Pax Romana — the key to understanding Revelation

You may think that the book of Revelation, or the Pax Romana of ancient Rome, has nothing to do with your life today. You’d be wrong, and here’s why.

Pax Romana

Pax Romana, meaning “Roman Peace,” refers to a period from 27 BC to around 192 AD, marked by:

• few civil wars and a strong, stable empire
• high prosperity, at least for most
• flourishing art and culture
• yet also a time of sporadic persecution of Christians under Nero, Domitian, and Trajan, even though systematic empire-wide persecution didn’t begin until 253 AD

Underneath these conditions lay a coherent, almost theological idea:

• The gods have chosen Rome.
• Rome and the emperors are the agents of the gods’ will, salvation, and presence in the world.
• The blessings of the gods — security, peace, justice, wealth, fertility, and so on — are available to everyone who submits to Rome as ruler.
• The Pax Romana is itself the longed-for “Golden Age.”
• Therefore, the emperor is worthy of worship, loyalty, and titles equal to a god’s.

The downside is that this golden age was built on violence, oppression, and forced pacification, and it was only golden for a few.

Rome propagated this vision relentlessly, through:

• works of art by people like Virgil or Epictetus
• impressive processions
• games
• statues
• coins
• a constant, overwhelming cultural presence — it was the center of nearly every public activity

As a result, the Pax Romana was inescapable: present in entertainment, at work, in the marketplace, even during meals. And the whole community made sure no individual’s bad behavior cost the city the emperor’s favor.

Many cities — especially in Asia Minor, where the letters in Revelation were written — competed with each other to build temples honoring the emperor and the gods and to spread the Pax Romana further. In doing so, they hoped to win the emperor’s support, or at least a reduction in taxes.

Pax Romana and Christians

For Christians living under this system, several serious problems arose:

• Jesus was their emperor — king of kings — especially since the gospels themselves were written as euangelion, the proclamation of a new emperor’s reign.
• They received their provision from Jesus, not from the emperor.
• Some of the activities woven into Pax Romana civic life, such as orgies as part of corporate functions, ran directly against their beliefs.
• The very means Rome used to “pacify” the empire could not be reconciled with Christian conviction.
• They were branded intolerant for insisting there was only one God, in an empire that comfortably accepted any number of additional gods.

Outward conformity was the easy path.

That left Christians with essentially three choices:

• Deny the faith completely, since you can only serve one master — Jesus or the emperor, not both.
• Live out the faith fully, risking social and economic isolation, ruin, imprisonment, and even death.
• Conform outwardly — confessing the emperor with the mouth — while remaining inwardly faithful to Jesus, confessing him with the heart. The cost of this option is that it makes the faith hypocritical.

That third option has proven compelling to many people across history, and it’s a major theme running through Revelation. Because Revelation is an apocalypse, it allows only two options — all for God or all against him, no comfortable middle ground. In that sense, the whole book functions as counter-propaganda against the Pax Romana.

Christians and Jews

The Jews were another source of conflict. Because of their long religious tradition, they were permitted to keep practicing their faith as long as it didn’t conflict with the Pax Romana — they could still celebrate Shabbat and carry out their temple activities, for instance.

But now there was this new Jewish sect, the Christians, who were not only disregarding the Pax Romana themselves but converting others throughout the empire to do the same. Rome responded by punishing the Jews for it, which in turn pushed the Jews to look for grounds to accuse the Christians of wrongdoing, so that Judaism itself could keep practicing undisturbed.

This tension bore hard on the Christians, and Revelation addresses it directly.

Jews in Revelation

The book is ultimately about one thing: Jesus, and everything that gets decided in relation to him. That holds true even for how the book treats the Jews.

We’ve already seen the tension between Christians and Jews in the historical situation; it surfaces clearly in the letters to Smyrna and Philadelphia, where Jewish opponents attacked the church for testifying about Jesus. Because of that, Revelation calls them the “synagogue of Satan.” When the text later says the Jews in Philadelphia would bow down before the church, it means they would come to accept Jesus — not that they would submit to the institution of the church.

The same dynamic appears in chapter 11, where the place where the two witnesses are killed is described, spiritually, as Sodom (a place of sin) and Egypt (a place of slavery). This is a description of Jerusalem — because Jesus, its rightful Lord, was killed there — and the name Jerusalem is pointedly avoided.

Throughout Revelation, the relationship to ethnic Israel as such is never really addressed (how much weight you put on the 144,000 in chapter 7 depends on how you read that passage); the book’s real concern is always the relationship to Jesus.

At the same time, the church is portrayed as part of Israel, not separate from it. Clear statements throughout the book describe a unity between Jews and Christians — the 24 elders in chapter 4, for instance, represent the 12 tribes and the 12 apostles together, and both the 12 tribes and the 12 apostles have their names engraved in the New Jerusalem.

Heaven itself, notably, is never described as some neutral place — it’s described as the New Jerusalem. It would be no surprise at all if Jesus were to appear in the physical city of Jerusalem at his second coming.

So why does Revelation take such a pointed, even controversial stance on the Jews? Because the church is part of Israel and cannot cut off its own roots, even when some Jews are openly attacking it.

Conclusion

The challenge for the church, then, is to hold together two things that pull in opposite directions: being part of Israel, and being attacked by Israel.

There’s a lot we can learn from this tension about how we relate to each other across different church denominations, and how we relate to Jewish people today.

Take away

Here are some questions for reflection:

• How is the Pax Romana being articulated today? What happens when someone disagrees?
• Who/what do you see as the source of your good life? From whom/what do you expect the solution to the problems in your life or the orientation in your life?
• How do you react when this conflicts with being “politically correct”?
• How do you threaten other people who disagree with you?
• Do you feel the need to pretend in certain areas of your life? Why? What would happen if you didn’t pretend?
• If you were in a situation where your personal opinion/belief would cost you a lot, would you still stand up for it? To what extent? What would you do in practice?

Dig Deeper

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