Ephesus: Key to a Vision in Revelation
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Footnotes
Hebrew and Greek letters have numerical values; thus the numbering of the beast (666) is the sum of the letters of his name.
Endnotes
An important, recent exception to this position is Leonard L. Thompson, The Book of Revelation: Apocalypse and Empire (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1990).
See, for example, Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza, Revelation: Vision of a Just World (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991), pp. 82–87 and 117–139.
In Rituals and Power The Roman Imperial Cult in Asia Minor (Cambridge: Cambridge, UK Univ. Press, 1984), p. 233. Simon Price described the emperors as the focal point between human and divine, but the exact meaning of the phrase in that context is not completely clear to me. I use the same phrase here, and try to articulate the meaning as I understand the evidence.
Max Wegner in George Daltrop, Ulrich Hausmann and Max Wegner, Die Flavier Vespasian, Titus, Domitian, Nerva, Julia Tit, Domitilla, Domitia (Berlin: Mann, 1966), pp. 26, 38, 86. See also Jale Inana and Elisabeth Rosenbaum, Roman and Early Byzantine Portrait Sculpture in Asia Minor (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1966), p. 67.
Hermann Vetters, et al. (Bonn, Germany: Rudolf Habelt, 1979–1984), IvE (Die Inschriften von Ephesos) 2.232–242; 5.1498; 6.2048.
The inscriptions also enable us to date the Temple of the Sebastoi more precisely than the fifteen-year Domitian reign. The two formulas used in the 13 inscriptions include the name of the then-current Roman proconsul of the province, as well as other officials. The three proconsuls named in the inscriptions served between 88 and 91 C.E. and, starting in 89/90, a prominent administrator of the temple (the neokoros) is also named. Since these inscriptions were commissioned for the dedication of the Temple of the Sebastoi, we can conclude that the cult became functional between 88 and 91, most likely in the year 89/90. The documentation of the argument for the dating can be found in chapter 2 of my study Twice Neakoros: Ephesus, Asia, and the Cult of the Flavian Imperial Family (Leiden: Brill, forthcoming 1993).