Revelations

Chapter 2

Day 5

        Author According to early Christian traditions, the Gospel of John, the three Epistles of John, and the Revelation were all written by the apostle John. The Revelation is the only one of these books that claims to be written by someone named John. Though the author does not claim to be the apostle John, it seems unlikely that any other first-century Christian leader was associated closely enough with the churches of Asia Minor to have referred to himself simply as John. There are certainly some differences in style and language between the fourth Gospel and the Revelation, but, regardless of the problems related to the authorship of the fourth Gospel, it is not implausible to assume that the John of the Revelation was in fact John the apostle, son of Zebedee.

Setting The author’s situation was one of suffering. He was a “fellow partaker in the tribulation” which is “in Jesus,” who, because of his testimony to Jesus, was exiled to the island of Patmos (1:9 ). The situation of the recipients seemed not yet so dire. To be sure, a faithful Christian in Pergamum had suffered death (2:13), and the church in Smyrna was warned of a time of impending persecution (2:10); but the persecutions described in the Revelation were still largely anticipated at the time of John’s writing.

Date Scholars have traditionally suggested two dates for the writing of the Revelation based upon the repeated references to persecution (1:9; 2:2-3, 10, 13; 3:9-10; 6:10-11; 7:14-17; 11:7; 12:13-13:17; 14:12-20; 19:2; 21:4). From about A.D. 150, Christian authors usually referred to Domitian’s reign (A.D. 81-96) as the time of John’s writing, but there is no historical consensus supporting a persecution of Christians under Domitian while hard evidence does exist for a persecution under Nero (A.D. 54-68). In this century, most New Testament scholars have opted for the later date under Domitian (about A.D. 95), though there has been a resurgence of opinion arguing for a setting just following the reign of Nero (about A.D. 68). Whichever date is chosen, however, the setting must be closely related to a time of persecution for the author and an anticipated expansion of persecution for the original audience.

Type of Literature The Revelation has traditionally been called an apocalypse. Although the genre itself was not literally acknowledged in the first century, what we now call “apocalyptic literature” certainly existed. In any case, John called his work a “prophecy” (1:3; 22:10, 19), but also gave it some features of an epistle (1:4-7; 22:21).