Heavenly Court, Caesar’s Court

David Aune has argued that the heavenly court scene of Revelation 4-5 “bears such a striking resemblance to the ceremonial of the imperial court and cult that the latter can only be a parody of the former” (5). He proposes this against the main “major competing view” that “the heavenly liturgy of the Apocalypse is a projection of the liturgy of the Christian church on earth” (5).

Aune offers various lines of evidence to support this interpretation. The scene of the divine king surrounded by his counsellors replicates the Roman portrait of the king of the gods: “In the Roman world, God (Jupiter or Zeus) is conceptualized as surrounded by armies, commanders, prefects, governors and messengers; all agents used by the supreme god to maintain control and communication over the universe in general and the world of man in particular. In Rome, which had a centraliz- ed monarchy unknown in the Greek world until the Hellenistic and Roman periods, Jupiter and his Council were conceptualized in terms of the emperor and his court; heaven was even called the ‘palatia’” (8).

The emperor was the earthly equivalent of the king of the gods: “The primary role of the Roman emperor, from the time of Julius Caesar on, was that of rendering justice; this corresponds to the ancient conception that Zeus and Jupiter were guarantors of justice and that they provided sanctions supporting the maintenance of the laws and customs of men. The judicial task of the Roman emperor, as of provincial governors, involved responding to a constant flow of letters and petitions from everywhere in the empire to the emperor, wherever he happened to be.” In carrying on this business, the emperor would be surrounded by “friends (amici) and advisors (consilium) whose task it was to aid him in his role of dispensing justice. accompanied by lictors bearing fasces, and by other apparitores (public servants), and sat between the consuls on their bench” (8). Just so, the Lord sits on His throne surrounded by twenty-four counsellors, presbyteroi, who, seated on thrones, share in His reign of justice. God Himself sits “passively” among His counsellors, receiving their praise and the petitions of heaven and earth.

The numerology and spatial arrangement of the heavenly court also mimics the court of Hellenistic and Roman rulers. Heaven is organized as a series of concentric circles centered on the throne of God (various forms of the Greek kuklo, “encircle,” are used), and the number of elders may have cosmos significance. After Alexander, “Hellenistic kings incorporated cosmic and astral imagery as visible symbols of their divine rule,” and this included the Herods (11). After the Roman fire, Nero built a new house that reinforced his cosmic stature: “Nero, after the great fire of C.E. 64, embarked on an enormous and extravagant building project in which he constructed for himself the famous Golden House. A central feature of this house, according to Suetonius, was a revolving rotunda: ‘The main banquet hall was circular and constantly revolved day and night, like the heavens’ (Nero 31. 2; LCL trans.). Further, Nero was represented by statues, some of which were gold, as Apollo-Helios, and on occasion he even acted the part of this divinity in person. Nero also reportedly wore a Greek cloak adorned with golden stars, perhaps similar to that worn by Demetrius . . . . An earlier emperor, Claudius, is reported to have worn a golden robe as well (Tacitus Annals 12.51)” (11).

When the elders throw their crowns before the Lord, they are enacting another Hellenistic custom. He quotes Aarian’s life of Alexander: “Embassies (presbeîai) also in the meantime came from Greece, and their envoys (présbeis), themselves crowned, came forward and crowned Alexander with golden crowns, as if they had come on a sacred embassy to honour some god,” and adds that “the Roman emperor was customarily presented with gold crowns by the senate (and provincial cities) on the occasions of accessions, consulships, victories and anniversaries” (12). Senators and servants of the emperor were known to offer their proskunesis and hymns of praise to the “saving” emperor, just as the elders prostrate themselves before God’s throne (13-17).

Revelation uses titles for God that were also used for the emperor. Aune quotes Adolf Deissmann: “The cult of Christ goes forth into the world of the Mediterranean and soon displays the endeavour to reserve for Christ the words already in use for worship in that world, words that had just been transferred to the deified emperors or had perhaps even been invented in emperor worship. Thus there arises a polemical parallelism between the cult of the emperor and the cult of Christ, which makes itself felt where ancient words derived by Christianity from the treasury of the Septuagint and the Gospels happen to coincide with solemn concepts of the Imperial cult which sounded the same or similar” (21).

It is all very convincing, but for two issues. First, it is not clear why this needs to be an “alternative” to the “major competing view” that the scene of Revelation 4-5 resembles the Christian liturgy. To pose them as competing views is to depoliticize Christian worship. It seems rather that one leading point of the scene is that Christian worship, being worship of a heavenly king, is a challenge to imperial propaganda. Second, the notion that the heavenly liturgy is a “projection,” either of Christian liturgy or of imperial court ceremonial, rests on the assumption that John composed the Apocalypse rather than recording visions he actually saw. If John really was caught up through a door in the sky to see heaven’s worship, there is no projection, unless it is the other direction – the heavenly court and liturgy dimly mimicked by God’s images on earth.

(David Aune, “The Influence of Roman Imperial Court Ceremonial on the Apocalypse of John,” Biblical Research 28 [1983] 5-26. )