Who wrote the book of Revelation

originally posted by: ChesterJohn

originally posted by: Utnapisjtim
a reply to: ChesterJohn

Huh?

originally posted by: Utnapisjtim
a reply to: ChesterJohn

So take your 2tim and stuff it somewhere where it can never be read

Telling someone to "Stuff It" is definitely not Jesus Like wouldn't you agree?

Nah, he would call you a fool instead and a brood of vipers and whipped you off the premises.

a reply to: Utnapisjtim

Haha. It's common knowledge for heavens' sakes. A fool can ask more than 10 wise men can answer. Do your primaries yourself, I am not your teacher. I'd rather ask you where on Earth you got the idea that Luke was a disciple of Jesus? Saulus says Luke was a physician, and Luke was a slave of Saulus together with Peter, John and the others. Saulus was never martyred, he either fled to Spain as soon as he had handed over his Christian slaves to Rome, or he was killed by Christians hiding in the catacombs of Rome.

For something that is apparently common knowledge, there relatively few who hold to these views.
I take it you believe you have higher wisdom hidden from the many, a gnosticism for the enlightened only?
Anybody who chooses to follow Jesus and His narrow path to the kingdom of heaven is a disciple, be that Luke, Theophilus myself or any other.
You declare Luke, Peter and John as slaves of Saulus without offering a shred of evidence.
Feel free to share your common knowledge with us less enlightened ones.

originally posted by: ChesterJohn
a reply to: [post22950073]Elcabong[/post]

They are Greekified/Hebrewnized English words. In the English Bibles that contain them it is only Names they Greekify/Hebrewnize but none of the rest of the Bible are treated with such disrespect. It is doctrine of men to draw followers after themselves rather than God in the flesh, Jesus Christ. Otherwise the word Jailor in Acts 16:23 would read Yailor, and every instance of the word Jews would read Yews, and so forth with every word beginning with "J".

The truth be known in English YHWH is JHVH/JEHOVAH, Yeshua is is Jesus in English, and Yehohanan is John in English. The names in English are pure words of God, tried seven times, are the English TRANSLITERATIONS of the original Greek copies.

If these Greekified/Hebrewnized English words were true to transliteration of the whole name and words into.

Somones name is Juan, you call them Juan.. Out of respect if nothing more. You dont convert it to greek, then convert that to german, then convert that to English, then top it off with your own dialect, completing the transformation of the word into a curse or a spell in the language you originally translated it from. JahHovah, for example, My God is Destruction. I'm sure YUOIEA loves hearing those prayers. And JahZues? Same deal. You go from rolling Gods eyes to pissing him off when your new word is an offensive statement in his language.

How do you say "quack" in Hebrew? You can't translate it. Ducks don't quack in Hebrew. Language is primarily spoken. The spoken is what is important.

All this talk about the Word of God.. Its not a written word. Written words are not the origin of spoken word. Voice is very important in Judaism. No one expects you to learn a language to learn somones name.

a reply to: AdKiller

transliterate name Jaun sir?

Oh Let me, it is transliterated not translated form Spanish as John. as Joaquin is Jack, Jesus (Hesus) from Spanish is Jesus just pronounced silent J, Antonio of which the Spanish Transliterated from the Greek which n English is Anthony.

You obviously don't know the difference between translation and transliteration, I see by your reply.

You don't speak pre-roman Hebrew either.

so trust in a God who promises to preserve his words to every generation forever.

a reply to: DpatC

Greeting Fellow ATS'ers

The question of authorship of the Apocalypse of Yohananon (aka 'Book of Revelation') located at the very end of the modern canon of the 'Greek New Testament' is a thorny one, and scholars to-day can only draw rough conclusions about its author, mainly from what is known as 'Internal Evidence' from reading the mangled Greek of the text itself which exists in comparatively few Greek MSS (e.g. Codex Sinaiticus, p47, Codex Alexandrinus & Codex Ephraemi palimpsest along with a number of early important fragments).

First, some background.

A close-reading of the grammatically impossible Greek syntax that we often encounter in the text of the book, such as we find it, e.g. in Codex Alexandrinus (A) and Sinaiticus as well as the papyri e.g. p44 (all with hundreds of much-needed later scribal emendations) is even worse, if you can imagine, than the Gospel of Mark's baby-Greek, and clearly shows that the author's native tongue was not Greek but Aramaic and/or Hebrew. that is Point #1 in terms of nailing down a few facts about the author(s).

The second thing we can deduce about the author, from the kind of subject matter he occupies himself with, is that (whoever this Yohanon was) he was most likely a priest or the son/grandson of a Levitical Temple priest, or at least someone who had been thoroughly steeped since childhood (like the anonymous, non-Pauline author of the Epistle to the Hebrews) in the intricacies and sacrificial nuances of the 2nd 'Herodian' Temple Liturgy, to which specific rituals the author, whoever he was, makes over 150 explicit & implicit literary references, including (in the visions of the Heavenly Temple Liturgy and the explicit Merkhava references to the Throne) deliberately conscious borrowing from (specifcally) the Seven (Weekly) Tamid Psalms (Ps 24, 48, 82, 94, 81, 93, 92), the so-called Ten Days of Repentance Rituals ('Aseret Yomei Teshuvah') following the blasting of thenRosh HaShannah Rams' Horn Trumpets and before Yom Kippur, which includes the eating of the Lekhak ('honey-cake') and the 'Sealing of the Elect' for the coming year, the bi-annual rotation of the 24-levitical priestly families serving in the Temple at Jerusalem and a host of other arcane 2nd Temple ritual nuances that are lost on most modern-day Christians.

The 3rd thing we may deduce from the clumsy Greek of the text of the Book of Revelation ('full of grammatical howlers in the Greek' to quote my old professor Dr. C.K. Barrett) is that the author CANNOT POSSIBLY BE the same person who wrote the elegant koine Greek of 4th Gospel or even the Epistles of 1, 2 & 3 John, i.e. 'John the Elder' (whoever he was); the many syntactical-grammatical differences between the Apocalypse & the Gospel & epistles include the overall theology, Weltanschauung, sentence-length, personal vocabulary and eschatology which are all so widely divergent from one another that any identification between the two must necessarily be ruled-out.

The 4th thing we might deduce about the author(s) of 'Revelation' is something about the time/era in which he/they wrote. In one passage (Rev. 17:10) the grammatically-mangled text speaks of the 5 of the 7 horns of the 'Beast' having fallen (i.e. dead) and the next one 'now still lives' which we may easily equate with the five 'fallen' successive Emperors of Rome, viz. Julius Caesar, Augustus, Tiberius, Gaius (aka 'Caligula') and Claudius as having fallen, leaving 'the Divine' Nero still alive. That would limit the time-frame to the reign of Nero Caesar (54 to June of 68 CE) and immediately before the Year of the Four Emperors (AD 69).

Identification of 'the Beast' with Nero can be bolstered by the 'number of the Beast, which is the number of a man, and his number is 616 (some MSS read 666); using the most basic of Hebrew gematria (numerical sequencing of individual Hebrew Letters, from 'gamma = treia' i.e. gamma is three) wherein the following gemmatrial table may be applied:

'Aleph is 1, Beth is 2, Gimmel is 3, Daled is 4, He is 5, Vav is 6, Zayin is 7, Chet is 8, Dtet is 9, Yod is 10;
Kaph is 20, Lamed is 30, Mem is 40, Nun is 50, Samek is 60, 'Qayin is 70, Phe is 80, Tsade is 90, Quph is 100;
Resh is 200, Shin/Sin is 300 & Tav is 400

From this we can deduce NRVN QSR (=Neron Caesar where long O is represented by the Vav as adding ups to 666; and using an alternative spelling of the name (NRV QSR) we would get 616, the alternate 'number of the Beast' in some of the earlier papyrus MSS fragments (p.Oxy.4499 = p115, dated c. 280 CE)

In addition there seems to be a reference in the text (Rev. 11:2, 'But measure not the Court thereof, for it is now occupied by the goyim') to a time that the Temple (and Jerusalem) was still standing (the 2nd Temple was two years later burned to the ground, i.e. in April of 70 CE), with the outer courts of the larger complex still being occupied by the Kittim = 'Gentiles' meaning the Roman Army whose military occupation of Palestine (in open revolt since 66 CE, the 70th Anniversary of the death of Herod, when Judaea passed to more-or-less direct Roman rule) began in earnest under Nero in 68 CE before he disappeared in June of that year.

This would place the time of the compilation of the Book of Revelation c. 68/69 CE and would explain the specific warrior Messiah language used throughout the book (e.g. Rev. 19:13, aka the blood-soaked Militant Messiah), with a final victory envisaged which echoes the kind of specifically anti-gentile language used in the War Scroll of the Dead Sea Corpus of writings (c. 50 BCE), whose own Zealot Monastery at Seccacah ('Damasqim' i.e. Qumran) was overrun by the Roman Army (June, 68 CE).

I would have to continue to lay out more evidence about the possible authorship issue in the Book of Revelation under another post since this one has said quite enough for one sitting, it seems to me ...

a reply to: Sigismundus

actually it is a prophecy on how God will bring all the 191 UN countries to judgement as they surround Jerusalem in the near future and gives the land that Britain, the Vatican and the US would not give Israel as promised, nor let them have but have been trying to give it to the Arab Moslems. He will come and destroy the nations and give Israel her promised Kingdom of Heaven, ruled by David from the throne of God via Jesus Christ.

That in short is what the Book of Revelation of Jesus Christ, penned by John the Beloved, who leaned on the bosom of Jesus at the last supper the night before his crucifixion.

originally posted by: infolurker
a reply to: DpatC

This is the revelation which God gave to Yeshua the Messiah, so that he could show his servants what must happen very soon. He communicated it by sending his angel to his servant Yochanan, who bore witness to the Word of God and to the testimony of Yeshua the Messiah, as much as he saw. Blessed are the reader and hearers of the words of this prophecy, provided they obey the things written in it! For the time is near!

Its about as near as it was 1000 years ago. Whats the hold up?!

originally posted by: Deetermined

originally posted by: DpatC
Serious question, who wrote the Book of Revelation - The reason I ask is that last week I took part in a Tarot Card reading with the Angels Azazeal and Lucifer.Tarot with "The Devil and the Devil himself." It was a interesting evening where everybody had to draw a card in order to determine our futures.
I drew the two of cups,grand im working with Angels for the foreseeable future, can;t remember what Azazeal drew but Lucifer drew Aquarius, the Water Bearer.
Its taken me a good week to get my head around the significance of the card the Angel Lucifer drew.
Im not sure whether to welcome you to Light or to warn you about the possibility of Tom Waits tune Book of Moses being played full blast from the Heavens over Temple Mount.
www.youtube.com...
I feel like Jeremiah talking to Zedekiah

Why do you care who wrote the book of Revelation when you're playing with deceitful fallen angels to determine your future? It sounds like you're the one who needs to be warned.

Fun fact: The bible could be deceiving. You all believe it so easily, and the devil is supposed to be the greatest liar of them all.

Keep the mind as open as the eyes.

a reply to: ChesterJohn

Hi Chester,

I'm trying to lay out some of the barest of facts surrounding the (mostly non-matching) mangled Greek MSS textual tradition of the Apocalypse of Yohanon (whoever he was) aka the Book of Revelation in order to tease-out any hard evidence of possible authorship identification, i.e. from 'internal evidence.'

Your post is naive & jejune and does not deal with any hard or demonstrable facts. I'm not sure if you realise it, but the identity of the 'lover-disciple' of Jesus is not named in the 4th gospel in any of the six times in which the phrase is mentioned; it could well have been Eleazar (aka 'Lazarus') for all we know (cf. 'Rabbi, the disciple whom you love is dying...' in John 11:3b)

To apply the textual implications of the book to modern-day Britain or the US or the UN is totally to misconstrue the points the author is making for his mid-first century audience, whom he is warning that 'the time is very near' (i.e. within a single generation of the time of the writing (c. Sept-Oct 69CE) and has nought to do with today's modern political scene. You might as well interpret the author's 'beginner's Greek' style (which is so utterly different in its ridiculous grammatical constructions, clumsy Greek vocabulary, spelling, syntax, sentence-length, Weltanschauung, theology, eschatology & overall style of utterance from the urbane, smooth, elegant koine Greek of the 4th canonical council-approved Gospel) as a prophecy about the contents of the next Harry Potter novel for all the sense you made in your post.

It might be helpful for your background study of the literary underpinnings of this book to read around the subject a little if you're going to discuss this complex problem intelligently, then you can get back and then you may respond accordingly.

A decent starting-point in this regard would be a careful reading of J. Massyngberde-Ford's ('preterist') Commentary put out in the 1960s by the Anchor Bible Series vol. 38; Craig Koester's more recent English translation might also shed some light on the subject as well.

Looks like you've got some catching-up to do !

9 I,John, your brother and companion in the suffering and kingdom and patient endurance that are ours in Jesus, was on the island of Patmos because of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus. 10 On the Lord’s Day I was in the Spirit, and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet, 11 which said: “Write on a scroll what you see and send it to the seven churches: to Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia and Laodicea.”

----

It was John who wrote Revelation. It says so right there. Not sure why it needs more in depth study or complexities.

The messenger is irrelevant. The message is.

a reply to: Sigismundus

the non matching Greek manuscripts are just bits of copies not one of them is an original auto-graph. the same with any Chaldean, or Hebrew pieces you may try and match up.

You are quick to violate the T&C of ATS by attacking me as naive and juvenile flies smack in the face of what you don't know as I pointed out in the first paragraph of this reply.

John is the Author via inspiration of God. It was settled by 100AD.

John received his command to write in Rev 1:19 0nward. Those things which thou h seen, meaning the Gospel according to John, those things which are 1,2, 3 John and Rev 1:1-18, and that which will come to pass Rev 2-22. Easy enough done by Following the only verse in the AKJV Bible to study and how to in 2 Tim 2:15. Compare it with your Greek pieces of nonsense and the Newer supposed more reliable versions that lack many verses including the only one to study the BIBLE, the word of Truth, not copies of pieces of Greek or any other supposed copies of manuscripts in unproven original languages.

You Deny the AKJV Bible, You Correct the AKJV Bible and you Fear the AKJV Bible as being the word of God preserved as promised in PS 12:6-7 to every Generation forever. No man can do that with pieces and corrupt manuscripts like the Vaticanus and the Siticanus.

a reply to: ChesterJohn

Hi Chester

I avoid ad hominem attacks against ATS members but ref: my comments about your misinformed opinions about the authorship question on this thread, I merely pointed out the childish naivety of your reply to me, which does not even attempt to address the issue of authorship of the Apocalypse of Yohanon (whoever he was) aka 'Book of Revelation'; to equate 'John the lover' of 'Jesus' with the Levitical author(s) of the book, or any Yohanon for that matter, is based on nothing more than wishful-thinking on your part, and it would do you credit to do some solid, historical background-research around this subject before you start launching into banal platitudes about the purported 'inerrancy' of the Authorised King James Version (AKJV) of the Hebrew-Aramaic and Greek canonical 'scriptures which English-text version had to be emended several times due, at first, to the vast number of careless printing errors (e.g. in the years since 1611, viz. 1613, 1616, 1617, 1618, 1629, 1630, 1633, 1634, 1637, 1638, 1640, 1642, 1653, 1659, 1675, 1679, 1833, 1896 and 1904) and later as older, closer-to-the-original MSS readings come to light over time (e.g. from the Dead Sea Scroll fragments following their re-discovery in 1947), hence the existence of the Revised Standard Versions. The KJV was based on only Codex Alexandrinus (A) from c. 430 CE and Codex Bezae-Biglot (D) from c. 460 CE and for the Old Testament it simply took over the text of the very late Masoretic Text of the Hebrew Bible (c. 900 CE); since 1611, more reliable uncials and papyri have emerged including the much older Codex Vaticanus (B) from c. 340 BCE, Codex Sinaiaticus ('aleph) also from around 340 CE, Codex Ephraemi-palimpsest (C) from around 420 CE and the Freer Codex Washingtoniensis (W) from around 340 CE; this is to say nothing of the vast number of much earlier papyri so to-day we have for the NT (p66, p47, p115 etc.).

In terms of the versions of the Hebrew Scriptures, the vast number of readings earlier than the very late and corrupt Masoretic text (which the 'inherent' KJV only had at its disposal, the Dead Sea Scrolls being unknown to the translation teams in 1611) are shown by the thousands of Dead Sea Scroll fragments discovered after 1947 (copied between BCE 350 - 68 CE) which differ in their consonantal text by approximately 15% when compared against the MT (that is, if you count letter for letter); what is even more troubling to persons who espouse 'inherency' of the KJV is the fact that, for example in our 'Book of Revelation', the numerous citings of OT Hebrew & Aramaic texts in the mangled Greek of the book does NOT (as does several Old Testament 'Messianic-prophetic' citings in the so-called 'Gospel of 'Matthew') match the Masoretic text very often; its citings from the book of Daniel for example are taken from a DIFFERENT AND FAR OLDER version of the Hebrew consonantal text than the late Masoretic Text (many large and important fragments of these pre-Masoretic text versions were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls) and it was this non-Masoretic Hebrew version that was also employed by Theodotion c. 120 CE in his Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures; other non-Masoretic Greek-translated versions of the Hebrew Scriptures include the early Greek Septuaginta (LXX) from 250 BCE (the Hebrew-Aramaic textual source underlay of the MSS used by the Greek translators of the LXX were also found among the Dead Sea Scrolls), as well as Revelation's habit of using quotations of text-translated versions much more in line with the Greek translation of Aquila and Symmachus c. 130 CE than the Masoretic text.

So the KJV is very far from inerrant, being based on a very few MSS available in 1611 all of which were more than 100 years later than what we have at our disposal to-day in terms of physical manuscript evidence.

I would strongly advise you to read a little more around the subject then carefully re-consider your unsupported pre-suppositions in this regard, as uncomfortable as it might make you feel.

a reply to: Sigismundus

childish Naivety is an attack on the Person and not the message it is simple name calling.

Now unlike your reply it lacks Biblical facts to back up your claims and shows you are quick to show you hatred of the Holy Bible the AKJV than it does any good study, you show you are one who changes scriptures to fit ones private interpretation.

Kione Greek Manuscripts copies, which are not complete, Parts of the Latin copies, and very old Hebrew copies cannot be verified to be accurate. But God said he would preserve it for us to every Generation forever. Psalm 12:6-7.

I hold in my hand and inspired, preserved words of God in English as found complete and whole without apology are found in only one Bible version the Holy AKJV Bible. That is correct, only the AKJV has ALL the words of God in it. All other versions have removed some claiming they know better than God when it comes to God's words. Making themselves god in place of God when it comes to the Bible.

I don't feel uncomfortable with you biased opinion on Holy scriptures, I feel pity for your soul, that and that alone leads me daily to tell people the truth and many don't like it. Just like you, so you will continue to violate the T&C and call me names as all your ATS predecessors have.

a reply to: DpatC

Really...Angels Azazeal and Lucifer. How are they doing these days? Would have thought they would be busier doing other things than playing cards?

a reply to: Sigismundus

It strikes me as incredibly odd that no one sees a connection between the "Beast" with a mortal head wound and Josephus' account in Wars in which he claimed to have received a head wound that observers thought was mortal (Wars Book 5, Chapter 13, paragraph 3). It is my believe that the reference to the Beast having a mortal head wound served as a deliberate allusion to Josephus' injury in order to provide context for the surrounding allegory which obviously would mean that Revelation was composed after the publication of Josephus' account. As for the "666", this number is found in the Old Testament associated with "gold" received by Solomon. Since the name Solomon means "peace" this could be viewed as a reference to the odd coincidence that two chroniclers of this history (of the "Jewish" Revolt) had names associated with "peace" (Tranquillus) or "silence" (Tacitus) while the name "Flavius" (which Josephus added to his name after being "adopted" into the Flavian family) means "gold colored". To put this in context with the surrounding allegory, it suggests that only those that were approved by some authority, which was indicated by their names, were able to create a history of this conflict. In other words, they had to have the "mark of the Beast" in order to be published.

a reply to: swordwords

Hey there, Swordwords.

Although I’ve re-read your citation in the Greek taken from Josephus' Jewish War (written originally in Aramaic c. 80 CE) I’m not so sure that Josephus himself, as you confidently assert, fits the bill of the ‘Wounded Head that was Healed’ in the Apocalypse of Yohanon (aka ;'The Book of Revelation') any better than the Roman Emperor Nero does, as Nero was widely believed c. 68/69 CE (at least, if you believe what Suetonius wrote ref: the so-called Nero Redivivus legend) to have ‘disappeared’ somewhere in the East only to return to life to exact a bloody vengeance against his (many) political enemies.

Here is the translation of the fragmentary texts (rendered into modern English) which is extracted from the mangled (apparently poetical) koine-Greek of text of ch. 13:3

‘And I looked, and behold, I saw the several heads [of the Beast];
And lo, one [of the heads] seemed, as it were, to bear a fatal-wound;
But I looked [again], and behold, I saw the death-stroke of his wound had been [miraculously] healed.
And lo, qol-Yisro’el was full of admiration for the Beast;
And behold, all upon the land [of Yisro-el] began to worship the Dragon;
For lo, the Authority [of the Beast] was being meted-out from [the Dragon’s] mouth.
And they began to murmur among themselves saying,
‘Who among men born [of women] can possibly be likened unto the Beast?'
And, ‘What son of man could hope to wage war against such a one as he?’

cf. Tacitus (Histories, Book II) ‘Around this time, (c. 68 CE) those living in Greece and Asia-minor became terrified by the false-report that although they heard that Nero was dead, they also heard opposing rumours that he was still very much alive [and would] return.’

Cf: Sybillian Oracles Book V, l. 361 ‘This shall happen at a time when the same one who had murdered his own mother (i.e. the death of Agrippina in 59 CE) shall suddenly return alive hasting from an opposing part of the earth with schemes of conquest in mind; yea, he shall destroy many lands and conquer many nations…’

Also see Sybilline Book V :28

‘He whose name begins with the letter which hath the [gemmatrial] numerical value of 50 (i.e. the Heb. letter NUN, hence ‘Nero’) shall morph into a terrible Dragon, and shall command a bloody war murdering even those of his own family, thereby throwing the royal succession into confusion; the same is he who is called The Athlete and The Charioteer, the same who claimed to excel at 1000 different occupations, and who shall defile the mountain between the two seas with the gore of the slain; and even after his disappearance he shall continue his rampage, for having returned back to life, he shall declare himself as one of the gods. But in the end he shall not prevail and the three princes that follow (Otho, Galba, Vespasian) shall in the end slay each other in succession…’

These Nero-redivivus legends continued well into the time of Domitian and several deranged individuals (making popular use of the widespread belief that Nero had been raised again to life) claimed to be ‘Nero-Reborn’ were hailed in various locations after 69 CE, including one Terentius Maximus in Parthia (who looked like Nero and even played the lyre) was later exposed as a fraud and executed by the Parthians before they granted him an army.