THE DATE of THE APOCALYPSE. Part 1 From Horae Apocalyptica by E B Elliott. 3rd edition 1847 Vol 1;
CHAP. II.--THE DATE of THE APOCALYPSE. This is my second preliminary point of inquiry, and one on which also the historical evidence will be found both direct and conclusive. For the testimony of Irenatus,was himself the disciple of the apostle John,-is as ex press to the point in question as it is unexceptionable. Speaking of the name and number of the Beast in the Apocalypse, he says, that had this been a matter then to be made known, it would have been disclosed by him who saw the Apocalypse: “For it’’ (the Apocalypse evidently) “was seen no very long time ago; but almost in our age, towards the end of the reign of Domitian."' The attempts that have been made to get rid of this tes timony, and force another meaning on Irenaeus' words, by those whose views and theories made them wish to do so, “have utterly failed.” It is as clear a testimony on the point it relates to, as there can be found to any other fact in any other historian.
Nor is it unsupported by other testimony. First, (not to insist on Tertullian,”) Clement of Alexandria indirectly, but clearly confirms the statement. Relating the well-known story of St. John and the robber, he speaks of it as enacted by the apostle on his return from exile in Patmos, “after the death of the tyrant; ”* and represents him as then an infirm old man.” Now “the tyrant,” whose death is referred to, must necessarily be either Nero or Domitian; as these were, up to the end of the first century, the only imperial persecutors of the Chris tian body. And Nero it can scarcely be: since at the time of Nero's persecution, St. John was by no means an infirm old man; being probably not much above, if indeed so much as, sixty years of age.” Thus it must rather have been, so as Eusebius explains Clement, the tyrant" Domitianan.1—Secondly, Victorinus (Bishop of Pettaw, and mar tyr in Diocletian's persecution) in his Commentary on the Apocalypse, written towards the close of the third century, says twice over expressly, and in a part that bears no mark of interpolation, that the Apocalypse was seen by the Apostle John in the isle of Patmos, when banished thither by the Roman Emperor Domitian."—To the same effect, thirdly, is the testimony of an Apocryphal author who wrote a history of St. John under the name of Prochorus, one of the seven primary deacons mentioned in the Acts; * a work, I conceive, of the third century, and the same perhaps as one noted among the spurious by Athanasius *—Again, Eusebius' testimony may be cited ‘on the date of the Apocalyptic revelation, (though he doubted about its author,) as expressing his deliberate adoption of the statement of Irenaeus."—The same is the recorded judgment of Jerome;” the same of Sulpitius Se verus".--Further, we find a distinct statement of similar purport in Primasius, an eminent Augustinian commen
1tator on the Apocalypse, of the sixth century. In his Preface to this Commentarry, he speaks of the Apocalyptic visions having been seen by St. John when banished and condemned to the mines in Patmos by the Emperor Domitian.*—And more might yet be added.”
Such is the later and subsidiary Patristic testimony still extant, to the fact of St. John having seen the Apocalyptic visions in Patmos under the reign of Domitian: —a chain of testimony not to be viewed (so as Tilloch would quite unwarrantably represent it)' as but the repetition of that of Irenaeus, whom indeed for the most part these writers do not even refer to ; * but as their own deliberate independent judgment, formed on all the evidence that then existed. As to any contrary early tradition respecting the date, if such there was, (as Sir I. Newton and Tilloch, still without any warrant of historic record, have assumed,”) it can scarcely have been unknown to them. And their total silence respecting it is only explicable on one of two suppositions; viz. either that it did not exist, or that they deemed it undeserving of credit, and not even worth the notice. Nor can this be wondered at: seeing that as to any contrary statement on the point in question, there ap pears to have been none whatsoever until the time of Epiphanius, Bishop of Salamis in Cyprus, in the latter half of the fourth century: a writer whose work is de cried by Mosheim as “full of blots and errors, through the levity and ignorance of the author: ”* and who in his statement on this very point, supposing it correctly written, and not an error of transcription in our copies, —so exemplifies this ignorance, as well to justify its silent neglect by those writers of our catena, viz. Jerom, Sulpitius, and Primasius, who lived after him. For he speaks of St. John having prophesied when in the isle of Patmos, in the days of the Emperor Claudius : — a time when, as Michaelis justly observes,” it does not appear from history that there was any imperial perse cution of the Christian body whatsoever ; and when moreover the probability is that of the seven Apocalyptic churches scarce one was as yet in existence,” and the Apostle John moreover in no way associated with the district." But indeed one is almost forced to suspect some strange error in the transcriber. For Epiphanius elsewhere implies John's age to have been ninety at the time of his return from Patmos.” And can we suppose that he really thought John to have been ninety years old before A.D. 54, which was the latest year of the life of Claudius, or about seventy when called by Christ to be his disciple 2"—Besides whose strange theory we are reminded by Newton and Tilloch of yet another testimony to the early date of the Apocalypse. The subscription to a Syriac version of the book, written about the beginning of the sixth century," is thus worded; “The Revelation which was made by God to John the Evangelist in the island of Patmos, whither he was banished by the Emperor Nero.” But of what value is this opi nion, then first broached, as it would appear 2 *—Or again, of what that of the commentator Arethas, pro mulgated still two or three centuries later,” to the effect that the Apocalypse was written before the destruction of Jerusalem ; * an opinion contradicted indeed else where in the body of his work by himself?"—Alike the one and the other slept unnoticed for centuries. And if waked up by critics of a more modern age, it has only been (as Michaelis, we have seen, confesses) from the supposed necessity of such dates, in order to any possi ble explanation of the Apocalyptic prophecies." It does not need that I discuss at all prominently certain points of indirect and subsidiary historical evidence, in favour of an early date, which these writers have also called in to their aid. A sufficient notice of them will be found below: and it will appear that they all, like the direct testimony just discussed, prove weak and worthless on examination.”—Nor will the only other evidence offered on their side,-evidence internal in its character, and which has been urged of late years with great earnestness and some effect" by Dr. Tilloch and others, after Sir Isaac and Bishop Newton,-be found at all better able to bear examination. For what is the main argument? It is founded on certain marked similarities discoverable, as they suppose, in sundry Epistles of Peter and Paul, written before Nero's death, to passages in the Apocalypse; whence they infer that the Apocalypse was written first, the Epistles after wards.' Now in a question of this kind it is important to distinguish between cases of reference to some ante cedent writing,-whether direct, or by means of the article or pronouns demonstrative, and those of mere similarity of thought or expression. Of the former class of examples, adduced by these critics from the apostolic epistles, there is not one, I believe, which is not explicable as a reference to the previous prophecies of the Old Testament.” As to cases of mere similarity and coincidence of thought, if we may often see much of it even in uninspired writings, without implying imitation on the part of one or other of the writers, how much more may we expect undesigned resemblances in inspired writings, such as are both the Epistles and Book of the Apocalypse spoken of ; seeing that, though written by different human penmen, they were inspired by one and the same divine Spirit : * which Spirit may just as well be supposed to have dictated an idea or brief sketch to St. Peter or St. Paul, which was afterwards to be developed in the finished pictures of the Apocalypse of St. John, as to have spoken by those first-mentioned Apostles in terms or figures borrowed from the previously promulgated pictures of the Apocalypse.
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