Revelation 2:13

Two features in the local situation menaced Christianity. Pergamos, besides forming a legal centre for the district (ad earn conueniunt Thyatireni aliaeque inhonorae ciuitates, Plin. ver 33), was an old centre of emperor-worship in Asia Minor; in 29 B.C. a temple had been erected to the divine Augustus and the goddess Roma, and a special priesthood had been formed (ὑμνῳδοὶ θεοῦ Σεβαστοῦ καὶ θεᾶς Ῥώμης). Another feature, shocking to early Christian feeling, was the local cult of Aesculapius (cf. Zahn, § 73, note 2), whose favourite symbol (e.g., on coins) was a serpent (“the god of Pergamos, Mart. Revelation 9:17); so Pausan. Cor. 27, (3:402), κάθηται δὲ ἐπὶ θρόνου βακτηρίαν κρατῶν, τὴν δὲ ἑτέραν τῶν χειρῶν ὑπὲρ κεφαλῆ ἔχει τοῦ δράκοντος. In addition to these fashionable cults, a magnificent throne-like altar to Zeus Soter towered on the Acropolis (Paus. ii. 73, 75, iii. 556, 557) commemorating the defeat of the barbarian Gauls by Attalus two centuries earlier, and decorated by a famous frieze of the gods warring against the giants (the latter, a brood of vigorous opponents, having often human bodies and serpentine tails, cf. below, Revelation 9:19). No wonder Pergamos was called “a throne of Satan” by early Christians who revolted against the splendid and insidious paganism of a place where politics and religion were firm allies. Least of all at this cathedral centre of the Imperial cultus could dissent be tolerated. The Asiarch, e.g., who condemns Polykarp is the local high priest of the altar, and the animus against Cæsar-adoration which pervades the Apocalypse easily accounts for the last phrase ὁ θ. τ. σ., particularly as the symbol of the serpent in the Aesculapius cult would come vividly home to pious Jewish Christians in the church, as a reminder of Satan (e.g., Revelation 12:9 and passim). The priesthood of this cult, “a vast college, believed to be in possession of certain precious medical secrets,” came “nearest, perhaps, of all the institutions of the pagan world, to the Christian priesthood,” its rites being “administered in a full conviction of the religiousness, the refined and sacred happiness, of a life spent in the relieving of pain” (Pater, Marius the Epicurean, i. 30; see Usener's Götternamen, 1896, pp. 147 f., 350, and Dill's Roman Soc. from Nero to M. Aur. 459 f.). κρατεῖς, κ. τ. λ., “And the magistrate pressed him hard, saying, ‘Swear the oath [by the genius of Cæsar] and I will release thee; curse the Christ.' But Polykarp replied, ‘For eighty-six years I have served him, and he has never injured me. How then can I blaspheme my King, who has saved me?' ” (Mart. Polyc. ix. Jewish analogies in 2Ma 8:4, Ass. Mos. viii. etc.). Some definite outburst of persecution at Pergamos is in the writer's mind (ἠρνήσω). To disown or abjure faith in Jesus, saying Κύριος Καῖσαρ, implies here as in the gospels the moral fault of cowardice, elsewhere (e.g. 1 John, Jude 1:4; 2 Peter 2:1) erroneous doctrine. The circumstances and surroundings of the local church are taken into account, as usual, in the prophet's estimate; they either claim some allowance to be made, or reflect additional credit and lustre on the particular community. ὁ μάρτυς, κ. τ. λ. He is faithful who retains his faith. Antipas (= Ἀντίπατρος, Jos. Ant. xiv. 1, 3; the name occurs in a third century inscription of Pergamos, Deissm. 187), is mentioned by Tertullian (adv. Gnost. scorp. 12); otherwise he is unknown. His Acts appear to have been read by Andreas and Arethas, and, according to Simon Metaphrastes, he was an old, intrepid bishop of Pergamos whose prestige drew upon him the honour of being burned to death in a brazen bull during Domitian's reign. The sober truth is probably that he formed the first prominent victim in the local church, possibly in Asia Minor, to the demands of the Imperial cultus. Carpus, Papylus, and Agathonikê, the other martyrs of Pergamos named by Eusebius (H. E., iv. 15, 48), died at a later period. On the whole verse see Ep. Lugd., “then did the holy martyrs endure indescribable torture, Satan eagerly striving to make them utter τι τῶν βλασφήμων ”. The textual variants arose from a failure to to see that Αντίπας (or - α) was a genitive and that μάρτυς was in characteristic irregular apposition to it. The name is neither a personification nor typical.