At the end of the Third Punic War...
Illustration
At the end of the Third Punic War, with Carthage defeated, Rome razed the city, such that no stone was said to be left on top of another and the earth salted. About a century later Rome rebuilt the city as its own. To read the destruction in Revelation, one might think of the creation of a new heaven and a new earth in these terms, a wiping clean and starting fresh. Yet this is not the intent of the New Jerusalem. While it comes through trial and tribulation, the new earth is very much the same earth -- only renewed, made to be the earth of creation in a new and fuller way. The image of the new earth, then, is not that of Carthage razed and rebuilt, which is built by humans and destructible. It is the passing of the earth through winter into the newness of spring.
