Before Jerusalem Fell

The Role of Emperor Worship 283
But another matter arises in consideration of these tiairs. The
very fact that the cessation of Israel’s religious honor of the emperor
(through daily sacrifice) determined Rome’s destructive response is
indicative of the very seriousness with which the emperor conceived
of emperor worship. In Rome’s eyes, emperor worship may well have
been deemed a purely political and symbolic act, and not a truly
religious act. ] 18 But it was a deadly serious symbolic statement, one
of such magnitude as to eventuate in war. Even symbolic actions are
of serious historical consequence among most peoples; surely even
early emperor worship, even if merely symbolic, had serious political
implications that could result in the persecution and war of Revelation.
Returning to the motivation for Nero’s persecution of the Christians
“there seem to have been two counts in the indictment. By
ancient rules each was tried separately. The first count probably, as
Conybeare and Howson suggest, was complicity in the fire. . . .
The second count was either majesta – almost anything could be
brought under this head – or the new crime of being a Christian, the
ccime of ‘the Name’, in itself a mere variation, as we shall see later,
of majestas or high treason. On this indictment there could be but one
verdict “119 As Henderson explains of this terrible episode: “In fact>
Christianity and the State were inevitably hostile, just because neither
could understand the position of the other. On the side of the
State, a very great and a very justifiable value was attached to the
conception of the Unity and the Unification of the whole Empire,
which was expressed, and could be expressed only, in the idea and
observance of Caesar-worship. This reverence paid to the Imperial
idea as symbolised by the worship of Rome and Augustus ‘united’,
as has been said, ‘the peoples of the Empire from the Ocean to the
Syrian desert.’” ’ 20
Thus, lurking behind the persecution, even if not
in the forefront, is the cult of the emperor — a harbinger of things to
come.
Additional questions could be explored with profit: Could it be
that the circus Nero sponsored to initiate the persecution of the
Christians in A.D. 64 was part of the veneration of the emperor, who
118. Except, of course, in the cases of the madcap emperors Caligula (Gaius) and
Domitian, and surely that of the insane Nero.
119. Workman, Persecutwn, p. 16.
120. Henderson, Lij2 and Pnncipate, p. 353.