Before Jerusalem Fell

96 BEFORE JERUSALEM FELL
sentence Peter’s crucifixion at Rome, Paul’s beheading, and John’s
banishment to an island.”47 The sentence in question read: KcM’
Ii%.poG 62 dm’ ‘Pc@q< KCYTa K@Cd~G cmavpoikczl, llafiM< m
\ &ror&@ral, ‘I@awq< TE VI@ zrapa&60zal.
Stuart initially granted Tertullian to be a Domitianic reference,
but later consideration persuaded him otherwise: “Now it strikes me,
that Tertullian plainly means to class Peter, Paul, and John together,
as having suffered at nearly the same time and under the same
emperor. I concede that this is not a construction absolutely necessary;
but I submit it to the candid, whether it is not the most
probable.”w
In a similar vein, historian Herbert B. Workman in his classic
study, Persecution in tb Early Church, draws the following conclusions
from the Tertullianic evidence: “St. John’s banishment to Patmos
was itself a result of the great persecution of Nero. Hard labour for
life in the mines and quarries of certain islands, especially Sardinia,
formed one of the commonest punishments for Christians. . . . He
lived through the horrors of two great persecutions, and died quietly
in extreme old age at Ephesus.”49
Furthermore, it would seem that Tertullian’s reference to an
attempted oil martyrdom ofJohn is quite plausible historically. This
is due to the very nature of the Neronic persecution of Christians in
A.D. 64. Roman historian Tacitus describes the gruesome scene – a
scene so evilly horrific that, even though Tacitus disparaged Christians
as “detested for their abominable crimes,”5° he was moved to
sympathy for the Christians by Nero’s actions: “And their death was
aggravated with mockeries, insomuch that, wrapped in the hides of
wild beasts, they were tom to pieces by dogs, or fastened to crosses
to be set on fire, that when the darkness fell they might be burned to
illuminate the night. . . . Whence it came about that, though the
47. Ibid., p. xvii. See also Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset, and David Brown, A
Commentary, Crttzkal and Explanatory, on the Old and New Tatarnenti, 2 vols. (Harttiord:
Scranton, n.d.) 2:548.
48. Stuart, Apoca~pse 1 :284n.
49. Herbert B. Workman, Persecution in th Ear~ Church (Oxford: Oflord University
Press, [1906] 1980), pp. 18, 19.
50. In this reference Tacitus apparently reflects the current suspicion that Christians
engaged in lewd, promiscuous “love feasts” (the early Agape Feast), had cannibalistic
services (the Lord’s Supper being the blood and body of Christ), and worshiped the head
of an ass.