<\/p>
Hengstenberg claims in his massive commentary on Revelation that that \u201call antiquity agrees in the opinion of Domitian\u2019s being the author of John\u2019s banishment\u201d (he\u2019s quoting another scholar but approving the conclusion). <\/p>\n
What is the evidence? Irenaeus, of course. Clement of Alexandria is quoted as saying that \u201cJohn after the death of the tyrant returned to Ephesus from the isle of Patmos.\u201d There\u2019s no name, but, says Hengstenberg, Clement speaks as if citing a well-known tradition and besides Domitian \u201cpre-eminently deserves\u201d the name \u201ctyrant.\u201d <\/p>\n
Origen also fails to mention Domitian in his comment that \u201cthe king of the Romans, as tradition testifies, condemned the witnessing John on account of the word of truth to the isle Patmos.\u201d Hengstenberg acknowledges that \u201cOrigen is silent respecting the name\u201d but explains that it was \u201cgenerally known, and the blank was easily supplied from the tradition.\u201d <\/p>\n
Eusebius does name Domitian, but then he explicitly cites Irenaeus as his source, so Eusebius hardly adds anything to Irenaeus. Hengstenberg says that Eusebius includes more information than Irenaeus, and thus it\u2019s evident that Irenaeus was not the \u201conly source of the tradition.\u201d He in fact \u201crefers to several depositaries of the tradition.\u201d That is so, but none of these are named. <\/p>\n
Finally, Hengstenberg notes Victorinus of Petabio, martyred under Diocletian, whose writing on the Apocalypse takes a domitianic date \u201cas a matter of undoubted certainty.\u201d <\/p>\n
He concludes: \u201cThese are all the testimonies on the time of the composition of the Apocalypse belonging to the age of living tradition. They declare with perfect unanimity that John was banihed by Domitian to Patmos, and there wrote the Apocalypse. <\/p>\n
What do we actually <\/em> have? The testimony of Irenaeus (itself ambiguous), two anonymous references, Eusebius (whose only explicit source is Irenaeus), and Victorinus. That constitutes a \u201cunanimous\u201d tradition? <\/p>\n In fact, Hengstenberg knows that alternative dates were offered by earlier writers, but he discredits their testimony. All of the \u201cdeviant\u201d writers are \u201cwriters of inferior rank\u201d \u2013 people like Epiphanius, who is not only second-class but \u201cextremely credulous.\u201d The \u201cdeviators\u201d vary among themselves \u2013 some place the book in the age of Nero, others in the time of Claudius, and another writer says that John was banished by Trajan. Behind all these proposals he sees the same motivation that impels modern critics to give the book an early date \u2013 the conclusion that the book is talking about the destruction of Jerusalem and therefore must be dated prior to that event. <\/p>\n The sleight of hand here is remarkable. Hengstenberg constructs a fragile \u201ctradition\u201d from unreliable materials. That tradition becomes the standard, and anyone who says otherwise is \u201cdeviant.\u201d That saves his from having to say that the \u201ctradition\u201d itself was variable, which it self-evidently was (unless one arbitrarily draws a line between the \u201creliable\u201d and \u201cinferior\u201d witnesses). <\/p>\n Hengstenberg\u2019s style of argument certainly cannot stand up to contemporary patristic scholarship, which revels in the diversity and variety of patristic opinion, and resolutely opposes any notion of a fixed norm. That contemporary stance also has its problems, but at least it opens an opportunity for a renewed challenge to the weak \u201cunanimous tradition\u201d on which too many scholars still rely. <\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Hengstenberg claims in his massive commentary on Revelation that that \u201call antiquity agrees in the opinion of Domitian\u2019s being the author of John\u2019s banishment\u201d (he\u2019s quoting another scholar but approving the conclusion). What is the evidence? Irenaeus, of course. Clement of Alexandria is quoted as saying that \u201cJohn after the death of the tyrant returned […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3021,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bible-nt-revelation"],"yoast_head":"\n