Introduction

Perhaps the most fascinating emperor figure in early Christian sources is the emperor Nero. Even though his reputation in general was ambivalent, he became a central actor, often associated with the Antichrist figure in Christian eschatological teaching. This teaching, however, was not open knowledge but often restricted to an inner circle. This article will discuss some aspects of such arcane teaching relating to Antichrist figures and the Nero redux and Nero redivivus legend. No full documentation can be given here; this can be found in my overview on the figure of the emperor Nero in early Christianity and the ancient church published in Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum, which should be consulted for all details.

From its beginnings, Christianity had an element of secrecy, of arcane teaching (and we are not now speaking of emerging Gnosticism). For example, in the gospel of Mark, Jesus is imagined as giving his last sermon to only an inner circle of four disciples (Mark 13:3), though with the gospel book itself such teaching becomes common knowledge for all disciples. The secrecy of the teaching now is an “open mystery”, a category that has some similarity to classic mystery cults like the Eleusinia. Large parts of the Athenian population had been initiated, but any public allusion to the central mysteries was strictly taboo, even in court. This is what we might call an “open mystery”. In apocalyptic literature, the dynamic of concealment and revelation is often a matter of time: what has previously been hidden shall “now” become revealed (Dan. 12:4; Assumption of Moses 1:16-18; 10:11-13; 4 Ezra 14:44-46; continued in the New Testament revelation schema, e.g., Col. 1:26-28; Eph. 3:4-7, 8-12; Rom. 16, 25-26 and in a wider sense 1 Cor. 2:6-10; 2 Tim. 1:9-10; Titus 1:2-3; 1 Pet. 1:20). On a more general level, the concept of secret teaching is not unusual in Hellenistic and Roman Judaism, either. For example, Josephus speaks about the never divulged secret oaths and other secrets of the Essenes (Jewish War 2.142). The dichotomy of mystery and revelation is part of the basic concepts of both Judaism and Christianity.