Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 2.djvu/139

Rh marked by cmel actions and bloodshed should be called the obstacle in the way of antichrist s manifestation. The apostle, not ignorant of Caligula s blasphemous edict, seems to have thought of some Caesar in whom the persecuting power of heathenism should culminate, without pointing at either Claudius as the withholder, or Claudius s suc cessor as the man of sin. The idea of antichrist was not historically fixed in his mind. Here we differ from Hitzig and Hausrath; though the date of the Thessalonian epistles (about 52 A.D.) presents no obstacle to the hypothesis, as De Wette thinks it does. The author of the Revelation presents the antichrist idea in a more definite form than St Paul. Borrowing characteristic traits from Antiochus Epiphaues, perhaps too from Caligula, whose blasphemous order to set up his own image in the attitude of Olympian Zeus within the holy temple at Jerusalem created intense excitement through out Palestine, aware of the fearful persecution which the Christians had suffered from Claudius s successor on the throne of the Caesars, the apostle John makes the man of sin or antichrist to be Nero returning from the East, accord ing to a report then current. In his view the vicious cruelty of paganism had its incarnation in the monster who set fire to Piome, torturing the Christians there, and hesi tating to commit no crime. If the capital of the heathen world had such a head, the character of the great antichrist stood forth in him. Accordingly, the writer describes Nero as the fifth head of the beast that rose out of the sea, i.e., Rome, who received a deadly wound which was healed, who made war upon the saints and overcame them, who disappeared amid the wondering of the world, to return with renewed power for three years and a half. The number of the beast or head, G6G, points unmistakably to Nero, for it is the equivalent of [ Hebrew ] Kaesar Neron, : &#61; 50, t &#61; 200, . &#61; 6, a &#61; 50, p &#61; 100, a &#61; GO, i &#61; 200. He is the beast that was and is not, the fifth fallen head, one of the seven; the eighth, because he should reappear after hisdeadly wound was healed. The succession of emperors is Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula. Claudius, Nero, Galba. Renan has again sanctioned the reckoning of Julius Cresar as the first of the list, on the authority of Josephus, Suetonius, Aurelius Victor, &c. ; but Suetouius s commencement of his lives of the Caesars with Julius, is scarcely a valid proof of his reckoning him to be the first of the line. Tacitus, xYurelius Victor, and Sextus Rufus, not to speak of Hippolytus, favour the opinion that Augustus Avas the first emperor ; and as the birth of Christ was under him, Christianity has nothing to do with Julius Caesar. In the view of the apocalyptist the latter is of no importance. The apostle writing under Galba (68 A.D.), held the opinion then prevalent among Christians as well as others, that the emperor was not really dead, but was in the East, whence he would return with an army of Parthians to conquer and destroy Rome (Tacitus, Hist. ii. 8; Suetonius, Nero, cap. 57, Dio Chrysostom, Or. xxi.) Such belief had then taken possession of the minds not only of the Jewish Christians in Palestine, but of the Jews themselves, who were in a state of feverish excitement because Jerusalem was besieged. Terror had seized all worshippers of the true God, because of the aspect which the empire assumed (Revelation xiii. 3-8, 18, xvii. 11). The apocalyptist also states that false or antichristian prophetism was to unite with the healed beast, and cause men to worship him or be put to death (xiii. 14, 15). We assume that the second beast, which rises out of the earth as the first does out of the sea, is identical with the false prophet in xvi. 13, xix. 20, xx. 10, and that it is a personification of false or heathen prophesying with its soothsaying and auguries. But though Irenaeus sanctions this view, it is not without difficulties, since the second beast ought in consistency to be historically definite like the first. It cannot be that the writer means the apostle Paul; for John, with all his Jewish tendencies, and hints unfavourable to Paul, would not speak so strongly against the latter. If John were not the author, as some incline to think, an unknown writer, Avith lively Judaic prepossessions, might perhaps describe the apostle Paul in such dark colours, but even then it is highly improbable. Renan supposes that some Ephesian impostor is meant, a partisan of Nero s, perhaps an agent of the pseudo-Nero, or the pseudo-Nero himself. One thing is pretty clear, that a polity is not represented by either of the two beasts in the Apocalypse, or by Paul s man of sin. It is remarkable how long the legend about Nero s revival continued, and how widely diffused it be came, though his body was buried publicly at Rome. Not till the 5th century did it become extinct. The author of John s first epistle has a more general and spiritual conception of antichrist, partly in consequence of the Alexandrian philosophy which had leavened thought in Asia Minor, as is perceptible in the fourth gospel. He finds antichrist within the church in any false teacher who corrupts the true doctrine respecting the Father and the Son through a tendency idealising away the practical basis of Christology. Such development of the idea agrees better with the general representation in the discourses of Jesus than the restricted individualising it received from Paul and John outside Christianity, though the latter bears the older and Judaic stamp. The author of I. John writes : &quot; As ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists. He is antichrist, that denieth the Father and the Son. This is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come ; and even now already is it in the world &quot; (ii. 18, 22, iv. 3). He that denied the Father and the Sou, that did not confess Jesus, was an antichrist in this author s opinion. Probably Gnosti cism was in his view more than any other form of error. There was a tendency among the later New Testament writers, as far as we can judge from 2 Peter ii. 15, to find antichrist in erroneous doctrine rather than an individual. False teachers are called followers of Balaam. In the Apocalypse itself certain heretics are termed Nicolaitanes or Balaarnites, i.e., destroyers of the people. The sibylline oracles agree with the Apocalypse in identifying antichrist and Nero. In those of Christian origin belonging to the earliest centuries, we find the current belief that Nero, having fled beyond the Euphrates, should return with an army to perpetrate farther cruelties in Rome. The descriptions in question are based, in part, on those of the apocalyptist, and the tyrant is directly identified with antichrist or Bcliar. When the legend about the tyrant s return from the East ceased, the true interpretation both of the fifth head and his mystic number 666 was lost. Irenoaus himself did not know the interpretation of 666, and has given several conjectural words more or less suitable to the number. The idea of a personal antichrist was retained by the Christian writers of the 2d and 3d centuries who held the sensuous view of Christ s speedy reappearing to set up his reign on