old Greek was still the language of every-day life, they were too conscious of the contrasts of style which separate it from the Fourth gospel to accept the view that a single author wrote both. Having to accept John the apostle as author of one or the other, they decided in favour of the gospel. In the West, on the other hand, where both documents circulated only in a Latin dress, men were unconscious of these contrasts of style, and so found no diffi- culty in accepting both as writings of the apostle John.” Hence, taking the Apocalypse by itself on the one hand and the tradition of John the presbyter on the other, we find both converging on the conclusion that, even if John the apostle did survive till the end of the first century in Asia Minor, it was not he but his namesake who wrote the Johannine Apocalypse. καὶ ot πρεσβύτεροι ὑμῶν ἐνυπνίοις ἐνυπνιασθήσονται (Acts ii. 17), under the influence of the prophetic spirit. In this case, the term πρεσβύτερος (as in 2 John ver. 3, and 3 John ver. 1) is the Christian term of honour and authority (cf. Deissmann, 154 f., 233 f.), not the Jewish term! for a member of the Sanhedrin (πρεσβύτης). Occasionally, as in the case of John, the presbyter must have had prophetic gifts; the fragments preserved by Irenzeus from the tradition of the Asiatic presbyters point un- mistakably to prophetic and even chiliastic tendencies, though they are more sensuous than in the corresponding features in the Apo- calypse. John was also a μαθητὴς τοῦ κυρίου in the wider sense of the term. He was one of the most important authorities who were in touch with apostolic tradition, and it is easier to credit him with the rabbinic erudition and apocalyptic lore of the Apocalypse than one who was ἀγράμματος καὶ ἰδιώτης (Acts iv. 13).
A further possibility (recognised by Erasmus) lies in the direction of pseudonymity. Apocalypses were almost invariably pseudony- mous, and it is held by some (¢.g., S. Davidson, Weizsacker, Wernle, Forbes, and Bacon in Expositor, 1907, 233 f.), that the presumption is in favour of John’s Apocalypse also belonging to the pseudepi- grapha. This would be rendered more probable, were it taken to include fragments or traditions which were really due to John Mark (Spitta, Volter), John the son of Zebedee (Erbes, Bruston), or John the presbyter (J. Weiss, so differently Bousset and Schmiedel). But it does not follow that an early Christian apocalypse must neces- sarily be pseudonymous. Hermas is not. Besides, one raison d étre for pseudonymity is absent, vzz., the consciousness that the prophetic
1So Selwyn (127 f.), holding that the author of the Apocalypse retained his
earlier Jewish title. Butit is prosaic to see that semi-circular court reflected in iv. 2 f., or to find evidence of special legal knowledge in ν. 1 and xii. ro,