is a prophet. He writes what he sees; and, since what he sees comes from God, his word is faithful and true (1:11, 1:19).
When John was writing, the prophets had a very special place in the Church. He was writing, as we shall see, in about AD 90. By that time, the Church had two kinds of ministry. There was the local ministry; those engaged in it were settled permanently in one congregation as the elders, the deacons and the teachers. There was also the travelling ministry of those whose sphere of work was not confined to any one congregation. In it were the apostles, whose authority ran throughout the whole Church; and there were the prophets, who were wandering preachers. The prophets were greatly respected; the Didache says (11:7) that to question the words of a true prophet was to sin against the Holy Spirit. The accepted order of service for the celebration of the Eucharist is laid down in the Didache, but at the end comes the sentence: ‘But allow the prophets to hold the Eucharist as they will’ (10:7). The prophets were regarded as uniquely coming from God; and John was a prophet.
(5) It is unlikely that he was an apostle. Otherwise, he would hardly have put such emphasis on the fact that he was a prophet. Further, he speaks of the apostles as if he was looking back on them as the great foundations of the Church. He speaks of the twelve foundations of the wall of the holy city, and then says: ‘and on them were the twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb’ (21:14). He would scarcely have spoken of the apostles like that if he himself had been one of them.
This conclusion is made even more likely by the title of the book. In the Authorized and Revised Versions, it is called the Revelation of St John the Divine. In the Revised Standard Version and in James Moffatt’s and in J. B. Phillips’ translations, the Divine is omitted, because it is absent from the majority of the oldest Greek manuscripts; but it does go a long way back. The Greek is theologos, and the word is used here in the sense in which scholars speak of ‘the Puritan divines’. It means not John the saintly but John the theologian; and the very addition of that title seems to distinguish this John from the John who was the apostle.
As long ago as AD 250, Dionysius, the great scholar who was head of the Christian school at Alexandria, saw that it was well nigh impossible that the same man could have written both Revelation and the Fourth Gospel, if for no other reason than that the Greek is so different. The Greek of the Fourth Gospel is simple but correct; the Greek of Revelation is rugged and vivid, but notoriously incorrect. Further, the writer of the Fourth Gospel studiously avoids any mention of his own name; the John of Revelation repeatedly mentions his. Still further, the ideas of the two books are different. The great ideas of the Fourth Gospel – light, life, truth and grace – do not dominate Revelation. At the same time, there are enough resemblances in thought and language to make it clear that both books come from the same centre and from the same world of thought.
The Date of Revelation
We have two sources which enable us to fix the date.
(1) There is the account which tradition gives to us. The consistent tradition is that John was banished to Patmos in the time of the Roman emperor Domitian, and that he saw his visions there; at the death of Domitian, John was liberated and came back to Ephesus, and there set down the visions he had seen. Victorinus, who wrote towards the end of the third century AD, says in his commentary on Revelation: ‘John, when he saw these things, was in the island of Patmos, condemned to the mines by Domitian the emperor. There, therefore, he saw the revelation . . . When he was afterwards set free from the mines, he handed down this revelation which he had received from God.’ The biblical scholar Jerome, who wrote at the end of the fourth century and the beginning of the fifth, is even more detailed: ‘In the fourteenth year after the persecution of Nero, John was banished to the island of Patmos, and there wrote the Revelation . . . Upon the death of Domitian, and upon the repeal of his acts by the senate, because of their excessive cruelty, he returned to Ephesus, when Nerva was emperor.’ The early Church historian Eusebius says: ‘The apostle and evangelist John related these things to the churches, when he had returned from exile in the island after the death of Domitian.’ Tradition makes it certain that John saw his visions in exile in Patmos; the only thing that is doubtful – and it is not important – is whether he wrote them down during the time of his banishment or when he returned to Ephesus. On this evidence, we will not be wrong if we date Revelation about AD 95.
(2) The second line of evidence is the material in the book. There is a completely new attitude to Rome and to the Roman Empire.
In Acts, the tribunal of the Roman magistrate was often the safest refuge of the Christian missionaries against the hatred of the Jews and the fury of the mob. Paul was proud that he was a Roman citizen, and he repeatedly claimed the rights to which every Roman citizen was entitled. In Philippi, he put the local magistrates in their place by revealing his citizenship (Acts 16:36–40). In Corinth, Gallio dismissed the complaints against Paul with impartial Roman justice (Acts 18:1–17). In Ephesus, the Roman authorities protected him from the rioting mob (Acts 19:23–41). In Jerusalem, the Roman tribune rescued him from what might have become a lynching (Acts 21:30–40). When the Roman tribune in Jerusalem heard that there was to be an attempt on Paul’s life on the way to Caesarea, he took every possible step to ensure Paul’s safety (Acts 23:12–31). When Paul despaired of justice in Palestine, he exercised his right as a citizen and appealed direct to Caesar (Acts 25:10–11). When he wrote to the Romans, he urged upon them obedience to the powers that be, because they were ordained by God and were a terror only to the evil and not to the good (Romans 13:1–7). Peter’s advice is exactly the same. Governors and kings are to be obeyed, for their task is given to them by God. It is a Christian’s duty to fear God and honour the emperor (1 Peter 2:12–17). In writing to the Thessalonians, it is likely that Paul points to the power of Rome as the one thing which is controlling the threatening chaos of the world (2 Thessalonians 2:7).
In Revelation, there is nothing but blazing hatred for Rome. Rome is a Babylon, the mother of prostitutes, drunk with the blood of the saints and the martyrs (Revelation 17:5–6). John hopes for nothing but Rome’s total destruction.
The explanation of this change in attitude lies in the wide development of Caesar-worship, which, with its accompanying persecution, is the background of Revelation.
By the time of Revelation, Caesar-worship was the one religion which covered the whole Roman Empire; and it was because of their refusal to conform to its demands that Christians were persecuted and killed. Its essence was that the reigning Roman emperor, who was seen to embody the spirit of Rome, was divine. Once a year, everyone in the Empire had to appear before the magistrates to burn a pinch of incense to the godhead of Caesar and to say: ‘Caesar is Lord.’ After they had done that, people were able to go away and worship any god or goddess they liked, as long as that worship did not infringe decency and good order; but they had to go through this ceremony in which they acknowledged the emperor’s divinity.
The reason was very simple. Rome had a vast and diverse empire, stretching from one end of the known world to the other. It had in it many languages, races and traditions. The problem was how to weld this varied mass into a unity. There was no unifying force such as a common religion, and none of the national religions could conceivably have become universal. Caesar-worship could. It was the one common act and belief which turned the Empire into a unity. To refuse to burn the pinch of incense and to say: ‘Caesar is Lord’ was not an act against religion; it was an act of political disloyalty. That is why the Romans dealt with the utmost severity with anyone who would not say: ‘Caesar is Lord.’ And Christians could never give the title Lord to anyone other than Jesus Christ. This was the centre of their creed.
We must see how this Caesar-worship developed and how it was at its peak when Revelation was written.
One basic fact must be noted. Caesar-worship was not imposed on the people from above. It arose from the people; it might even be said that it arose in spite of efforts by the early emperors to stop it, or at least to curb it.
