Jonathan Kirsch - A History of the End of the World

The idea that handling a Roman coin is an act of idolatry would have been an article of faith for a pious Jew from Judea. At the Temple of Yahweh in Jerusalem, for example, men and women on pilgrimage to the Jewish homeland from far-distant communities did not bring along the animals they would offer for sacrifice on the altar of God. Rather, they purchased what livestock they needed on arrival in Jerusalem. And, lest the pilgrims pollute the Temple by using coinage bearing the name and profile of some pagan emperor or some pagan deity, money changers were available along the approaches to the Temple to exchange pagan coins for temple currency on which no offensive names or figures were permitted to appear.

The money changers and the sellers of sacrificial animals who plied their trade at the Temple in Jerusalem are memorably featured in the Gospels, of course, but only in a tale that profoundly misrepresents why they were there in the first place. “And [Jesus] entered the temple and began to drive out those who sold and those who bought in the temple” goes the account in Mark, “and he overturned the tables of the money-changers, and the seats of those who sold pigeons.” 60Jesus condemns the money changers and the sellers of sacrificial animals for turning the Temple into a “den of thieves”—but the fact is that they were providing a ser vice that prevented the Temple from being tainted by commerce with coinage bearing “the mark of the beast.” 61

The Gospel story is not mentioned at all in Revelation, whose author would have surely understood the pious function of the money changers. For him, the only coinage that a true believer must refuse to handle is the kind that bears the names and images of the Roman emperor and his divine patrons and patronesses—that is, money inscribed with the mark of the Beast. But John’s contempt for money and his contempt for commerce are, so to speak, two sides of the same coin. When he describes the final destruction of “Babylon”—a code name for imperial Rome, not only in Revelation but also in other ancient apocalyptic writings such as the Sibylline Oracles and the Apocalypse of Baruch—John reserves some of his most wrought prose, and a certain bitter sarcasm, too, for those who profit from the buying and selling of luxuries.

“And the merchants of the earth weep and mourn for her, since no one buys their cargo anymore,” writes John in his vision of the final destruction of Rome. 62And he proceeds to provide a catalog of their wares in such sumptuous detail that it betrays both a certain envy as well as contempt: “Cargo of gold, silver, jewels and pearls, fine linen, purple, silk and scarlet, all kinds of scented wood, all articles of ivory, all articles of costly wood, bronze, iron and marble, cinnamon, spice, incense, myrrh, frankincense, wine, oil, fine flour and wheat, cattle and sheep, horses and chariots, and slaves, that is, human souls.” 63

Elsewhere in Revelation, John imagines that sinners will sizzle in a lake of fire for all eternity, a lake that “burneth with sulphur and brimstone.” 64Here, however, he contents himself with visions of merchants and shipmasters who suffer only from broken hearts at the loss of a lively trade in luxury goods as they witness the destruction of Babylon.

“The merchants of these wares, who gained wealth from her, will stand far off, in fear of her torment, weeping and mourning aloud,” writes John. “And all shipmasters and seafaring men, sailors and all whose trade is on the sea, stood far off and cried out as they saw the smoke of her burning, ‘What city was like the great city?’ And they threw dust on their heads, as they wept and mourned, crying out, ‘Alas, alas, for the great city where all who had ships at sea grew rich by her wealth! In one hour she has been laid waste.’ And a craftsman of any craft shall be found in thee no more, and the sound of the millstone shall be heard in thee no more.” 65

If John is seeking to scare his readers and hearers into shunning their pagan friends, neighbors, and kinfolk, the demonization of Roman coinage—and the condemnation of the “cargo” that it could buy—was a clever psychological tool. After all, Christian true believers could congratulate themselves on their own poverty, whether self-imposed or not, by reminding themselves that participating in pagan commerce was equivalent to bargaining with the Devil. They are encouraged by the book of Revelation to console themselves with dreams of the day when God will punish the collaborators who took the Devil’s coin. And revenge, as we shall see, is among the core values of Revelation.

John’s condemnation of coinage and cargo is also consistent with what we can discern about his own way of life. Nothing in Revelation states or implies that John himself practices a trade or engages in buying and selling, or even that he holds a clerical rank in any of the seven churches that he addresses. Rather, he appears to follow the example of Jeremiah and John the Baptist; he is purely a prophet, wholly self-announced and bearing no ordination or official title. Nor does he seem to have a home in any of the seven cities. John apparently wanders from town to town, relying on the people he meets to offer him a bite to eat and a place to bed down. In that sense, he would have lived and worked in conscious imitation of Jesus and the disciples as they are described in the Gospel of Matthew.

“Take no gold, nor silver, nor copper, no bag for your journey, nor two tunics, nor sandals, nor a staff,” Jesus is shown to instruct the twelve disciples. “And whatever town or village you enter, find out who is worthy in it, and stay with him until you depart.” 66

John’s life as an itinerant preacher would have been an advertisement for the ideas that he embraces with such fervor in the pages of Revelation—“an enactment of the ascetic values of homelessness, lack of family ties, and the rejection of wealth and possessions,” as one scholar has explained. 67These are the same values that are expressed in the strict rules that governed the members of an apocalyptic community like the one at Qumran near the Dead Sea, and in the pronouncements of the apocalyptic prophet whose name was Jesus: “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests,” says Jesus, “but the Son of man has nowhere to lay his head.” 68

Some scholars speculate that John renounced a life of wealth and privilege in order to take up his calling as a prophet. The argument is highly speculative but intriguing. Since banishment was a penalty reserved for aristocrats under Roman law, they imagine, John himself must have been a member of the Jewish priestly caste and a man of high rank in the Jewish homeland. One ancient source, a bishop of Ephesus called Polycrates, seems to affirm as early as the late second century that John was an ordained priest rather than a self-appointed preacher. Based on such meager evidence, one scholar proposes that John was banished to Patmos directly from a life of comfort in Jerusalem, Alexandria, or perhaps even the imperial capital of Rome. 69But the text of Revelation suggests that John, like Jesus himself, was a man of humble origins who never aspired to rank or riches and, in fact, detested those who did.

A wandering preacher and missionary like John would have been a familiar figure among the Christian communities of the seven cities. The Didache, a Christian manual of religious instruction from roughly the same era—and a work with its own apocalyptic passages—calls on all good Christians “to share their firstfruits, money, and clothes with any true prophet who wishes to settle among them.” 70And the Didache confirms that prophets—or at least the authentic prophets who speak “in the spirit”—deserved to be taken seriously. 71Long after the Jewish rabbinical tradition had declared the age of prophecy to be over, the Christian churches of the Roman Empire were still prepared to welcome any man (or woman) who claimed and appeared to be a “true prophet.”