[176] This is perhaps the right way of apprehending the Jewish conceptions, in which the positive facts regularly run away into generalities. In the accounts of the Anti-Messias and of the Antichrist no positive elements are found to suit the emperor Gaius; the view that would explain the name Armillus, which the Talmud assigns to the former, by the circumstance that the emperor Gaius sometimes wore women’s bracelets (armillae, Suetonius, Gai. 52), cannot be seriously maintained. In the Apocalypse of John—the classical revelation of Jewish self-esteem and of hatred towards the Romans—the picture of the Anti-Messias is associated rather with Nero, who did not cause his image to be set up in the Holy of Holies. This composition belongs, as is well known, to a time and a tendency, which still viewed Christianity as essentially a Jewish sect; those elected and marked by the angel are all Jews, 12,000 from each of the twelve tribes, and have precedence over the “great multitude of other righteous ones,” i.e. of proselytes (ch. vii.; comp. ch. xii. 1). It was written, demonstrably, after Nero’s fall, and when his return from the East was expected. Now it is true that a pseudo-Nero appeared immediately after the death of the real one, and was executed at the beginning of the following year (Tacitus, Hist. ii. 8, 9); but it is not of this one that John is thinking, for the very exact account makes no mention, as John does, of the Parthians in the matter, and for John there is a considerable interval between the fall of Nero and his return, the latter even still lying in the future. His Nero is the person who, under Vespasian, found adherents in the region of the Euphrates, whom king Artabanus acknowledged under Titus and prepared to reinstate in Rome by military force, and whom at length the Parthians surrendered, after prolonged negotiations, about the year 88, to Domitian. To these events the Apocalypse corresponds quite exactly.
On the other hand, in a writing of this character no inference as to the state of the siege at the time can possibly be drawn, from the circumstance that, according to xi. 1, 2, only the outer court, and not the Holy of Holies of the Temple of Jerusalem was given into the power of the heathen; here everything in the details is imaginary, and this trait is certainly either invented at pleasure or, if the view be preferred, possibly based on orders given to the Roman soldiers, who were encamped in Jerusalem after its destruction, not to set foot in what was formerly the Holy of Holies. The foundation of the Apocalypse is indisputably the destruction of the earthly Jerusalem, and the prospect thereby for the first time opened up of its future ideal restoration; in place of the razing of the city which had taken place there cannot possibly be put the mere expectation of its capture. If, then, it is said of the seven heads of the dragon: βασιλεῖς ἑπτά εἰσιν· οἱ πέντε ἔπεσαν, ὁ εἷς ἐστιν, ὁ ἄλλος οὔπω ἦλθεν, καὶ ὅταν ἔλθη ὀλίγον αὐτὸν δεῖ μεῖναι (xvii. 10), the five, presumably, are Augustus, Tiberius, Gaius, Claudius, Nero, the sixth Vespasian, the seventh undefined; “the beast which was, and is not, and is itself the eighth, but of the seven,” is, of course, Nero. The undefined seventh is incongruous, like so much in this gorgeous, but contradictory and often tangled imagery; and it is added, not because the number seven was employed, which was easily to be got at by including Caesar, but because the writer hesitated to predicate immediately of the reigning emperor the short government of the last ruler and his overthrow by the returning Nero. But one cannot possibly—as is done after others by Renan—by including Caesar in the reckoning, recognise in the sixth emperor, “who is,” Nero, who immediately afterward is designated as he who “was and is not,” and in the seventh, who “has not yet come and will not rule long,” even the aged Galba, who, according to Renan’s view, was ruling at the time. It is clear that the latter does not belong at all to such a series, any more than Otho and Vitellius.
It is more important, however, to oppose the current conception, according to which the polemic is directed against the Neronian persecution of the Christians and the siege or the destruction of Jerusalem, whereas it is pointed against the Roman provincial government generally, and in particular against the worship of the emperors. If of the seven emperors Nero alone is named (by his numerical expression), this is so, not because he was the worst of the seven, but because the naming of the reigning emperor, while prophesying a speedy end of his reign in a published writing, had its risk, and some consideration towards the one “who is” beseems even a prophet. Nero’s name was given up, and besides, the legend of his healing and of his return was in every one’s mouth; thereby he has become for the Apocalypse the representative of the Roman imperial rule, and the Antichrist. The crime of the monster of the sea, and of his image and instrument, the monster of the land, is not the violence to the city of Jerusalem (xi. 2)—which appears not as their misdeed, but rather as a portion of the world-judgment (in which case also consideration for the reigning emperor may have been at work)—but the divine worship, which the heathen pay to the monster of the sea (xiii. 8: προσκυνήσουσιν αὐτὸν πάντες οἱ κατοικοῦντες ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς), and which the monster of the land—called for that reason also the pseudo-prophet—demands and compels for that of the sea (xiii. 12: ποιεῖ τὴν γῆν καὶ τοὺς κατοικοῦντας ἐν αὐτῇ ἵνα προσκυνήσουσιν τὸ θηρίον τὸ πρῶτον, οὗ ἐθεραπεύθη ἡ πληγὴ τοῦ θανάτου αὐτοῦ); above all, he is upbraided with the desire to make an image for the former (xiii. 14: λέγων τοῖς κατοικοῦσιν ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς, ποιῆσαι εἰκόνα τῷ θηρίῳ ὃς ἔχει τὴν πληγὴν τῆς μαχαίρης καὶ ἔζησεν, comp. xiv. 9; xvi. 2; xix. 20). This, it is plain, is partly the imperial government beyond the sea, partly the lieutenancy on the Asiatic continent, not of this or that province or even of this or that person, but generally such representation of the emperor as the provincials of Asia and Syria knew. If trade and commerce appear associated with the use of the χάραγμα of the monster of the sea (xiii. 16, 17), there lies clearly at bottom an abhorrence of the image and legend of the imperial money—certainly transformed in a fanciful way, as in fact Satan makes the image of the emperor speak. These very governors appear afterwards (xvii.) as the ten horns, which are assigned to the monster in its copy, and are here called, quite correctly, the “ten kings, which have not the royal dignity, but have authority like kings;” the number, which is taken over from the vision of Daniel, may not, it is true, be taken too strictly.
In the sentences of death pronounced over the righteous, John is thinking of the regular judicial procedure on account of the refusal to worship the emperor’s image, such as the Letters of Pliny describe (xiii. 15: ποιήσῃ ἵνα ὅσοι ἐὰν μὴ προσκυνήσωσιν τὴν εἰκόνα τοῦ θηρίου ἀποκτανθῶσιν, comp. vi. 9; xx. 4). When stress is laid on these sentences of death being executed with special frequency in Rome (xvii. 6; xvii. 24), what is thereby meant is the execution of sentences wherein men were condemned to fight as gladiators or with wild beasts, which often could not take place on the spot where they were pronounced, and, as is well known, took place chiefly in Rome itself (Modestinus, Dig. xlviii. 19, 31). The Neronian executions on account of alleged incendiarism do not formally belong to the class of religious processes at all, and it is only prepossession that can refer the martyrs’ blood shed in Rome, of which John speaks, exclusively or pre-eminently to these events. The current conceptions as to the so-called persecutions of the Christians labour under a defective apprehension of the rule of law and the practice of law subsisting in the Roman empire; in reality the persecution of the Christians was a standing matter as was that of robbers; only such regulations were put into practice at times more gently or even negligently, at other times more strictly, and were doubtless on occasion specially enforced from high quarters. The “war against the saints” is only a subsequent interpolation on the part of some, for whom John’s words did not suffice (xiii. 7). The Apocalypse is a remarkable evidence of the national and religious hatred of the Jews towards the Occidental government; but to illustrate with these colours the Neronian tale of horrors, as Renan does in particular, is to shift the place of the facts and to detract from their depth of significance. The Jewish national hatred did not wait for the conquest of Jerusalem to originate it, and it made, as might be expected, no distinction between the good and the bad Caesar; its Anti-Messias is named Nero, doubtless, but not less Vespasian or Marcus.
[177] The circumstance that Suetonius (Claud. 25) names a certain Chrestus as instigator of the constant troubles in Rome, that had in the first instance called forth these measures (according to him the expulsion from Rome; in contrast to Dio, lx. 6) has been without sufficient reason conceived as a misunderstanding of the movement called forth by Christ among Jews and proselytes. The Book of Acts xviii. 2, speaks only of the expulsion of the Jews. At any rate it is not to be doubted that, with the attitude at that time of the Christians to Judaism, they too fell under the edict.
[178] The Jews there at least appear later to have had only the fourth of the five wards of the city in their possession (Josephus, Bell. Jud. ii. 18, 8). Probably, if the 400 houses that were razed had been given back again to them in so striking a manner, the Jewish authors Josephus and Philo, who lay stress on all the imperial marks of favour shown to the Jews, would not have been silent on the subject.
[179] The question was, apparently, whether the gift of the tenth sheaf belonged to Aaron the priest (Numb. xviii. 28), to the priest generally, or to the high-priest (Ewald, Jüd. Gesch. vi.3 635).
[180] It is nothing but an empty fancy, when the statesman Josephus, in his preface to his History of the war, puts it as if the Jews of Palestine had reckoned on the one hand upon a rising of the Euphrates-lands, on the other hand, upon the troubles in Gaul and the threatening attitude of the Germans and on the crises of the year of four emperors. The Jewish war had long been in full course when Vindex appeared against Nero, and the Druids really did what is here assigned to the Rabbis; and, however great was the importance of the Jewish Diaspora in the lands of the Euphrates, a Jewish expedition from that quarter against the Romans of the East was almost as inconceivable as from Egypt and Asia Minor. Doubtless some free-lances came from thence, as e.g. some young princes of the zealously Jewish royal house of Adiabene (Josephus, Bell. Jud. ii. 19, 2; vi. 6, 4), and suppliant embassies went thither from the insurgents (ib. vi. 6, 2); but even money hardly flowed to the Jews from this quarter in any considerable amount. This statement is characteristic of the author more than of the war. If it is easy to understand how the Jewish leader of insurgents and subsequent courtier of the Flavians was fond of comparing himself with the Parthians exiled at Rome, it is the less to be excused that modern historical authorship should walk in similar paths, and in endeavouring to apprehend these events as constituent parts of the history of the Roman court and city or even of the Romano-Parthian quarrels, should by this insipid introduction of so-called great policy obscure the fearful necessity of this tragic development.
[181] Josephus (Arch. xx. 8, 9), makes him indeed secretary of Nero for Greek correspondence, although he, where he follows Roman sources (xx. 8, 2), designates him correctly as prefect; but certainly the same person is meant. He is called παιδαγωγός with him as with Tacitus, Ann. xiii. 2: rector imperatoriae iuventae.
[182] It is not quite clear what were the arrangements for the forces occupying Syria after the Parthian war was ended in the year 63. At its close there were seven legions stationed in the East, the four originally Syrian, 3d Gallica, 6th Ferrata, 10th Fretensis, 12th Fulminata, and three brought up from the West, the 4th Scythica from Moesia (I. 213), the 5th Macedonica, probably from the same place (I. 219; for which probably an upper German legion was sent to Moesia I. 132), the 15th Apollinaris from Pannonia (I. 219). Since, excepting Syria, no Asiatic province was at that time furnished with legions, and the governor of Syria certainly in times of peace had never more than four legions, the Syrian army beyond doubt had at that time been brought back, or at least ought to have been brought back, to this footing. The four legions which accordingly were to remain in Syria were, as this was most natural, the four old Syrian ones; for the 3d had in the year 70 just marched from Syria to Moesia (Suetonius, Vesp. 6; Tacitus, Hist. ii. 74), and that the 6th, 10th, 12th belonged to the army of Cestius follows from Josephus, Bell. Jud. ii. 18, 9, c. 19, 7; vii. 1, 3. Then, when the Jewish war broke out, seven legions were again destined for Asia, and of these four for Syria (Tacitus, Hist. i. 10), three for Palestine; the three legions added were just those employed for the Parthian war, the 4th, 5th, 15th, which perhaps at that time were still in course of marching back to their old quarters. The 4th probably went at that time definitively to Syria, where it thenceforth remained; on the other hand, the Syrian army gave off the 10th to Vespasian, presumably because this had suffered least in the campaign of Cestius. In addition he received the 5th and the 15th. The 5th and the 10th legions came from Alexandria (Josephus, Bell. Jud. iii. 1, 3, c. 4, 2); but that they were brought up from Egypt cannot well be conceived, not merely because the 10th was one of the Syrian, but especially because the march by land from Alexandria on the Nile to Ptolemais through the middle of the insurgent territory at the beginning of the Jewish war could not have been so narrated by Josephus. Far more probably Titus went by ship from Achaia to Alexandria on the Gulf of Issus, the modern Alexandretta, and brought the two legions thence to Ptolemais. The orders to march may have reached the 15th somewhere in Asia Minor, since Vespasian, doubtless in order to take them over, went to Syria by land (Josephus, Bell. Jud. iii. 1, 3). To these three legions, with which Vespasian began the war, there was added under Titus a further one of the Syrian, the 12th. Of the four legions that occupied Jerusalem the two previously Syrian remained in the East, the 10th in Judaea, the 12th in Cappadocia, while the 5th returned to Moesia, and the 15th to Pannonia (Josephus, Bell. Jud. vii. 1, 3, c. 5, 3).