Pergamum #93

Pergamum, also spelled Pergamos or Pergamon, was a wealthy and influential city in northwestern Asia Minor, in what is now Turkey, and the capital of the Roman province of Asia for a time. It is the third of the seven churches addressed in Revelation 2:12-17, in a message that is both a commendation and a warning.

Biblical Significance

Christ presents himself to Pergamum as the one who has the sharp two-edged sword (Revelation 2:12). He says he knows where the church lives, “where Satan’s seat is,” and commends the believers for holding fast to his name and not denying their faith even in the days of Antipas, his faithful witness, who was killed among them (Revelation 2:13). Nothing more is known about Antipas from the text. What exactly the phrase “Satan’s throne” refers to is uncertain, and interpreters have suggested several possibilities: the great altar of Zeus on the acropolis, the city’s famous temple of Asclepius, the center of the imperial cult, which required worship of the emperor, or the seat of Roman authority in the province with power to execute Christians. Each fits a city where pagan religion and civic life were closely bound together.

The rebuke concerns compromise. Some in the church held to the teaching of Balaam, who according to Numbers 31:16 counseled Moabite women to lead Israel into idolatry and sexual immorality, an event related in Numbers 25:1-3. Others held a similar teaching linked to the Nicolaitans (Revelation 2:14-15). The church is told to repent, or Christ will come and fight against them with the sword of his mouth (Revelation 2:16). To the one who conquers, he promises hidden manna and a white stone with a new name written on it (Revelation 2:17), images whose exact background is debated.

Today

The ruins of Pergamum lie above the Turkish town of Bergama. A dramatic theater cut into the steep slope of the acropolis, the foundations of a temple of Trajan, and the remains of the great library, which was among the largest in the ancient world after Alexandria, can still be seen. The monumental Altar of Zeus was taken to Germany in the nineteenth century and is now reconstructed in the Pergamon Museum in Berlin. Below the hill are the remains of the Asclepion, a healing sanctuary, and a huge brick building known as the Red Basilica, originally built for Egyptian deities and later used as a church. Some have proposed it as the church of Revelation, but that link is uncertain.