Jonathan Kirsch - A History of the End of the World

Dionysius, like countless other Bible critics to come, was alert to the obvious and disturbing contrasts between the Fourth Gospel and Revelation, including the marked differences in the fundamental theological stance of each work: the Gospel embraces what theologians call a “present” eschatology, while Revelation knows only a “futuristic” one. 8According to certain passages in the Gospel of John, for example, Christians need not wait until the end-times to enjoy the blessing of eternal life; rather, they are saved in the here and now: “Whoever lives and believes in me shall never die,” says Jesus. “He who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life.” 9By contrast, Revelation insists that salvation must await the end of the world—the Tribulation, the Resurrection, and the Day of Judgment—at some unknown moment in the future when “the trumpet call is sounded by the seventh angel” and “the mystery of God is fulfilled.” 10

Perhaps even more provocative, at least to expert readers of ancient Greek, are the differences in language and literary style between the Gospel of John and the book of Revelation. When scholars compare the words and phrases of Revelation and the Fourth Gospel in order to calculate the number of Greek terms that are used in both texts but nowhere else in the New Testament, they find only eight words in common. 11An even more unsettling difference between the two texts is found in each author’s command of the common (or “Koine”) Greek in which the Christian scriptures are written. The Greek used in the Gospel is “correct and elegant,” while the Greek used in Revelation is “inaccurate and even barbarous,” according to Adela Yarbro Collins, a leading expert on the book of Revelation (and the spouse of John J. Collins, a fellow specialist in apocalyptic studies). 12

Nowhere in Revelation, in fact, does the author claim to be the apostle John, nor does he refer to any experiences that might place him among the apostles during the lifetime of Jesus. Indeed, he appears to be uninterested in—and perhaps even unaware of—the life story of Jesus as it is described in such evocative detail in the Gospels. At one point in Revelation, he makes a passing reference to the twelve apostles in the third person, which strongly suggests that he was not claiming to be one of them. And when he mentions the apostles at all, it is only in his celebrated vision of the New Jerusalem that will descend from heaven after the end of the world: “And the wall of the city had twelve foundations,” he writes, “and on them the twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb.” 13

Pious theologians and secular scholars alike have proposed some highly imaginative scenarios to explain how the same author might have written both Revelation and the Fourth Gospel. Perhaps, they suggest, the apostle John wrote Revelation when he was younger and wilder and only newly arrived in the Greek-speaking provinces of the Roman Empire—and he wrote the Gospel when he was older and wiser, and only after he had acquired a mastery of Greek over long years of practice. Or perhaps he dictated the text of each book to a different secretary or translator, one far more skilled than the other—and, if so, the Gospel is the work of the more accomplished secretary, while Revelation suffered at the hands of the incompetent one.

Yet another explanation is that the apostle died before finishing one or both of the books. According to one ancient tradition, John was martyred for his faith sometime before 70 C.E., which is earlier than the dates assigned to the Fourth Gospel or Revelation by contemporary scholars. Perhaps, then, one or both of the books were completed after John’s death by two separate redactors, each with a different understanding of his theology and an unequal mastery of Greek. One modern Bible scholar strikes an even more provocative stance when he imagines that the text of Revelation fell into the hands of a posthumous ghostwriter who was not merely inept but intent on ruining the work of St. John the Evangelist—“an arch-heretic who betrays a depth of stupidity all but incomprehensible, and only matched by his ignorance.” 14

Dionysius himself read the two books with pious but discerning eyes and was forced to conclude that Revelation was written by “another John”—that is, someone named John but not St. John the Evangelist. 15Modern scholars share the same conviction. Bart Ehrman, for example, points out that the apostle John is described in the Gospels as illiterate, and thus could not plausibly have written any of the biblical works that are attributed to him. 16And the question of authorship is still being debated by scholars and theologians: “No subject of Biblical studies has provoked such elaborate and prolonged discussion,” complains one scholar, “and no discussion has been so bewildering, disappointing and unprofitable.” 17

Indeed, readers of Revelation across the ages have never been able to resist asking the most daring and tantalizing question of all: If the author was not St. John the Evangelist, then who was the other John, the man who really wrote the book of Revelation?

One early and intriguing candidate for the authorship of Revelation, for example, is an otherwise obscure elder (or “presbyter”) of the early Christian church whose name was also John. He is first mentioned in the work of Papias, a bishop of the second century who is the earliest known commentator on the book of Revelation. The original writings of Papias are lost, but he is cited and quoted by other ancient sources who knew his work. According to a passage in the influential church history composed by Eusebius in the fourth century, for example, Papias was in the habit of seeking out elderly Christians of his acquaintance, the presbyter John among them, in an earnest effort to learn about the life of Jesus from eyewitnesses to the events that are described in the Gospels.

“I do not regard that which comes from books,” insists Papias in an intriguing aside, “as so valuable for myself as that which comes from a living and abiding voice.” 18

Significantly, Papias was the bishop of Hierapolis, which was located in the vicinity of Laodicea, one of the cities in Asia Minor to whose churches the author of Revelation addresses himself. Since Papias was already at work on his commentaries in the first decades of the second century, it is plausible that his sources might have included an aging eyewitness who had known the historical Jesus or, at least, a living apostle. So Papias’s passing reference to the presbyter John was enough to catch the eye of Eusebius, an early and authoritative chronicler of the Christian church. “Eusebius concludes that if John the son of Zebedee did not see the Revelation,” explains Adela Yarbro Collins, “then John the presbyter probably did.” 19

An entirely different John, and a much more famous one, has been proposed as the author of Revelation by Catholic scholar J. Massyngberde Ford, author of an idiosyncratic translation of Revelation that appears in the Anchor Bible series. Ford argues that the original author of Revelation is neither the apostle John nor the presbyter John but rather a third man—John the Baptist, the fiery Jewish prophet who is mentioned in the Gospels as well as the writings of the ancient Jewish historian Josephus. According the Gospels, John the Baptist was beheaded before the crucifixion, a fact that may explain why the author of Revelation seems to know so little about the biblical life story of Jesus of Nazareth.

Ford suggests that Revelation includes “additions” that were written into text by Jewish followers of John the Baptist “who may or may not have converted to Christianity.” But she also points out that, when all the apocalyptic passages in the New Testament are compared, “Revelation is the only one in which Jesus is not the central figure.” 20For that reason, she concludes that the core of the book of Revelation is “an essentially Jewish apocalypse” that was only later repurposed for a Christian readership and then, even later, admitted into the Christian canon. 21Far from being a book written by Jesus Christ, the core text of Revelation may not have been originally written by a Christian at all.