belonged. The unique allusion in xxi. 14 to the twelve apostles of the Lamb, however, has an objective and retrospective tinge, which, though it does not absolutely rule out apostolic authorship, points in that direction. It is not a subtle anti-Pauline touch, for even Paul did not number himself among the twelve (1 Cor. xv. 5), but when it is collated with such discrepancies as that between xi. 1-2 and Mk. xiii. 2 (cf. also iii, 21 with Mk. x. 37-40) or that between Ac. i. 6-8 and the apocalyptic calculations of the end (see further, on iii. 21, vii. 1-3, 14, ix. 15) the result is a cumulative argument in favour of some primitive Christian who sat looser to the synoptic tradition than a disciple such as the son of Zebedee would have done. During last century the apostolic authorship of the book, in conjunction with the Neronic date, was urged by Baur (cf. Church Hist. of First Three Centuries, 1. 84 f., 153 f.) and his school, on the double ground that it represented a type of narrow Jewish Christi- anity in the apostolic church, and that it contained an overt polemic against the apostle Paul. Neither of these arguments is seaworthy at the present day, although the anti-Pauline reference becomes a much more serious question, when the Nero or Galba date is chosen, than some recent defenders of the latter hypothesis appear to realise. The Apocalypse has the Pauline teaching behind it ‘cf. iii, 14, xxii. 17), but it neither reproduces any of the Pauline idiosyncrasies nor opposes Paul personally. It goes back to the popular Jewish Christianity of the primitive churches, whose “theology” consisted primarily in a belief that Jesus, the true messiah, had secured the forgiveness of sins for his people and would return presently to establish the divine βασιλεία. The writer ignores any problem of the law or of the resurrection of the body. Echoes of the synoptic tradition are audible enough, particularly of its Lucan form, and one feature of the teaching of Jesus is preserved carefully, viz., the belief in the catastrophic advent of the βασιλεία ; but no evidence is available to prove a literary filiation between it and any of the synoptic gospels.’
1 So far as the local colour is not derived from O.T. traditions, it may be ascribed, as, e.g., by Mr. Theodore Bent (Nineteenth Century, 1838, 813-881, cf. also His- torical New Testament , p. 688) to a personal acquaintance with Palestine and Asia Minor (see on iv. 2, vi. 12 f., viii. 8 Ε., ix. 16, 18, xxii. 2). Thus, e.g., the references to the appearance or the disappearance (cf. the case of Chrysé near Lemnos, told by Pausanias, viii. 33-4) of islands reflect the insular situation of Patmos, from which several of the A2gean islands were at least visible (Tozer: Islands of the Aegean, pp. 178-95), as well as the volcano of Santorin. The crater of some Medi- terranean volcano may have lent special point to the lake of fire and brimstone. But John’s imagination is stronger than his susceptibility to his environment, though