The Watchtower Announcing Jehovah’s Kingdom Archives - Page 35 of 35

A Commentary, Critical and Explanatory, on the Old and New Testaments

In support of the above we have the volume entitled “A Commentary, Critical and Explanatory, on the Old and New Testaments,” by Drs. R. Jamieson, A. R. Fausset and D. Brown of Great Britain, edition of 1873, Part Two of which says on page 514b on Babylon:

The Chaldean Babylon on the Euphrates. See Introduction, ON THE PLACE OF WRITING this Epistle, in proof that Rome is not meant as Papists assert; compare LIGHTFOOT sermon. How unlikely that in a friendly salutation the enigmatical title given in prophecy (John, Revelation 17.5), should be used! Babylon was the centre from which the Asiatic dispersion whom Peter addresses was derived. PHILO, Legatio ad Caium section 36, and JOSEPHUS, Antiquities, 15, 2.2; 23:12 inform us that Babylon contained a great many Jews in the apostolic age (whereas those at Rome were comparatively few, about 8000, JOSEPHUS 17.11); so it would naturally be visited by the apostle of the circumcision. It was the headquarters of those whom he had so successfully addressed on Pentecost, Acts 2:9, Jewish “Parthians . . . dwellers in Mesopotamia” (the Parthians were then masters of Mesopotamian Babylon); these he ministered to in person. His other hearers, the Jewish “dwellers in Cappadocia, Pontus, Asia, Phrygia, Pamphylia,” he now ministers to by letter. The earliest distinct authority for Peter’s martyrdom at Rome is DIONYSIUS, bishop of Corinth, in the latter half of the second century. The desirableness of representing Peter and Paul, the two leading apostles, as together founding the Church of the metropolis, seems to have originated the tradition. CLEMENT OF ROME (1 Epistola ad Corinthios, section 4, 5), OFTEN QUOTED FOR, IS REALLY AGAINST IT. He mentions Paul and Peter together, but makes it as a distinguishing circumstance of Paul, that he preached both in the East and West, implying that Peter never was in the West.

The Watchtower Announcing Jehovah’s Kingdom. March 1, 1966. p. 153-154

A Commentary, Critical and Explanatory, on the Old and New Testaments

A Translation of the Epistles of Clement of Rome, Polycarp and Ignatius

The First Letter of clement to the Corinthians, section 5, reads: “. . . Let us place before our eyes the good Apostles. Peter, by unjust envy, underwent not one or two but many labours; and thus having borne testimony unto death he went unto the place of glory which was due to him. Through envy, Paul obtained the reward of patience. Seven times was he in bonds; he was scourged; was stoned. He preached both in the east and in the west, leaving behind him the glorious report of his faith. And thus, having taught the whole world righteousness, and reached the furthest extremity of the west, he suffered martyrdom, by the command of the governors, and departed out of this world, and went to the holy place, having become a most exemplary pattern of patience.”—Page 6 of A Translation of the Epistles of Clement of Rome, Polycarp and Ignatius, by Temple Chevallier, B.D., edition of 1833, London, England.

The Watchtower Announcing Jehovah’s Kingdom. March 1, 1966 p. 154

A Translation of the Epistles of Clement of Rome, Polycarp and Ignatius

A Short History of the World

Repeatedly it is stated that this symbolic fourth beast is different from the three before. This “beast” began with the Roman Empire, and of it H. G. Wells, in A Short History of the World, says:

Now this new Roman power which arose to dominate the western world in the second and first centuries B.C. was in several respects a different thing from any of the great empires that had hitherto prevailed in the civilised world. It was not at first a monarchy, and it was not the creation of any one great conqueror. It was not indeed the first of republican empires; . . . But it was the first republican empire that escaped extinction and went on to fresh developments. . . . it was never able to maintain itself in central Asia or Persia because they were too far from its administrative centres. It . . . presently incorporated nearly all the Greek people in the world, and its population was less strongly Hamitic and Semitic than that of any preceding empire . . . So that the Roman Empire was essentially a first attempt to rule a great dominion upon mainly Aryan lines. It was so far a new pattern in history, it was an expanded Aryan republic. . . . The Roman Empire was a growth, an unplanned novel growth; the Roman people found themselves engaged almost unawares in a vast administrative experiment. . . . It was always changing. It never attained to any fixity. In a sense the [administrative] experiment failed. In a sense the experiment remains unfinished, and Europe and America today are still working out the riddles of worldwide statecraft first confronted by the Roman people.—Chapter 33, “The Growth of the Roman Empire,” pages 149-151. Published 1922.

The Watchtower Announcing Jehovah’s Kingdom. August 1, 1959 p. 475-476

A Short History of the World