The Synagogue of Satan
Understand Revelation 2:9 and 3:9 in the context of the persecution under Domitian.
Anti-Semites often speak of the Jewish people as the “synagogue of Satan” and as imposters “who say that they are Jews and are not.”
These favorite anti-Semitic slurs surprisingly originate in the apocalyptic book of Revelation, which depicts the heavenly, resurrected Yeshua denouncing the late-first-century synagogues of Smyrna and Philadelphia. These statements have puzzled Bible readers for a long time, and unfortunately, they have fueled both replacement theology and theological anti-Semitism.
In The Sent Ones, we work our way through the story of the Apostolic Era from the beginning of the book of Acts to the second century. In the process we reassemble the historical context around the New Testament texts, and that historical context often yields rewarding insights into otherwise baffling passages. The present case provides a good example. When placed back into their historical context, the Master’s words regarding the Jewish communities in Smyrna and Philadelphia support neither replacement theology nor anti-Semitism. Instead, they reveal a critical historical moment in the separation between “church” and “synagogue.”
Rewind Your Religion
The offending passages, bereft of historical context, read as follows:
I know your tribulation and your poverty (but you are rich) and the slander of those who say that they are Jews and are not, but are a synagogue of Satan. (Revelation 2:9)
Behold, I will make those of the synagogue of Satan, who say that they are Jews and are not, but lie—behold, I will make them come and bow down before your feet, and they will learn that I have loved you. (Revelation 3:9)
Synagogue of Satan
A Google search on the term “synagogue of Satan” yields an abundance of links to a wide variety of anti-Semitic websites and blogs touting conspiracy theories about a secret cabal of Kabbalists in control of the banks, the Zionist agenda to create a “Jew world order,” and wild claims about religious Jews as high priests of a satanic cult.
The Star of David is held up as proof of satanic connections between Judaism and the prince of darkness. (After all, the Magen David is a star shape, and everyone knows that star shapes, along with all other geometric shapes, are intrinsically satanic, right?) The modern witch-hunter explains that Jesus referred to the Jewish synagogue as a “synagogue of Satan” because, whether they know it or not, that is who Jews are worshiping.
The conspiracy theory deepens with the phrase “those who say they are Jews and are not.” Anti-Semites and conspiracy enthusiasts use these verses from Revelation as evidence for their theory that the Jewish people are not really the descendants of the noble patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. One occasionally encounters this teaching even in offshoot “Hebrew roots” venues. According to this notion, the Jewish people are not really Jewish because they have sullied the pure bloodline by accepting converts over the centuries. Therefore, Jewish people today are Jewish in name only.
Extremists claim that the people who self-identify as Jewish today are imposters who simply pose as the descendants of the nation of Israel. Needless to say, the historical record does not allow us to take this theory seriously as an interpretation of the Revelation passages.
The Replacement Theology Explanation
Most Christian interpretations of these puzzling expressions identify the synagogue of Satan as the Jewish synagogue and “those who say they are Jews but are not Jews” as Jewish people who do not believe in Jesus. It’s easy to argue this interpretation by stringing together a few Pauline passages.
In Romans 2:28-29, Paul states that a person is not a Jew if he is only Jewish outwardly, “but a Jew is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart.” In Romans 9:6-7, Paul makes a similar statement: “Not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel, and not all are children of Abraham because they are his offspring.” Draw in the imagery from Paul’s olive tree analogy in Romans 11, demonstrating that Jewish people who do not believe in Jesus are branches broken off from the olive tree of Israel, and one might conclude that non-Christian Jews are no longer true Jews.
This seemingly obvious conclusion is malignant with replacement theology. Simply put, this interpretation holds that the Jewish people are no longer Israel. They forfeited that identity when they did not accept Jesus. If a Jewish person wants to become a part of Israel, he must first become a Christian because since Jesus came, Christians alone enjoy any status as the people of God. That is not at all what Paul meant in those passages from Romans, nor is it what the Master meant when he reproached the Jewish communities in Smyrna and Philadelphia.
Domitian’s Persecution
The risen Yeshua’s admonitions must be taken in their historical context. The seven epistles at the beginning of Revelation indicate that the writer addressed them to believers in Asia Minor during a time of persecution. Revelation 2:10 goes on to say to the believers in Smyrna,
Do not fear what you are about to suffer. Behold, the devil is about to throw some of you into prison, that you may be tested … you will have tribulation. Be faithful unto death.
The epistles indicate a readership enduring persecution in the other cities of Asia Minor as well.
Church tradition maintains that the Apostle John, author of the book of Revelation, saw his vision and wrote down the apocalypse on the island of Patmos during the reign of Emperor Domitian. This piece of information gives us some historical context: the persecution under Domitian.
Imperial Financial Problems
What inspired Domitian to attack the believers? It all started with the Jewish tax.
Near the end of his reign, Domitian’s administration suffered financial problems. The paranoid Domitian knew that others before him had been unseated when unhappy legions turned against their emperor. Domitian, therefore, increased their pay beyond what the empire could afford.
To compensate, Domitian turned to robbing his own citizens. Whenever a wealthy Roman citizen was accused of an offense against the emperor’s honor, Domitian prosecuted the offense and seized the man’s assets.
However, Domitian needed still more revenue, so he raised taxes. Suetonius said, “Besides other taxes, the tax on the Jews was levied with utmost rigor.”
In those days the Romans required every Jew to pay an annual poll tax of two drachmas per head. The tax applied to every Jewish man, woman, and child in the empire. Domitian’s father, Vespasian, first introduced the Fiscus Judaicus (Jewish tax) on the pretense of recouping imperial expenses from the Jewish War. However, by Domitian’s time, the Jewish tax had become essential to Rome’s annual revenue.
Roman law required every Jew to pay the tax, but the law did not precisely define who was a Jew. That ambiguity sometimes made God-fearing Gentile believers liable for the tax as well. The Roman authorities did not distinguish between halachic Jews and people who merely practiced aspects of Judaism.
In the eyes of the tax authorities, keeping the Sabbath, Jewish dietary laws, or other Jewish customs might have been sufficient to make a person and his household liable for the tax. Naturally, this resulted in Gentile God-fearers attempting to diminish or conceal their association with Judaism. Some Jews also tried to conceal their Jewish identity to avoid the tax.
The revenue garnered from these tax evaders encouraged Domitian to push the program further. He called upon the general public to inform the government about known Jews in their midst. Many informers came forward. This is how Domitian discovered an entire secret society of tax evaders right under his nose in Rome: God-fearing Gentile believers. They claimed they were not Jewish, yet lived as if they were. They called themselves “Christians.”
Domitian issued legislation making anyone who merely “lived as Jews” liable for the tax. He called on the population to report friends, neighbors, and relatives who worshiped the Jewish God and practiced Jewish customs. Slaves reported their owners. Neighbors reported neighbors. Our Master predicted,
Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child, and children will rise against parents and have them put to death … a person’s enemies will be those of his own household. (Matthew 10:21, 36)
According to Domitian, anyone who rested on the Jewish Sabbath was liable for the Fiscus Judaicus. He arrested them and seized their property. He banished some to exile. Others he put to death.
The Atheists
The number of God-fearing Gentiles who lived as Jews shocked Domitian. The Christians abounded in every city, and some lived even among the upper-class aristocrats of Rome. The more he learned about them, the more he dreaded and feared them.
Domitian already disliked the Jews. His superstitious mind and constant paranoia made him fear the Jewish God whose Temple his family had destroyed. The discovery of thousands of “secret Jews” right under his nose fed those fears.
The “secret Jews” did seem to be organizing politically against him. They seemed to have no loyalty to Rome. They followed a different King—a Jewish King—and identified themselves as citizens of the Jewish King’s kingdom. They claimed their King would soon topple Rome and conquer the entire world.
Domitian quickly discovered that the Christians were “atheists”—that is, they denied the gods of Rome their customary dues. They blasphemed against the gods, calling them dead, lifeless idols inhabited solely by evil demons. They tried to persuade others, as well, to abandon the gods. The atheism of the Christians sorely troubled the deeply religious emperor.
During the New Testament Era, the believers considered the apostles to carry the authority of Jesus himself.
A New Policy
Domitian wanted the Gentile God-fearers separated from the Jews. He introduced legal enactments to distinguish between Jews and Gentile Christians. He affirmed Judaism’s status as a legal religion under Roman law but for Jews only. He excluded the God-fearing Gentiles from those same protections. Moreover, he declared Christianity illegal for both Jews and Gentiles.
Domitian’s new policy impacted the relationship between the believers and the larger Jewish community throughout the empire. The impact of the new policy seems to explain what happened in Smyrna and Philadelphia.
We may surmise that after the decree reached the provinces, members of the local Jewish communities denounced the believers to the authorities. In the interest of self-preservation, they were motivated to inform on the believers by providing the local Roman magistrates and tax authorities lists of names identifying people who worshiped within their community but were not Jewish.
We can imagine the leaders of the Jewish communities in Smyrna and Philadelphia presenting such a list to the authorities, saying, “These people are not Jews; they are members of the illegal Christian superstition.” The Master comforted the persecuted and disenfranchised believers in those cities by reversing the words of their betrayers: “I know … the slander of those who say they are Jews and are not” (Revelation 2:9).
That description appears to allude to the accusation that the Jews of Smyrna must have made against the believers. They claimed, “These people are not Jews,” but they themselves were not acting like good Jews when they denounced the believers. Jewish ethical standards regard informing on a fellow Jew and putting a brother’s life in danger as a sin. Although the informers were Jewish, they did not act in a manner appropriate for Jewish people. The phrase “those who say that they are Jews and are not” functioned as an ironic reproach against the informers whose chief accusation had been that the believers were not Jewish and were, therefore, guilty of the crimes of being atheists and Christians.
Jewish ethical standards regard informing on a fellow Jew and putting a brother’s life in danger as a sin. Although the informers were Jewish, they did not act in a manner appropriate for Jewish people.
Synagogue of the Accuser
This historical situation also explains why the Master used the bitter epithet “synagogue of Satan” (Revelation 2:9). The Hebrew word satan means “accuser.” If the Jewish leaders in Smyrna and Philadelphia denounced the believers as “Christians” to the Roman authorities, they became agents of “the accuser of our brothers” (Revelation 12:10) because they became accusers themselves.
This does not mean that they were Satan worshipers (God forbid), that the devil secretly controlled their synagogue, or that they employed satanic imagery or rituals. That’s not the point at all. Instead, the term “synagogue of Satan” most probably referred to the informers’ role as accusers of the brethren.
The statement cannot be taken as a blanket defamation of Jewish synagogues or even a defamation of everyone in the synagogues of Smyrna and Philadelphia. It most likely referred specifically to those individuals who drew up a list of known believers and delivered it to the authorities. Most likely, the accusers held prominent positions as community leaders, perhaps synagogue leaders. After all, the synagogue leaders were in the best position to compile such a list of names, and they would be the ones the Roman authorities pressured to compose such a list.
These difficult passages turn out to be a fascinating window into the situation of the first-century believers. The resolution of this mystery underscores the importance of learning history. Ancient texts must be understood within their ancient contexts.
Conclusion
In short, when the phrase “synagogue of Satan” and “those who say they are Jews and are not Jews” are read within their historical context, they make reasonable sense without any anti-Jewish, anti-Semitic, or anti-synagogue implications.
The passages make no hint that the Jewish people of Smyrna and Philadelphia abdicated their status as the people of God by failing to become believers in Yeshua, nor is there any indication of replacement theology or anti-Jewish sentiment in these passages. On the contrary, the reproach of the Master uses the term “Jews” with a positive connotation, holding the term up as a high ethical standard. The synagogues in question were probably the very synagogues in which the believers in Smyrna and Philadelphia had been worshiping from day to day and from one Sabbath to another until shortly before John wrote the Revelation.
The Master called them “synagogues of Satan” because the leadership in those communities assumed the role of accuser against the brethren. Those accusers pointed out that the God-fearing Gentile believers among them were not Jewish and therefore were not eligible for protection under Roman law as Jews practicing Judaism. Instead, they were guilty of practicing the illegal superstition of the Christians, i.e., an “atheism” that failed to honor the gods of Rome. The Master’s harsh words indicate that the accusers who betrayed the believers were not acting in a manner consistent with Jewish ethics, and he turned their accusation back on them.
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