Who wrote Revelation?
The author of the Book of Revelation and why it matters
The Revelation of Jesus Christ which God gave to him to show his slaves what must happen soon, and signified by sending though his angel to his slave John, who witnessed the Word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ, to all that he saw. Revelation 1:1–2
Who wrote the book of Revelation?
In some respects, this question is a trick one.
In the eyes of orthodox Christian faith, God is the author of all Scripture, so God is the divine author of Revelation.
But more properly in Revelation 1:1-2, God is the source, who speaks through Jesus Christ, via angelic messenger, to the human recipient of the visions, who organized and wrote them in a combination of letter and apocalyptic forms.
(So much for an easy answer.)
But in this post I am specifically interested in the human author of Revelation.
The commentaries will be all over the place on this issue arguing the traditional John the apostle, or John the elder, or an entirely different (and unknown) John, called John the seer.
I see all of these as one singular person: John the apostle, elder, and seer.
The person who penned Revelation was the same person who wrote the Gospel of John and 1–3 John.
While to many this identification may seem self-evident, it is often a good idea to revisit the plain evidence.
In Plain Sight is a subscriber supported publication. If you appreciate the content and insights of this Substack, please consider a paid subscription. Subscribers receive additional material at the end of most posts with more subscriber only material to come.
John
First, the author of Revelation names himself as John, a common Jewish name, but usually followed by a moniker of kinship.
This John, though, includes no ben Zebedee or an identifier like apostle (he does call himself “slave”)—he assumes his audience knows exactly who he is in Rev 1:1, 4, 9, and 22:8, nothing extra needed.
This John refers to himself throughout Revelation with “I.”
Revelation stands or falls on the authority of this person known to the seven churches of Asia.
He was known, and they trusted him.
John the Witness
This John claims to be a witness “to the Word of God and the testimony of Jesus to all that he saw.”
He used the verb martyreō, “witness” or “testify” and in the past tense. John employed courtroom language to indicate that he had true personal knowledge of events and of a person.
That true knowledge was of two things: the Word of God and the testimony of Jesus.
The two are closely related: The Word of God refers to the incarnation of God in the person of Jesus (as in John 1:1, 14 and 18, cf. 1 John 1:1), while the “witness of Jesus” (or “testimony of Jesus”) refers to the whole of Jesus’s words and works including the ultimate witness: the crucifixion of Jesus on the cross.
John used a play on words: he witnessed (emartyrēsen) the witness (martyria) of Jesus. With this claim John repeats in a much shorter form the testimony in the Gospel of John. In John 19 we read:
“But when they came to Jesus and saw that he was already dead, they did not break his legs. But one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and at once there came out blood and water. He who saw it has borne witness (memartyrēken)—his testimony (martyria) is true, and he knows that he is telling the truth—that you also may believe” (John 19:33–35 ESV).
The importance of John’s statement in Revelation 1:1-2 cannot be overstated: the author of Revelation was not only the recipient of divinely given visions of Jesus Christ, but also the witness of the earthly Jesus, who himself was the witness.
This John reiterates his witness with the words: “to all that he saw”—an interesting way of putting things.
One would expect a simple “that he saw” but John uses the Greek term hosa, “as much as” or as I translate it “to all that.” John claimed that he saw more than a single event; he saw many events in the life of Jesus.
Wouldn’t you know it? This phrase sounds surprisingly similar to (but shorter than) 1 John 1:1 “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we beheld, and our hands touched concerning the word of life.”
The language of eye (and ear)-witness once again crops us and leads inevitably to the question of the connection between John of Revelation and the writer of the Gospel of John and 1 John.
John and the author the Gospel and Letters
The Gospel of John and 1–3 John are technically anonymous (the Beloved Disciple of the Gospel and the Elder of 2–3 John are the only designations for the author).
But besides John 19 and 1 John 1, there are many other indications in the very language of Revelation that connects the John of Revelation with the author of the Gospel of John and 1–3 John—just in Revelation chapter 1 an array of vocabulary shows a relationship between Revelation and the other Johannine books.
Here is a list of language in Revelation 1 that we also see in the Gospel of John and 1–3 John:
1. “which God gave to him to show” John and Revelation have almost half the uses—15 of 33 times—of the term “to show” (Gr. deiknymi) in the New Testament.
2. “and signified by sending …” With the verb “to signify,” (Gr. sēmainō; all English translations have “to show”) John connects to the “signs” of his Gospel (Gr. sēmeion). The Gospel of John uses sēmainō three of the other five times in the NT.
3. “and signified by sending …” “Send” (Gr. apostellō) is a key verb in all the Gospels, but more-so in John. And 1 John and Revelation have apostellō more (6x) than the non-Gospel NT books combined (5x spread over five letters).
4. “who witnessed the Word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ” “Witness” (Gr. martyreo) is a distinctly Johannine verb (John and 1–3 John 43x, Revelation 4x; rest of NT 31 total times over 21 books).
As already pointed out, John claims eye-witness testimony throughout the Gospel of John, and 1 John, as well as here in Rev 1:2.
When we add to this data the noun “Witness” or “testimony” (Gr. martyria), the distinction is even more stark: Revelation uses the term 9 times, the Gospel of John 14 times and the letters 7 times—a total of 30 uses— and the entire rest of the NT only 7 times.
5. “who witnessed the Word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ” “The Word” (Gr. logos) and “The Word of God” (Gr. logos tou theou) though common in the NT, are quintessentially Johannine in the direct reference to Jesus as the content (John 1:1, 14; 1 John 1:1).
6. “whatsoever he saw” Language of seeing (Gr. horao, blepo) and hearing (Gr. akouo) and keeping (tereo) in Rev 1:2, 3, 10, 11, 12, 17 and throughout Revelation are all very Johannine.
7. In John Jesus usually refers to God as “my Father” that is the Father of Jesus in the Gospel and five times in Revelation (“his Father” or “my Father”) as in Revelation 1:6.
8. “I am” (v. 8)—especially with predicate and divine referent—is overwhelmingly Johannine (64x Gospel of John; 10x Revelation—rest of NT 45x in 6 books).
9. Other Johannine terms: “write” (Gr. grapho).
This vocabulary is just from Revelation 1!—the rest of Revelation is also replete with Johannine terms and concepts (throughout this series, I will make a point of showing this language).
Statistics never fully prove a theory, but these observations, added to the weight of early church tradition, make the John of Revelation the overwhelmingly likely candidate for the Gospel and letters of John.
Why does it matter?
I have referred throughout to John’s eye-witness testimony to Jesus as a common feature of the Gospel of John, 1 John, and Revelation.
Why is this eye-witness testimony important for Revelation?
Simply put, the authority of Revelation rests on it.
John based the authority of his visions on his personal connection to Jesus Christ as a living, breathing human whom he knew personally and watched die and saw risen from the dead.
John greatly appreciated early Christian prophets, whom he references in Revelation, but John’s particular prophetic authority rested on his connection to this Jesus.
John reiterated his clear understanding of Jesus Christ in Rev 1:5: “and from Jesus Messiah (Christ), the Witness, the Faithful One, the Firstborn from the dead, the Ruler of the kings of the earth.”
The Jesus who lived on earth and died and rose again is the Jesus who rules.
In the Gospel (and the letters), Jesus is the human face of God (John 1:18) crucified and risen from the dead.
In Revelation, this crucified and risen Jesus is unified with the Father on the heavenly throne—the image of Jesus as the slain yet standing lamb at the right hand of the throne clearly connects the two as well as the designation Word of God.
This is the Jesus John witnessed to.
The rest of Revelation is grounded in the authority and veracity of this witness.