RadixJournal - July 21, 2026


The Book of Revelation 10-13


Episode Stats


Length

19 minutes

Words per minute

152.54

Word count

3,007

Sentence count

71

Harmful content

Toxicity

1

sentences flagged

Hate speech

13

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Nero, the Roman Roman general, is one of the most famous historical figures in the history of the world. But who was he really? And where did he come from? And why did he become a mythical figure?

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Now, in Book 5, Nero becomes a mythical figure.
00:00:06.240 When Nero died, a rumor circulated
00:00:11.160 that he had actually escaped to the Parthians
00:00:13.980 and that he would come back.
00:00:16.220 You get this in a few Roman authors of the time.
00:00:19.740 Now, at first, this didn't mean that he would rise from the dead.
00:00:24.580 In fact, in any of these Jewish books,
00:00:26.040 it didn't mean he would come back from the dead.
00:00:28.120 It meant that he was still alive and would come back,
00:00:32.620 leading a horde of Parthians and recapture the Roman Empire. 0.96
00:00:37.540 And this was a kind of nightmare scenario.
00:00:40.720 In the fifth book of Sibylline Oracles,
00:00:44.620 Nero is blown up into what you might call
00:00:48.860 an eschatological adversary.
00:00:51.360 By an eschatological adversary, I mean an anti-messiah.
00:00:56.380 In Christian terms, we call him an antichrist,
00:00:59.920 somebody who is like a negative counterpart of a messiah 1.00
00:01:05.440 and who would come and lead the pagan hosts
00:01:09.700 in their attack on Jerusalem.
00:01:13.260 And that figure, there are several oracles
00:01:16.260 in the fifth book of Sibylline oracles
00:01:18.700 that quite clearly refer to Nero.
00:01:22.600 They refer to him especially because
00:01:24.880 of the murder of his mother.
00:01:27.340 Nego was accused of having had his mother put to death.
00:01:29.800 And so he's called, in Greek, a matraktonos,
00:01:32.680 was the man who killed his mother,
00:01:34.480 so that he is like an antichrist.
00:01:37.540 In one oracle, actually, that is added
00:01:40.000 late to the third book of Sibylline oracles,
00:01:42.280 he's called Belial.
00:01:43.640 And Belial was like the name for Satan.
00:01:47.200 So in those oracles, he will come back, 0.95
00:01:50.440 He will rage against Jerusalem and the holy people, 0.95
00:01:54.840 but he will always fail. 0.99
00:01:58.040 But in spite of that, the fifth book of Sibylline Oracles
00:02:02.580 is a very pessimistic book.
00:02:05.260 It ends up not with the kingdom of God,
00:02:08.440 but with the battle of the stars, in which all the stars
00:02:12.320 eventually fall from the sky, and the sky is left starless.
00:02:16.880 And I think that's a tremendously bleak vision
00:02:21.420 of the future.
00:02:22.640 But that I figure came from the time
00:02:24.640 of the end of the diaspora revolt.
00:02:27.820 And it was a time when there was very little hope
00:02:31.560 for the Jews in Egypt.
00:02:35.440 We have that imagery in the book of Revelation, of course.
00:02:39.280 Yeah, isn't this obvious where this comes from?
00:02:41.720 All these things come directly from that.
00:02:43.560 There's a difference 0.93
00:02:44.960 because the author of Revelation, like all Christians,
00:02:48.440 believed that Jesus had risen from the dead
00:02:51.180 and that Jesus would come back from the dead.
00:02:54.840 So in Revelation, Nero becomes quite properly an anti-Christ,
00:03:00.580 somebody who would do all the same things that Christ did,
00:03:05.080 but with negative or evil effect.
00:03:08.600 And so in Revelation, the assumption is that Nero actually had died,
00:03:13.380 but that he would come back from the dead.
00:03:16.220 And that would set up the final conflict between good and evil.
00:03:21.500 So Nero evidently had a great grip on imaginations in the ancient world.
00:03:30.040 Very interesting.
00:03:33.380 I mean, that's the strongest argument that I've heard,
00:03:37.680 that there is some reference to Nero going on,
00:03:41.220 um, as opposed to a more general, you know, figure. But again, I would, the problem with
00:03:49.720 the gematria, um, explanation is that, um, six, six can produce a very large number of names,
00:03:57.680 right? Um, so it's not, you know, it doesn't, it doesn't obviously point to Nero. Um, and I,
00:04:05.340 There have been other proposals. Probably the most famous is that the name means Latin man or the Roman, right, which six six can also spell.
00:04:17.640 You know, so I mean, I so I I would say that I think it will be worth like revisiting those passages.
00:04:26.520 The Nero explanation seems plausible, but to the extent it's based on Gematria, I think it's kind of thin, honestly.
00:04:33.760 um and it's one of the reasons uh gematria is not uh something that's been interesting
00:04:40.400 to me in terms of uh gem analysis is because the numbers could spell many things right
00:04:49.300 you know i mean and that's not and i think it probably uh jews will occasionally introduce
00:04:56.400 gematria they you know i assume that this is done uh or some jewish filmmaker has done this
00:05:02.360 you know people have theories about uh hotel numbers and like the shining for example and
00:05:08.220 cooper's shining um but i just think that the problem is what does that actually what does
00:05:14.280 that number actually signify and it could signify many things right i think it's just kind of it's
00:05:20.260 it's a way i think our reading of the of room 237 actually seems more plausible to adam and eve
00:05:26.780 three serpent seven the sabbath and there's all that garden of eden imagery in the room that he 0.80
00:05:34.420 walks in it's it's green and so on and eve comes out of the tub and then she's an old hag you know 0.94
00:05:40.260 the sin i mean i i think that sort of works that yeah i'm using that as an example of we're not 0.83
00:05:47.180 numerologists here like it's it's worse in terms of we rem theorists like it it's sort of simpler
00:05:54.640 in a way you don't have to take all these steps there are numbers that just you know when you see
00:06:00.420 sixes and sevens that's it that's all you need sort of and multiples thereof yeah i so i'm yeah
00:06:08.480 i'm of a school of a simpler uh numerology i guess you could say and i think that that's you know and
00:06:16.220 again because of this problem with uh gematria i think that that you know i that's why i don't
00:06:22.160 think it's really worth looking at so if that were the only evidence someone was presenting
00:06:25.980 that this is nero then i'd be like well it's that's very thin right that's very thin um i think
00:06:34.100 there is more going on though in in this section of um revelation that we'll get into as we read
00:06:42.440 it um and also that the number six itself has a kind of deeper significance right so the number
00:06:48.260 six as we discussed it also it has you know i was listening to um
00:06:53.620 i was listening to another uh uh person or podcast who was doing a kind of symbolic analysis of um
00:07:04.100 uh revelation and he he was saying and this is something i would i would be interested in
00:07:10.120 verifying and just sort of double checking but the number six has a general kind of negative
00:07:15.180 association, which we might expect, right? Now, how exactly that's deduced may be less clear,
00:07:24.300 but this is a kind of thought that some scholars run with, that essentially that six has a kind of
00:07:31.200 negative association elsewhere in the Bible, right? Which I guess would make sense, right,
00:07:37.080 from our perspective. Now, I think that, yeah, yeah, but I think that REM tends to be more
00:07:43.760 clever than that where the it's it's almost it's sort of it has a significance but it's not
00:07:48.760 necessarily a good evil significance and so forth right um and i think it is sort of yeah oh go finish
00:07:57.820 your thought and then i'll yeah no no so that's the only thing i'm saying so the argument that
00:08:03.100 collins is presenting is the most convincing i've heard which is he's he's making a strong case
00:08:09.340 that Nero was this kind of boogeyman to the Jews in the ancient world and so forth,
00:08:14.320 and that he had an even sort of anti-messiac-like significance, messianic, anti-messianic
00:08:21.540 significance. So I think that that's the best case that we've heard supporting that this is
00:08:27.460 a reference to Nero. But going on Gematria, I just don't see it. And the other thing I would
00:08:34.460 argue too is that this figure may be a more general figure than nero right and a more timeless figure
00:08:40.920 who uh where the symbolic connections are deeper and you know again we we argue that six has a kind
00:08:50.400 of solar arian significance and the number of man the number of creation and so uh so there is
00:08:57.020 something deeper there definitely with uh six six six is it also a reference to nero could be i
00:09:02.460 mean we'll look at it but i definitely what uh what he is arguing is uh more compelling than
00:09:10.860 other arguments i've heard do you think it's as simple as it's jupiterian and like in some
00:09:17.580 way associated with zeus yeah but i think that when we when we look at the myth i think it's even
00:09:23.680 more complex than that and i think that it's so the figure uh the beast that is associated with
00:09:31.120 666 um as we'll see there's there are other contextual details that that may make him kind
00:09:38.420 of more specific in significance right the argument i all put forth is that he might represent
00:09:43.940 essentially uh a gentile form of christianity a kind of you know racialist or corrupt form of
00:09:50.960 christianity that is you know anti-semitic or is is racialist right um where you know we have this
00:09:59.400 idea that people who are don't have the mark are excluded from trade and so forth so it might
00:10:05.060 represent like christians becoming tribalistic and racist or something like this i'll make the
00:10:10.440 argument um as we analyze uh the symbols but in other words it's deeper right than it this is
00:10:18.020 just nero hey we saw that it's nero right um is it also a reference in nero could be i mean it's
00:10:24.400 I mean, I think that there are examples, you know, in contemporary gem where they're certainly making references to contemporary figures, but those figures also have a kind of deeper mythological significance, right?
00:10:38.600 And they are what we would call composite gods, composite characters, composite gods, but they're referencing figures that the artist is seeing as related and having a similar significance, essentially, some that are contemporary, some that are ancient, right?
00:10:59.140 In any case, and I guess I'll let you...
00:11:05.560 Yeah, I think, are we ready to start reading?
00:11:08.600 yeah yeah yeah well one one thing i wanted to return to because i think a we gave it sort of
00:11:16.680 a kind of incomplete treatment and there's a lot there um okay so going back again to the
00:11:24.600 description of these um uh these sort of scorpion men that accompany apollyon um and this is i
00:11:33.080 believe it's in revelation 9 9 right uh so i can read that again just to go back um
00:11:43.260 uh their faces were like human faces their hair like women's hair and their teeth like lion's
00:11:50.120 teeth they have breastplates like burlesperates of iron and the noise of their wings is like the
00:11:56.420 noise of many chariots with horses running into battle yeah this is the um this is just before
00:12:02.900 apollyon is introduced and and in the appearance the locusts were like horses prepared for battle
00:12:08.940 on their head were what looked like crowns of gold it's locust with faces and so on they have
00:12:17.120 tails and stings like scorpions and their power to hurt people for five months is in their tails
00:12:23.540 they have as king over them the angel of the bottomless pit his name in hebrew is
00:12:31.700 abaddon and in greek he is called apollyon
00:12:35.780 yeah he in that description i don't know if i missed it there's also they're also described
00:12:42.660 as having hair like that of women right so this would all yeah yeah this is the core eye right
00:12:49.780 or the chorus this is a reference to the chorus um and also apollo is given this
00:12:54.760 this epithet as well he of unshorn air he of uncut air right uh we discuss all this when we
00:13:02.580 discuss samson because we we you know which means a man of a son and we feel that this is a reference
00:13:08.960 to the apollonian cult essentially and there's a reference especially to this ritual of hair
00:13:13.760 offerings cutting the hair and offering them um and uh but there are there are many things in
00:13:21.000 there there's a kind of there's a there's references to lions which we argue have a
00:13:25.340 aryan significance uh there's references there's equine references we argue that the horse has a
00:13:32.560 kind of aryan significance as well and this is um you know other people have put forth this thesis
00:13:38.800 as well that in the bible uh the horse has a has a kind of gentile significance uh there's um a
00:13:45.920 scholar that um i don't know if it's in this book i don't know if we cover it in this book but
00:13:50.120 who basically has this thesis and has you know uh made this analysis of the bible um and his
00:13:57.900 argument is that the horse you know has indo-european significance which in the horse
00:14:02.840 has ancient ancient indo-european significance um but that this would so it becomes a symbol
00:14:10.200 of jews who are in some way fearful of horses because of you know these uh conquering tribes
00:14:17.840 and these martial tribes and so forth um and you know there's references to chariots as well and
00:14:25.980 of course that's you know was the roar of many horses and chariots rushing into battle so this
00:14:32.220 is also a reference to, um, Apollo. We discussed how the scorpion tail, the scorpion, the reference
00:14:39.580 to the scorpion is, uh, it seems like it's a reference to the scorpion men, uh, that are,
00:14:44.880 um, you know, are associated, have a solar significance. I think also in Egypt as well,
00:14:52.300 there's some, um, you know, so that's something people can double check, but certainly in, uh,
00:14:58.420 Mesopotamia, Shemash or Utu, you know, his palace is guarded by the scorpion men and so forth.
00:15:06.040 And then there is also the hair, again, that are like something like crowns of gold on their heads. 0.91
00:15:14.480 And this kind of fixation on hair, hair like women. Right. So we're talking about the Korai. 0.91
00:15:20.640 And I again, I would argue that we're talking about the Nazarite. Right. So the Nazarite are ultimately a reference to the Koros is the argument. 0.96
00:15:28.320 that we make in our Samson podcast and so forth.
00:15:33.760 And they also, the name Nazar in the Hebrew means many things.
00:15:41.020 It means prince, it can mean prince.
00:15:44.400 Joseph is described by this noun as a prince.
00:15:50.280 That's the translation of prince.
00:15:52.180 And Apollo was a prince and so forth.
00:15:53.800 The koros or the noble youth, that's what the word means.
00:15:56.960 koros means noble youth and um it but nazir can also mean hair and it also can mean crown
00:16:07.240 right so it also mean hair can also mean crown it's a reference to nobility it's a reference
00:16:12.680 to the nazirite and what is the reason this is stuff that we covered again uh in the ancient
00:16:18.100 world long hair was associated with nobility this is you know the homeric heroes all had long hair
00:16:25.360 It's, you know, it's sort of the, it's a kind of, it harkens to an earlier kind of Aryan, you know, barbarian past, you could say. But long hair has an association with nobility. And maybe it even has a kind of, you know, it has a racial significance as well, because, you know, in Greece, there are different populations in the Mediterranean.
00:16:51.900 And so it would also be an expression of race. You have these long, long locks like Apollo. Apollo is associated with this hair. Nobility is associated with the hair. And, you know, by the time of Plato, I think the tradition might be waning, if not going extinct.
00:17:08.380 But long hair starts to be associated more with philosophers, whereas formerly it was associated with this noble, you know, founding warrior elite and so forth in Greece.
00:17:24.140 So, yeah, all of that is significant in this description.
00:17:28.080 And all of this corroborates the idea that we're talking about Apollo here, right?
00:17:31.900 So, you know, Amalek was saying that this is something that's been understood by scholars.
00:17:37.640 i don't think it's been widely understood or widely reported um i remember when i was researching
00:17:42.720 for an article that i wrote about this there was you know i mean with ai now we have ai so we can
00:17:48.480 find this sort of obscure guy um that is making this point but um you know i wasn't aware of
00:17:56.100 anyone making this point uh prior to me writing an article about it in like 2019 or whatever
00:18:01.220 um and then uh and also again we go to yeah it seems it seems likely and it does seem like there
00:18:08.800 is uh uh support among scholars for the idea that the first horseman is a reference to apollo he's
00:18:15.460 got the bow the second horseman a reference to aries uh the third i guess a reference to the
00:18:21.600 god of disease and so forth right and hades is actually mentioned explicitly in that uh sort of
00:18:29.140 entourage right that we find with the horses um yeah so uh those are just kind of points that i
00:18:36.660 wanted to touch on again because i think we were kind of leaving some of that detail out uh something
00:18:42.820 like crowns of gold on their heads so nazar can also mean crown as well as head or as well as hair
00:18:50.420 right so maybe there's maybe to a jewish audience familiar with the hebrew and the different um
00:18:56.820 meaning the different meanings that can be derived from words like nazar is you're making
00:19:02.660 the association of crown which is an association to nobility of course uh the chorus um it's also
00:19:10.260 making maybe an association even to this word nazar which may also mean hair so golden crowns
00:19:15.780 of hair and golden of course we're talking about a blonde we're talking about blonde arians here 0.63
00:19:21.380 are Gentiles, right? That's what we're talking about. And they're led by Apollo, right? So 1.00
00:19:27.360 the fact that this is some kind of obscure bit of knowledge, which I think at least we can be
00:19:37.240 granted, is remarkable because it's clearly an attack on Apollo, right?