than as growth; the virtues of asceticism and even celibacy (cf. on xiv. 4) acquire unwonted prominence ; sensuous aspects of the mes- sianic reign tend to predominate; the impulse of propaganda is checked by the sombre and fore-shortened view of the world which the presentiment of approaching judgment fostered ; religion tends to be bound up with a hatred and fear of the civil power;! and God is a dazzling, silent, enthroned figure of majesty, who has men warned and wounded, not (as in the fourth gospel) a Pather who is in direct touch with his children upon earth. The passion for moral retribution regards material and political convulsions more and more as the proper dynamic of providence. To John’s eyes, the cause of affairs in the empire of his day was running straight to the edge of a precipice. He saw in history not any τύχη Or εἱμαρμένη but the justice and irony of providence abroad, and his puritanic temper expressed itself in a mixture of spiritual resignation with an imperious and vindictive expectation :--- Rome shall perish! write that word In the blood that she has spilt.
This expectation is only a heightened form of the traditional belief (cf. 4th Esd. xii. 11 f., Apoc. Bar. iv. 4-5) that the fourth kingdom of Daniel’s vision was the Roman empire, which was to be overthrown at the advent of messiah’s reign. Josephus pru- dently evades this interpretation, though he is well aware of it. His business, he protests, is not to explain the future (Anztzq. x. 10. 4). But the interpretation was widespread in apocalyptic circies, and a Christian had special reasons for sharing it. John expresses it with characteristic vigour. He will encourage no fifth-monarchy tendencies among Christians in Asia Minor, but he has no word of showing loyalty to the empire as distinguished from worshipping the emperor. He makes no attempt, such as Agrippa made before Caligula (Leg. ad Gaium, 36), to disprove the charge of treason, and no considerations of patriotism qualify his threats of doom against the Roman empire.?
1Τε cannot be too strongly insisted that the tone of the Apocalypse here was neither normal nor final. Indeed the subsequent history of the church bears out this verdict. The Asiatic idiosyncrasies of its eschatology, and above all of its relation to the State are thrown into relief against the ‘‘loyalist” tone of a contemporary Roman writing like that of Clemens Romanus. ‘The moderation of this fine epistle is attributed by Lightfoot (Clem. Rom.., i. pp. 27 f. 60 f. 382 f.) to the fact that its author and bearers were connected with the imperial household.
? Dr. Selwyn actually conjectures (pp. 124 f.) that the prophet was banished for having written the seditious oracles of iv.-xxii., and that when he re-edited the work (adding i.- ii.) during Galba’s reign it was only the strong anti-Neronic feeling at Ephesus which saved him from capital punishment as a traitor (pp. 214 f.).