Review of Malik, The Nero-Antichrist

BRYN MAYR CLASSICAL REVIEW: The Nero-Antichrist: founding and fashioning a paradigm.

Shushma Malik, The Nero-Antichrist: founding and fashioning a paradigm. Classics after antiquity. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2020. Pp. xv, 228. ISBN 9781108491495 $99.99.

Review by
Harriet Fertik, University of New Hampshire. harriet.fertik@unh.edu

I am not sure what to make of this claim in light of the evidence of the Book of Revelation:

[Malik] contends that the association of Nero with the Antichrist did not originate in the first century, as many biblical scholars have concluded (8-9): instead, it emerged among late antique Christians and enjoyed renewed popularity among writers in the late-nineteenth century.

Probably it has to do with the use of the term "Antichrist," which appears in 1-2 John, but not in the Book of Revelation.

For PaleoJudaica posts on the Book of Revelation and the Nero rediturus and Nero redivivus myths, start here and follow the links. Some posts on or involving the Antichrist tradition are here, here, here, here, here, and here.

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