Gonzalo Rojas-Flores, «The Book of Revelation and the First Years of Nero’s Reign», Vol. 85 (2004) 375-392
In this article I try to demonstrate that the Book of
Revelation was written in the first years of Nero’s reign, because (a) there
is an important patristic tradition in favor of Nero and (b) the internal
evidence shows that the text was redacted after Nero’s ascension to the throne
in 54 and before the earthquake of Laodicea in 60.
The Book of Revelation and the First Years of Nero’s Reign 383
destroyed: “Come out of her, my people, so that you do not take part in
her sins, and so that you do not share in her plagues; for her sins are
heaped high as heaven, and God has remembered her iniquities†(Rev
18,4-5).
According to the prophecy of John, believers living in Jerusalem
stay sheltered in the Temple, protected from the profanation of the
Holy City, while believers living in Rome are persuaded to escape
before the city is destroyed. In conclusion, at the time John wrote the
Book of Revelation, the Jewish-Christians had not escaped to Pella yet,
and Menahem, Eleazar, son of Simon, John of Gischala and Simon bar
Giora had not taken control of the Temple and the Holy City yet (26).
3. The deaths of Paul, Peter and James the Just
John prophesies about two witnesses killed in Jerusalem (Rev
11,1-13). According to an old tradition, Peter would have died in the
same year Paul was decapitated, that is to say, in 67 (27). Did John refer
to them when he wrote about the two witnesses? But his description of
the death of the two witnesses differs radically from the historical
circumstances in which Peter and Paul were executed. While the two
witnesses are executed in Jerusalem in the context of a war in which
believers are protected inside the Temple, Peter and Paul were
executed in Rome during a war in which Jewish-Christians escaped
from Jerusalem.
But Peter could have been crucified in Rome in 64, during the
repression that took place after the fire in Rome (28). This alternative
(26) According to Eusebius, the Jewish-Christians went to Pella “before the
warâ€, because God ordered it through a revelation received by “approved menâ€
(Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 3.5). However, it is very probable that this escape had taken
place after the disastrous retreat of Cestius, when “many of the most eminent of
the Jews swam away from the city, as from a ship when it was going to sinkâ€
(Josephus, Bell. Iud. 2.20.1).
(27) According to this patristic tradition, Peter and Paul died in the same year,
the fourteenth year of Nero’s reign (Eusebius, Chronicon 2.211; Hist. eccl. 2.25;
Jerome, De viris ill. 5;12), that is to say, between October of 67 and June of 68.
(28) Eusebius and Jerome affirmed that Peter and Paul died in the same year.
But some Fathers used to present their lives as parallel lives. Irenaeus, for
example, assured his readers that Peter and Paul founded the church of Rome. Cf.
C.P. THIEDE, Simon Peter. From Galilee to Rome (Grand Rapids 1988) 157, 190-
191. In my opinion, Peter was probably crucified in 64, during the repression that
took place as a consequence of the fire in Rome, three years before the death of
Paul in 67.