Revelation 2:13

13. And where thou dwellest A touch of sympathy and palliation for shortcomings.

Satan’s seat is No contemporary history exists to tell us what rendered Pergamos the home of the Satanic throne; for throne the word seat should have been rendered. Wordsworth notes, that the emblem of Esculapius was the serpent, who is represented on the Pergamene medals as “Pergameus Deus,” the Pergamene god; and this temple may have been the seat of Satan. Great numbers resorted to the Esculapian shrine for cures; and the cures were supposed to be effected by the miraculous power of the god. Hence it appears quite a probability that this temple, like that of Diana at Ephesus, was the source of violent persecution to the Church, rendering the city the stronghold of a violent pagan fanaticism.

The terms holdest fast, hast not denied, are delightful endorsements of the patience of the Church in that trying hour.

Even What heightens the firmness.

Antipas Is said by Eusebius to have been slain, in a tumult, by the Esculapian priests. He is supposed to have been bishop of Pergamos, and to have been martyred in the time of Domitian. The Greek Church dedicates April 11 as his day. Hengstenberg, by a preposterous etymology, makes Antipas mean “against all,” giving the last syllable its Greek meaning of all. This meaning of the whole name he likens to antichrist, against Christ, and anticosmos, against the world. To this Alford objects, that Antipas is a contraction of Antipater, and so cannot bear such a meaning. (See our biography of Luke, prefixed to his Gospel.) Trench, however, as absurd as Hengstenberg, while not accepting his meaning of Antipas, condemns Alford’s objection, averting that Antipas has all the rights of a word however formed. But surely if Antipas is merely a shortened form of Antipater, (meaning, instead of a father, pro-father,) the last syllable cannot mean all. When it is maintained by some that Antipas is an allegorical. and not a real character, because Balaam and Jezebel are here used allegorically, we reply that neither designates an unreal person in this book.