Mark of the Beast

In a 1991 article in the Tyndale Bulletin, Edwin Judge reviews the symbolic resonances of the phrase “mark of the beast,” but notes, rightly that “the visions of Revelation keep disconcertingly coming down to earth” (158). So he looks for historical evidence of a mark imposed by Roman authorities that would give those who were marked access to a marketplace (as in Revelation 13:17.

He writes, “In AD 303-4 we know from a contemporary papyrus letter that a test of sacrifice (in the form of a pinch of incense on the altar?) was required to gain access to the courts of law.5 In the time of Domitian (whose emphasis on his own divinity is commonly thought to lie behind Revelation) a large temple to him, with colossal statue, was erected in Ephesus (Roman capital of Asia, to which the book is addressed) to the west of the upper market, where you would pass if coming up from the harbour. Perhaps they required everyone to sacrifice to Domitian before entering the market? But if so, what sort of mark could have been used as evidence?” Later, during a famine in Edessa, the governor sealed people with “leaden seals, and gave each of them a pound of bread a day” (159-60). 

So, perhaps we have a seal that gives access to food. But on the forehead? Judge adds, “Tattooing was used by barbarian peoples as a status mark. Judaism and other oriental cults used it as a sign of dedication. A devotee of Cybele and Attis is ‘sealed’ by tattooing. A Byzantine chariot-driver had his forehead tattooed with a cross. Branding on the forehead was used as a penalty for runaway slaves, being displaced after Constantine by a metal collar. The Greek tradition otherwise recoiled from the branding of slaves. ‘Do not brand your servant with marks that insult him,’ says pseudo-Phocylides, the sixth-century elegist. But a brand-mark could easily be imitated with ink. In the first century Satyricon of Petronius, Eumolpus proposes to fake one as a disguise: ‘Let him shave not just your heads, but your eyebrows too, rightaway. Then I shall inscribe some neat lettering on your foreheads to make it look as though you had been branded as a punishment’” (160).

Possibly, Revelation 13 is speaking about a demand that those who want to enter a market first offer sacrifice and receive an ink “brand” on the forehead.

Judge knows that his evidence is late and speculative. And beyond that, we may question what sort of marketplace Revelation 13 has in view. Perhaps the passage is talking about exclusion of Christians from economic life; but it’s also possible that the “buying and selling” in view is liturgical, templar, like the buying and selling that Jesus condemned and interrupted in his temple action. In this context, Christians are being excluded from the transactions of the temple (and synagogue), something for which we do have evidence in the gospels and the book of Acts. If Judge may speculate about a Roman mark, we may perhaps be allowed to speculate about a charagma imposed by temple authorities only on those who, like the chief priests, had sworn loyalty to Caesar.

(Judge, “The Mark of the Beast, Revelation 13:16,” Tyndale Bulletin 42:1 [1991] 158-60.)