Orthodox Apologetics

Hippolytus defended millenarianism in his Commentary on Daniel and De Christo et Antichristo. Opposition to the doctrine, however, was gathering force, the leader of the reaction at Rome being the priest Caius. In face of this Hippolytus departed from Irenaeus's exegesis of the key-passage, Rev. 20, 2-5. The thousand years there mentioned, he now explained, are not to be taken as referring literally to the duration of the kingdom, but are a symbolical number which should be interpreted as pointing to its splendor.