Alan Bandy, a New Testament scholar and specialist in the Apocalypse interprets the famous passage in the Book of Revelation, in which Jesus addresses the church of Pergamum:
I know thy works, and where thou dwellest, even where Satan’s seat is: and thou holdest fast my name, and hast not denied my faith, even in those days wherein Antipas was my faithful martyr, who was slain among you, where Satan dwelleth.”
Bandy describes the most popular interpretations of the term, “Satan’s seat”:
1. The temple of Zeus and Athena at Pergamum, current Bergama in Turkey.
2. The Pergamene Asklepieion, an ancient hospital dedicated to Asklepios, the god of healing.
3. Pergamum as an important seat of Roman power in the province of Asia.
4. Pergamum as a prominent site of the imperial cult, the worship of the Roman emperor. instituted after Augustus Caesar.
Citing Steven Friesen on whom he relies for many of his arguments,Bandy opts for the last item – the Roman imperial cult – as the object of Jesus’ denunciation.
I find his choice persuasive and the reasons he gives are important, especially as, all over the Internet, Christian websites point to the altar of Zeus as the “seat of Satan.”
Juri Lina, whose book “Under the Sign of the Scorpion” describes the masonic, occult, and Kabbalist aspects of the Russian Revolution, also refers to the Zeus altar in those terms.
The popularity of the interpretation probably derives from the fact that the Zeus altar, which was transferred to a Berlin museum in the 19th century, was the inspiration of Hitler’s architect, Albert Speer:
Eventually, the altar caught the eye of a young man named Albert Speer, the new chief architect for the Nazi Party. Germany’s new chancellor, Adolf Hitler, had commissioned him to design the parade grounds for the party rallies in Nuremberg.
For inspiration, Speer turned to the Pergamon Altar. [sic]
“If you read the German written by Speer, he gives all the credit to Hitler,” says Dr. Anthony R. Santoro, the Distinguished Professor of History & President Emeritus of Christopher Newport University. “I think he’s like a good interior decorator that someone hires, and that client already has the ideas of what he wants to do, and the decorator agrees with him. So that’s what Speer did.”
Using the altar as his model, Speer created a colossal grandstand at the rally grounds in Nuremberg. It became known as the Zeppelintribüne. After the war, only a small part of it was left standing.
“If you look at the kinds of ceremonies that were on display at Zeppelin field with the reconstructed temple there patterned on the Pergamum Altar, you’ll see photographs of Hitler, descending down the steps, like a tribune of the people from old Roman times,” says Santoro.”
Although Bandy arrives at his conclusion by a process of elimination, I think there are other reasons to regard the apotheosis of the emperor as the target of Jesus’ address to the Pergamum church.
Within the frame-work of Biblical prophecy, Satan’s end-time appearance on earth is invoked not directly, but through types: thus, the hunter-ruler Nimrod is a type of Satan; so are the King of Tyre and the Pharaoh of Egypt; so also the rulers of Persia and Babylon. So too Antiochus IV Epiphanes, whose profanation of the Jewish Temple was predicted by the prophet Daniel.
Notice that these rulers were not merely rulers, but rulers who aspired to divinity; rulers whose kingdoms dominated the known world in their time.
Each of these types of Satan is addressed in prophetic passages that start out by describing contemporary events and then enlarge into prophesies about the end-times.
It seems hermeneutically correct that if Satan in the Old Testament is embodied in kings who aspire to displace God, then Satan in Revelation must also refer to a king who seeks to displace God.
The worship of Zeus and Asklepios, gods themselves, cannot be the main reason Jesus called Pergamum Satan’s seat.
Nor can the Dionysian cultic orgies in the region be the reason.
However vile, they did not demand the unquestioning submission of Christians. It was only the cult of the emperor that demanded that.
The desire to aspire to the throne of God is in the Bible the quintessential characteristic of Satan:
12 How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!
13 For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north:
14 I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High.
15 Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit.”
The site of the imperial cult in Pergamum was the temple of the Roman emperor Trajan, which was completed by his successor, the emperor Hadrian.
Hadrian is the emperor who put an end to the Jewish revolt under Bar-Kokhba around 132-135 AD.
The the rebels were completely defeated; the Jewish people were deported and exiled and their religion proscribed; the name of Judea was changed to Syria-Palestine.
The imperial cult was thus specially dreadful for the Jews.
Moreover, the worship of the emperor was conjoined with the worship of Zeus (Jupiter), giving even more potency to the term “Satan’s seat.”
This is nowhere so clear as in the martyrdom of the elderly Bishop of Pergamum, Antipas, to whose death (in 92 AD) Jesus refers in the same passage in Revelation.
Why was Antipas martyred?
Apparently his faith and his ability to heal people from demons attracted the rivalry of the priests of Asklepios. They complained to the Roman authorities and Antipas was asked to sacrifice to the emperor and to call him god.
When the devout bishop refused, he was taken to the temple of Zeus and put inside a hollow bronze bull at the top of the 40 foot altar.
The bull was the vessel in which human sacrifices were performed.
(Human sacrifices were officially outlawed by the Romans in 97 BC, but continued infrequently into the4th century AD).
The bull was then heated with flames until Antipas was roasted to death inside the burning metal, his cries animating the bull and making it come alive to spectators.