Revelation.
Revelation is the last book of the Bible, and the one least understood. Christians themselves are not agreed as to its meaning. Some believe it to be a series of prophecies which have had their fulfilment in the struggles between Christianity and Paganism; others believe that its prophecies are yet to be fulfilled; still others pronounce it a symbolical poem, representing the conflict between truth and error, while not a few consider it the recorded fancies of a diseased imagination.
The book purports to be from “John to the seven churches of Asia” (i, 4). This John is declared to be the Apostle John and its authority is based upon this claim. Smith’s “Bible Dictionary” says: “The question as to the canonical authority of the Revelation resolves itself into a question of authorship. Was St. John the Apostle and Evangelist the writer of the Revelation?” If John the Apostle and the author of the Fourth Gospel were one, as assumed by the “Bible Dictionary,” then the question of its authenticity and canonical authority must be abandoned, for the author of the Fourth Gospel did not write it. There is nothing in common between them. The German theologian, Lucke, says: “If all critical experience and rules in such literary questions do not deceive, it is certain that the Evangelist and Apocalyptist are two different persons.” De Wette says: “The Apostle John, if he be the author of the Fourth Gospel and of the Johannine epistles, did not write the Apocalypse.” Regarding this conclusion, Ewald says: “All men capable of forming a judgment are of the same opinion.” Among the eminent critics and commentators who take this position are Luther, Erasmus, Michaelis, Schleiermacher, Credner, Zeller, Evanson, Baur, Renan, and Davidson.
The Apostle John wrote neither the Fourth Gospel, the so-called Epistles of John, nor Revelation. That he did not write Revelation is shown by the following:
1. The author does not claim to be an apostle.
2. He refers to the Twelve Apostles (xxi, 14) in a way that forbids the supposition that he was one of them.
3. The Apostle John is declared to have been illiterate and incapable of writing a book.
4. It is addressed to the seven churches of Asia, and yet the seven churches of Asia, to which it is addressed, rejected it.
The Alogi maintained that it was a forgery which came from Corinth. Dionysius, Bishop of Alexandria, writing in the third century, says: “Divers of our predecessors have wholly refused and rejected this book, and by discussing the several parts thereof have found it obscure and void of reason and the title forged.”
Concerning its rejection by modern churchmen, the Edinburgh Review (No. 131) says: “The most learned and intelligent of Protestant divines here almost all doubted or denied the canonicity of the book of Revelation. Calvin and Beza pronounced the book unintelligible, and prohibited the pastors of Geneva from all attempts at interpretation.” Dr. South described it as “a book that either found a man mad or left him so.”
Luther, in the Preface to his New Testament (Ed. of 1522) writes: “In the Revelation of John much is wanting to let me deem it either prophetic or apostolical.”
CHAPTER XI.
PAULINE EPISTLES.
Fourteen books—Romans, First and Second Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, First and Second Thessalonians, First and Second Timothy, Titus, Philemon, and Hebrews—are ascribed, some correctly, some doubtfully, and others falsely, to Paul. They were all written, it is claimed, between 52 and 65 A.D.