Allegory, History, and the Millennium: Andrew of Caesarea, Augustine of Hippo, and the Byzantine Grammar of Apocalyptic Time

By: Jonathan Photius, NEO-Historicist Research Project

Abstract

Although both Andrew of Caesarea and Augustine of Hippo reject a literal, carnal millennium, their allegorical interpretations of Revelation 20 diverge fundamentally in their treatment of history. Augustine’s approach collapses the millennium into the present Church age, thereby rendering subsequent history exegetically inert. Andrew of Caesarea, by contrast, interprets apocalyptic symbolism as temporally meaningful and progressively clarified through historical experience. This article argues that Andrew should be regarded as a Proto-Historicist: not because he advances chronological systems or identifications, but because he articulates a distinctly Byzantine hermeneutic in which time and history function as legitimate interpreters of prophecy. This difference explains the development of Byzantine historicist interpretation and clarifies why Orthodox eschatology cannot be adequately described as Augustinian.¹²

1. Introduction: Allegory and the Problem of Time

In modern theological taxonomies, Andrew of Caesarea and Augustine of Hippo are often grouped together under the category “amillennial,” on the assumption that both reject a literal thousand-year earthly reign of Christ. While formally true, this classification obscures a decisive difference in how allegory functions within each thinker’s eschatology. The question is not whether the millennium is symbolic, but whether symbolic interpretation abolishes historical development or presupposes it.¹

Andrew’s Commentary on the Apocalypse—the earliest surviving complete Greek commentary on the Book of Revelation—emerged within a Byzantine ecclesial context that understood history itself as the arena of divine pedagogy. Augustine’s De civitate Dei, by contrast, reflects a Latin theological synthesis shaped by anti-chiliastic polemic and an overriding concern for ecclesial stability.²

2. Augustine of Hippo: Allegory and Temporal Closure

In City of God XX.7–9, Augustine identifies the “thousand years” of Revelation 20 with the entire period between Christ’s first and second comings.³ The number signifies completeness rather than duration; the binding of Satan is effected through Christ’s passion; the reign of the saints is coextensive with the present Church.

Augustine explicitly resists any expectation of a distinct future historical phase within the present age:

*“The thousand years may be understood in reference not to a definite number of years, but to the fullness of time.”*⁴

The interpretive consequence is decisive. Prophecy is fulfilled in principle at the advent of Christ; history thereafter does not disclose new meaning but merely illustrates theological truths already known.⁵⁶ Apocalyptic symbolism becomes descriptive rather than predictive, ecclesiological rather than historical.

3. Andrew of Caesarea: Allegory without De-Historization

Andrew likewise rejects chiliastic literalism, yet his allegorical method functions differently. Numbers are symbolic, but symbols refer to real processes unfolding within time.⁷

3.1 Time and experience as hermeneutical agents

Andrew’s most explicit methodological statement occurs in his discussion of Revelation 13:18:

*Τὸ δὲ ἀκριβὲς τοῦ ἀριθμοῦ καὶ τῶν λοιπῶν τῶν περὶ αὐτοῦ γεγραμμένων ὁ χρόνος καὶ ἡ πείρα τοῖς σώφροσιν ἐρευνηταῖς ἀποκαλύψει.*⁸

*“Time and experience will reveal to sober investigators the precision of the number and the other things written concerning it.”*⁹¹⁰

This statement establishes a hermeneutic alien to Augustine’s system. Andrew assumes that apocalyptic meaning unfolds across historical time and that later generations may possess superior interpretive vantage.¹¹

3.2 The future Antichrist and phased fulfillment

Andrew affirms a future personal Antichrist, yet this does not negate historicist sensibility. Rather, it presupposes phased fulfillment: apocalyptic symbols may operate across multiple historical manifestations before reaching their final personal expression.¹²

4. Revelation 20 Reconsidered: A Comparative Framework

Andrew’s commentary on Revelation 20 refuses both chiliastic literalism and temporal collapse.¹⁵ In contrast, Augustine identifies the millennium exhaustively with the present Church age.¹⁴¹⁶

Category	Andrew of Caesarea	Augustine of Hippo
Nature of the millennium	Symbolic, temporally meaningful	Symbolic, temporally exhaustive
Relation to history	History clarifies prophecy	History adds no new meaning
Binding of Satan	Real, with historical phases	Fully accomplished
First resurrection	Spiritual, historically consequential	Spiritual only
Expectation of future epochs	Yes	No

5. Apocalyptic Time and Byzantine Historical Consciousness

Andrew’s hermeneutic reflects a broader Byzantine understanding of sacred history. In Byzantine theology, history is neither a neutral chronicle nor a disposable prelude to eternity; it is the very medium through which divine providence is revealed.¹⁷¹⁸

The liturgical cycle, the cult of the saints, and the memory of councils all presuppose that time itself is theologically charged.¹⁹ Andrew’s appeal to χρόνος and πείρα aligns Revelation with this Byzantine temporal grammar.

6. From Andrew to the Byzantine Apocalypse Tradition

Andrew’s commentary became the foundation of the Byzantine Apocalypse tradition.²⁰

6.1 Arethas of Caesarea

Andrew’s successor, Arethas of Caesarea, preserves Andrew’s interpretive restraint while reinforcing the legitimacy of historical illumination.²⁰²¹

6.2 The catena tradition

Medieval Byzantine catenae institutionalized Andrew’s method, transmitting a balance of sobriety and historical attentiveness.²²²³

7. Andrew as Proto-Historicist

Andrew should not be described as a modern historicist. He offers no chronological tables or speculative identifications. Yet he articulates axioms foundational to later Byzantine historicism: prophecy unfolds within history, history functions as an interpretive witness, and apocalyptic meaning matures over time.²⁴²⁵²⁶

Revelation 20: Andrew of Caesarea vs. Augustine of Hippo

Category	Andrew of Caesarea	Augustine of Hippo
View of the “1000 years”	Symbolic number denoting a real, divinely ordered period unfolding within history	Symbolic number denoting the totality of the present Church age
Temporal function	Temporally meaningful, though not arithmetically fixed	Temporally exhaustive and non-progressive
Relation to history	History progressively clarifies the symbol	History adds no new exegetical content
Status of fulfillment	Partially intelligible now; more fully intelligible later	Fully realized in principle already
Role of later generations	Later interpreters may understand better	No privileged later vantage
Binding of Satan	Real, with historical phases and limitations	Accomplished decisively at Christ’s first advent
First resurrection	Spiritual, but historically consequential	Spiritual only (regeneration/baptism)
Expectation of future epochs before the end	Yes (non-chiliastic, non-carnal)	No
Relation to Antichrist	Final Antichrist still future; symbols may have multiple historical manifestations	Antichrist primarily eschatological; little role for historical staging
Danger avoided	Chiliastic speculation	Millenarian agitation
Unintended consequence	Open-ended historical interpretation	Apocalyptic de-historicization

*** Andrew of Caesarea allegorizes the millennium without de-historicizing it, whereas Augustine allegorizes the millennium by collapsing it entirely into the present Church age.

Hermeneutical Method: Why Andrew and Augustine Diverge

Category	Andrew of Caesarea	Augustine of Hippo
Primary concern	Interpretive sobriety (σωφροσύνη) with openness to history	Ecclesial stability and anti-chiliasm
View of allegory	Symbol opens meaning across time	Symbol closes meaning into the present
Function of allegory	Dynamic and retrospective	Static and exhaustive
View of prophecy	Unfolding disclosure	Completed theological description
Role of “time”	Time is an exegete (χρόνος καὶ πείρα)	Time is largely irrelevant after fulfillment
Apocalypse as a book	Companion to Church history	Symbolic theology of the Church
Theological trajectory enabled	Byzantine historicism	Western amillennialism
Reception history	Arethas → Byzantine catenae → post-Byzantine exegetes	Medieval Latin synthesis → Reformation amillennialism

8. Conclusion: Why Andrew Is Not an Augustinian

Andrew of Caesarea should not be described as a modern historicist. He offers no chronological tables, no speculative identifications of contemporary rulers, and no attempt to calculate prophetic timetables. Yet he articulates axioms foundational to later Byzantine historicism: prophecy unfolds within history; history itself functions as an interpretive witness; and apocalyptic meaning matures over time rather than being exhausted at a single moment.²⁴²⁵²⁶

What is less frequently acknowledged, however, is that these axioms did not remain confined to Andrew’s own commentary, nor were they merely latent principles awaiting rediscovery in the modern period. They were actively transmitted, stabilized, and received within the Greek exegetical tradition. The most direct conduit of this transmission is Arethas of Caesarea, whose expanded commentary on the Apocalypse does not revise Andrew’s hermeneutic but rather institutionalizes it. Arethas preserves Andrew’s methodological sobriety (σωφροσύνη) while explicitly allowing that historical developments may illuminate apocalyptic symbols retrospectively, thereby securing Andrew’s approach as normative within the Byzantine tradition.²⁷

Through Arethas, Andrew’s hermeneutic entered the medieval catena tradition, where it acquired durable authority. Byzantine compilations repeatedly transmit Andrew’s refusal of premature identifications alongside his expectation that later generations may recognize prophetic fulfillment with greater clarity. Revelation is thus read neither as a closed allegory of the present Church nor as a speculative map of the immediate future, but as a sacred text whose symbols accompany the Church through time.

This continuity becomes especially evident in the post-Byzantine period, when Orthodox exegetes writing under radically altered historical circumstances nonetheless retain Andrew’s fundamental interpretive posture. Figures such as Maximus the Peloponnesian do not abandon patristic restraint in favor of speculative historicism; rather, they extend Andrew’s principles into new historical contexts. In Maximus’s Apocalypse commentary, prophetic meaning is discerned not through calculation or anticipation but through lived historical experience (πείρα) and retrospective recognition—a posture already authorized by Andrew’s appeal to χρόνος and πείρα.²⁸

Seen in this light, Byzantine and post-Byzantine historicist tendencies are best understood not as innovations imposed upon the tradition, but as developments organically licensed by its earliest authoritative Apocalypse commentator. Andrew of Caesarea did not bequeath a system; he bequeathed a method. That method—mediated by Arethas and preserved in the Greek exegetical memory—made it possible for later Orthodox interpreters to read Revelation historically without abandoning patristic restraint or succumbing to chiliastic excess.²⁹

Andrew of Caesarea thus stands at the headwaters of Orthodox apocalyptic interpretation not as a modern historicist avant la lettre (ahead of its time), but as the patristic exegete who decisively refused to sever prophecy from history, thereby authorizing a tradition in which time itself becomes the Church’s exegetical companion.

Footnotes

Introduction & Method

See Asterios A. Agyriou, Les exégèses grecques de l’Apocalypse (Thessaloniki: Patriarchal Institute for Patristic Studies, 1985), 43–61, on the foundational role of Andrew of Caesarea in the Greek reception of Revelation.
Bernard McGinn, Visions of the End: Apocalyptic Traditions in the Middle Ages (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), 38–47, for the contrast between Latin and Greek approaches to apocalyptic temporality.

Augustine of Hippo and Revelation 20

Augustine of Hippo, De civitate Dei XX.7–9, in Corpus Christianorum Series Latina (CCSL) 48, ed. Bernard Dombart and Alphons Kalb (Turnhout: Brepols, 1955), 720–730.
Augustine, De civitate Dei XX.7 (CCSL 48:722):
“Mille anni duobus modis possunt intelligi… sive propter perfectionem temporis.”
Robert Markus, Saeculum: History and Society in the Theology of St Augustine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 201–214.
Gerald Bonner, “Augustine’s Understanding of the Millennium,” Studia Patristica 10 (1970): 290–296.

Andrew of Caesarea: Text and Hermeneutic

Andrew of Caesarea, Commentarius in Apocalypsin, PG 106:215–452.
Andrew of Caesarea, Commentarius in Apocalypsin on Rev 13:18, PG 106:332C–D.
Greek text follows PG 106; cf. Joseph Schmid, Studien zur griechischen Apokalypse, vol. 1 (Munich: Karl Zink, 1955), 82–86, for manuscript discussion and textual variants.
English translation adapted from Eugene B. Pentiuc, The Old Testament in Eastern Orthodox Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 212–213, with adjustments to reflect Andrew’s technical vocabulary.

Allegory, Time, and History

Agyriou, Les exégèses grecques, 89–112, on Andrew’s principle of interpretive sobriety (σωφροσύνη).
Paul Magdalino, “The History of the Future and Its Uses,” in The Making of Byzantine History, ed. Roderick Beaton and Charlotte Roueché (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009), 17–28.
John Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology: Historical Trends and Doctrinal Themes (New York: Fordham University Press, 1974), 209–222.

Revelation 20 Comparison

Augustine, De civitate Dei XX.9 (CCSL 48:728–730).
Andrew of Caesarea, Commentarius on Rev 20:1–6, PG 106:401–412.
Brian Daley, The Hope of the Early Church (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 188–194.

Byzantine Historical Consciousness (Expansion II)

Alexander Schmemann, Introduction to Liturgical Theology (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1966), 51–63.
Georges Florovsky, “The Problem of Christian History,” in Christianity and Culture (Belmont, MA: Nordland, 1974), 37–52.
Andrew Louth, Greek East and Latin West (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2007), 115–128.

Reception History: Andrew → Arethas (Expansion III)

Arethas of Caesarea, Commentarius in Apocalypsin, PG 106:493–776.
Joseph Schmid, Studien zur griechischen Apokalypse, vol. 2 (Munich: Karl Zink, 1956), 133–167.
Agyriou, Les exégèses grecques, 145–182.
Sebastian Brock, “The Transmission of the Apocalypse Commentary Tradition,” Byzantinische Zeitschrift 75 (1982): 1–15.

Proto-Historicism and Orthodox Eschatology

John Behr, The Mystery of Christ (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2006), 274–289.
Demetrios Constantelos, Byzantine Philanthropy and Social Welfare (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1968), 22–25 (for Byzantine teleology of history).
Christopher Veniamin, Orthodox Eschatology (Etna, CA: Center for Traditionalist Orthodox Studies, 2008), 93–104.
Arethas of Caesarea, Commentarius in Apocalypsin, in Patrologia Graeca 106:493–776, esp. prologue and scholia on Rev 1–3, where Arethas explicitly affirms Andrew’s restraint (σωφροσύνη) while maintaining that historical developments may clarify apocalyptic symbols retrospectively.
Maximus the Peloponnesian, Ἑρμηνεία εἰς τὴν Ἀποκάλυψιν, in Δημήτριος Γ. Τσάμης, ed., Μεταβυζαντινὴ Ἐσχατολογικὴ Γραμματεία (Athens: Ἀποστολικὴ Διακονία τῆς Ἐκκλησίας τῆς Ἑλλάδος, 1982), 233–312. See esp. comments on Rev 13 and Rev 20, where Maximus insists that prophetic meanings are discerned through “τὴν ἐκ τῶν πραγμάτων πείραν” rather than speculative calculation.
Asterios A. Agyriou, Les exégèses grecques de l’Apocalypse (Thessaloniki: Patriarchal Institute for Patristic Studies, 1985), 182–219; and Dimitrios Tselengidis, “Ἡ Ἀποκάλυψις στὴ Μεταβυζαντινὴ Ἑρμηνευτικὴ Παράδοση,” Θεολογία 62 (1991): 401–423. These sources demonstrate that post-Byzantine historicist tendencies are developments within tradition, not innovations.

Bibliography

Primary Sources

Andrew of Caesarea. Commentarius in Apocalypsin. Patrologia Graeca 106:215–452.

Arethas of Caesarea. Commentarius in Apocalypsin. Patrologia Graeca 106:493–776.

Augustine of Hippo. De civitate Dei. Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 48. Edited by Bernard Dombart and Alphons Kalb. Turnhout: Brepols, 1955.

Secondary Sources

Agyriou, Asterios A. Les exégèses grecques de l’Apocalypse. Thessaloniki: Patriarchal Institute for Patristic Studies, 1985.

Behr, John. The Mystery of Christ. Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2006.

Bonner, Gerald. “Augustine’s Understanding of the Millennium.” Studia Patristica 10 (1970): 290–296.

Brock, Sebastian. “The Transmission of the Apocalypse Commentary Tradition.” Byzantinische Zeitschrift 75 (1982): 1–15.

Daley, Brian. The Hope of the Early Church. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.

Florovsky, Georges. Christianity and Culture. Belmont, MA: Nordland, 1974.

Louth, Andrew. Greek East and Latin West. Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2007.

Magdalino, Paul. “The History of the Future and Its Uses.” In The Making of Byzantine History, edited by Roderick Beaton and Charlotte Roueché, 17–28. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009.

Markus, Robert. Saeculum: History and Society in the Theology of St Augustine. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970.

McGinn, Bernard. Visions of the End. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998.

Meyendorff, John. Byzantine Theology. New York: Fordham University Press, 1974.

Schmid, Joseph. Studien zur griechischen Apokalypse. 2 vols. Munich: Karl Zink, 1955–1956.

Schmemann, Alexander. Introduction to Liturgical Theology. Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1966.

Veniamin, Christopher. Orthodox Eschatology. Etna, CA: Center for Traditionalist Orthodox Studies, 2008.