Out of the earth
By Professor EM Blaiklock MA Litt D
Version 2 of Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
ARCHAEOLOGY AND THE APOCALYPSE
John's Book of Symbols
The ruins of Ephesus-travellers' impressions-Ephesus the dying city-Ramsay's thesis on Rev. 2 and 3 the historical interpretation of the book-its contemporary significance illustrated by the seven letters to Asia-the relevance of history and geography in their interpretation-the material supplied by archaeological research to this end— Rev. I3 and its theme—the historical interpretation-the seal on hand and brow-the number of the beast-future prospects in the field.
RUIN-MUSING, as old as Isaiah and as modern as H. V. Morton, finds rich food for fancy near the little Turkish village of Seljuk. Nearby stand the stones of Ephesus, the scene of nearly eighty years of digging.
Rose Macaulay, who has diligently collected the ruin-literature of travellers and poets, quotes Richard Chandler, who visited Asia Minor, agog for its past, nearly two hundred and fifty years ago. "Returning from this cavity, “ wrote this reverend gentleman, concerning the swamp where he thought he had found the temple of Artemis, the 'Diana' of Acts 19, "the traveller has nothing else in view but venerable heaps of rubbish, and must be forced to supply his curiosity with considering that this was the place, where once stood, and flourished, that renowned wonder of the world."
One of H. V. Morton's most colourful chapters tells how at Seljuk he found a stagnant pond, lush with water-weed, from which protruded sculptured capitals and carved column drums. Here he imagined the summer frogs croaking in derision:
"Great is Diana, great is
Diana," for the mud-buried marble is all that is left of the great temple of the mystery cult which kept ten thousand priestess courtesans employed.
Sir William Ramsay himself, most factual of archaeologists, speaks' in awe of the "uncanny volume of sound" lifted by the evening wind from the reedy plain which stretches from the ruined harbour works of the ancient city to the sea, now twenty miles away across the silt-choked foreland. It is the vivid picture of Ephesus' vibrant, passionate life in Luke's famous story of the rioting silversmiths, which has made the world so ruin-conscious on the site, so sensitive to the parable of change and decay written in swamp and shattered stone.
All that is left of Ephesus is a monument to man's prodigal treatment of the good earth. The old folly of deforestation and greedy cropping had set in motion the retributive processes of erosion in Asia Minor long before Christian times, but at Ephesus their impact was striking.
Paul's ship made no call there in A.D. 57, for the harbour was already difficult, and by Justinian's day six centuries later, the battle with sand and mud was lost and the city harbour an inland marsh.
When John, therefore, wrote the Apocalypse, Ephesus must have been a consciously dying city. She no longer saw the flash of oars. The ships went to Smyrna. Like old Solomon Gill in Dombey and Son, Ephesus opened its shop each day, but the customers were gone, save those who patronized the vast and evil commerce of the great temple, and bought the little silver souvenirs whose traffic
caused the trade guilds such live concern. Business life in Ephesus, in many an old established firm, had lost its verve, its inventiveness, and hope. There was a resting on the past, and such a mood is but one stage removed from death.
Archaeology thus vividly illuminates John's letter to Ephesus, and demonstrates the truth of the brilliant thesis of Sir William Ramsay. Beginning with the assumption that the seven letters of Chapters Two and Three of the Apocalypse were real letters, and designed to be read by their recipients and clearly understood, Ramsay set out to find in the history and geography of each place the key to the symbolism in which John expressed his message.
Ramsay maintained that the spirit and outlook of a community is compounded of the forces of environment and the influence of history. He argued that the faults and excellencies of character to which a people at large is prone, find their reflection and rendering in the Christian minority among them. He quite triumphantly proved his case, and in so doing set a pattern for a fruitful interpretation of the Apocalypse. First and foremost, the strange book which closes the canon of Scripture, had something significant to say to the troubled Christians of Asia in the first darkness of imperial persecution. Such a meaning is by no means exclusive. Other interpretations are as valid and legitimate. Wherever man is at grips with paganism in the name of Christ, and wherever Christians wait for history's consummation, John's words are likely to be relevant and luminous.
In discussing the light thrown by archaeology on the Book of the Revelation it will not be necessary to discuss the seven letters in detail. A portion only of Ramsay's supporting material was derived from archacological research, and those details alone are germane to the present theme.
Ephesus has provided the leading illustration, for the stone foundations of jetty and dockside warehouse, deep inland on the edge of the desolate plain, are sharp light on the city whose Christians were bidden be mindful whence they had fallen, and do as they once did, where old things had passed away and ahead lay death. Significantly no cross tops the ruin.
Youthful Smyrna was Ephesus' rival, and to Smyrna's enduring church was promised a "crown of life."
The Christian would fasten on the words with satisfaction, for it was the sort of poet's tag on which cities preen them-selves. Athens was "violet-crowned," until men tired of the adjective. Of Auckland, to its citizens' delight, Kipling wrote, "last, loneliest, loveliest, exquisite, apart." In such fashion the simile of a crown dominates all praise of Smyrna.
"The city has been styled," writes the Rev. Richard Chandler in his eighteenth-century account, "the crown of Ionia." More significantly Aristides calls the "Golden Street," which ringed Mount Pagus with lovely buildings,
"the crown of Ariadne in the heavenly constellation." Apollonius of Tyana, amid rich praise for Smyrna, says rhetorically that it is greater charm "to wear a crown of men than a crown of porticoes."
From afar, the crest of Mount Pagus, its broken ruins cleared by the diligent spades of modern digging, still faintly suggests a diadem above the city's crest. "I have been up there," wrote Freya Stark, "sometimes to walk in the morning, with Ionia on one side and Aeolis on the other, spread below; and nearby, in a shapeless depression, the stadium where Polycarp was burned, and have thought of that old bishop "how he would describe his intercourse with John, and with the rest of those who had seen the Lord ...'" Under "the crown of Smyrna"
Polycarp was not the only Christian who won "a crown of life."
Pergamum, royally sited, with a view of distant peaks and isles, had been an ancient seat of government for four centuries when, in A.D. 29, the first temple to the deified Emperor was erected there. Two others were to follow to flaunt that adoration of the human head of Roman rule, that Beast in the Holy Place, which haunts the Apocalypse.
Asklepios, the god of healing, was also entrenched on Pergamum's acropolis, he who allegedly appeared to Aelius Aristides and gave him "a new name" (see Rev. 2: I7). Asklepios' symbol, frequent on Per-gamenian coins, was a serpent. Pausanias, the ancient traveller and geographer, describes the same Asklepios as sitting on a throne, a staff in one hand, and the other on a serpent's head, a representation which would appear to Christians diabolically blasphemous.
Pausanias also mentions a throne-like altar to Zeus on the top of the crag which dominated Pergamum. Recovered by German archaeologists, the great block of its decorated stone was taken to Berlin,' to see yet another age, with less excuse, exalt the Great Leviathan, and deify the Beast. The altar anciently commemorated the defeat of a Gallic invasion, and its decorated frieze dealt with the subject of the legendary conflict of gods and giants.
The latter, as though Pergamum were obsessed by the Satanic symbol, were represented as a brood of muscular Titans with snake-like tails. The Christians of Pergamum, said John, "dwelt where Satan's throne was." They would have no difficulty in recognizing in the phrase the great altar of Zeus, which somehow summed up the cluttered paganism of the place and usurped the name and place of Christ, for Zeus at Pergamum, was dubbed "the Saviour."
Inscriptions are fine grist for the archaeologist's mill, and from Thyatira they come in plenty. Thyatira's valley was a broad and ancient highway of trade, and in the days of the Roman Peace the city became, like Laodicea, a centre of busy commerce. More trade guilds, those ubiquitous associations of businessmen and craftsmen, have been identified in Thyatira than in any other Asian city. Inscriptions mention workers in wool, linen, leather, and bronze, dyers, tanners, potters and bakers.
The people of Thyatira's church were drawn from a commercial community, alive to salesmanship, keen to do business, and alert to capture trade. Lydia, for example, when she met Paul in distant Macedonia, was a Thyatiran abroad with purple cloth to sell. The trade guilds must have been an anxious problem to the Christian craftsman.
How could he attend the formal meetings and banquets without witnessing licentiousness, and condoning pagan rites? It was the old Corinthian problem of "sitting at meat in the idol's temple" which confronted the struggling church. Archaeology, with its revelation of the scope of the city's trade organization, has set the moral dilemma in high relief.
"Jezebel" (Rev. 2: 20 Notwithstanding I have a few things against thee, because thou sufferest that woman Jezebel, which calleth herself a prophetess, to teach and to seduce my servants to commit fornication, and to eat things sacrificed unto idols.) no doubt had her solution. If she was a Nicolaitan (Rev. 2: 6 But this thou hast, that thou hatest the deeds of the Nicolaitanes, which I also hate. Rev 2:15 So hast thou also them that hold the doctrine of the Nicolaitanes, which thing I hate. So hast thou also them that hold the doctrine of the Nicolaitanes, which thing I hate) or a "Balaamite" (Rev. 2:14 But I have a few things against thee, because thou hast there them that hold the doctrine of Balaam, who taught Balac to cast a stumblingblock before the children of Israel, to eat things sacrificed unto idols, and to commit fornication.
Woe unto them! for they have gone in the way of Cain, and ran greedily after the error of Balaam for reward, and perished in the gainsaying of Corré Jude 11), one of those advocates of compromise whose trail can be traced from the Corinthian epistles to the Apocalypse, this dynamic woman must have trained the worldly-minded to make a show of reconciling paganism and Christ. Such doctrine was a subtle temptation in those communities where livelihood often depends upon a close and amicable relationship with society at large. And archaeology is quite emphatic concerning the varied business life of Thyatira.
Ramsay's interpretation of the remaining three epistles draws its illustrative material rather from the realms of history and geography than from that of archaeology, but one inscription from Sardis may be allowed to round off the story. The city, like Laodicea, has been extensively excavated, and American expeditions have identified many sites. Among them is a sister-temple to that of Ephesus, and a brick-built Christian church. The city which "had a name that it lived and was dead" (Rev.
3: 1) held a Christian minority which "had not defiled its garments" (Rev. 3: 4). Their names, said the Messenger,
"I will not blot out of the book of life," and
as though in token of fulfilment there appears the epitaph of physician Artemas. He died in the first century, perhaps one of John's own flock, and was perhaps in the apostle's mind when the words of praise were written at the close of the sombre letter. The physician's epitaph in the city that was dead, closed with the words: "He is living."
There remains to be said a brief word about Chapter Thirteen, most horrific of the visions of the Apocalypse.
Two points find some illustration from archaeology, the seal of the Beast, and the number of his name.
In the papyri,
"to be sealed" meant to be imperially
protected and retained for imperial use. This appears to be the use of the verb which Paul had in mind in Romans
15:28 “When therefore I have performed this, and have sealed to them this fruit, I will come by you into Spain” a verse which has produced an astonishing variety of renderings. Seals were set, in pursuance of this practice, on sacks of grain to guarantee the correct weight or measure of the contents. There was also a mark, a red stamp, which was required for all documents of exchange.
It showed the Emperor's name and the year of his reign, and was technically known as "the seal."
If, therefore, the first and basic interpretation of the Beast is Caesar himself, John's picture of the seal stamping hand and brow of the duped multitude becomes shockingly true to life. They are stamped and sealed with the sign of the false god of Rome, stamped upon the hand which creates, and before the brain which plans. And without the stamp, which stands symbolically for con-formity, and tacit acceptance of the worship of the Emperor, a man could "neither buy nor sell." The trade guilds, with their stranglehold upon a man's livelihood and the success of his daily avocation are, of course, in view.
And what of the last verse in the chapter: "... his number is six hundred and sixty-six"? Note first that a far from negligible manuscript tradition gives 616, not
666. In both Greek and Latin the letters of the alphabet had numerical value, and the fact was very commonly used to build puzzles. Among the wall scratchings from Pompeii is an election notice in which the vowels are cryptically exchanged for numbers, and another inscription speaks of a girl called Harmonia. "The number of her name,
" it says, "is 45." The key to the puzzle seems to be that Harmonia suggests the nine Muses, and 45 is the sum of all the digits from I to 9.
The churches of Asia probably knew the key to 666 or 616, but it was early forgotten. In Greek 616 adds up to "Caesar God," but 666 is not so simple, and much ingenuity and juggling with spelling has been employed to fit the number to "Nero Caesar," or "Caius Caesar." It is also plausibly suggested that 666 falls short of the perfect trinity 777 in all counts, and thus presents a grisly picture of the power and baseness of Antichrist.
Archaeology has thus done no more than point the way.
The subject remains open for conjecture and ingenuity.
After all the writer warns his readers: "Behold here is wisdom." Perhaps some papyrus scrap still hidden or unread, or some undiscovered inscription under a Turkish doorstep, contains the answer to John's cryptogram.
The key to the interpretation of the Apocalypse is, of course, the significance of its imagery. Much of that is Old Testament in its origin; much of it, as the illustrations in this chapter have briefly shown, is based on contemporary history and geography. Some of it, it may be fairly admitted, is still elusive, and it is here that archaeology may still have something of interest and importance to say.
Archaeology is no longer a Western preserve. There are indigenous schools of archaeologists in the Middle East, and the Far East, which are doing, and will no doubt continue to do good work. Asia Minor, scene of the earliest activities of the organized Church, still offers vast scope for investigation and discovery. The Apocalypse is a document of early Church history, and as such will yet yield more of its primary meaning, as spade and trowel bring to clearer light the ways of thought and action in the first century.