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Chapter 21 |
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Chapter 23
The Letters to the Seven Churches of Asia
W. M. Ramsay
1904
Chapter 22: The Letter to the Church in Pergamum
These things saith he that hath the sharp-pointed two-edged sword.
I know where thou dwellest, where Satan's throne is; and thou holdest fast my name, and
didst not deny my faith, even in the days of Antipas my witness, my faithful one, who was
killed among you where Satan dwelleth. But I have a few things against thee, because thou
hast there some that hold the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to cast a
stumbling-block before the children of Israel, to make them eat things sacrificed to idols
and commit fornication. After that fashion hast thou too some that hold the teaching of
the Nicolaitans. Repent therefore; or else I come upon thee quickly, and I will make war
against them with the sword of my mouth.
He that hath an ear let him hear what the Spirit saith to the Churches.
To him that overcometh will I give of the hidden manna; and I will give him a white
stone, and upon the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth but he that receiveth
it.
In this letter, the intimate connection between the Church and the city, and the
appropriateness, in view of the rank and position of the city, of the opening address to
the Church are even more obvious than in the two previous letters. "These things
saith he that hath the sharp two-edged sword." The writer is uttering the words
of Him who wears the symbol of absolute authority, and is invested with the power of life
and death. This is the aspect in which he addresses himself to the official capital of the
Province, the seat of authority in the ancient kingdom and in the Roman administration. To
no other of the Seven Cities could this exordium have been used appropriately. To Pergamum
it is entirely suitable. He that hath the absolute and universal authority speaks to the
Church situated in the city where official authority dwells.
The distinguishing characteristic of this letter is the oft-recurring reference to the
dignity of Pergamum as the seat of Roman official authority; and we have to follow out
this reference in one detail after another. The author of the letter speaks as invested
with an authority similar and yet immeasurably superior to that of the Imperial
government. The sword which he bears is the sharp-pointed, double-edged, cut-and-thrust
sword used in the Roman armies, not the Oriental scimitar, or the mere cutting sword
employed by many nations, and especially by the Greek soldiers. The name by which it is
here called denoted a barbarian and non-Greek sword (originally a Thracian term), and
therefore was suitable for the weapon borne by the Romans, who were a
"barbarian" race, in contrast with the Greeks. The Romans did not themselves
refuse the epithet "barbarian": e.g., the Roman adaptations of Greek plays are
said by the Roman poets even to be "translations in a barbarian tongue." Hence
St. Paul in Romans 1:14, when he speaks of himself as indebted both to Greeks and to
barbarians, means practically (though not quite exclusively) Greeks and Romans.
In Roman estimation the sword was the symbol of the highest order of official
authority, with which the Proconsul of Asia was invested. The "right of the
sword," just gladii, was roughly equivalent to what we call the power of life
and death (though, of course, the two expressions are not exactly commensurate); and
governors of Provinces were divided into a higher and a lower class, according as they
were or were not invested with this power. When the Divine Author addresses Pergamum in
this character, His intention is patent, and would be caught immediately by all Asian
readers of the Apocalypse. He wields that power of life and death, which people imagine to
be vested in the Proconsul of the Province.
The writer knows well the history of the Church in Pergamum. Its fortunes had been
mainly determined by the rank and character of the city as the seat of government and
authority; and He who knows its history expresses the fulness of His knowledge in the
striking words, "I know where thou dwellest, where Satan's throne is." In
these remarkable words is compressed a world of meaning. "Satan" is a term here
employed in a figurative sense to denote the power or influence that withstands the Church
and all who belong to it. The usage is similar to that seen in 1 Thessalonians 2:18: it
has elsewhere been pointed out that in that passage "Satan" probably implies the
clever device whereby, without any formal decree of expulsion or banishment (which would
have been difficult to enforce or to make permanent), the Apostle was prevented from
returning to Thessalonica. Similarly, in the present case, "Satan" is the
official authority and power which stands in opposition to the Church.
But the situation has now developed greatly. When St. Paul was writing that letter to
the Thessalonians, the civil power that hindered him was the authority of the city
magistrates. The Imperial administration had not at that time declared itself in
opposition to the new teaching, and was in practice so conducted as to give free scope to
this or almost any other philosophic or moral or religious movement. But before the Seven
Letters were written, the Imperial government had already ranged itself definitely in
opposition to the Church of Christ. The procedure against the Christians was fixed and
stereotyped. Their loyalty was now tested by the one criterion recognised alike by public
opinion and by government policy, viz., their willingness to perform the ritual of the
State religion, and make offering to the Imperial God, the Divine Emperor. Those who
refused to comply with this requirement were forthwith condemned to death as traitors and
enemies of the State.
In this State religion of the Empire, the worship of the Divine Emperors, organised on
a regular system in Asia as in all other Provinces, Satan found his home and exercised his
power in opposition to God and His Church. Pergamum, as being still the administrative
capital of the Province, was also the chief seat of the State religion. Here was built the
first Asian Temple of the divine Augustus, which for more than forty years was the one
centre of the Imperial religion for the whole Province. A second Asian Temple had
afterwards been built at Smyrna, and a third at Ephesus; but they were secondary to the
original Augustan Temple at Pergamum.
In this Pergamenian Temple, then, Satan was enthroned. The authority over the minds of
its Asian subjects, possessed by the State, and arrayed against the Church, was mainly
concentrated in the Temple. The history of the Church in Pergamum had been determined by
its close proximity to the seat of State opposition, "where Satan's throne is."
Such, beyond all doubt, was the chief determining fact in prompting this remarkable
expression. But it is probable that other thoughts in a secondary degree influenced the
language here. The breadth of meaning in these letters is so great, that one suggestion is
rarely sufficient; the language was prompted by the whole complex situation. In many cases
we cannot hope to do more than describe some one side of the situation, which happens to
be known to us; but here we can see that the form of the expression was clearly determined
in some degree by the historical associations and the natural features of the city.
Pergamum had for centuries been the royal city, first of the Attalid kings, and afterwards
of the viceroy or Proconsul who represented the Emperor in the Province. History marked it
out as the royal city, and not less clearly has nature done so. No city of the whole of
Asia Minor--so far as I have seen, and there are few of any importance which I have not
seen--possesses the same imposing and dominating aspect. It is the one city of the land
which forced from me the exclamation "A royal city!" I came to it after seeing
the others, and that was the impression which it produced. There is something unique and
overpowering in its effect, planted as it is on its magnificent hill, standing out boldly
in the level plain, and dominating the valley and the mountains on the south. Other cities
of the land have splendid hills which made them into powerful fortresses in ancient time;
but in them the hill is as a rule the acropolis, and the city lies beneath and around or
before it. But here the hill was the city proper, and the great buildings, chiefly Roman,
which lie below the city, were external ornaments, lending additional beauty and
stateliness to it.
In this case, again, the natural features of the city give a fuller meaning to the
words of the letter.
Some confusion is caused by the peculiar relation between Ephesus and Pergamum. Each of
the two was in a sense the metropolis of Asia. It is impossible, in the dearth of
information, to define the limits of their circles of influence; and it was, in all
probability, hardly possible to do so very exactly at the time when the Seven Letters were
written. Pergamum was the historical capital, originally the one metropolis of Asia, and
still the official capital. But Pergamum was badly situated for commerce and
communication; it did not lie on any of the great natural lines of trade between Rome and
the East (though it was situated on the Imperial Post-road to the East, in the form in
which that route was organised by Augustus and lasted throughout the first century); and
therefore it could not permanently maintain its premier rank in the Province. The sea-ends
of the two great roads across Asia Minor were at Ephesus and Smyrna; one or other of those
two cities must inevitably become the capital of the Roman Province; and the circumstances
of the time were more in favour of Ephesus. Smyrna, indeed, offered the better harbour,
more accessible for ships, at the head of a gulf extending far up into the land, bringing
sea-borne trade nearer the heart of the country; it had permanent vitality as the chief
city of Asia; and the future was with it. But Ephesus commanded the most important land
route; and this gave it a temporary advantage, though the changing nature of its situation
denied it permanent possession of the honour.
The Christian Church and its leaders had from the first seized on Ephesus as the centre
of the Asian congregations, whether through a certain unerring instinct for the true value
of natural facts, or because they were driven on in that direction by circumstances--but
are not these merely two different expressions and aspects of one fact? Pergamum, however,
and even Smyrna, had also a certain claim to the primacy of Asia; and it is interesting to
observe how all those varied claims and characteristics are mirrored and expressed in
these letters. To the superficial eye Pergamum was, apparently, even yet the capital; but
already in the time of St. Paul, AD 56, the Ephesians had claimed primacy in Asia for
their goddess (Acts 19:27), and at a later period the Imperial policy was induced to grant
official Roman recognition and to make the worship of the goddess part of the State
religion of the Province. Considering the close connection in ancient times between
religion, political organisation, and the sentiment of patriotism, we must conclude that
this wider acceptance of Ephesian religion over the whole of Asia, beginning from
non-official action, and finally made official and Imperial, marked and implied the rise
of Ephesus to the primacy of the Province; but, at the time when the Seven Letters were
written, the popular recognition of the goddess in the Asian cities had not been confirmed
by Imperial act.
As being close to the centre of the enemy, Pergamum had been most exposed to danger
from State persecution. Here, for the firs time in the Seven Letters, this topic comes up.
The suffering which had fallen to the lot of Smyrna proceeded chiefly from
fellow-citizens, and, above all, from the Jews; but the persecution that fell to the lot
of Pergamum is clearly distinguished from that kind of suffering. In Pergamum it took the
form of suffering for the Name, when Christians were tried in the proconsular court, and
confronted with the alternative of conforming to the State religion or receiving immediate
sentence of death. Naturally, that kind of persecution originated from Pergamum, and had
there its centre; but many martyrs were tried and condemned there who were not
Pergamenians. Prisoners were carried from all parts of the Province to Pergamum for trial
and sentence before the authority who possessed the right of the sword, jus gladii,
the power of life and death, viz., the Roman Proconsul of Asia.
Two errors must here be guarded against. "Antipas, my witness, who was killed
among you," is the only sufferer mentioned. But it would be utterly erroneous to
infer (as some have done) that Antipas had been the only Christian executed as yet in
Pergamum or in the Province. His name is mentioned and preserved only as the first in the
already long series: the subsequent chapters of the Revelation, which tell of the woman
drunk with the blood of the saints, show what were the real facts. That one name should
stand as representative of the whole list is entirely in the style of the Apocalypse.
In the second place, it would be equally erroneous to argue that persecution was still
only partial and local, not universal, and that only members of the Church of Pergamum had
as yet suffered death. It is not even certain that Antipas was a member of that
congregation: the words are not inconsistent with the possibility that Antipas was brought
up for trial from some other city, and "killed among the Pergamenians." A
wide-spread persecution had already occurred, and the processes of law had been fully
developed in it. The Apocalypse places us in view of a procedure developed far beyond that
which Tacitus describes as ruling in the reign of Nero; and such a formed and stereotyped
procedure was elaborated only through the practice and precedents established during later
persecution.
The honourable history and the steadfast loyalty of the Pergamenian Church, however,
had been tarnished by the error of a minority of the congregation, which had been
convinced by the teaching of the Nicolaitans. This school of thought and conduct played an
important part in the Church of the first century. Ephesus had tried and rejected it; the
Smyrnaean congregation, despised and ill-treated by their fellow-citizens, had apparently
not been much affected by it; in Pergamum a minority of the Church had adopted its
principles; in Thyatira the majority were attracted by it, and it there found its chief
seat, so far as Asia was concerned. Probably the controversy with regard to the Nicolaitan
views was fought out and determined in Asia more decisively than in any other Province,
though the same questions must have presented themselves and demanded an answer in every
Province and city where the Graeco-Roman civilisation was established. The character of
this movement, obscure and almost unknown to us, because the questions which it raised
were determined at so early a date, will be most conveniently treated under Thyatira; but
it is necessary here to point out that it was evidently an attempt to effect a reasonable
compromise with the established usages of Graeco-Roman society and to retain as many as
possible of those usages in the Christian system of life. It affected most of all the
cultured and well-to-do classes in the Church, those who had most temptation to retain all
that they could of the established social order and customs of the Graeco-Roman world, and
who by their more elaborate education had been trained to take a somewhat artificial view
of life and to reconcile contradictory principles in practical conduct through subtle
philosophical reasoning.
The historian who looks back over the past will find it impossible to condemn the
Nicolaitan principles in so strong and even bigoted fashion as St. John condemned them.
But the Apostle, while writing the Seven Letters, was not concerned to investigate all
sides of the case, and to estimate with careful precision exactly how much could be
reasonably said on behalf of the Nicolaitans. He saw that they had gone wrong on the
essential and critical alternative; and he cared for nothing more. To him, in the
absorbing interest of practical life, no nice weighing of comparative right was possible;
he divided all Christians into two categories, those who were right and those who were
wrong. Those who were wrong he hated with his whole heart and soul; and he almost loved
the Ephesians, as we have seen, because they also hated the Nicolaitans. The Nicolaitans
were to him almost worse than the open and declared enemies of Christ on the pagan side;
and he would probably have entirely denied them the name of Christians.
But the historian must regard the Nicolaitans with intense interest, and must regret
deeply that we know so little about them, and that only from their enemies. And yet at the
same time he must feel that nothing could have saved the infant Church from melting away
into one of those vague and ineffective schools of philosophic ethics except the stern and
strict rule that is laid down here by St. John. An easy-going Christianity could never
have survived; it could not have conquered and trained the world; only the most convinced,
resolute, almost bigoted adherence to the most uncompromising interpretation of its own
principles could have given the Christians the courage and self-reliance that were needed.
For them to hesitate or to doubt was to be lost.
Especially, it is highly probable that the Nicolaitans either already had, or soon
would have, reached the conclusion that they might justifiably comply with the current
test of loyalty, and burn a little incense in honour of the Emperor. The Church was not
disloyal; even its most fanatical defenders claimed to be loyal; then why should its
members make any difficulty about proving their loyalty by burning a few grains of
incense? A little incense was nothing. An excellent and convincing argument can readily be
worked out; and then--the whole ritual of the State religion would have followed as a
matter of course; Christ and Augustus would have been enthroned side by side as they were
in the compromise attempted by the Emperor Alexander Severus more than a century later;
and everything that was vital in Christianity would have been lost. St. John, like St.
Paul in 1 Corinthians, saw the real issue that lay before the Church--either it must
conquer and destroy the Imperial idolatry, or it must compromise and in so doing be itself
destroyed. Both St. Paul and St. John answered with the most hearty, unwavering,
uncompromising decisiveness. Not the faintest shadow of acquiescence in idolatry must be
permitted to the Christian. On this the Nicolaitans, with all good intention, went wrong;
and to St. John the error was unpardonable. He compares the Nicolaitans to the Israelites
who were led astray into pleasure and vice by the subtle plan of Balaam. No words of
condemnation are too strong for him to use. Their teaching was earthly, sensual, devilish.
In their philosophical refinements of argumentation he saw only "the deep things
of Satan."
It is clear also that the Nicolaitans rather pitied and contemned the humbler
intelligence and humbler position of the opposite section in the Church; and hence we
shall find that both in the Thyatiran and in the Pergamenian letter St. John exalts the
dignity, authority and power that shall fall to the lot of the victorious Christian.
Christ can and will give His true followers far more than the Nicolaitans promise. No
power or rank in the world equals the lofty position that Christ will bestow; the Imperial
dignity and the name of Augustus cannot be compared with the dignity and name of the
glorified Christ which He will give to His own.
Further light is, as usual, thrown on the opening address of the letter by the promise
at the end: "To him that overcometh will I give of the hidden manna, and I will
give him a white stone, and upon the stone a new name written, which no one knoweth but he
that receiveth it."
The "white stone" was, doubtless, a tessera, and ought, strictly speaking, to
be called by that name, but the word is not English and therefore is unsuitable. There is
no English word which gives an adequate rendering, for the thing is not used among us, and
therefore we have no name for it. It was a little cube or rectangular block of stone,
ivory, or other substance, with words or symbols engraved on one or more faces. Such
tesserae were used for a great variety of purposes. Here it is a sort of coupon or ticket
bearing the name, but it is not to be given up: it is to remain secret, not to be shown to
others, but to be kept as the private possession of the owner.
An explanation of the white pebble or tessera with the New Name has been sought in many
different objects used in ancient times, or ideas current among ancient peoples, Greek,
Roman, and Jewish. Some scholars quote the analogy of the tessera given to proved and
successful gladiators inscribed with the letters SP, which they regard as a new title spectatus,
i.e., tried and proved; but this analogy, though tempting in some ways, will not bear
closer examination. The letters SP on the gladiatorial tesserae are considered by Mommsen
to stand, not for spectatus, but for spectavit. Various theories are
proposed about the meaning; but no theory makes out that a new name was given to the
proved gladiator with the tessera: he was simply allowed to retire into private life after
a proved and successful career, instead of being compelled to risk his reputation and life
when his powers were failing. The analogy fails in the most essential points.
Moreover, it is necessary that any suggestion as to the origin of the sayings in the
Seven Letters should be taken from a phase of life familiar to the society to which they
were addressed. But gladiatorial exhibitions and professional gladiators (to whom alone
the tesserae were given) were an exotic in the Eastern Provinces: they were not much to
the taste of the Hellenes, but were an importation from Rome. The influence of Roman
fashions over the Provinces was, indeed, strong enough to make gladiatorial exhibitions a
feature in many of the greater festivals in Asia; but it does not appear that they ever
became really popular there, or that gladiatorial metaphors and allusions to the life of
professional gladiators ever passed into current speech. None of the gladiatorial tesserae
which are known as yet have been found in the Province Asia. There is therefore no reason
to think that the Asian readers would have caught the allusion to such tesserae even if
St. John had intended it (which is altogether unlikely).
Still more unsatisfactory are the comparisons suggested between this white stone and
the voting ballot used by jurors or political voters, the tessera that served as an
entrance-ticket to distributions, banquets, or other public occasions, and so on through
all the various purposes served by such tesserae or stones. All are unsatisfactory and
elusive; they do not make the reader feel that he has gained a clear and definite
impression of the white pebble.
Yet, while none of these analogies is complete or satisfactory in itself, perhaps none
is entirely wrong. The truth is that the white pebble with the New Name was not an exact
reproduction of any custom or thing in the social usage of the time. It was a new
conception, devised for this new purpose; but it was only a working up into a new form of
familiar things and customs, and it was therefore completely intelligible to every reader
in the Asian Churches. It had analogies with many things, though it was not an exact
reproduction of any of them. Probably the fact is that the pebble is simply an instrument
to bear the Name, and all the stress of the passage is laid on the Name which is thus
communicated. The reason why the pebble is mentioned lies in a different direction from
any of the suggestions quoted above.
Two facts, however, are to be noticed with regard to this "white pebble." In
the first place, it is lasting and imperishable. Hence, such a translation as
"ticket" or "coupon" would--apart from the modern associations--be
unsuitable. A "ticket" is for a temporary purpose; this pebble is eternal.
According to the ancient view a close relation existed between permanent validity and
record on some lasting imperishable material. The mere expression in writing of any idea
or word or right or title gave it a new kind of existence and an added effectiveness,
placed it in short on a higher plane in the universe. But this new existence was, of
course, dependent on the permanence of the writing, i.e., on the lasting nature of the
material. Horace plays with the popular idea, when he declares that his lyric poetry is a monumentum
aere perennius: laws, the permanent foundation of peace and order in a city, were
written on bronze; but poetry will outlast even bronze. The New Name, then, must be
written, not simply left as a sound in the air; and it must be written, not on the
parchment made in the city but on an imperishable material like this pebble.
In the second place the colour is important. It was white, the fortunate colour.
Suitability of the material to the subject in writing seems to have been considered to
some degree in ancient time. Dr. Wunsch, one of the leading authorities, lays great stress
n the fact that curses and imprecations were usually written on lead, as proving that lead
was the deadly and ill-omened metal in Greece; and since many imprecations were found at
Tel-Sanda-hannah in the southwest of Palestine engraved on limestone tablets, there is
some temptation to regard limestone as selected for a similar reason, and to contrast its
dark, ill-omened hue with the "white stone" engraved with the New Name in this
case. Some doubt however is cast on this theory of material by the fact that a private
letter, of a kind which would not be written on a material recognised as deadly and
ill-omened, has recently been found incised on a leaden tablet: it is published as the
oldest Greek letter in the Austrian Jahreshefte, 1904, p. 94.
Equally difficult is the allusion to the New Name. We take it as clear and certain that
the "new name" is the name which shall be given to the conquering Christian; and
the words are connected with the already established custom of taking a new name at
baptism.
The name acquired in popular belief a close connexion with the personality, both of a
human being and of a god. The true name of a god was kept secret in certain kinds of
ancient religion, lest the foreigner and the enemy, by knowing the name, should be able to
gain an influence over the god. The name guaranteed, and even gave, existence, reality,
life: a new name implied the entrance on a new life.
This old superstition takes a peculiar form among the modern Jews of Palestine. It is
their custom to change a person's name in the case of a dangerous illness, as is mentioned
by Mr. Macalister in the Quarterly Statement of the Palestine Exploration Fund,
April, 1904, p. 153. The new name, which is retained ever afterwards, if the patient
survives, frequently has reference to life, or is that of some Old Testament saint whose
life was specially long.
Accordingly the New Name that is given to the victorious Christian marks his entrance
on a new and higher stage of existence; he has become a new person. Yet this alone would
make an inadequate and unsatisfying explanation. We miss the element of authority and
power, which is imperatively demanded to suit the case of Pergamum. To furnish this
element the New Name must be the name of God. Here, again, we find ourselves brought close
to the sphere of popular religion, superstition and magic. Knowledge of the compelling
names of God, the names of God which influence nature and the mysterious forces of the
universe, was one of the chief sources of the power which both the Mysteries and the magic
ritual claimed to give their votaries. The person that had been initiated into the
Mysteries learned not merely the landmarks to guide him along the road to the home of the
Blessed--the white poplar and the other signs by the way--he learned also the names of God
which would open the gates and bars before him, and frighten away hostile spirits or
transform them into friends. Mr. Anderson Scott gives an excellent note on this passage,
which may be supplemented from Dieterich's Mithrasliturgie, pp. 32-39. He who knows
the right name of a demon or divine being can become lord over all the power that the
demonic being possesses, just as he who knows the name of a man was considered to possess
some power over the man, because the name partakes of reality and not merely marks a man's
personality, but is almost identified with it.
Probably no incompatibility between these two aspects of the New Name, as the name of
God and as the name of the Individual Christian, was felt by the ancient readers of this
letter. The name that was written on the white stone was at once the name of the
victorious Christian and the name of God. These two points of view approximated towards
one another, and passed into one another. Personal names frequently were derived from, or
even identical with, a Divine name. The ordinary thought of primitive Greek and of
Anatolian religion--that the heroised dead had merely returned to the Divine Mother who
bore them, and become once more identified with and merged in the divine nature--also
helped to obliterate the difference which we in modern times feel between the two points
of view. Here and in the Philadelphian letter the name of God is also the name of the
victorious Christian, written on him in the latter case, given him on a white tessera in
the Pergamenian letter. Pergamum and Philadelphia are the two Churches which are praised
because they "held fast my name," and "did not deny it"; and they are
rewarded with the New Name, at once the Name of God and their own, an eternal possession,
known to the bearers only, the symbol and instrument of wider power; they shall not merely
be "Christians," the people of Christ; they shall be the people of His new
personality as He is hereafter revealed in glory, bearing that New Name of His glorious
revelation.
The allusion to the "hidden manna" is one of the few touches in the Seven
Letters derived purely and exclusively from the realm of Jewish belief and superstition.
It is not even taken from the Old Testament; but is a witness that some current Jewish
superstitions acquired a footing in the early Christian Church. According to a Jewish tale
the manna laid up "before the Testimony" in the Ark was hidden in a cave of
Mount Sinai, and would be revealed when Messiah came. That superstition is here used as a
symbol to indicate the heavenly food that should impart strength to the Christian. It is,
however, quite probable that there is some special suitability in this symbol, due to
popular, mixed Jewish and pagan, belief current in Asia, which we have failed to catch.
As to the spirit in which popular beliefs are here used, Mr. Anderson Scott in the note
just quoted has said all that there is to say. The same form of expression, which is so
frequent elsewhere in the Seven Letters, occurs here. A contrast is intended between the
ordinary popular custom and the better form in which that custom is offered to the true
Christian: to the victorious Christian shall be given the possession of a far more
powerful and efficacious name than any which he could learn about in the various kinds of
popular ritual, a name which will mark the transformation of his whole nature and his
recreation in a new character.
The promises and the principles of Christianity had to be made intelligible to minds
habituated to think in the customary forms of ancient popular thought; and they are
therefore expressed in the Apocalypse according to the popular forms, but these forms must
be understood as merely figurative, as mere attempts, necessarily imperfect, to reach and
teach the popular mind. The words and thoughts in the Seven Letters, when taken singly and
separately, are to a remarkable extent such as a pagan mystic of the first or second
century might have used; and we shall probably find that some champion will hereafter
appear to prove that the Seven Letters took their origin from no mere Christian, but from
a pagan mystic circle tinged with semi-Gnostic developments of Christianity. The same view
has already been advocated by influential scholars with regard to the epitaph of the
Phrygian bishop, Avircius Marcellus--with equal unreason in both cases (unless perhaps the
Seven Letters present a more startlingly pagan resemblance in some parts than the bishop's
epitaph). Those who advocate such theories fail to catch the spirit which lies in the
Christian document as a whole. The whole, in literature, is far more than the sum of the
separate parts: there is the soul, the life, the spirit that gives vitality and unity to
the parts. To miss that character in such a document is to miss what makes it Christian.
To miss that, is to miss everything. All those mystic rites and popular cults were far
from being mere imposture or delusion; they had many elements of truth and beauty; they
were all trying to reach the same result as Christianity, to satisfy the wants of the
popular mind, to guide it right in its groping after God. They all used many of the same
facts and rites, insisted on many similar customs and methods, employed often the same
words and symbols as Christianity used; and yet the result is so utterly different in
character and spirit that one would have been inclined to say that not even a single
paragraph or sentence of any Christian document could have been mistaken for a product of
one of those Mystic circles of devotees, had it not been for the treatment that the
testament of Avircius Marcellus has recently received from some high
authorities--discussed point by point, detail after detail, without regard to the spirit
of the whole, and thus proved to be non-Christian by ignoring all that is Christian in it.
There is, however, a certain obscurity, which must evidently be intentional, in this
passage; more is meant than lies on the surface. Now the earlier part of the letter is
characterised by an unmistakable and yet carefully veiled opposition to the State religion
and to the government which had provoked that opposition; and this quality in the letter
guides us to the proper understanding of the conclusion, which is one of the most
remarkable passages in the Seven Letters. The readers of this letter, who possessed the
key to its comprehension, hidden from the common world, could not fail to be struck with
the analogy between this New Name and the Imperial title Augustus. That also had been a
new name, deliberately devised by the Senate to designate the founder, and to mark the
foundation of the new Empire: it was an old sacred word, used previously only in the
language of the priests, and never applied to any human being: hence Ovid says:
"Sancta vocant augusta patres" (Fast., 1., 609). That old word was
appropriated in 27 BC to the man who had been the saviour of Rome, and whom already the
popular belief had begun to regard as an incarnation of the divine nature in human form,
sent down to earth to end the period of war and introduce the age of peace. This sacred,
divine name marked out the man to whom it was applied as one apart from the world,
standing on a higher level, possessor of superhuman power in virtue of this new name and
transmitting that power through the name to his descendants.
The analogy was striking; and the points of difference were only to the advantage of
the Christian. His new name was secret, but all the more efficacious on that account. The
readers for whom this letter was written--the Christians of Pergamum, of all Asia, of the
whole world--would catch with certainty the hidden meaning. All those Christians, when
they were victorious, were to be placed in the same position as, or rather higher than,
Augustus, having a New Name, the Name of God, their own secret possession, which no man
would know and therefore no man could tamper with by acquiring control through knowledge.
As Augustus had been set above the Roman world by his new name, so they would be set above
the world by theirs.
This is the answer which the Church made to the persecuting Emperor, who beyond all his
predecessors prided himself on his divine nature and his divine name. To insult,
proscription, a shameful death, it returns a triumphant defiance: the Emperor is
powerless: the supreme power and authority remain with the victorious Christian, who
defeats the Emperor by virtue of the death which the Emperor inflicts. Here for the first
time in the Seven Letters the absolute and inexorable opposition between the Church and
the Imperial government is clearly expressed. It is not merely that the State persecutes
the Church. The Church proscribes and sets itself above the Augustan government and the
Augusti themselves. And this is done in the letter to the Church of that city where the
Imperial government with the Imperial religion had placed its capital and its throne.
The taking of a new name, and the meaning attached to this in the usage of the time,
was orally illustrated by the late Dr. Hort, from the case of Aelius Aristides, the famous
orator of Hadrianoi and Smyrna, as I am informed by a correspondent, though the lecture in
which the illustration was stated seems never to have been published. The facts are known
from various passages of Aristides, chiefly in the Lalia (Hymn) to Aesculapius and in the
Sacred Discourses.
The case of Aristides, who was born probably in AD 117, may be taken as applicable to
the period of the Apocalypse. Aristides had a new name, which was given him by the God,
appearing to him in the form of Aesculapius. That deity was his chief protector and
adviser and helper, though the mother of the God also regarded him as her protege and
favourite. Aesculapius cured him of his disease, guided him in his life by ordering him to
devote himself to oratory, revealed himself to his favoured servant, and gave him the name
Theodorus. There is much probability that the name was given in a vision, though the
circumstances are not quite clear.
The evidence lies chiefly in a remarkable passage at the end of Aristides' Hymn to
Aesculapius, which Reiske declares himself unable to understand, though he suggests that
it refers to some prophecy vouchsafed to Aristides by Aesculapius in a dream. Words which
Reiske could not understand must be very obscure; and hence the passage has attracted
little attention.
It is rather bold to suggest an explanation where that excellent scholar says "non
intelligo"; but the words of Aristides seem to illustrate the passage before us
so well, that an interpretation may be offered. The words and the situation are as
follows. Aristides has just related how through the orders and aid of Aesculapius he had
appeared in Rome and given a successful display of oratory before the two Emperors, the
ladies of the Imperial family and the whole Imperial court, just as Ulysses had been
enabled by Athena to display his eloquence in the ball of Alcinous before the Phaeacian
audience. He proceeds in the following very enigmatic words: "And not only had these
things been done in this way, but also the Symbol or Synthema was with me encouraging me,
whilst you showed in act that there were many reasons why you brought me before the
public, viz., that I might be conspicuous in oratory, and that the most perfect (the
highest circles and the educated class) might hear with their own ears the better counsels
(i.e. the teaching of a true philosophy and morality)."
The nature of the Synthema which Aristides received from the god he does not explain.
The obscurity in which he leaves it is obviously intentional. It was a secret between the
god and himself; he, and he alone, had been initiated by the god into this ministry, and
it was not to be published for every one to know. Only they should understand who might be
initiated into the same mystery: the word and the sign would be enough for them: others
who were outside should remain ignorant.
But Aristides adds one word which gives a hint as to the purpose and effect of the
Synthema: the Synthema was something that addressed him in an earnest, rousing way, a
practical sign and proof that the god for various reasons brought him before the assembled
world in order that he should gain distinction as an orator and that the noblest should
hear with their own ears good counsel on good subjects. The Synthema then was a symbol
always present with him and speaking direct to him; it as a pledge of success from the god
who gave it, and thus filled him with god-given confidence. Hence it served for a call to
action as an orator; for it recalled the orders and assurances and promises which the god
had given him in the past, and was a pledge that there still subsisted between the god and
his votary that same bond of connection and mutual confidence.
Aristides does not expressly say that the Synthema was connected with the new name that
was bestowed on him by the god; but there can hardly be any doubt that the name and the
sign stood in some close relation to one another, and were given him at the same time,
probably (as Reiske thought) in a dream. In that dream or vision the god had commissioned
him to the profession of oratory, had promised him constant aid, had guaranteed him
brilliant success, and as a proof and pledge of the promised aid had bestowed on him a new
name, Theodorus, "the gift of god," and a sign. So much seems practically
certain. Only one thing has to be added, which seems to spring directly from these facts:
the Sign must have been the form in which the new name was communicated. Perhaps in
writing, perhaps in some other way, Aristides had always with him the proof of the god's
presence and aid. The name was the power of the god, at once encouraging him to effort and
guaranteeing success.
In a sense not unlike this, the term Synthemata was used to indicate the signs or words
of a symbolic code which two persons arranged with one another in order that their letters
might convey more meaning to the intended recipient than to any chance reader who was not
aware of the secret.
It is to be observed that, though Aristides regarded Aesculapius as his special
protector and guide in life, the name which was given him was not Asclepiodoros, but
Theodoros. Aesculapius, who gave him the name, was merely the form in which the ultimate
divine power envisaged itself to Aristides; it was "the god," and not
Aesculapius, whose name he bore.
Orators of that period seem commonly to have regarded themselves as sent by divine
mission, and as charged with a message of divine truth. So Dion Chrysostom several times
claims divine mission; and in one of his speeches at Tarsus he explains that all that
happens to us in an unexpected, unintended, self-originated way, ought to be regarded by
us a sent to us by the god, and therefore, as he has appeared in that way before the
Tarsian audience, they should regard him as speaking with authority as the divine
messenger. The speech was delivered probably in the third period of Dion's career, which
began when he received news of the death of Domitian, and thus his case illustrates
strictly contemporary belief about those travelling orators and teachers, who in many ways
show so close analogy to the Christian Apostles and travelling preachers.
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Chapter 23
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