[OrthodoxPresbyterian]

The church at Laodicea were to read Paul's letter to the Colossians, Col 4:16, they had not met Paul personally, Col 2:1. The city had a profitable business from the production of wool cloth and when it was destroyed by an earthquake in AD 60 it was able to rebuild itself without outside help (Walvoord). It had a widely known medical school and produced an eye-salve (Mounce). It got its water from hot springs almost 6 miles away and by the time it got to Laodicea it would have been luke warm. It was also a centre for banking. The church lived within this affluent society and the attitudes of its citizens rubbed off onto the church. ~~ As I thought about it OP, it occurred to me that people do not desert a region because of an earthquake any more than they desert one because of a hurricane or a tornado. If living in a flood plain, they might desert that plain after a flood. After a volcano there also might be a desertion of a ruined location. The Walvoord cite above suggests that life was ongoing and rebuilding was taking place. Therefore, you require a citation that says the REGION was deserted of people, not a citation of a devastating earthquake.

On the contrary -- the Walvoord citation would best describe the condition of Laodicea in AD 65 -- a wealthy, self-sufficient and self-satisfied City which enjoyed such riches that they were able to rebuild their city without Roman assistance after the First Great Laodicean Earthquake of AD 65. While Walvoord believes that the Revelation was written in AD 95, his description is simply inapplicable to the Laodicea of that day -- the city itself had been levelled in the Second Great Laodicean Earthquake of AD 66, and would not be rebuilt until the time of Marcus Aurelius, at least six decades or so after the destruction of the Second Great Earthquake.

The textual evidence of Revelation itself confirms the AD 65 date, wherein John describes Laodicea thusly:

Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked: (Revelation 3:17)

This passage aptly describes the Laodicea of AD 65, so wealthy and self-satisfied that they had rebuilt their city without Roman financial aid only five years before. It is completely inapplicable to the Laodicea of AD 95, which was laid utterly to waste in the Second Great Earthquake of AD 66 and which would not be rebuilt until the days of Marcus Aurelius, long after John's death. In fact, it's completely inapplicable even to a Laodicean "region" whose principal city had been destroyed in AD 95 and never rebuilt until deep into the next century; as the wealth of Laodicea was always attributed by all ancient writers particularly to the City of Laodicea itself, not to the surviving stragglers who might have remained in the general "region" after the devastation of AD 66.

The fact is, the only reason which one would apply John's description of Laodicea as "rich, and increased with goods" to the flattened ruin of AD 95 is a desire to preserve a Domitianic date for Revelation which is, after all, derived only from an incorrectly translated quotation from a writer (Irenaeus) whose dating of events is already known to be at least 25-30 years suspect, based on his decades-mistaken record of the Death and Resurrection of Christ in the same century as the Revelation itself!!

If not motivated by a desire to maintain the (incorrectly-translated and highly-suspect) Domitianic date, no-one would think to apply John's description of rich self-satisfaction to the flattened ruin of Laodicea in AD 95 -- the description itself only makes sense when applied to the wealthy and self-satisfied city of AD 65.

It is still obvious to me that the depths of apostasy seen in Pergamos and Thyatire could not have come about in a minuscule 3 years after Paul.

It only took the Corinthians some 3 to 5 years from Paul's apostolate there to descend into sexual immorality worse even than the pagans; so we really have no good reason to suppose that the similar apostasy could not have occurred in other Churches as well.

And your sense of Irenaeus timeline is not necessarily the issue either: the specific name Domitian IS used. If I confuse the time of William Henry Harrison's presidency, but use his name as the instigator of an event, my intent is clear in the use of the name. At a minimum, an observer after many years who does not know my mind should wonder if I did not mean the name that I did use.

At the very least, Irenaeus' flubbing the timeline of the most important event of the First Century (the Life, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ) by 25 to 30 years makes his dating of any event in that century highly suspect by a margin of two or three decades... enough to be dismissed as completely-unreliable evidence, at any rate.

Besides which, as noted before, if the Irenaeus quotation is correctly translated such that the Verb agrees with the Subject, then Irenaeus is referring to the last days of John himself (in AD 95-96), NOT the Revelation (which the Syriac manuscript attests, was received by John during the reign of Nero).

[Hermann the Cherusker]

This passage aptly describes the Laodicea of AD 65, so wealthy and self-satisfied that they had rebuilt their city without Roman financial aid only five years before. It is completely inapplicable to the Laodicea of AD 95, which was laid utterly to waste in the Second Great Earthquake of AD 66 and which would not be rebuilt until the days of Marcus Aurelius, long after John's death. In fact, it's completely inapplicable even to a Laodicean "region" whose principal city had been destroyed in AD 95 and never rebuilt until deep into the next century; as the wealth of Laodicea was always attributed by all ancient writers particularly to the City of Laodicea itself, not to the surviving stragglers who might have remained in the general "region" after the devastation of AD 66.

Again, there are two Roman Laodicea's. One in Asia, and one in Galatia. The one in Asia is near Colossae. The one in Galatia is near Iconium and Lystra. After the one in Asia was destroyed by an earthquake, do you have any evidence that it was uninhabited? What evidence is there for us to determine which city is referred to?