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1. Introduction
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1 INTRODUCTION The "long year" looked like the last year, the last of all years, even to the Roman historian Tacitus.1 Consider the way the world looked then to aJew in the Diaspora. From the island of Patmos in 69 CE, a Jew named John looked to the east and saw the holy city of Jerusalem besieged by the armies of Rome but standing valiantly, awaiting its deliverance. BeyondJerusalem, the ghost of Nero—or a Nero who never really died—threatened to lead the armies of Parthia against his former dominions.2 Looking to the west, John saw the convulsions of the great beast that was Rome: war raged on Italian soil, each emperor slew his predecessor, each so-called ruler of the worldwas unable to rule even his own city. It appeared that the Empire was drunk on its own corruption, lurching toward its dissolution. As he looked around the province of Asia, John saw the army of the latest pretender leaving the siege of the holy city of Jerusalem and marching on to assault the great city of Rome. Myriads of soldiers under the command of Gaius Licinius Mucianus traversed the province of Asia on their way to install the fourth emperor of the year. Closer still to home, John saw his own Jewish community living dangerously among the nations, derided and .0scapegoated by their neighbours over the war in Judea, tempted to abandon the commandments of God for the ways of the nations. 1 These two descriptions, "long" and "last,"proceed from Tacitus: "that one long year of Galba, Otho, and Vitellius" (atque ilium Galbae et Othonis et Vitelli longum et unum annum; Dialogus 17) and "the year that was going to be his [Galba's] last and for the state almost the end" (annum sibi ultimum, reipublicae prope supremum; Histories 1.11). 2 "About this time [summer 69 CE] Achaia and Asia were terrified by a false rumour of Nero's arrival. The reports with regard to his death had been varied and therefore many people imagined and believed he was alive" (Subidem tempus Achaia atque Asia falso exterritae velut Nero adventaret, vario super exitu eius rumore eoque pluribus vivere eum fingentibus credentibusque; Tacitus,Histories 2.8). 2 PARABLES OFTHE WAR The circumstances of those years were dire. Nero took his own life in June 68, and Galba, a general from Spain, ascended. By the middle of January 69, another general, Otho, overthrew Galba and took the imperial office. Three short months later, a third general, Vitellius, supported by the northern legions, defeated Otho in a bloody battle on Italian soil. Meanwhile in Judea, Vespasian, who had been dispatched by Nero to put down the Jewish revolt, bided his time. Most of the resistance in the countryside had been squashed, and the armies of Rome surrounded Jerusalem. When Nero died, Vespasian halted the war operations as he waited to see who would succeed to the imperial office. Eventually Vespasian's troops proclaimed him emperor; he removed several legions from the siege of Jerusalem and sent them marching toward Rome. By the end of the year, Vespasian's party was victorious and he was the fourth emperor of the year. This crisis drove John to write his Apocalypse. He strove to make sense of this situation for himself and his community, and he saw in Rome the avatar of Babylon. He strove to make his people understand how significant and dangerous their situation was and to move them to resist the temptations of the Greco-Roman cultural complex. His vision was a parable of the war, and his message was to stand fast in the face of adversity and of the adversary and to trust that God, through his lamb, would save or even extend his people and punish their adversaries. This is the vision we have in John's Apocalypse. This tale is the product of my labours and the source of my obligations in this book. It is both an unorthodox tale of John's Apocalypse and the narrative formulation of an unorthodox argument concerning John's Apocalypse. Putting it bluntly, I argue that the Apocalypse is a Jewish and not a Christian document. Explanations, qualifications, and cautions are immediately necessary. I work out my argument that the Apocalypse ofJohn ought—within the canons of historical-critical scholarship—to be understood as a Jewishrather than a Christian document in relation to four text complexes: the invective against the "synagogue of Satan" (Rev 2:9...