I have been doing some reading recently on the Epistula Apostolorum (which has a probable Asia Minor provenance) and its connections with second-century Phyrgian millinarianism and the Montanist prophetic movement at the end of the century. To that one may add Revelation (again, situated in Asia Minor), the Ascension of Isaiah, and the chiliasm of Papias of Hierapolis (which depends in part on 2 Baruch) and Irenaeus, who was influenced by Polycarp and Papias. Some interesting papers in this field including David Frankfurter's "The Legacy of Jewish Apocalypses in Early Christianity: Regional Trajectories" (CRINT, 1996) and Charles Hill's "The Epistula Aposolorum: An Asian Tract from the Time of Polycarp" (JECS, 1999).
Frankfurter cites Sherman Johnson's paper on "Asia Minor and Early Christianity" (in Neusner's 1972 festscrift for Morton Smith) which notes that Pliny's correspondence with Trajan indicates a "latent hostility" to Roman power in the region which may give rise of popular movements. This hostility is of course very overt in Revelation, which attacks some localized symbols of Rome's power such as the Asian temples to the goddess Roma (= cariacatured as a drunken harlot).
Hill's article views the Epistula Apostolorum as probably written in the 140s at a time, according to Aelius Aristides:
when the “many frequent earthquakes” tormented the region, when “Mytilene . . . was nearly all leveled and . . . in many other cities there were many shocks, and some villages were wholly destroyed,” when “the Ephesians and the Smyrnaeans ran to one another in great agitation. The series of earthquakes and terrors was extraordinary.”
Hill relates the 120 years to this historical setting in the following way:
We recall here the undated inscriptions mentioned above which speak of famine and pestilence. This date also has the advantage of accommodating a reasonable interpretation of the 120 years of Ep. Apost. 17. Commencing the 120 years from the time of Jesus’ ascension would yield a date of around 150 for the expected parousia. For an author writing not long after a quake in 142–43, this date would be quite plausible, only slightly less so just after the quake(s) of the later 140s (p. 49).
