Saturday, May 20, 2023

Allen Brent on Revelation 3:21

  

Apoc. 3,21: καθισαι μετ’ εμου εν τω θρονω μου

 

Particular references here to our concerns with the Imperial Cult are sparse, even though Hemer detected and reinforced early discussions of the relationship between what is recorded by ancient writers and inscriptions regarding Laodicea and this letter. The wealth and self-sufficiency of the city meant that it was in a position to decline to ask for imperial aid following the earthquake already mentioned (5A 3.1.6). However, the promise here to the overcomers is "to sit with me on my throne (καθισαι μετεμου εν τω θρονω μου) even as I have been victorious (ως καγω ενικησα) and sit with my father on his throne (και εκαθισα μετα του πατρος μου εν τω θρονω μου; v. 21)."

 

There was however an imperial temple erected in honour of Domitian at Laodicea in commemoration of his often fictitious, military, victories. The depiction of the temple on coins represents Domitian in armour with a spear and with the inscription: επινεικιος. Furthermore, as Hemer notes, Ramsay restored an inscription from Laodicea in which a freedman of the emperor, Tiberius Claudius Tryphon, dedicates a triple gate and towers: "to Jupiter (Δ[ιι]) the greatest Saviour (μεγις[τω] Σ[ω]τηρι) and emperor Domitian (και Αυτοκρατορι [Δομιτιανω]), Caesar Augustus (Καισαρι Σεβαστω), pontifex maximus (αρχιερει μεγιστω)." We have shown the clear emphasis in the other letters on a contra-cultural representation of Christian eschatology in terms of the Imperial Cult. It is interesting to ask, therefore, whether the address of the Lord Christ ("Behold I stand at the door and knock" v. 20), however allusory, is not a parallel with the gate bearing the emperor's name and by whose will people come in and come out. The supper is clearly eschatological (Apoc. 3,20 cf. 19,9 and 17) but a foretaste is the Eucharist of the present which has already in previous letters been paralleled with the cultic festivities of the guilds at Pergamon (5B 1.3) and Thyateira (5B 1.4). (Allen Brent, The Imperial Cult and the Development of Church Order: Concepts and Images of Authority in Paganism and Early Christianity Before the Age of Cyprian [Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae 45; Leiden: Brill, 1999], 189)

 

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