Rome ran heaven's government layout with human furniture

The layout above

The government of heaven is mapped in full in the three heavens. Its offices, with the texts that place them:

The numbering is exact: “Even all they that were numbered were six hundred thousand and three thousand and five hundred and fifty” (Numbers 1:46 ): 600,000 + 3,000 + 550 = 603,550.

The Rome mirror

The empire under Augustus ran the same offices with human occupants:

Two of the rows rest on Augustus’s own account of his reign. The senate named him Augustus by decree, senatus consulto Augustus appellatus sum (Res Gestae 34). He records accepting the office of pontifex maximus, Rome’s chief priesthood, after the death of the man who had seized it during the civil wars, a rival he leaves unnamed, in the consulship of P. Sulpicius and C. Valgius (Res Gestae 10), 12 BC by the conventional dating.

The titles

The evangelists give Christ the titles: “For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord” (Luke 2:11), soter (σωτήρ , “savior”) and kurios (κύριος , “lord”). The Samaritans extend the first: “this is indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the world” (John 4:42), ὁ σωτὴρ τοῦ κόσμου (ho soter tou kosmou).

Rome had already carved that word into stone for Augustus. The Priene calendar inscription (IK Priene 14, also cataloged OGIS 458; conventionally dated 9 BC) records the decree of the Greeks of Asia to start the provincial year on Augustus’s birthday. Its preserved text calls him “savior” (σωτῆρα ), “the one who ends war” (τὸν παύσαντα μὲν πόλεμον ), and declares that “the birthday of the god” was “the beginning of the good tidings for the world” that came through him: ἤρξεν δὲ τῶι κόσμωι τῶν δι' αὐτὸν εὐανγελί[ων ἡ γενέθλιος ἡμέ]ρα τοῦ θεοῦ . The stone is fragmentary, and the brackets mark the standard edition’s reconstructions. Euangelion, the good tidings, is the word the empire used for the birthday of its god.

The evangelists write into that vocabulary. The angel at the birth announces “good tidings of great joy” (Luke 2:10 ), εὐαγγελίζομαι (euangelizomai, “I bring good tidings”). Mark opens his account: “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God” (Mark 1:1 ), Ἀρχὴ τοῦ εὐαγγελίου : beginning and euangelion, the decree’s own pairing. The coinage carried the same claims into daily commerce: the tribute penny reads TI CAESAR DIVI AVG F AVGVSTVS, “son of the divine Augustus,” with PONTIF MAXIM on the reverse, examined in render unto Caesar; the senate had voted the divine honors at Augustus’s death (Suetonius, Divus Augustus 100).

The census

The KJV reads: “there went out a decree from Cæsar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed” (Luke 2:1). “Taxed” translates ἀπογράφεσθαι (apographesthai, “to be registered, enrolled”); the “world” is τὴν οἰκουμένην (oikoumene, “the inhabited world”), the empire’s standard word for its own territory. The instrument is a registration, the same instrument as the numbering of Israel.

The mechanics are recorded: “And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city. And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judæa, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem; (because he was of the house and lineage of David:)” (Luke 2:3-4). The empire’s registration moved a family of the house of David to the city of David at the moment of the birth. Luke dates the registration to the governorship of Quirinius (Luke 2:2 ); the dating is a known crux, and render unto Caesar carries the Josephus data.

The citizenship

Rome’s citizenship was property. Paul invokes it: “Is it lawful for you to scourge a man that is a Roman, and uncondemned?” (Acts 22:25 ). The chief captain states the price: “With a great sum obtained I this freedom. And Paul said, But I was free born” (Acts 22:28). “Freedom” translates πολιτείαν (politeia, “citizenship”): bought with a great sum in one case, inherited by birth in the other.

Philippians uses the same state vocabulary for the heavenly version: “our conversation is in heaven” (Philippians 3:20), where “conversation” translates πολίτευμα (politeuma, “citizenship, commonwealth”) and the verb is ὑπάρχει (hyparchei): the citizenship exists in heaven, present tense. The letter went to Philippi, “the chief city of that part of Macedonia, and a colony” (Acts 16:12 ), κολωνία (kolonia, a Latin word in Greek letters): a colony of Roman citizens.

The peace

Rome’s peace has its author’s own description. The senate voted an altar, ara Pacis Augustae, the altar of Augustan Peace, for Augustus’s return from Spain and Gaul (Res Gestae 12). The gate of Janus, open while Rome was at war, was closed three times under his rule, after two closures in the city’s entire earlier history (Res Gestae 13). The peace is defined in his words: parta victoriis pax, peace won by victories, throughout the empire, on land and sea.

Heaven’s peace announcement stands on the same page as the census decree: “And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men” (Luke 2:13-14 ). “Host” translates στρατιᾶς (stratia, “army”): heaven’s peace is announced by an army.

The counterfeit runs the same layout

The three heavens maps the counterfeit kingdom in full: the dragon’s seat, the ranks, the synagogue, the ministers of righteousness. Two cells of the mirror add data.

The worship is a parody of a name. The beast’s worshipers chant “Who is like unto the beast?” (Revelation 13:4). The archangel’s name is that question: Michael (מִיכָאֵל ) is mi (מִי , “who”), kha (כְּ , “like”), El (אֵל , “God”): “who is like God?” (Daniel 10:13). The archangel’s name asks who compares to God; the chant asks who compares to the beast.

The registration controls commerce: “And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name” (Revelation 13:16-17). Its counterpart follows: the 144,000 “having his Father’s name written in their foreheads” (Revelation 14:1 ). The juxtaposition of a mark that controls trade with a name that marks the registered is data; reading the mark as a counterfeit census is interpretation.

The fulness of the time

Paul dates the sending by the state of the times: “But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son” (Galatians 4:4 ). The phrase is τὸ πλήρωμα τοῦ χρόνου (pleroma tou chronou, “the fulness of the time”): the measure filled full.

The Priene decree is conventionally dated within a decade of the birth, and it shows the vocabulary already in circulation: a savior-god, a gospel of his birthday, a peace arranged by the emperor. When the evangelists write euangelion, soter, and eirene of Christ, every one of those words already carried an imperial claim. The evangelists spoke into terms the whole empire already used and assigned them to a different bearer.

References

1. IK Priene 14 (OGIS 458), the Priene calendar inscription, conventionally dated 9 BC: the decree of the Greeks of Asia moving the provincial year to Augustus’s birthday, calling him savior and god and his birthday the beginning of the good tidings for the world.
2. Augustus, Res Gestae Divi Augusti 10, 12-13, 34: the pontificate accepted after the unnamed rival’s death, the altar of Augustan Peace and the closed gate of Janus, and the name Augustus conferred by senate decree.
3. Roman Imperial Coinage I (2nd ed.), Tiberius 26/30, and Suetonius, Divus Augustus 100: the tribute penny’s legend and the deification vote behind it, examined in render-unto-caesar.