Revelation 11:8

God's servants rejected and cast aside, as so much refuse! See Sam. Agonistes, 667 704. The “great city” is Jerusalem, an identification favoured by (a) incidental O.T. comparisons of the Jews to Sodom (Isaiah 11:9; Jeremiah 23:14; so Asc. Isaiah 3:10), (b) the Christian editor's note ὅπου καὶ ὁ κύριος αὐτῶν ἐσταυρώθη, (c) a passage like Luke 13:33, (d) the reference in Revelation 16:19, and (e) passages in Appian (Syr. 50 μεγίστη πόλις Ἱ.), Pliny (H. N. xiv. 70), Josephus (Apion, i. 22), and Sib. Or. (ver 154, 226, 413, written before 80 A.D.), all of which confirm this title (cf. the variant addition μεγάλην in Revelation 21:10): it is indeed put beyond doubt by the peculiar antichristtradition upon which the Jewish original was based (A. C. 19 f., 134 f., E. Bi. i. 179, 180). The obscurity and isolated character of this eschatology, “an exotic growth upon the soil of Judaism” and much more in early Christianity, may be accounted for perhaps by the historical changes in the later situation, which concentrated the antichrist in anti-Roman rather than in anti-Jewish hostility. As yet, however, the seduction of the Jews by a false messiah (cf. John 5:43 and its patristic interpretation) was quite a reasonable expectation: see the evidence gathered in A. C. 166 f. Victorinus, following the Apocalypse literally (Revelation 11:7 = Revelation 17:11), makes Nero redivivus beguile the Jews. The alternative to this theory has won considerable support (especially from Spitta and Wellhausen) upon various grounds; it regards the great city as Rome, where the two prophets are supposed to preach repentance to the heathen world and eventually to be killed. But although this suits some portions of the language well (e.g., Revelation 11:13, conversion to God of heaven), it is not exegetically necessary; it introduces Rome abruptly (8 c being of course taken as a gloss) and irregularly: nor does it explain the general contour of the oracle as happily as that advocated above. Bruston's ingenious attempt to take τ. μεγάλης with πλατείας (= Jewish justice) is quite untenable, and the great city is not likely to be a translator's error (Weyland), גרולה for קדושׁה. πνευματικῶς (cf. Galatians 4:24 f.) as opposed to σαρκικῶς (“literally,” Just. Mart. Dial. xiv. 231 d) is “allegorically, or mystically.” καὶ Αἴγυπτος, not as the home of magic (cf. Blzu's Altjüd. Zauber-wesen, 39 f.) but as a classical foe of God's people (and Moses of old?). The connexion with the water-dragon of Revelation 12:15 (cf. Ezekiel 29:3; Ezekiel 32:2) is obvious. Philo allegorises E [914] usually as a type of the corporeal and material. ὅπου κ. τ. λ., no wonder if Christians suffer, after what their Lord had to suffer (cf. Matthew 10:22-25; Matthew 10:28 f.) at the hands of impious men. There is none of the modern's surprise or indignation at the thought of “Christian blood shed where Christ bled for men”.

[914]. Codex Sangermanensis (sæc. ix.), a Græco-Latin MS., now at St. Petersburg, formerly belonging to the Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. Its text is largely dependent upon that of D. The Latin version, e (a corrected copy of d), has been printed, but with incomplete accuracy, by Belsheim (18 5).