John

Verse 4 of chapter 1 leads us to the discussion on the authorship of the book of revelation.  The author in 1:1 and 1:4 names himself as John.  This to many would be the obvious choice then for the name of the books author.  Well yes, but it is important to note that in apocalyptic literature the common practice was to write in the name of an important prophetic figure of the past to give the writing authority.  This practice was deemed necessary by the writers of the other apocalyptic books because the time when the Holy Spirit inspired the prophets was only a memory and not a present reality.

We can probably dismiss this practice having taken place in revelation due to two reasons. One, is that for John and his churches the Holy Spirit was not a memory but an active force within the life of Christians (Rev 1:10, 2:7, 22:17) and so prophets and prophesy was alive again. Second, John is obviously a well respected member of the 7 churches and writing under a pseudonym would lessen the authority rather than heighten it.

So we can say with some certainty that the author of revelation was a man called John, but is this the same John that we read of elsewhere.  In the NT there is mention of a number of Johns and the early church fathers mentioned sever others;

John the Baptist - Matthew 3:1
John son of Zeebedee and apostle- Matthew 4:21
John Mark - Acts 12:12
John the Elder - author of the epistles 1,2 and 3 John
John the beloved disciple and author of the fourth gospel - if different from John son of Zeebedee

Each of these four have been put forward as revelation's writer but the one most ordinary people will claim as the author is John son of Zeebedee, the apostle of Jesus.  As this is the most popular we will deal with this one in full and mention the others where needed.

The prologue of revelation is the real title for this book but on the earliest manuscripts we have the added title of the Apocalypse of John.  Later manuscripts have the title Apocalypse of John the Evangelist and later still John the Theologian.  This process of the addition of titles to the book has a fairly reasonable answer to it.  As the NT books were brought together into the cannon we have today one of the major factors that allowed a book in was that it had apostolic credentials, so if it was written by an apostle it had a greater chance of getting in.  This then explains why revelation finds itself with an apostolic title as time goes on.

Some of the early church farther's also pointed towards this John being the author of revelation (Justin Martyr) but for those who stumped for John the apostle others went for someone else (Eusebius quoting Papias).  A closer look at revelation itself actually points away from John son of Zeebedee and apostle from being the writer.  When ever the author of revelation mentions his name he never adds mention of his apostleship or of him ever having met Jesus in the flesh, both of which would add wait to his credentials and authority of the vision.

So if John son of Zeebedee isn't the writer which other John is.  Well it probably isn't John the baptist as he lost his head fairly early on in the gospels so that rules him out.  The elusive John Mark never travels with Paul and Barnabas to Asia and there is no mention of him within the church farther's (and he was known as Mark not John).  That leaves us with the writer/s of the gospel and the epistle, this leads us back to Eusebius who again quoting an early church farther seems to give us the answer to our question (Eusebius quoting Dionysius).

Dionysius the bishop of Alexandria carried out an analysis of the texts of the gospel, the epistles and revelation and came to the conclusion that the latter's author was not the same as the formers.  More recent research has found the same thing.  Where as the gospel and epistles are written in fairly fluent Greek, revelation is much more forced and clumsy as if a non-fluent Greek speaker was writing it.  Words used by the gospel writer are not used by the writer of revelation and the differences go on and on.

So where does this leave us.  Well back at the beginning of this blog, the author of revelation is John a prophet in exile from the churches in Asia minor.  Probably a Palestinian Jew who had converted to Christianity (hence the poor Greek but exceptional OT imagery) other than that we know nothing.

apokalupsis iēsou christou

These three words start the book of revelation, translated literally it reads 'revelation Jesus Christ' but is usually translated into English as either 'The revelation of Jesus Christ' (NIV, ESV, NASB, ISV, KJB) or 'A revelation of Jesus Christ' (YLT).  The rest of the first verse tells us that this revelation of Jesus was given to him by God to pass on to his servants and that what is said will take place soon.

To begin with I want to mention something I recently stumbled upon whilst listening to something on the book of revelation and reading the verses again. It seems to be the way these things happen, you read a verse hundreds of times and never see something, then suddenly it hits you and you can't believe you missed it before.  The revelation of Jesus Christ, say it a few times out loud, sounds to me like John is telling us what this vision is about.  A revelation of Jesus Christ, who he is, what he has done, what he is doing and what he will do.  Maybe John, having seen this vision and committing it to text decided to put in its introduction the meaning of what had been revealed to him.  Not a revelation of the end times or a vision of the Armageddon but an unveiling of Jesus Christ.

On a more critical note a closer look at the first word of the book begins to show us some important things. Apokalupsis is only used this once in the entire book of revelation and is one of 18 uses of the word in the NT.  It comes from the word apokalupto which means to reveal, lay bare or uncover.  Keller points out that this word has links to the stripping off of clothes and a look through the LXX shows that the word is used either for the revealing or uncovering of God's truth (1 Sam 2:27, Am 3:7) or the removing of clothes to reveal the naked body or as a euphemism for sexual intercourse (Lv 18:6, Ez 16:36).

The image that comes to my mind is that of the crucifixion accounts where Jesus is stripped of his clothes and hangs dying on the cross.  This though is not defeat but victory, what is happening in this moment is not the end but something much greater. As the physical signs of the temple curtain splitting, the earth shaking and the sky darkening took place something unseen was taking place. Something no one saw but was as real as the gruesome death taking place on that hill.  Maybe that which was unseen, hidden from those who had joined this developing faith needed to hear what had happened.  Maybe that is what revelation is about, the unveiling of what Jesus Christ has accomplished, the revealing of all that has happened so those that believe can stand firm in their faith.