While the author of the Apocalypse cannot have been the author of the Fourth Gospel, his personality is partially disclosed by the internal evidence of the book, which shows that it was the work of a Jewish Christian prophet called John (i. 1, 9, etc.) who was in close touch with the Asiatic churches. It is a προφητεία, and as such it is ranked by the first Christian writer of the second century who definitely mentions it (cf. Justin’s Dial., 81, 82). It was intended to be read aloud in the worship! of those Christian congregations, primarily but not exclusively, to which its opening messages were addressed. In reality it isa sort of catholic epistle as it stands (cf. ii. 7, etc., xxii. 16, 21), an open letter or manifesto to the churches. The authority claimed by John is that of a prophet, not of an apostle. The seven Asiatic communities may have lain within his circuit or diocese, but the data of Apoc. ii.-iii. do not suggest any specifically concrete relations between the prophet and the churches. He does not seem to have founded any of them, nor does he promise to re-visit them. Upon the other hand, John claims no special re- lation to Jesus Christ, and there is no distinct evidence that he had been an eye-witness of Jesus the messiah upon earth. None of the visions implies any such personal intimacy; indeed that of i. 9 f. tells against it, for the apocalyptic categories which dominate the opening vision are not such as might be expected from one who had been among the Galilean disciples.2 It may be replied that an apocalypse is not a gospel, and that in an apocalypse it was the qualities of a προφήτης which would naturally be prominent. But this only raises the further psychological problem: how should a primitive disciple adopt such categories? The reference in xviii. 20 does not absolutely exclude the possibility of John having been an apostle, for ἀπόστολος is here employed in its wider sense, and in any case the addition of προφῆται shows that this προφήτης might have equally well referred objectively to the class or order to which he
1 Passages like i. 3, ii. 7, etc., xiii. 9, 18, xxii. 7, reflect this ecclesiastical use, while the explanatory comments in iv. 5 (ἄ εἰσιν . . . θεοῦ), v. 6 (ot εἶσιν .. . γῆν), v.8 (ἄ εἶσιν . . . ἁγίων), xviii. 24, xix. 8 (τὸ γὰρ . . . ἐστίν), xix. 10 (ἡ yap... προφητείας), xix. 13 (καὶ κέκληται . . . θεοῦ), xx. 14 (οὗτος . . . πυρός), sound often like prose glosses which in some cases may have been inserted by the author | himself or a general editor, but in others were probably due to the interpretative reading in the churches. A partial analogy is furnished by the influence of the players on the text of Shakespeare’s plays.
2 The seer never says, I saw the Lord Fesus, or, Behold, the Lord Fesus. Contrast Acts vii. 55, 56, etc. ‘‘ Jesus speaks through His Spirit under various forms or without any form, and is never beheld in the form He wore in Galilee ” (Abbott, p. 214). Cf. Prof. A. S. Peake, in Mansfield College Essays (1909), pp. 89-106.