Bible Commentaries
Revelation 2

Verses 1-29

II 1-III 22 The ’Covering Letter to the Seven Church of Asia’ —1. Asia is the proconsular province. True; it contained many Christian centres besides those here named, e.g. Hierapolis, Colossae, Magnesia. But ’seven’, as always, means ’totality’. But why choose these seven towns? Ramsay ( Letters, ch 14) thinks they were situated on a ’circular road’ by which Rome linked up the most important parts of the province. John would naturally send his letter first to Ephesus; his courier would then go north to Smyrna and Pergamum; then, south-east, and then back by the central part of the road to Ephesus. But, why choose unimportant towns like Philadelphia rather than e.g. Cyzicus? Ramsay conjectures that ’ Asia’ was divided into seven ’ postal areas within which letters might be distributed from a centre commercially or otherwise important. But other towns might be Christian-wise more important. What are the ’Angels’ of the Churches? Elsewhere in Apoc ’angel’ means, as usual, a personal spirit acting as messenger. Does it here mean simply the messenger who carried the letters? No: why write to messengers? Nor do the symbolic stars suit them. Are they the bishops of the various communities? The Latin Fathers incline to this view. But it were too severe to make a bishop responsible for the faults of an entire community! The Greek Fathers tend to think of Guardian Angels. Still, such angels can hardly be blamed, though Daniel (10:13 and 12:1) equips nations and rivers with ’princes’ who are angels and actually opposed to one another. The extremes are clear—Christ, the Sun (16); and the Churches—the Lamps. In between are the Stars, the angels. Three ’planes of reality’, with appropriate symbols. Not that John was borrowing from Plato that intermediate world of ’ideas’, realities higher than their concrete version, the ’things’ that surround us. The Jews already had a floating belief in a more ’real’ because a ’heavenly’ Ark, Book of the Law, Temple furniture and so forth. In this document, we see John’s mind hovering, so to say, between heaven and earth. He is sending ’a heavenly message in a heavenly way to groups of men who should themselves be heavenly. He sees, as with Christ’s eyes, the perfect Community; conscious that the earthly fact by no means corresponds with that, he calls the ’ideal’ an ’angel’: what other word could he dispose of? With his eye, first, on the ideal, he writes to it, and sends it with a message to the ’real’, soon enough forgetting the ’ideal’ and its symbol and focusing on the real, but always reverting to Christ, that Sun from which alone comes the fire that sets the lamps alight.

1-7 The Letter to Ephesus —Ephesus, by far the most important city of ’ Asia’ as governmental centre, ’gate between Rome and Orient’, rich international market, home of general and philosophical education and magic arts ( Ephesia grammata; cf.Acts 19:19); famed above all for the immemorial cult and temple of the Asiatic goddess whom the Greeks called Artemis and the Romans Diana (columns from a temple 500 years older than what John saw are in the British Museum). Its vast precinct was an asylum for criminals, a home of prostitutes, and contained a shrine of Augustus and, later, three associate Caesartemples.

1. Christ moves around among the Lampstands: in this central city he is seen as it were in all the churches of ’ Asia’.

2. Unsanctioned itinerant preachers come there (cf.2 Timothy 3:5-6): but the Ephesian Christians would not tolerate heterodoxy (and cf. 6), though (4 ) they had grown slack in good works.

5. Let them repent, else, ’I am coming at thee!’ Christ would remove the lamp of Ephesus!

7. But the persevering and victorious should eat of the Tree of Life in the eternal Paradise (contrast the veto in Genesis 3:22). Are there allusions here to the frequent shifting of the Ephesian population owing to the constant silting up of the harbour? And to the sacred Artemisian tree on early Ephesian coins? This will not seem far-fetched when we see, below, how John nearly always gives a side-glance to something local and familiar. On the Nicolaitans; see below, 15.

8-11 Smyrna —The ’beauty-spot’, the ’idol’ (??a?µa) of Asia. Its palaces on the eastward hills were known as its ’wreath’ or coronet. Almost from 200 b.c. it was devoted to the imperial cult and even under Antiochus Epiphanes opened a temple to the Goddess Rome. Its loyalty earned it the title ’Faithful’. Its Jewish community was savagely hostile to Christians: it would be Jews who egged on the populace to demand the death of its bishop St Polycarp ( a.d. 156) during the imperial games.

8. Christ, First, but also Last, slain, but now alive, (9 ) knows their poverty—’but thou art rich!’—and the blasphemies of the Jews’Jews’? A misnomer! A ’synagogue’? Yes! but of Satan! Cf. 24. /par/par10. The Smyrniots shall suffer persecution—sharp, including martyrdoms, but short (’10 days’: on John’s use of numbers, see § 969g). Let them be ’faithful’—to death! Christ would give them a wreath of Life, nor (11 ) would they be hurt by the ’second death’, that of the soul.

12-17 Pergamum—Whence ’parchment’, there fabricated. A colossal altar of Zeus dominated both city and plain. Caesar-worship developed as from 29 b.c. A centre for the cult of the healer-hero Asklepios: sick pilgrims slept in his temple: Aelius Aristides (2nd cent.) having done so received a new name, Theodorus, and was given a sacred emblem that he’ carried about as pious consolation. If this practice was normal, 17 may allude to it. 13. This concentration of paganism may explain ’the Throne of Satan: where Satan dwells’. The local Christians had held firm, even in the days of Antipas (a protomartyr? otherwise unknown).

14-16. Still, they contain men who ’hold the teaching of Balaam who taught Balak (Numbers 31:16) to ensnare the Israelites—to eat idols’ food and commit fornication. So thou too hast, even thou, men who similarly hold the teachings of the Nicolaitans’. (No reason for connecting this name with the deacon of Acts 6:5.) St Paul, writing to the Ephesians and Colossians shows that fore-runners of the Gnostics (see § 963c and below, 20 and 24) existed who encouraged ’laxism’ sharing in feasts where food coming from temple-sacrifices was eaten (not illegitimate in itself, but suggesting that the banqueters joined too in the actual worship; see 1 Cor 8), and where immorality often resulted from such orgies. The ’laxists’ said: ’These meals are merely social, not religious: no risk of sin!’ John rejects this: Christ will ’come at’ the guilty with his sword sharper than any such casuistry, or than the persecutor’s. 17. The Victor would be given, not that food, but the’ hidden manna’, and a white token, medallion, engraved with a ’new name’ known to none but the recipient. The Manna, ’bread from heaven’, had been hidden in the Ark (Exodus 16:23; cf.Hebrews 9:4): tradition said that it should be restored at the time of the Messias (cf.Jn 6): in the catacombs the Eucharist was symbolized by a manna-jar. Again, it was widely believed that each thing had an ’inner self’, to which a secret name corresponded. He who knew that name had power over the essence of the thing. This ’secret’ name was sometimes engraved in magic characters on a token of ivory or stone, to be worn round the neck or as a ring. Christ by his union with the soul gives it a new ’self’ known only to him and to his Christian. The Promises increasingly concern this supernatural, indeed Eucharistic, union. 18-29 Thyatira —Commercially very active, with guilds of bakers, dyers, tanners, potters, wool-workers, linen, leather, bronze, etc. Life was practically impossible save in a trade-guild which meant joining in its feasts. 19 ff. John praises the Thyatirans: but, they tolerate a ’modern Jezebel’ (see 3 Kg 16-21; 4 Kg 9), who like the ’modern Balaam’ (14), seduces them into laxity—infidelity to the One God who had espoused Israel was immemorially called adultery (22 ). He whose flaming eyes penetrate all specious excuses and read men’s hearts bids them break off this adulterous alliance—she shall indeed be placed in a bed, but one of torment: The Victorious shall share in Christ’s own victory (27 ff.), and he will give them that Morning Star which is himself (cf. 22:16; 2 Peter 1:19) —the Prophets were lamps; Christ, the Dawn-Star rising in men’s hearts. (Why not the Sun? full daylight? Because while we live by faith, we exist at best but in a twilight.) Thyatira had a female Sibyl who ’prophesied’ there: later, the Montanists had heretic ’prophetesses’ there: so this ’Jezebel’ may have been no mere collectivity, but an actual woman, claiming to reveal ’deep things’—the ’Depth’ was afterwards a technical Gnostic word. ’Deep things?’ cries John. ’May be! But the "deep things" of Satan (cf. 9). ’I lay on you no other burden’, i.e. no fresh obligations: John remembers the decree in Acts 15:28: ’(We) . . . lay on you no further burden, save to abstain from things sacrificed to idols . . .’ John had joined in making that decree: the recurrence of the subject-matter revives the formula.