Who Wrote Revelation and Why?

Four times, the book of Revelation identifies its author as “John” (1:1, 4, 9; 22:8). This was an extremely popular name at the time. In fact,John was fifth most common among names for Jewish men in Palestine in this period.

The fact that John does not further identify himself (e.g., as John Mark, John son of Zebedee, or John of Jerusalem) shows that he must have been well known to his audience. He only says that he is “your brother and partner in the tribulation and the kingdom and the patient endurance that are in Jesus” (1:9a, ESV).

The only biographical detail he adds is that, when he saw the vision, he “was on the island called Patmos on account of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus” (1:9b).

Patmos is a Greek island in the Aegean Sea, only thirteen square miles in size. John says he was on the island because of “the testimony of Jesus,” which could mean that he was there on an evangelizing mission, but the context of persecution and tribulation has convinced scholars that John was on Patmos as a punishment for his Christian preaching.

This has led some to claim that Patmos was a penal colony, but evidence does not support that. It is more likely that John had been banished or exiled to Patmos from a major city. Banishment was a common way of dealing with troublesome upper-class individuals as an alternative to execution or forced labor. A person in exile would be allowed to live in a remote location—away from where he had been causing trouble. This seems to have been why John was on Patmos.

Is John of Patmos identical to any of the other known Johns of the early Christian world? Historically, the most popular view is that it was John, son of Zebedee, one of the twelve apostles. This view can be traced to as early as A.D. 155, when it was endorsed in the writings of St. Justin Martyr.

However, there was a dispute about this among the early Church Fathers. Some say that they do not know who wrote Revelation and doubt its apostolic authorship. Others suggest that it was written by a figure known as John the Elder or John the Presbyter. According to early sources, John the Elder was not one of the Twelve but he was an eyewitness of the ministry of Christ, and in later years he—like John son of Zebedee—lived in Ephesus, resulting in two famous Johns having their tombs there.

This may be supported by the fact that John the apostle was an uneducated, Galilean fisherman from the lower class (Acts 4:13) and not the kind of person who would receive the mild punishment of exile. It has been argued that John the Elder was a member of the Jerusalem aristocracy, and the option of exile was often applied to members of the upper class in place of the death penalty, which would have been used on members of the lower class who had committed the same crime.

Whoever wrote the book, the reason why it was written is made clear in its opening verse, which describes it as “The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show to his servants what must soon take place” (1:1). The Greek term for revelation—apokalupsis—is the origin of our word apocalypse. In the first century, this meant “a revealing,” so the book reveals information given by Jesus Christ about his bride, the Church. In fact, the term apokalupsis literally means “unveiling,” and at the time John was writing, was commonly to describe a particular moment of their week-long wedding festivities: “the lifting of the veil of a virgin bride, which took place immediately before the marriage was consummated.”

This information concerns “what must soon take place” from John’s first-century perspective. He was writing to warn his readers of a series of events in the Roman world that would involve the persecution of Christians and God’s judgment on the pagan world order that oppressed them, and to strengthen them in hope through the vision of the victorious Church as “bride of the Lamb.”

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