Dating the Book of Revelation
I’ve just been watching a video by Joel Richardson (you should check out his YouTube channel) on the dating of the Book of Revelation: Traveling to the Island of Patmos to Settle the Revelation Debate: This One Fact Destroys Preterism. While I really appreciate Joel’s videos and admire his ministry work, particularly in the Middle East, I’m not sure I’m persuaded by the arguments he gives in this video. In fact, I think he might be over-claiming uniformity among the early Church fathers on this matter.
I threw a comment on the video, but I’ve seen YouTube remove comments when they include links to other sites, so I thought I’d duplicate my comment here in case it gets removed. Here goes…
My Tentative Thoughts…
Section titled “My Tentative Thoughts…”I don’t subscribe to Preterism. Nonetheless, I don’t think we need a late date of Revelation to dispel Preterism, so I’m less eager to hold on to the argument you present. There are other ways to understand the Irenaeus quote, as noted in Andrew Corbett’s 2005 article on dating (see Dating the Authorship of Revelation). Looking at just the dating arguments around the statements of the early Church fathers and ignoring the “pull” of whether you are for or against Preterism, it’s worth the attention of whatever readers have bothered getting this far into my comment.
Here’s a quote from Corbett:
“Irenaeus did not say that John the apostle wrote the Apocalypse in the reign of Emperor Domitian, rather, he mentioned that John was seen (alive) during the reign of Emperor Domitian. Clement of Alexandria did not identify Domitian as ‘the Tyrant’, rather, he refers to Caesar Nero as “the Tyrant.” Clement’s reference to the apostle John as ‘an old man’ must be understood in the context of first-century life-spans where someone in their 60s was considered old.”
The comments to Corbett’s article (though few) are worth reading as well, such as the one by “Keith” in 2022. He talks about the potential ways to read the Greek of Irenaeus’ quote, and he also makes note of a statement of Irenaeus regarding “ancient copies” of the book of Revelation. Here’s a part of Keith’s comment:
“Irenaeus makes reference to “ancient copies” of the book of Revelation. So not only were these copies ancient (i.e. they had been around a very long time), but they were also in fact copies (i.e. non-original versions). So when Irenaeus, just a couple paragraphs later, speaks of something that “was seen not a long time back, but almost in my own lifetime,” how could that be a reference to the vision of Revelation? What kind of sense would it make for Irenaeus to refer to copies of the apocalyptic vision as “ancient,” but also maintain that the vision itself occurred almost in his own lifetime?”
“This problem is alleviated if we understand ἑωράθη as a reference to John himself (“he was seen”), rather than the apocalyptic vision (“it was seen”).”