cambridge (London: Macmillan, 1908):
Grounds for asserting the Neronian date.
But two points seem decisive:
(1) The whole language about Rome and the empire, Babylon, and the Beast, fits the last days of Nero and the time immediately following, and does not fit the short local reign of terror under Domitian. Nero affected the imagination of the world as Domitian, as far as we know, never did. ....
(2) The book breathes the atmosphere of a time of wild commotion. To Jews and Christians such a time might seem to have in part begun from the breaking out of the Jewish war in the summer of 66. Two summers later Nero committed suicide, and then followed more than a year of confusion till the accession of Vespasian, and one long year more brings us to the Fall of Jerusalem. To the whole Roman world the year of confusion, if not the early months of Vespasian's reign, must have seemed wholly a time of weltering chaos. For nearly a century the empire had seemed to bestow on civilized mankind at least a settled peace, whatever else it might take away. The order of the empire was the strongest and stablest thing presented to the minds and imaginations of men. But now at last it had become suddenly broken up, and the earth seemed to reel beneath men's feet. Under Vespasian, however, the old stability seemed to return : it lasted on practically for a century more. Nothing at all corresponding to the tumultuous days after Nero is known in Domitian's reign, or the time which followed it. Domitian's proscriptions of Roman nobles, and Roman philosophers, and Roman Christians, were not connected with any general upheaval of society. It is only in the anarchy of the earlier time that we can recognize a state of things that will account for the tone of the Apocalypse.
It is therefore to no purpose that critic after critic protests that we have no evidence of the persecution of Christians beyond Rome. This is quite true, ― if we leave the Apocalypse out of sight, but it applies equally to the persecution of Domitian. The question really is (1) whether the Apocalypse is intelligible if there was no persecution of Christians except that local and apparently short persecution described by Tacitus; and (2) which of the two persecutions was most likely to call forth terrible echoes of itself in other lands. The absence of evidence doubtless comes from the absence of all Christian records for this period.
I do not wish to occupy time with commenting on the correspondence between Pliny and Trajan. But I am very thankful now to be able to refer to Lightfoot (Ign. 1. 7-17) as showing that it is wholly wrong either to treat Trajan as first introducing important persecution, or to suppose that previously the Christians were habitually confounded with the Jews by heathens, and therefore shared their immunities in the earlier period. Whether Christians were forbidden to exist, or condemned under more general laws, condemnation was assuredly always a danger which they had to fear : and there is no reason why this state of things should not date from the time of Nero.
....
But two points seem decisive:
(1) The whole language about Rome and the empire, Babylon, and the Beast, fits the last days of Nero and the time immediately following, and does not fit the short local reign of terror under Domitian. Nero affected the imagination of the world as Domitian, as far as we know, never did. ....
(2) The book breathes the atmosphere of a time of wild commotion. To Jews and Christians such a time might seem to have in part begun from the breaking out of the Jewish war in the summer of 66. Two summers later Nero committed suicide, and then followed more than a year of confusion till the accession of Vespasian, and one long year more brings us to the Fall of Jerusalem. To the whole Roman world the year of confusion, if not the early months of Vespasian's reign, must have seemed wholly a time of weltering chaos. For nearly a century the empire had seemed to bestow on civilized mankind at least a settled peace, whatever else it might take away. The order of the empire was the strongest and stablest thing presented to the minds and imaginations of men. But now at last it had become suddenly broken up, and the earth seemed to reel beneath men's feet. Under Vespasian, however, the old stability seemed to return : it lasted on practically for a century more. Nothing at all corresponding to the tumultuous days after Nero is known in Domitian's reign, or the time which followed it. Domitian's proscriptions of Roman nobles, and Roman philosophers, and Roman Christians, were not connected with any general upheaval of society. It is only in the anarchy of the earlier time that we can recognize a state of things that will account for the tone of the Apocalypse.
It is therefore to no purpose that critic after critic protests that we have no evidence of the persecution of Christians beyond Rome. This is quite true, ― if we leave the Apocalypse out of sight, but it applies equally to the persecution of Domitian. The question really is (1) whether the Apocalypse is intelligible if there was no persecution of Christians except that local and apparently short persecution described by Tacitus; and (2) which of the two persecutions was most likely to call forth terrible echoes of itself in other lands. The absence of evidence doubtless comes from the absence of all Christian records for this period.
I do not wish to occupy time with commenting on the correspondence between Pliny and Trajan. But I am very thankful now to be able to refer to Lightfoot (Ign. 1. 7-17) as showing that it is wholly wrong either to treat Trajan as first introducing important persecution, or to suppose that previously the Christians were habitually confounded with the Jews by heathens, and therefore shared their immunities in the earlier period. Whether Christians were forbidden to exist, or condemned under more general laws, condemnation was assuredly always a danger which they had to fear : and there is no reason why this state of things should not date from the time of Nero.
....
To be continued...
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