that they have no firm ground beneath their feet. Pseudodorotheus, after he has placed the banishment of John to Patmos under Trajan, adds, "But others say, he was banished to Patmos, not under Trajan, but under Domitian, the son of Vespasian.", Arethas, who at ch. vii. 1-8 places the composition of the Apocalypse before the Jewish war, at ch. i. 6, makes it to have been written under Domitian.

6. We can with tolerable certainty discover the extraneous grounds, which have given rise to these departures from the historical tradition, and through which they lose all their importance. They have no higher origin than the opinions of our modern critics, who on the ground of the first plausible conjecture and discovery on the internal field, disregard and tread under foot the weightiest and most solid testimonies. Epiphanias ranks in the same line with Züllig.

It cannot but appear strange, that all those who depart from the tradition, amid their other diversities agree in this, that they place the composition of the Revelation before the era of Jerusalem's overthrow. That what impelled them to this was the belief of certain passages in Revelation having respect to the Jewish catastrophe, seems probable alone from the analogy of later critics and expositors, who from Grotius downwards have been chiefly influenced by this consideration to disallow the composition of the Apocalypse under Domitian. But it is raised to certainty by expressions of Andreas and Arethas, who in reference to certain passages expressly affirm that they were understood by some of the Jewish war, who consequently could not do otherwise than transfer the composition of the book to a time previous to that war. But in proportion as the exposition of the Apocalypse was then in a state of infancy, the less consideration can justly be attributed to what has sprung from such a ground.

Why the Emperor Claudius should have been fixed on may be

1 Before Theophylact on John: Ὑπὸ δὲ Τραϊανοῦ βασιλέως ἐξωρίσθη ἐν τῇ νήσῳ Πάτμῳ διὰ τὸν λόγον τοῦ κυρίου. . Εἰσὶ δὲ οἱ λέγουσι, μὴ ἐπὶ Τραϊανοῦ αὐτὸν ἐξωρισθῆναι ἐν Πάτμῳ, ἀλλὰ ἐπὶ Δομετιανοῦ, υἱοῦ Οὐεσπασιανού.

2 Andreas says on ch. vi. 12: Καὶ εἶδον ὅτε ἤνοιξε τὴν σφραγῖδα τὴν ἕκτην, καὶ σεισμὸς μέγας ἐγένετο, καὶ ὁ ἥλιος ἐγένετο μέλας ὡς σάκκος κ. τ. λ. Καὶ ταῦτά τινες εἰς τὴν ἐπὶ Οὐεσπασιανοῦ πολιορκίαν ἐξέλαβον ἅπαντα τῶν εἰρημένων ἕκαστον τροπολογήσαντες. Also on ch. vii. 1 : Καὶ ταῦτά τισιν ὑπὸ Ρωμαίων πάλαι τοῖς Ἰουδαίοις γεγενήσθαι ἐξείληπται.

gathered from those who have latterly contended for the composition under his reign. Grotius, Hammond, and others derive their chief argument in favour of Claudius from Acts xviii. 2, and the well-known passage of Suetonius (Claud. c. 25), which speak of the expulsion of the Jews, and this is supposed to have involved also John's banishment to Patmos. Another argument may still be found in the original passage Matt. xxiv. 7, " And there shall be famines and pestilences in various places," on which Rev. vi. 5-8 rests; for this has often been referred to the times of Claudius, in whose reign a famine four times broke out and a pestilence twice-comp. Acts xi. 28, the comm. on Sueton. c. 18, Schott Comment. in Sermones de reditu, p. 27.

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It was the more natural to think of Nero, when one once abandoned the ground of testimony and gave way to conjectures, since, having been the first to begin the work of persecution against Christians, and the person under whom the most distinguished of the apostles, Peter and Paul, suffered martyrdom, he was regarded in ancient times as distinctively the persecutor. Tertullian already makes John, not indeed banished by Nero to Patmos, yet put by him into a barrel of boiling oil.1

We are not, however, to suppose that with the result we have now attained, the inquiry respecting the composition of the Apocalypse is to be regarded as closed. External testimonies alone cannot decide the matter. It is conceivable, that what was originally conjecture, may have clothed itself in the garb of tradition, and under this form deceived even the most honest inquirers. But we must put the matter in its fair and correct position—that we have no longer to speak of two equally accredited views of antiquity; that we must recognise upon the one side a well-supported tradition, and on the other an uncertain conjecture; that we must proceed to the investigation of the internal grounds with the consciousness of having already at the outset won a firm position, from which we should not suffer ourselves to be driven by any uncertain conjectures, but only by the most conclusive arguments. But the more careful examination of the internal grounds, far from invalidating the external testimonies, rather yields the result,

1 So at least Jerome already, adv. Jovin. c. i. c. 14, understood his expression, de præser. c. 86. Comp. Lampe on John Prolog. i. c. 4, § 3.

that the Book could have been composed at no other time than during the reign of Domitian.

I. Let us first bring into view the condition of the churches in Lesser Asia, as that appears in the seven epistles.

Dr Lücke himself is obliged to admit, p. 243, that the Revelation supposes a condition of the churches, which, in contradistinction from the earlier one of Paul's time, may be designated the age of John. First of all, the seven epistles presuppose a time, when that word of the Lord, "But when the bridegroom tarried, they all slumbered and slept," and that word, "Because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold," had already passed into fulfilment. The blessed period of the first love is past, even there too, where it still relatively stood fast; zeal has relaxed and corruption make great inroads; we feel ourselves everywhere transferred to the later times, "in which a grievous corruption, that not suddenly but by gradual advances had sprung up, and acquired new strength as it proceeded, had already befallen those churches."

In Ephesus the love which Paul, in ch. iii. 18 of his epistle, had besought for the Ephesians, has become cooled. "But I have somewhat against thee, that thou hast left thy first love," (Rev. ii. 4.) Already it is a time, when that which still remained is in danger of perishing. "Remember from whence thou hast fallen (it is said in ver. 5), and repent and do the first works; else I will come unto thee quickly, and remove thy candlestick out of its place, except thou repent." Paul, in his farewell discourse to the church at Ephesus, Acts xx., still makes no mention of any blemishes among them, but only warns them against the snares of the threatening foe. The Epistle to the Ephesians, written by Paul (according to Wieseler in his Chronol. of the Apost. age, p. 455) during the period of his first two years' imprisonment at Rome, or in the year 61 or 62 (according to Harless about the year 62), everywhere conveys the impression of fresh life, of a first love. The apostle begins at the very outset with an expression of thanksgiving to God for all the rich spiritual gifts which he had conferred on that church. He lauds in particular the love of the Ephesians, their brotherly love, which has its source and foundation in the love of God, ch. i. 15, 16, "Wherefore I also, after I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus, and love unto all

the saints, cease not to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers."

The church of Sardis appears in a still sadder condition. "I know thy works, that thou hast a name that thou livest, and art dead" is the word to her, iii. 1-your light has already wellnigh become extinct.

Laodicea had become lukewarm; wretched and miserable, poor, and blind, and naked. The condition of the Laodicean church in Paul's time is partly to be estimated by that of the Ephesian, according to Col. iv. 16, partly and more particularly by that of the church of Colosse; comp. Col. ii. 1, iv. 13, 15, 16. The Epistle to the Colossians was written about the same time with that to the Ephesians (see Wieseler), and not long before the close of Paul's life, when suffering imprisonment at Rome. There, just as in the Epistle to the Ephesians, he gives thanks for what he had heard of their faith and love: "We give thanks to God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, praying always for you, since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus, and your love to all the saints," (Col. i. 3, 4.) According to ch. ii. 5, the apostle is with them in spirit rejoicing and beholding their order and their faith in Christ.

Dr Lücke thinks, p. 413, that the change in question can be explained, though a period of only ten years had intervened. But even this short space is not secured. The date of the Apocalypse is supposed by him to have been separated from that of the Epistles to Ephesus and Colosse by a period of somewhere about six years. And then it is clear as day, that even a space of ten years could not account for so radical a change. It bespeaks a change of persons, the arrival of a new generation comp. Judg. ii. 7, according to which the people served the Lord so long as Joshua and the elders lived, who had seen the mighty works of the Lord, which he had done for Israel. In regard, especially, to what concerns the Laodiceans it will not do merely to say: Tempora mutantur et nos mutamur in illis. It were indeed a source of despair, if such a change on the part of established Christians could be explained from a change of times, and, God be thanked, is without an example in the history of the Christian church. The world can certainly become demoralized in a short time, but Christians retain their anointing. And then in the decennium

immediately following the composition of the Epistles to the Ephesians and Colossians, no change of times can be pointed out, which should have brought such perils with it, endangering even the elect. It came only at the period, to which the church tradition assigns the composition of the Apocalypse, under the reign of Domitian. There all the premises are to be found, which are required to explain the facts. We have, in that case, an interval of more than thirty years. During that period the apostles had all, with the exception of John, gone to their rest, and so the boundary set by the apostle Paul in 2 Thess. ii. 6 had been crossed; gone, too, were the Christian fathers, who had seen the great deeds of the Lord, while a storm of persecution, such as the Christian church had not yet seen, passed over the less firmly established new generation. Hence, the Seer writes, according to ch. i. 9, to his companions in tribulation and in the patience of Jesus Christ. Then did the word of the Lord in Matth. xiii. 20, 21, find a mournful fulfilment : "But he that received the seed into stony places, the same is he who heareth the word, and anon with joy receiveth it; yet hath he not root in himself, but dureth for a while; for when tribulation or persecution ariseth because of the word, by and bye he is offended."

Farther, we find in the churches to which John wrote, the errors of those, whom he designates by the symbolical names of the Nicolaitans or Balaamites, deeply rooted and wide-spread. According to ch. ii. 21, the Lord had already given ample time to their operations: "And I gave her space to repent of her fornication; and she repented not." How strong the pressure of the Nicolaitans was upon the church at Ephesus, is manifest from its being mentioned as a matter of high desert, that they hated the deeds of these Nicolaitans. They must there have been already excluded from the church. For in apostolic times this was the form in which hatred manifested itself-comp. 1 Cor. v.—and it could not otherwise have been a fact of a public character, as it appears to have been. In the church at Pergamos the matter had not been brought to such an exclusion, a proof how strong the party there was. So also in the church at Thyatira. It must there have found its way to the directorship; as may be inferred from the Jesabel, the wife of the angel, the weaker half of the party in office.