Talk:Book of Revelation

message: A discussion is taking place to address a potential problem with the redirect The Revelation of Jesus Christ and it has been listed for discussion. Readers of this page are welcome to participate at  until a consensus is reached.  Veverve (talk) 14:30, 9 February 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  "[[:The Revelation of Jesus Christ]]" listed at [[Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion|Redirects for discussion]] 

message: A discussion is taking place to address a potential problem with the redirect First woe and it has been listed for discussion. Readers of this page are welcome to participate at  until a consensus is reached.  Veverve (talk) 14:32, 9 February 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  "[[:First woe]]" listed at [[Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion|Redirects for discussion]] 

message: A discussion is taking place to address a potential problem with the redirect Second woe and it has been listed for discussion. Readers of this page are welcome to participate at  until a consensus is reached.  Veverve (talk) 14:32, 9 February 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  "[[:Second woe]]" listed at [[Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion|Redirects for discussion]] 

message: It should at least be mentioned that some experts date Rev. (or at least the completed text, if composed in several parts) as late as the 110s CE. The conventional dating requires 666->Nero, which is rejected by Irenaeus (Haer. V, 30, 3), even though the (supposed) execution of Peter/Paul during the (supposed) Neronian Persecution becomes a fully-fleshed-out trope in his time, while no source, Christian or Pagan, that can be securely dated before the 110s CE, ever mentions anything of that (the traditional dating of Clem. 1 implicitly assumes the papal lists are historical, which they are not). The gematrically unusual assignment of the same numerical value for "נ" and "ן" in נרון קסר (NRON QSR) is also far too easily dismissed in the traditional interpretation - a Hellenized Jew of 90s CE Asia Minor, using standard gematria, would calculate the number of נרון קסר to be 1316, would probably not (yet) be aware of any "Neronian Persecution" either, and would understand "Babylon" as an allusion to the Jewish Diaspora rather than a metaphor for Rome. By the 120s CE however, there is rather robust evidence that the "Neronian Persecution" and the "Babylon=μήτηρ τῶν πορνῶν=Rome" narrative traditions had started to emerge among the Christians of western Asia Minor.
The tentative 2016 identification 666=Ulpius (i.e. Trajan) has apparently (as far as I have looked, which is not very far) not been published in a scholarly WP:RS yet, but we do know that there was much antagonism against Christians in western Asia Minor at that time, and that this was the groundwork for the subsequent documented organized persecutions of Christians as Christians (and not for tax evasion or other secular crimes) in the Roman Empire. In other words, the events in the Pliny-Trajan correspondence provide a most convincing framework both in time and in place for Rev., but only if it was indeed finalized in the 110s. And since the Ponto-Bithynian persecution of Christians was still localized and opportunistic, it is easy to see how Irenaeus - who lived the first half of his life during the comparatively tolerant times of Hadrian and Antoninus -, at the time when a) persecution of Christians became more common again and started to become more systematic, and b) the finalized Peter-Paul-Nero narrative emerged, could still strongly reject the identification of 666 with Nero (or Trajan, Domitian, etc): when Irenaeus thought of violent repression of Christianity, Polycarp and Lugdunum were his points of reference, not some past Roman emperor - even though the Peter-Paul-Nero story was a folk tale at his birth, and a fully developed narrative at his death, and Nero was widely considered a "beast" even by Roman pagans in the 2th century CE.
Dating Rev. to the mid-110s CE and assuming 666->Trajan also gives an improved understanding why Pergamon, of all places, is singled out in Rev.2:13 as "ὅπου ὁ θρόνος τοῦ Σατανᾶ"/"ὅπου κατοικεῖ ὁ Σατανᾶς": in 113/14 Trajan chose it as the regional capital of the Imperial/Emperor cult. This was not only controversial with the people of economic competitors like Ephesus and Smyrna, but suddenly and massively increased the risk for Pergamene Christians to become victim of the sort of bottom-up accusations described by Pliny less than 5 years earlier as being common enough in the neighboring province (whose Christian communities were satellites of Pergamon, Ephesus, Smyrna etc) to cause administrative problems. Note that Rev.'s "Σᾰτᾶν" is not the same entity as the 666-"θηρίον", which merely forces everyone to worship the first "θηρίον", which in turn derives its "ἐξουσία" from the "δράκων ὁ μέγας [...] καὶ ὁ Σατανᾶς". If the 666 refers to Trajan, the setting of 115 CE Pergamon would, to a Christian of the Johannine Apocalyptic variety, indeed be the 666-"θηρίον" (or its gematric equivalent: "ἀριθμὸς γὰρ ἀνθρώπου ἐστί") enforcing worship of pagan Roman imperium=ἐξουσία at "ὁ θρόνος τοῦ Σατανᾶ" by threat of execution for flagitia. This does not work for Nero, nor for Domitian, while the Pergamon Altar by the late 1st century CE was no convincing "θρόνος τοῦ Σατανᾶ" as post-Medieval authors assumed, but a famous secularized tourist attraction with little if any religious significance for the masses, and even as the Zeus altar of the local elites it was soon replaced by the Traianeum some 30 metres higher at the very top of the acropolis.
All things considered, a date of ~115 CE and an origin in the Roman province of "Asia" is at least as plausible as the traditional majority opinion of ~95 CE, and should thus at least be mentioned with a sentence or two, since we implicitly mention the very early dating (mid-late 60s) which is today held to be an overly literal fringe opinion unsupported by robust data. A 115-120 date may also seem a fringe opinion today, but its circumstantial support is too strong for scholars to dismiss it out of hand, so it is really more an old minority opinion that is presently getting revived, reviewed and reconsidered, and likely to see more discussion in the future. Adding some brief and noncommitted note on the late dating will serve well to prepare the article for a renewed debate about Rev.'s date of composition. 2A02:908:4B33:BD80:919B:E815:194A:338D (talk) 19:26, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
thread_title: Dating