Before Jerusalem Fell

Th Nero Redivivus Myth 315
authority. Thereupon, by the fact that Vespasian was made Emperor
and in an orderly manner was confirmed by the Senate, the moral
wound of the beast is healed and in the new imperial family of the
Flavians the Roman Empire is restored in its old and firm power.59
A number of celebrated scholars (e.g., Schaff and Dusterdieck) ,60
view the matter thus, including some even of the late date school
(e.g., Caird and Moffatt) .61 Moffatt is a particularly interesting case
in point. He attempts to hold to the best of both worlds, as it were,
when he writes at Revelation 13:3: “The allusion is . . . to the
terrible convulsions which in 69 A.D. shook the empire to its foundations
(Tat. Htit. i. 11 ). Nero’s death with the bloody interregnum after
it, was a wound to the State, from which it only recovered under
Vespasian.”G2 To discover such a vigorous late date advocate and
Nero Rediuiuus enthusiast admitting that the references can be applied
to the Roman Civil War and Rome’s revival under Vespa.sian, is to
discover a telling admission. If the verses in Revelation can properly
be understood as making reference to the earth-shaking historical
events of the era, why would any commentator be driven to employ
a myth to make sense of the passages? And this being the case, how
can the myth be used as a major dating datum from the internal
evidence? If such a vigorous, liberal advocate of the Domitianic date
as Moffatt is willing to allow such, why should not the more cautious,
evangelical scholars allow it?
The reference to the “eighth” king (Rev. 17:11) might seem a
difllculty for this view. This is because the eighth emperor of Rome
was actually Otho, the second of the interregnum rulers, and not
Vespasian, who actually gave life again to the Empire. Exegetically
it should be noted that in the chronological line of the seven heads/
kings, John speaks of the matter with exactness by use of the definite
article. That is, he writes in Revelation 17:10 (we translate it literally):
“thz [of] five fell, the [d] one is, the [d] other not yet come, and
whenever he comes a little time it behooves him to remain. ” But the
definite article is conspicuously absent in the reference to the eighth
59. Weiss, Comrmmta~ 4453-454.
60. Philip Schaff, Hirtoy of th Christian Church, 8 vols. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,
[1910] 1950) 1:390, 428; Diisterdieck, Revelation, pp. 374-375.
61. G. B. Caird, A Commenta~ on the Revelation of St. John the Diviru (New York: Harper
& Row, 1966), p. 164; Moffatt, Revelation, p. 430.
62. Zbtd., p. 430.