Chapter 7 | Table of
Contents | Chapter 9
The Letters to the Seven Churches
W. M. Ramsay
1904
Chapter 8: The Education of St. John in Patmos
Closely related to this authority claimed and exercised by the writer of the Apocalypse
over the Church--so closely related that it is merely another aspect of that authority--is
the claim which he makes to speak in the name of Christ. He writes in a book what he has
seen and heard. The words of the letter are given him to set down. It is the Divine Head
of the Church Himself, from whom all the letters and the book as a whole originate. The
writer is distinguished from the Author; though the distinction is not to be regarded as
carried through the book with unbroken regularity, and must not be pressed too closely.
The one idea melts into the other with that elusive indefiniteness which characterises the
book as a whole.
On his credentials as a legate or messenger is founded the authority which the writer
exercise over the Church. Over the Church God alone has authority; and no man may demand
its obedience except in so far as he has been directly commissioned by God to speak. Only
the messenger of God has any right to obedience: other men can only offer advice.
Let us try to understand this attitude and this claim by first of all understanding
more clearly the situation in which the writer was placed, and the circumstances in which
the work originated. Only in that way can the problem be fairly approached. It may prove
insoluble. In a sense it must prove insoluble. At the best we cannot hope to do more than
state the conditions and the difficulties clearly in a form suited to the mind and
thoughts of our own time. But a clear understanding of the difficulties involved is a step
towards the solution. The solution however must be reached by every one for himself: it is
a matter for the individual mind, and depends on the degree to which the individual can
even in a dim vague way comprehend the mind of St. John. It involves the personal element,
personal experience and personal opinion; and he who tries to express the solution is
exposed to subjectivity and error. The solution is to be lived rather than spoken.
St. John had been banished to Patmos, an unimportant islet, whose condition in ancient
times is little known. In the Imperial period banishment to one of the small rocky islands
of the Aegean was a common and recognised penalty, corresponding in some respects (though
only in a very rough way and with many serious differences) to the former English
punishment of transportation. It carried with it entire loss of civil rights and almost
entire loss of property; usually a small allowance was reserved to sustain the exile's
life. The penalty was life-long; it ended only with death. The exile was allowed to live
in free intercourse with the people of the island, and to earn money. But he could not
inherit money nor bequeath his own, if he saved or earned any: all that he had passed to
the State at his death. He was cut off from the outer world, though he was not treated
with personal cruelty or constraint within the limits of the islet, where he was confined.
But there are serious difficulties forbidding the supposition that St. John was
banished to Patmos in this way.
In the first place this punishment was reserved for persons of good standing and some
wealth. Now it seems utterly impossible to admit that St. John could have belonged to that
class. In Ephesus he was an obscure stranger of Jewish origin; and under the Flavian
Emperors the Jews of Palestine were specially open to suspicion on account of the recent
rebellion. There is no evidence, and no probability, that he possessed either the birth,
or the property, or the civic rights, entitling him to be treated on this more favoured
footing. He was one of the common people, whose punishment was more summary and far
harsher than simple banishment to an island.
In the second place, even if he had been of sufficiently high standing for that form of
punishment, it is impossible to suppose that the crime of Christianity could have been
punished so leniently at that period. If it was a crime at all, it belonged to a very
serious class; and milder treatment is unknown as a punishment for it. In its first
stages, before it was regarded as a crime, some Christians were subjected to comparatively
mild penalties, like scourging; but in such cases they were punished, not for the crime of
Christianity, not for "the name," but for other offences, such as causing
disorder in the streets. But St. John was in Patmos for the word of God and the
testimony of Jesus, partaker with you in the tribulation and kingdom and patience which
are in Jesus. His punishment took place at a time when the penalty for Christianity
was already fixed as death in the severer form (i.e. fire, crucifixion, or as a public
spectacle at games and festivals) for persons of humbler position and provincials, and
simple execution for Roman citizens. Nor is it possible to suppose that St. John was
banished at an early stage in the persecution, before the procedure was fully comprehended
and strictly carried out. The tradition that connects his punishment with Domitian is too
strong.
The conclusion seems inevitable: St. John was not punished with the recognised Roman
penalty of banishment to an island (deportatio in insulam): the exile to Patmos
must have been some kind of punishment of a more serious character.
There was such a penalty. Banishment combined with hard labour for life was one of the
grave penalties. Many Christians were punished in that way. It was a penalty for humbler
criminals, provincials and slaves. It was in its worst forms a terrible fate: like the
death penalty it was preceded by scourging, and it was marked by perpetual fetters, scanty
clothing, insufficient food, sleep on the bare ground in a dark prison, and work under the
lash of military overseers. It is an unavoidable conclusion that this was St. John's
punishment. Patmos is not elsewhere mentioned as one of the places where convicts of this
class were sent; but we know very little about the details and places of this penalty; and
the case of St. John is sufficient proof that such criminals were in some cases sent
there. There were no mines in Patmos. Whether any quarries were worked there might be
determined by careful exploration of the islet. Here, as everywhere in the New Testament,
one is met by the difficulty of insufficient knowledge. In many cases it is impossible to
speak confidently, where a little exploration by a competent traveller would probably give
certainty.
Undoubtedly, there were many forms of hard labour under the Roman rule, and these
varied in degree, some being worse than others. We might wish to think that in his exile
St. John had a mild type of punishment to undergo, which permitted more leisure and more
ease; but would any milder penalty be suitable to the language of 1:9, your brother and
partaker with you in the tribulation? It is possible perhaps to explain those words as
used by an exile, though subjected only to the milder penalty inflicted on persons of
rank. But how much more meaning and effect they carry, when the penalties of both parties
are of the same severe character. Now it is a safe rule to follow, that the language of
the New Testament is rarely, if ever, to be estimated on the lower scale of effectiveness.
The interpretation which gives most power and meaning is the right one. St. John wrote to
the Churches in those words of 1:9, because he was suffering in the same degree as
themselves.
Banished to Patmos, St. John was dead to the world; he could not learn much about what
was going on in the Empire and in the Province Asia. It would be difficult for him to
write his Vision in a book, and still more difficult to send it to the Churches when it
was written. He could exercise no charge of his Churches. He could only think about them,
and see in the heavens the process of their fate. He stood on the sand of the seashore,
and saw the Beast rise from the sea and come to the land of Asia: and he saw the battle
waged and the victory won. Just as the Roman supreme magistrate or general was competent
to read in the sky the signs of the Divine will regarding the city or the army entrusted
to his charge, so St. John could read in the heavens the intimation of the fortunes and
the history of his Churches.
In passing, a remark on the text must be made here. It is unfortunate that the Revisers
departed from the reading of the Authorised Version in 13:1; and attached the first words
to the preceding chapter, understanding that the Dragon "stood upon the sand of the
sea." Thus a meaningless and unsuitable amplification--for where is the point in
saying that the Dragon waxed wroth with the Woman, and went away to war with the rest
of her seed; and he stood upon the sand of the sea? the history breaks off properly
with his going away to war against the saints (the conclusion of that war being related in
19:19-21), whereas it halts and comes to a feeble stop, when he is left standing on the
seashore--was substituted for the bold and effective personal detail, I stood upon the
sand of the shore of Patmos, and saw a Beast rise out of the sea.
St. John could see all this; and through years of exile, with rare opportunities of
hearing what happened to his Churches, he could remain calm, free from apprehension,
confident in their steadfastness on the whole and their inevitable victory over the enemy.
In that lonely time the thoughts and habits of his youth came back to him, while his
recently acquired Hellenist habits were weakened in the want of the nourishment supplied
by constant intercourse with Hellenes and Hellenists. His Hellenic development ceased for
the time. The head of the Hellenic Churches of Asia was transformed into the Hebrew seer.
Nothing but the Oriental power of separating oneself from the world and immersing oneself
in the Divine could stand the strain of that long vigil on the shore of Patmos. Nothing
but a Vision was possible for him; and the Vision, full of Hebraic imagery and the traces
of late Hebrew literature which all can see, yet also often penetrated with a Hellenist
and Hellenic spirit so subtle and delicate that few can appreciate it, was slowly written
down, and took form as the Revelation of St. John.
Most men succumb to such surroundings, and either die or lose all human nature and sink
to the level of the beasts. A few can live through it, sustained by the hope of escape and
return to the world. But St. John rose above that life of toil and hopeless misery,
because he lived in the Divine nature and had lost all thought of the facts of earth. In
that living death he found his true life, like many another martyr of Christ. Who shall
tell how far a man may rise above earth, when he can rise superior to an environment like
that? Who will set bounds to the growth of the human soul, when it is separated from all
worldly relations and trammels, feeding on its own thoughts and the Divine nature, and yet
is filled not with anxiety about its poor self, but with care, love and sympathy for those
who have been constituted its charge?
When he was thus separated from communication with his Churches, St. John was already
dead in some sense to the world. The Apocalypse was to be, as it were, his last testament,
transmitted to the Asian Churches from his seclusion when opportunity served, like a voice
coming to them from the other world.
Those who can with sure and easy hand mark out the limits beyond which the soul of man
can never go, will be able to determine to their own satisfaction how far St. John was
mistaken, when he thought he heard the Divine voice and listened to a message transmitted
through him to the Churches and to the Church as a whole. But those who have not gauged so
accurately and narrowly the range of the human soul will not attempt the task. They will
recognise that there is in these letters a tone and a power above the mere human level,
and will confess that the ordinary man is unable to keep pace with the movement of this
writer. It is admitted that the letters reveal to us the character and the experiences of
the writer, and that they spring out of his own nature. But what was his nature? How far
can man rise above the human level? How far can man understand the will and judgment of
God? We lesser men who have not the omniscient confidence of the critical pedant, do not
presume to fix the limits beyond which St. John could not go.
But we know that from the Apocalypse we have this gain, at least. Through the study of
it we are able in a vague and dim way to understand how that long drawn-out living death
in Patmos was the necessary training through which he must pass who should write the
Fourth Gospel. In no other way could man rise to that superhuman level, on which the
Fourth Gospel is pitched, and be able to gaze with steady unwavering eyes on the eternal
and the Divine and to remain so unconscious of the ephemeral world. And they who strive
really to understand the education of Patmos will be able to understand the strangest and
most apparently incredible fact about the New Testament, how the John who is set before us
in the Synoptic Gospels could ever write the Fourth Gospel.
The Revelation, which was composed in the circumstances above described, must have been
slow in taking form. It was not the vision of a day; it embodied the contemplation and the
insight of years. But its point of view is the moment when the Apostle was snatched from
the world and sent into banishment. After that he knew nothing; his living entombment
began then; and if the Revelation is quoted as an historical authority about the Province,
its evidence applies only to the period which he knew.
At last there came the assassination of the tyrant, the annulling of all his acts, and
the strong reaction against his whole policy. The Christians profited by this. The
persecution, though not first instituted by him, was closely connected with his name and
his ideas, and was discredited and made unpopular by the association. For a time it was in
abeyance.
In particular, the exile pronounced against St. John was apparently an act of the
Emperor, and ceased to be valid when his acts were declared invalid. The Apostle was now
free to return to Asia. He may have brought the Apocalypse with him. More probably an
opportunity had been found of sending it already. But it reached the Churches, and began
to be effective among them, in the latter part of Domitian's reign; and hence Irenaeus
says it was written at that time. But while his account is to be regarded as literally
true, yet the composition was long and slow, and the point of view is placed at the
beginning of the exile.
There grew up later the belief that his exile had only been short; and that he was
banished about two years before the end of Domitian's reign. But this seems to rest on no
early or good evidence: all that can be reckoned as reasonably certain (so far as
certainty can be predicated of a time so remote and so obscure) is that St. John was
banished to Patmos and returned at the death of Domitian.
Antoninus Pius (138-161), indeed, laid down the rule that criminals might be released
from this penalty after ten years on account of ill-health or old age, if relatives took
charge of them. But this amelioration cannot be supposed to have been allowed in the
Flavian time for an obscure Christian. No other end for the punishment of St. John seems
possible except the fall of Domitian; and in that case he must have been exiled by
Domitian, for if he had been condemned by another Emperor, his fate would not have been
affected by the annulment of Domitian's acts.
There arose also in that later time a misconception as to the character of the Flavian
persecution. It was regarded as an act of Domitian alone, and was supposed to be, like all
the other persecutions except the last, a brief but intense outburst of cruelty: this
misconception took form before the last persecution, and was determined by the analogy of
all the others.
But the Flavian persecution was not a temporary flaming forth of cruelty: it was a
steady, uniform application of a deliberately chosen and unvarying policy, a policy
arrived at after careful consideration, and settled for the permanent future conduct of
the entire administration. It was to be independent of circumstances and the inclination
of individuals. The Christians were to be annihilated, as the Druids had been; and both
those instances of intolerance were due to the same cause, not religious but political,
viz., the belief that each of them endangered the unity of the Empire and the safety of
the Imperial rule. Domitian was not a mere capricious tyrant. He was an able, but gloomy
and suspicious, ruler. He applied with ruthless logic the principle which had apparently
been laid down by his father Vespasian, and which was confirmed a few years later by
Trajan. But the more genial character of Vespasian interfered in practice with the
thorough execution of the principle which he had laid down; and the clear insight of
Trajan recognised that in carrying it out methods were required which would be
inconsistent with the humaner spirit of his age, and he forbade those excesses, while he
approved the principle. But the intellect of Domitian perceived that the proscription of
the Christians was simply the application of the essential principles of Roman
Imperialism, and no geniality or humanity prevented him from putting it logically and
thoroughly into execution. His ability, his power to grasp general principles, and his
narrow intensity of nature in putting his principles into action, may be gathered from his
portrait, Fig. 5, taken from one of his coins.
Figure 5: Domitian the persecutor
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