Editor’s Postscript

Readers of this letter corpus may find the following information helpful.

  1. Nothing else is known about Luke, Antonius, and Mania, or Demetrius, Diotis, and Nouna.
  2. The fate of Flavius Clemens, the cousin of Domitian who accompanied the emperor to the Pergamene games, is known. He was married to Domitilla, the emperor’s niece. Although Domitian had long viewed Clemens as a trusted advisor, in 95 CE Domitian charged him with being an “atheist,” having neglected the traditional religions of Rome. Evidence from the catacombs in Rome suggests that Clemens and Domitilla were sympathetic to Christianity, if not Christians themselves. Domitian exiled Domitilla and executed Clemens as an enemy of the empire.
  3. By the mid-90s CE, Domitian was greatly reviled by the Roman senate. He was murdered on 16 September 96 CE by a freeman named Stephanus, who had previously been a procurator of Domitilla. Under the pretense of handing the emperor a document, Stephanus attacked and killed Domitian.
  4. The history of Pergamene Christianity after these events is sketchy. In the mid-90s CE, while in exile on the island of Patmos, the author of the Johannine apocalypse directly addressed Christians in Pergamum as well as six other locations in western Asia Minor (Rev. 2–3). According to him, a sizable portion of the Christian community in Pergamum had compromised its faith in collusion with the imperial cult. With them in view, the author wrote the following in veiled fashion, using imagery from the Old Testament: “I have a few things against you: There are some among you who hold to the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to entice the Israelites to sin so that they ate food sacrificed to idols and committed sexual immorality. Likewise, you also have those who hold to the teaching of the Nicolaitans” (Rev. 2:14–15).
  5. Approximately fifteen years after these words were written, Ignatius of Antioch (referred to by Antipas in his second letter from Antioch), having become a bishop in Antioch, mentions the existence of Christian communities in three of the seven locations identified in Revelation 2–3 (Ephesus, Smyrna, and Philadelphia). No mention is made, however, of Christian communities in Pergamum. A second- or third-century CE text known as The Martyrdom of Carpus, Papylus, and Agothonice (also known as The Acts of the Pergamene Martyrs) gives an account of three martyrs (two men and one woman) who died for their Christian testimony in Pergamum. Eusebius, a fourth-century author, preserved a document titled The Letter of the Churches of Lyons and Vienne, which records a series of martyrdoms in Gaul in 177 CE At one point, that document recalls the death of a man, Attalos, whose family origins lay in Pergamum. Condemned for holding to the Christian faith, Attalos was scheduled to be executed by wild beasts at the gladiatorial games, where he met his death with honor.
  6. In 132–35 CE, a second Jewish revolt against Rome took place in Judea, led by Simeon ben Kosiba. It seems to have been precipitated by efforts of the emperor Hadrian (emperor 117–38 CE) to ban circumcision and to build a new Roman city, Aelia Capitolina, on the ruins of the previous city of Jerusalem. A valiant effort by the Jewish revolutionaries did not result in success. Aelia Capitolina was established, and Rome populated it with gentile settlers, erecting a temple of Jupiter Capitolinus in the place where the Jerusalem temple had once stood. The Jewish rabbis relocated to Galilee to complete the work they had begun in Jamnia (also known as Yavneh), reshaping Judaism to make it more viable in the absence of the Jerusalem temple. Their efforts survive in the compilation of the Mishnah, the Palestinian Talmud, and other works of the rabbinic period.