Before Jerusalem Fell - EntreWave

302 BEFORE JERUSALEM FELL
was healed. And the whole earth was amazed and followed after the
beast (13:3).
And he deceives those who dwell on the earth because of the sips
which it was given him to petiorm in the presence of the beast, telling
those who dwell on the earth to make an image to the beast who had
the wound of the sword and has come to life (13:14).
The beast that you saw was and is not, and is about to come up out
of the abyss and to go to destruction. And those who dwell on the
earth will wonder, whose name has not been written in the book of
life from the foundation of the world, when they see the beast, that
he was and is not and will come (17:8).
And the beast which was and is not, is himself also an eighth, and is
one of the seven, and he goes to destruction (17:11).
In his commentary at Revelation 13:3 conservative commentator
Swete spoke of the myth more fully:
If it be asked whether any of the earlier Roman Emperors received a
death-blow from which he recovered or was supposed to have recovered,
the answer is not far to seek. In June 68 Nero, pursued by the
emissaries of the Senate, inflicted upon himself a wound of which he
died. His remains received a pubjic funeral, and were afterwards
lodged in the mausoleum of Augustus. Nevertheless there grew up in
the eastern provinces of the Empire a rumour that he was still alive,
and in hiding. Pretenders who claimed to be Nero arose in 69 and 79,
and even as late at 88 or 89. . . . The legend of Nero’s survival or
resuscitation took root in the popular imagination, and Dion Chrysostom
. . . at the end of the century sneers at it as one of the follies of
the time. Meanwhile the idea of Nero’s return had begun to take its
place in the creations ofJewish and Christian fancy. . . . The legend
has been used by St John to represent the revival of Nero’s persecuting
policy by Domitian. 11
Nero so fearfully impressed the world in his era that pagan,
Jewish, and Christian legends quickly began to grow up around his
death and to assert themselves among the general populace throughout
the far-flung reaches of the empire. Pretenders to the imperial
11. Swete, Rewlution, p. 163. Robinson is not impressed with the “elaborate attempts
to trace stages in the development of this myth” by Peake, BeckWith, and Charles (John
A. T. Robinson, Redatzng k Ntw Testarwd [Philadelphia Westminster, 1976], p. 245 and
note).