Persecution Under Domitian

The event

By the final years of the first century, the church faced a different, more diffuse kind of pressure than Nero's dramatic, localized violence in Rome three decades earlier. Under the emperor Domitian, later Christian writers describe a period of persecution touching Christians more broadly across the empire, driven partly by Domitian's insistence on being addressed as "lord and god" and his intolerance of any group that refused to participate in the civic and imperial cults expected of loyal subjects.

The letters to the seven churches in Revelation 2-3 reflect exactly this kind of pressure: believers in Smyrna facing coming imprisonment and told to be "faithful unto death" (Revelation 2:10), a martyr named Antipas already killed in Pergamum, "where Satan's throne is" (Revelation 2:13), and churches wrestling with how far to compromise with the surrounding pagan culture to avoid trouble. Whether the persecution under Domitian was as systematic as some later sources suggest, or a more localized and uneven pressure, is debated among historians - but John's own exile to Patmos during this period is itself a clear, undisputed data point.

Generally dated to the mid-90s AD, this season of pressure forms the direct historical backdrop against which Revelation's message of patient endurance and confident hope was written and first heard: a call to worship the true King in a world demanding loyalty to a false one, and a promise that the Lamb who was slain, not any earthly emperor, holds ultimate authority over history.

Dating

Historians debate how systematic and empire-wide Domitian's persecution actually was, as opposed to more localized pressure that still felt very real to the churches experiencing it; John's own exile during this period is a clear, undisputed data point regardless.

Scripture references

• Revelation 2:1-3:22

Further reading

• Catholic Encyclopedia (1913): Domitian
• Bible Odyssey (SBL): Christian Martyrdom