Apollonius," etc. (probably seven others were named).

The people consecrated Zeus Sabazios either by building him a temple, or simply by erecting a statue in his

honour: in either case the action was a stage in the gradual Hellenising of an Anatolian cult in outward show

by making it more anthropomorphic. The original Anatolian religion was much less anthropomorphic; it had

holy places rather than temples, and worshipped "the God" rather than individualised and specialised

embodiments of him. Under the influence of Greek and other foreign examples, temples and statues were

introduced into that simple old religion. It is impossible to get back to a stage in which it was entirely

imageless and without built temples; but certainly in its earlier stages images and temples played a much

smaller part than in the later period.

The symbolism of this monument is so instructive with regard to the popular religious views in Anatolia that

a detailed study of it forms the best introduction to this subject. The monument is now built into the inner

wall of a house at Koula, a considerable town in Eastern Lydia; but it was brought there from a place about

twenty-five miles to the north. It originates therefore from a secluded part of the country, where Anatolian

religious ideas were only beginning to put on an outward gloss of Hellenism, though their real character was

purely Asian. Greek however was the language of the district.

It is fundamentally the same idea of a higher and a lower plane of existence that is expressed in the

symbolism of the Angels and the Stars in heaven, corresponding to the Churches and the Lamps on earth.

The lamp, which represents the Church, is a natural and obvious symbol. The Church is Divine: it is the

kingdom of God among men: in it shines the light that illumines the darkness of the world.

The heavenly pair is more difficult to express precisely in its relation to the earthly pair. There seems to be

involved here a conception, common in ancient time generally, that there are intermediate grades of

existence to bridge over the vast gap between the pure Divine nature and the earthly manifestation of it.

Thus the star and the angel, of whom the star is the symbol, are the intermediate stage between Christ and

His Church with its lamp shining in the world. This symbolism was taken over by St. John from the

traditional forms of expression in theories regarding the Divine nature and its relation to the world.

Again, we observe that, in the religious symbolic language of the first century, a star denoted the heavenly

existence corresponding to a divine being or divine creation or existence located on earth. Thus, in the

language of the Roman poets, the divine figure of the Emperor on earth has a star in heaven that

corresponds to it and is its heavenly counterpart. So the Imperial family as a whole is also said to have its

star, or to be a star. It is a step towards this kind of symbolic phraseology when Horace (Odes, i, 12) speaks

of the Julian star shining like the moon amid the lesser fires; but probably Horace was hardly conscious of

having advanced in this expression beyond the limits of mere poetic metaphor. But when Domitian built a

Temple of the Imperial Flavian family, the poet Statius describes him as placing the stars of his family (the

Flavian) in a new heaven (Silvae, v, I, 240f). There is implied here a similar conception to that which we are

studying in the Revelation: the new Temple on earth corresponds to a new heaven framed to contain the

new stars; the divine Emperors of the Flavian family (along with any other member of the family who had

been formally deified) are the earthly existences dwelling in the new Temple, as the stars, their heavenly

counterparts, move in the new heaven. The parallel is close, however widely separate the theological ideals

are; and the date of Statius' poem is about the last year of Domitian's reign, AD 95-96.

The star, then, is obviously the heavenly object which corresponds to the lamp shining on the earth, though

superior in character and purity to it; and, as the lamp on earth is to the star in heaven, so is the Church on

earth to the angel. Such is the relation clearly indicated. The angel is a corresponding existence on another

and higher plane, but more pure in essence, more closely associated with the Divine nature than the

individual Church on earth can be.

Now, what is the angel? How shall he be defined or described? In answer to this question, then, one must

attempt to describe what is meant by the angels of the Churches in these chapters, although as soon as the