Key Themes of the New Testament: A Survey of Major Theological Themes by David E. Graves

Author:David E. Graves [Graves, David E.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2014-05-30T17:00:00+00:00

Paul’s Death

Second Timothy was apparently written from prison in Rome (2 Tim 1:8) where Paul was preparing to die (2 Tim 4:6–8), possibly around AD 67/68. Paul was with Luke and asked Timothy and Mark to come to him before winter (2 Tim 4:9, 11 and 21) and to bring his cloak that he left earlier in Troas. He also wanted his scrolls and “above all the parchments” (2 Tim 4:13).[851] He traveled to Rome via Corinth, where Erastus stayed (2 Tim 4:20). Somewhere during this time, Paul was rearrested.

The cruel emperor Nero was reigning during this period (AD 54 to 68). He was known to have murdered his wife Octavia, his mother and step-brother, along with his teacher Seneca. When Rome burned in AD 64, (Tacitus Ann. 15.44.3–8) the people accused Nero of starting the fire himself. Nero tried to sift the blame off himself onto the Christians.

Quotes from Antiquity

Nero’s persecution of Christians

But neither human help, nor imperial munificence, nor all the modes of placating Heaven, could stifle scandal or dispel the belief that the fire had taken place by order. Therefore, to scotch the rumour, Nero substituted as culprits, and punished with the utmost refinements of cruelty, a class of men, loathed for their vices, whom the crowd styled Christians. Christus, the founder of the name, had undergone the death penalty in the reign of Tiberius, by sentence of the procurator Pontius Pilatus, and the pernicious superstition was checked for a moment, only to break out once more, not merely in Judaea, the home of the disease, but in the capital itself, where all things horrible or shameful in the world collect and find a vogue. First, then, the confessed members of the sect were arrested; next, on their disclosures, vast were convicted, not so much on the count of arson as for hatred of the human race. And derision accompanied their end: they were covered with wild beasts’ skins and torn to death by dogs; or they were fastened on crosses, and, when daylight failed were burned to serve as lamps by night. Nero had offered his Gardens for the spectacle, and gave an exhibition in his Circus, mixing with the crowd in the habit of a charioteer, or mounted on his car. Hence, in spite of a guilt which had earned the most exemplary punishment, there arose a sentiment of pity, due to the impression that they were being sacrificed not for the welfare of the state but to the ferocity of a single man. (Tacitus Ann. 15.44.3–8 [Jackson])

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