Saturday, May 20, 2023

Allen Brent on the Traditional Dating for the Book of Revelation: The topography of Ephesus (Revelation 2:7)

  

The topography of Ephesus

 

In Apoc. 2,7 the contra-cultural analogue of the sacred τεμενος of the temple of Artemis at Ephesus is the παραδεισος του θεου The cross that is the tree of life (δωσω αυτω φαγειν εκ του ξυλου της ζωης) constitutes the contra-eikon of the tree-shrine depicting the birth of Artemis. From long antiquity that τεμενος had been a place where criminals had sought and obtained asylum. There is evidence that Domitian extended this area and thus compounded the abuse to which two letters of Apollonius of Tyanna, allegedly contemporary with this reign, attest (65 and 66). Such extensions would have reactivated public alarm at the scandal of the criminal refugees in the area and given pertinence to this reference, since Augustus had tried to limit the area and therefore the abuse. Thus the case for a Domitianic date is strengthened. Furthermore we have already described the "union of necorates" in Asia formed from the assimilation of Ephesus as νεωκορος της μεγαλης Αρτεμιδος (Acts 19,35) with the Imperial Cult from Domitian's time onwards (2C 2.3.2.3). (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], 168)

 

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