REVELATION OF ST. JOHN, the last book of the New Testament, and the only distinctively prophetic one given to fling back the veil which hides futu rity from the view. Its writer was John (i. 4, xxii: 8), the servant of God (i: 1), the "brother" and "companion in tribu lation" of the then persecuted Christians, himself an exile in Patmos, "for the word of God and for the testimony of Jesus Christ" (i: 9). It was there he saw the prophetic visions, narrating them after he left the island. The ma jority of the Fathers and the Church of the Middle Ages considered, as do most modern Christians, that the author was John the Apostle; though Dionysius of Alexandria, and some others among the ancients, believed him to have been a certain John the Presbyter (mentioned by Papias, Dionysius, Eusebius, and Jer ome), whose tomb, like that of the apos tle, was said to be at Ephesus. Among those who accept the apostolic author ship of the work, two views are current as to its date. The prevailing one is, that the visions in Patmos were seen in A. D. 96, and the work penned in that year or in 97, the reigning emperor being Domitian. The other view is, that it was penned about A. D. 68 or 69. Ch.
xvii: 10 is interpreted to mean that five Roman emperors had reigned and died, viz., Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Clau dius, Nero, "one is," i. e., Galba or if Julius Cxsar be considered the 1st em peror, then the "one" is Nero. Respect ing the canonicity of this book, it was alluded to or quoted in Hermas, Papias, Melito, Justin Martyr, the fragment pub lished by Muratori, Theophilus, of An tioch, Apollonius of Ephesus, Irenus, Hippolytus, Tertullian, Clement of Alex andria, Origen, Jerome, etc. It was not in the Old Syrian version, though some Greeks accepted it. The Corinthians, Coins of Rome, and others rejected it. Luther, Carlstadt, and Zwingli spoke of it disparagingly, but it is accepted by the Churches of the Reformation as well as by the Roman Church. Three schemes of interpretation exist: The Preterist, which makes the events pre dicted now wholly passed; the Futurist, which regards them as future, and that of a third and numerous school, who regard the visions as an historical or con tinuous prediction of the whole history of the Church from apostolic times to the consummation of all things.