CHAPTER VIII.

LATER HISTORY FROM TRADITIONARY SOURCES, TILL HIS ARRIVAL AT EPHESUS, AND BANISHMENT TO PATMOS.

AUTHENTIC TRADITIONS.

- PARTHIAN EMPIRE AND THE EUPHRATES.

GLORIOUS CLIME.-SCENERY OF THE APOCALYPSE AND OF THE BOOKS OF DANIEL AND EZEKIEL COMPARED.-JERUSALEM'S TRIBULATION APPROACHING. FIRES ROME.VESPASIAN

AGRIPPA II. THE ROMAN GOVERNORS. NERO. ACCUSES AND PERSECUTES CHRISTIANS. INVADES JUDEA. -TITUS.-ST. JOHN SEES THE SIGNS FORETOLD BY

GESSIUS FLORUS..

66

THE last occasion on which St. John appears in the New Testament history proper was in the year of our Lord 50, when he met St. Paul and other apostles in a council held at Jerusalem, to deliberate and determine on the subject of circumcision, which certain Judaizing teachers sought to have continued as a rite in the Church. In following him to the close of his career, we have to make our way, as best we can, without the infallible record of the Scriptures as our guide, except as those parts of the New Testament of which he was the author clearly connect themselves with history, and take their place as authentic records in his life. In other words, for the subsequent portion of his life we are left to his own writings, and to ecclesiastical tradition or history.

It is a natural and laudable curiosity, in the receivers of that faith to which the apostles devoted their lives, to know something more than we find in the inspired history respecting these noble witnesses for the truth, and especially respecting one who performed so important a part, and lived to the end of the century, to the middle of which only we have been able by that history to trace him. As he lived much longer than any other of the apostles, and was personally known to the generation of Christians who were on the stage at the beginning of the second century, the traditions respecting him have of course a much higher authority than those related of any other apostle. And the traditions themselves have a greater appearance of historical truth.

Indeed, some very decidedly authentic statements of his later life, and others which seem well supported, may be derived from the genuine writings of the ancient fathers.

But where he spent the intervening period, from the year 50 until we find him taking up his permanent residence in Asia Minor, there appears to be no very positive information. It seems remarkable that we find no further mention of him in the Acts after the council held that year in Jerusalem. But the same is true of Peter. Whether he spent this whole period in discharging his apostolic office at Jerusalem or in Palestine, becomes a question of deep interest. It appears to be as well established as any fact not recorded in the Scriptures that Peter, following the emigrants and colonists of his own nation, journeyed eastward, and made the provinces of the Parthian empire and the regions east of the Euphrates the scene of his labours.

The number of Jews in the city of Babylon and the province around it had, it is said, been increased at this time to such a degree that they constituted a very large portion of the population. St. Peter would be led to follow them as he prosecuted his apostolic work. His First Epistle seems to have been written from Babylon,2 and is addressed to the Christians scattered abroad, beginning with Pontus,3 the place nearest to him on the north-east of Asia Minor. That St. Peter uses "Babylon" in a metaphorical sense for Rome is a conjecture which has few supporters among scholars. Michaelis (J. D.) very ably exposes the absurdity of the opinion that Peter dates from Babylon in a mystical sense. He remarks that, through some mistake, it has been supposed that the ancient Babylon, in the time of Peter, was no longer in being; and it is true that in comparison with its original splendour it might be called even in the first century a desolated city; yet it was not wholly a heap of ruins or destitute of inhabitants. This appears from the account which Strabo, who lived in the time of Tiberius, has given of it. This ancient geographer compares Babylon to Seleucia; saying, "at present Babylon is not so great as Seleucia," which was the capital of the Parthian empire, and, according to Pliny, contained six hundred thousand inhabitants. Michaelis further humorously remarks that "to conclude that Babylon, whence Peter dates his Epistle, could not have been the ancient Babylon, because this city was in a state of decay, and thence to argue that Peter used the word mystically to denote Rome, is about the same as if, on the receipt of a latter dated from Ghent or Antwerp, in which mention was made of a Christian community there, I should conclude that because these cities are no longer what they were in the Jos. Antiq., xviii. 1-9. 2 1 Pet. v. 13.

3 1 Pet. i. 1.

sixteenth century, the writer of the epistle meant a spiritual Ghent or Antwerp, and that the epistle was really written from Amsterdam." He continues: "The plain language of epistolary writing does not admit of such figures; and though it would be very allowable in a poem, written in honour of Göttingen [this was the residence of the professor] to style it another Athens, yet if a professor of this university should, in a letter written from Göttingen, date it 'Athens,' it would be a greater piece of pedantry than ever yet was laid to the charge of the learned. In like manner, though a figurative use of the word Babylon is not unsuitable to the animated and poetical language of the Apocalypse, in a plain and unvarnished epistle Peter would hardly have called the place whence he wrote (in the absence of any conceivable motive) by any other appellation than that which literally and properly belonged to it." And as Babylon in Egypt was a mere military station, there can be no doubt the place named by Peter was the ancient Assyrian or Chaldean Babylon, or the city that in his day stood on its site. "It was a city of great importance and interest in a religious point of view, offering a most ample and desirable field for the labours of the chief apostle, now advancing in years, and whose whole genius, feelings, and religious education, and natural peculiarities, qualified him as eminently for this oriental scene of labour as those of St. Paul fitted him for the triumphant advancement of the Christian faith among the polished and energetic races of the mighty West. With Peter went also others of the apostolic band."

As there is no trace of the labours of John in any other direction, it is not improbable, as he had thus far been so intimately associated with Peter in apostolic labours in Judæa and Samaria, they were not separated now; at least for a portion of the time Peter was in the Parthian dominions. As far back as the time of Augustine, A.D. 398, the First Epistle of John was known as the Epistle to the Parthians. He quotes 1 John iii. 2, which he introduces, "which is said by John in the Epistle to the Parthians." 3 It seems indeed pleasant to contemplate these eminent apostles, "in this glorious clime of the East," amid the scenes of that ancient captivity in which the mourning sons of Zion had drawn consolation and support from the word of prophecy, which the march of time, "in its solemn fulfilment," had now made the faithful history of God's children; amid the ruins of empires, and scattered wrecks of ages, attesting in the dreary desolation the

1 Introd. to N. T., Marsh's Trans., xxvii. 4, 5. Lardner does his utmost to maintain the mystical sense, and may be referred to: Hist. of Apos. and Evang., xix. 3.

2 D. F. Bacon's Lives of the Apostles, p. 260.

3"Quod dictum est ab Joanne in epistola ad Parthos" (Quæst. Evang., c. xix.).

surety of the word of God. "From the lonely waste, mounded with the dust of twenty-three centuries, came the solemn witness of the truth of the Hebrew seers, who sang over the highest glories of that plain, in its brightest days, the long foredoomed ruin that at last overswept it with such blighting desolation. Here mighty visions of the destiny of worlds, the rise and fall of empires, rose on the view of Daniel and Ezekiel, whose prophetic scope on this vast stage of dominion expanded far beyond the narrow limits that bounded all the future in the eyes of the sublimest of those prophets whose whole ideas of what was great were taken from the little world of Palestine." 1

It would seem indeed, when we open the Apocalypse, that its writer had been recently reperusing the prophecies of these captive seers; and they may have been made the more vivid, if he was permitted to do this amid the very scenes where these visions were granted. There is a striking similarity between some of the leading symbols of the Apocalypse, and those of Daniel and Ezekiel. As a single example of this close resemblance we may take the four living creatures of Ezekiel i. 5 seq., and of Revelation iv. 6 seq.2 They appear to Ezekiel out of the midst of a fiery cloud. As for the likeness of their faces, the four had the face of a man and the face of a lion on the right side; and the face of an ox and the face of an eagle on the left. Every one had four wings. To John they appear in the midst of the throne, and round about the throne set in heaven; and the first was like a lion, the second like a calf, the third had the face of a man, and the fourth was like a flying eagle; and they had each of them six wings about him. They had the same leonine, bovine, human, and aquiline faces, pointing to the same great characteristic features in the providence that governs this world. But there is less in John's representation to strike the mind with awe. The throne is more accessible. It is not borne aloft, with lightning-like swiftness, above the heavens; it is set in heaven on a floor of crystal or of glass, and the rainbow about it is distinguished for the preponderance of its emerald rays. There are other thrones about it on which are seated redeemed men in white raiment, with crowns on their heads and palms in their hands, singing to Him who sits on the throne; for in the midst of the throne stood a Lamb as if it had been slain. And the "Babylon" which Peter used in a literal John uses in a figurative sense. He had seen with his own eyes the desolations which marked the proud city; and its overthrow became in his mind a vivid symbol of the destruction of that city which should attempt, by its usurped power, to lord 1 D. F. Bacon's Lives of the Apostles, p. 261.

2 See also Dan. vii. 9--14, Ezek. i. and xlvii.; Rev. i. 8-18 and xxii., etc.