Latest / Reformed Thinking / Authorship of the Apocalypse | Robert L. Thomas

Transcript

Authorship of the Apocalypse | Robert L. Thomas · Reformed Thinking

0:00
Welcome to reform thinking. You know, imagine a powerful
0:04
judge who just absolutely despises a specific law.
0:07
OK, yeah, but he he can't strike the law down from the bench
0:11
because it is wildly popular with the public and it has been
0:15
on the books for years. So his hands are kind of tied.
0:17
Right. So what does he do?
0:19
Well, he launches a political campaign to prove the politician
0:22
who drafted the law was just a total.
0:24
Fraud. Oh wow, attack the source
0:26
instead of the law itself. Precisely.
0:29
And in the 3rd century, this literal political playbook was
0:32
used to nearly erase the Book of Revelation from the Bible.
0:35
It is a wild piece of history, really.
0:38
It is you are joining us for a fascinating historical and
0:41
theological mystery today. For this deep dive, we were
0:45
looking at an ancient literary dispute weighing the historical
0:48
biases of early church figures against some hard statistical
0:52
linguistic evidence. Because the question on the
0:54
table is simple but carries massive weight.
0:57
Did the apostle John actually write the Book of Revelation?
0:59
Right. And to set the baseline for you
1:01
listening, we have to look at the historical landscape.
1:04
Yeah, and honestly, the ancient world of textual criticism is,
1:08
well, it is the absolute definition of Muddy Waters.
1:10
For sure you do not have pristine museum display cases
1:14
with everything neatly labeled. Not at all.
1:16
You have fragments, you have rumors, and you have heavy
1:19
theological biases. So let us unpack the initial
1:22
scene. Picture the 1st century Roman
1:25
province of Asia. Today that is modern day Turkey.
1:30
And the epicenter of this region was the city of Ephesus.
1:33
Right Ephesus. This geographical area was the
1:36
literal cradle of early Christianity.
1:39
It had a massive advantage over almost every other region in the
1:42
Roman Empire. It really did.
1:43
It benefited from the extended personal oversight of two major
1:47
abystolic figures. First, you have the apostle
1:49
Paul. He spent three solid years there
1:51
around the years 52 to 55. And in the context of Paul's
1:55
ministry, I mean, staying in one single city for three years is a
1:58
staggering amount of time. It was a massive investment of
2:00
his. Time.
2:00
Yeah. Then, according to very reliable
2:03
ancient records, the apostle John arrives in Ephesus right
2:06
around the time Paul is martyred in Rome.
2:08
So John relocates to this specific province and spends
2:12
roughly 30 years there, right? Overseeing the churches until
2:14
the end of the 1st century. What is so fascinating here is
2:18
the sheer volume of biblical texts that flooded into this
2:21
specific geographical area. Oh, it is incredible.
2:25
The province of Asia received the letters to the Ephesians,
2:28
the Colossians, First and Second Timothy.
2:31
The three Johannian letters, the Gospel of John, and of course
2:34
the Apocalypse, the Book of Revelation.
2:36
It is an unparalleled concentration of Apostolic
2:40
contact. And it did not stop the apostles
2:42
themselves. No, it did not.
2:44
This same region produced notable 2nd century Christian
2:47
leaders who were discipled directly by the apostles.
2:50
We are talking about men like Papias, Polycarp and later
2:54
Irenaeus. Yeah, Irenaeus grew up under
2:56
Polycarp's instruction. These men had direct, verifiable
2:59
ties to this region and to the Apostle John himself.
3:02
They were the next generation of leadership.
3:04
That direct lineage is so crucial to keep in mind.
3:07
We have a geographical epicenter overflowing with direct
3:10
Apostolic instruction. And the early Christians,
3:13
they're universally accepted that the apostle John wrote the
3:16
Book of Revelation. Absolutely.
3:18
But here is the tension we are looking at today.
3:21
Despite that overwhelming ancient consensus, 20th century
3:25
modern scholarship often views the traditions coming out of
3:29
this specific region with intense skepticism.
3:32
Right. Modern critics look at the
3:34
traditional claim that John the Apostle wrote Revelation, and
3:38
they basically shake their heads.
3:39
They argue they cannot possibly be true.
3:42
So we have to figure out why modern scholars would doubt such
3:45
a strong geographically rooted consensus.
3:48
Yeah, where does this skepticism actually come from?
3:51
Because it does not originate in the 20th century.
3:53
Not at all. To understand the modern doubt,
3:55
we must trace the origin all the way back to a specific 3rd
3:59
century figure. A guy named Dionysius of
4:01
Alexandria. Right.
4:02
Let us set up the profile of the man who started this whole
4:05
controversy. So Dionysius was the overseer of
4:08
the Alexandrian church from the year 247 to 264.
4:12
And Alexandria, located in Egypt, was a massive
4:15
intellectual hub. It was known for its great
4:17
library and its philosophical schools.
4:19
Yeah, and Dionysius was a highly distinguished pupil of the
4:23
famous theologian origin. We should be completely fair to
4:27
Dionysius. Right from the start, he
4:30
possessed very strong Christian credentials.
4:32
Oh. Absolutely.
4:33
He survived severe Roman persecution.
4:35
During the decision persecution, Christians were forced, under
4:39
threat of torture and death, to sacrifice to the Roman gods.
4:44
And many believers folded under that pressure.
4:46
Right, which led to the Novation Heresy.
4:49
Which was a massive schism, splitting the church over how to
4:52
handle those Christians who had renounced their faith but later
4:55
wanted to return. And Dionysius fiercely opposed
4:57
the Novation schism and fought to keep the Church unified.
5:00
He is a heavyweight theologian and a battle tested leader.
5:04
He is a serious figure, which is what makes his role in this so
5:07
fascinating. But Dionysius carried a highly
5:09
specific theological acts to grind.
5:11
Yes, he strongly opposed a concept known as chiliasm,
5:15
right? Can you breakdown what chiliasm
5:17
actually is and why an intellectual from Alexandria
5:20
would hate it so much? Sure.
5:22
The term chiliasm comes from the Greek word for 1000, chilioy.
5:26
OK, it is the relief drawn straight from Revelation chapter
5:30
20 that Jesus Christ will return to earth and establish A fiscal
5:34
geopolitical Kingdom for a literal 1000 years following the
5:38
resurrection. Then, because of his training in
5:40
Alexandria under origin, Dionistius preferred an
5:44
allegorical method of interpreting scripture.
5:46
Yes, Alexandrian thinkers were heavily influenced by Greek
5:49
philosophy. Which taught that the material,
5:52
physical world was inferior to the spiritual.
5:54
Realm precisely so. The idea as a physical Kingdom
5:57
on Earth sounded unrefined and overly literal to an Alexandrian
6:03
intellectual. Dionysius believed the thousand
6:06
year reign mentioned in the Book of Revelation had to be purely
6:08
spiritual or symbolic. Right.
6:10
And he runs into a major obstacle with a man named Nepos.
6:14
Nepos was an Egyptian overseer who wrote a very popular book
6:17
called Refutation of the Allegorists.
6:19
You can guess how Nepos felt about the Alexandrian method of
6:23
interpreting the Bible based on that title.
6:25
Definitely. Nepos advocated for interpreting
6:27
the Scriptures in a more literal Jewish fashion.
6:30
He predicted a physical Kingdom of Christ on earth, and he
6:33
relied heavily on the Book of Revelation to prove his point.
6:36
And Dionysius absolutely despised this view.
6:39
He despised it so much that he went on a dedicated campaign
6:43
against the of Nepos. Nepos had passed away by this
6:46
point, but his book was spreading everywhere.
6:49
Dionysius actually held a three day debate in a rural district
6:54
to convince the followers of Nepos to abandon this literal
6:57
interpretation of 1000 year earthly Kingdom.
7:01
Three days. That is intense.
7:03
Yeah, and he managed to persuade many of them, but he recognized
7:07
a massive tactical problem, the. Followers of Nepos were using
7:10
the Book of Revelation as their primary proof text.
7:12
Right. And at that time the entire our
7:14
orthodox Christian world accepted the Book of Revelation
7:17
as inspired scripture written by the Apostle John.
7:19
This goes back to the judge and the law analogy we opened with.
7:23
Exactly. Dionysius is backed into a
7:25
corner. He hates the literal millennial
7:27
implications of the Book of Revelation, but he cannot
7:30
outright ban a widely accepted canonical book without causing a
7:34
massive uproar. So does Dionysius attack the
7:37
Book of Revelation because he hates its literal implications
7:41
but uses a backdoor method to discredit its literal
7:44
interpretation by attacking the author?
7:46
That is precisely the strategy he deployed.
7:49
It was brilliant, politically speaking.
7:51
Because the Apocalypse was already widely accepted by the
7:54
Church, Dionysius found a backdoor.
7:57
He claimed that an inspired holy man named John wrote the book,
8:01
but he insisted that it was definitely not the Apostle John.
8:04
By separating the book from Apostolic authority, he could
8:07
subtly downgrade its theological weight.
8:09
His logic was simple. If the Apostle John did not
8:12
write it, then maybe it's literal description of 1000 year
8:15
Kingdom did not need to be taken so seriously.
8:17
Let us systematically breakdown the case Dionysius presented to
8:21
the Church to back up this bold claim.
8:23
We will start with his external claims and then move to his
8:26
textual arguments. For external evidence, Dionysius
8:29
relied on a rumor. He said there was hearsay say
8:31
that there were two tombs in Ephesus, and both of those tombs
8:34
bore the name John. That rumor is the entirety of
8:37
his external historical evidence.
8:39
Wait, really? Just a rumor?
8:41
Yeah. He suggests that because there
8:43
might have been 2 tombs with the name John, a different John must
8:46
have written the apocalypse. I have to push back on that
8:49
logic. That is incredibly weak hearsay.
8:52
It really is. Relying on a rumor about two
8:54
gravestones in a city hundreds of miles away across the
8:58
Mediterranean Sea to overturn an established Apostolic authorship
9:03
is. Baffling, especially since John
9:05
was one of the most common names in the entire ancient world.
9:08
Right, finding 2 tombs with the name John in a major metropolis
9:11
like Ephesus is like finding 2 graves named Smith in London and
9:16
concluding a different Smith wrote a famous book.
9:19
It is highly theoretical and it completely lacks any reliable
9:23
historical tradition. You are absolutely right, it is
9:25
entirely circumstantial. Dionysius likely knew his
9:28
external historical evidence was flimsy, which is why he leaned
9:31
so heavily into internal textual arguments.
9:34
He wanted to prove from the text itself that the apostle John
9:37
could not be the author. And the first of these internal
9:39
arguments is what we can call the name game argument.
9:42
Specifically, is the name game argument.
9:44
Well, Dionysius pointed out that the apostle John never named
9:47
himself in his Gospel or in his three epistles.
9:50
Right. In the Gospel of John, the
9:52
author deliberately avoids his own name, referring to himself
9:54
anonymously as the disciple whom Jesus loved.
9:58
Dionysius notes that the author of Revelation takes the exact
10:01
opposite approach. The author names himself 4
10:04
distinct times. Three times in Chapter 1 and
10:07
once in Chapter 22. And Dionysius argued that this
10:10
radical shift in behavior proves they are different authors.
10:14
I can see why that sounds convincing on the surface.
10:16
Yeah, it's. That sounds plausible at first.
10:18
If I am the Apostle John and I write a massive sweeping
10:22
historical biography like the Gospel without ever naming
10:25
myself, why do I suddenly feel the ego driven need to stamp my
10:29
name four times in Revelation? It does seem suspicious.
10:32
But I wonder if different literary genres require
10:35
different authorial signatures. That is the core of the issue
10:38
right there. The nature of apocalyptic
10:41
literature is entirely different from historical gospels or
10:44
pastoral letters. Right prophetic visions require
10:47
the explicit identification of the human receiver to
10:51
authenticate the divine message. If a person writes a letter to a
10:54
church they know well, anonymity is an act of pastoral humility.
11:00
But if someone claims to have been taken up into heaven, to
11:03
have seen the risen Christ in glory, and to have received
11:06
visions of the end of the world from angels.
11:08
The immediate question for the church is going to be who are
11:11
you to claim this? That makes perfect sense.
11:15
The author has to state his name to provide an Apostolic
11:17
guarantee of the vision's validity.
11:20
If an anonymous source sent you a letter detailing the end of
11:23
the world, you would throw it away.
11:25
You need the signature of an apostle to take it seriously.
11:28
Furthermore, Dionysius logic is highly inconsistent when applied
11:32
to the rest of the New Testament.
11:33
Oh, how so? Dionysius fully accepted that
11:35
the Apostle Paul was the author of the book of Hebrews, yet Paul
11:39
is entirely anonymous in the book of Hebrews.
11:41
Ah, I see, Paul names himself in his thirteen other letters,
11:44
Romans, Corinthians, Galatians. He always starts with Paul, an
11:47
apostle, but in Hebrews he drops his name completely.
11:51
And Dionysius was perfectly fine accepting Paul's authorship of
11:55
Hebrews despite the missing name, but he uses the exact
11:58
opposite logic to deny John's authorship of Revelation.
12:02
That is a glaring double standard.
12:03
He is applying the rules selectively to get the result he
12:06
wants. He gives Paul a pass for
12:08
changing his signature style, but he uses the same change in
12:11
style to condemn John. But let us glue to his next
12:14
point the structural argument. OK.
12:16
What did he claim there? Dionysius claim that the Gospel
12:19
of John and the First Epistle of John begin very similarly.
12:22
The Gospel starts in the beginning.
12:24
Was the word first. John starts that which was from
12:27
the beginning. And Dionysia said Revelation is
12:29
utterly aliens them and has no structural similarity at all.
12:33
That claim falls apart when you look at the rigorous scholarship
12:36
of Eric Haupt. Oh, what did Haupt find?
12:39
Haupt noticed a striking structural prominence of the
12:42
Greek word martyria, which means testimony or witness.
12:46
This concept is not just a casual theme, it's structurally
12:49
brackets. All three works.
12:51
Yes, in Revelation chapter one, verse 2, the author commences
12:55
with a vindication of his trustworthiness, stating he is
12:58
the one who testified the word of God, even the testimony of
13:01
Jesus Christ, as many things as he saw.
13:03
So Martyria functions as a legal guarantee of eyewitness
13:07
veracity. We see that same guarantee in
13:09
the Gospel, in the Epistles. First John chapter one starts
13:12
with the author declaring what he has heard, what he has seen
13:15
with his eyes, and what he has touched with his hands.
13:18
And the Gospel of John ends in chapter 21 by stating this is
13:22
the disciple who is testifying to these things.
13:25
Well, Revelation ends in Chapter 22, summarizing its entire
13:29
contents repeatedly as a testimony.
13:31
They all structurally rely on this very specific personal
13:35
eyewitness guarantee. The author of all three texts
13:38
writes from the perspective of someone who is personally
13:40
involved in the events, someone who feels the heavy burden of
13:43
providing testimony. Beyond that structural framing,
13:46
the Apocalypse has a distinct fondness for triplets and
13:48
sevenfold arrangements. You see 7 seals, 7 trumpets, 7
13:52
bowls. And the Gospel of John also
13:54
features 7 highly specific signs and seven I AM statements.
14:00
The structural inclinations of the author to organize
14:03
information in sevens are actually remarkably similar when
14:06
you look past the surface layer. Moving deeper into Dionysius's
14:09
internal critique, let us examine his claims about the
14:13
specific Greek vocabulary and grammar used by the Apostle
14:16
John. This is where it gets into the
14:18
vocabulary and grammar wars. Right.
14:20
Dionysius published a list of 19 Johannian terms.
14:24
These are words that appear frequently in the Gospel and the
14:26
epistles, right? Words like life, light, truth,
14:30
grace, joy, flesh, blood, judgement, and forgiveness.
14:35
And Dionysius claim that the Book of Revelation had scarcely
14:37
a syllable in common with these 19 words.
14:39
It was a sweeping generalization and tended to sound highly
14:42
authoritative to his followers. But when we examine the actual
14:45
text of Revelation, the hard data tells a completely
14:48
different story. What does the statistical
14:50
breakdown actually show regarding those 19 words?
14:52
The breakdown shows that Dionysius research was
14:55
incredibly sloppy, or perhaps deliberately misleading.
14:58
Really. How bad was it?
15:00
Out of those 19 terms he listed as missing, 12 of them are
15:04
actually in Revelation. Wow.
15:05
And they do not just appear once, they appear with high
15:08
frequency, Yes. The Greek word Zoe, meaning
15:11
life, appears 15 times in Revelation.
15:14
The word hyma blood appears five times.
15:17
The word Crisis Judgment appears four times.
15:20
Pneuma Spirit appears 7 times. Furthermore, 3 of the words
15:24
Dionysius listed as essential to John's vocabulary are not even
15:28
found in the Gospel of John at all.
15:30
When you look at the actual Greek text, Dionysius's
15:33
vocabulary argument collapses completely.
15:36
He was banking on the fact that his audience in the 3rd century
15:39
did not have concordances or digital search tools to verify
15:43
his claims. He simply stated it as an
15:46
indisputable fact, knowing few people would have the ability or
15:49
the time to manually count the Greek words across multiple
15:52
scrolls. It is wild that he got away with
15:54
that level of scholarly malpractice.
15:56
It really is, but his next argument is the one that really
15:59
stuck around and caused the most historical damage.
16:01
It is the faultless Greek fallacy.
16:04
Dionysus claimed that the Gospel and Epistles were written in
16:07
flawless Greek, showing the greatest literary skill without
16:10
a single barbarous word or grammatical error.
16:13
He contrasted his pristine writing with revelation, which
16:16
he said was full of barbarisms and solaceisms.
16:19
A solace is just a severe grammatical error.
16:22
We have to concede a major part of his point regarding
16:25
revelation. The Greek in Revelation is
16:27
highly unusual. You will find nominative cases
16:30
placed completely out of order, broken sentences, mixed up
16:34
genders, and numbers that do not agree.
16:36
It is undeniably strange. However, Dionysius's premise
16:40
that First John is flawless is historically absurd.
16:43
Let us connect this to you, the listener.
16:45
If you are listening to this and you have ever read first John in
16:48
an English translation, it flows beautifully the.
16:51
Translators clean it up for us. But if you were a Greek student
16:54
trying to diagram those sentences in your first year
16:56
class, your professor would hand your paperback covered in red
17:00
ink. Oh, definitely.
17:01
Scholar JL Holden describes the prologue of First John as
17:04
bordering on incoherence. He calls it a lapse into
17:08
grammatical impossibilities. The renowned scholar Raymond E
17:11
Brown famously noted that the early verses of First John are a
17:14
grammatical nightmare. In fact, referring to 1st John
17:17
Chapter 3, Brown pointed out that the author is singularly
17:20
inept at constructing clear sentences.
17:23
Another scholar literally dubbed those versus gibberish in the
17:26
original Greek. The Greek of First John is
17:28
exceptionally difficult, repetitive, and disjointed.
17:31
It is certainly not the pristine, flawless classical
17:35
Greek that Dionysius claimed. It was this.
17:37
Logic fails again. If John deviated from normal
17:40
grammatical usage and wrote messy Greek in his first
17:42
epistle, there is absolutely no reason he could not have
17:45
deviated from normal usage in the Apocalypse.
17:48
I want to offer an analogy for this.
17:50
Imagine claiming a famous musician could not have possibly
17:53
written a gritty, chaotic, experimental punk rock album
17:57
because their earlier work was a pristine classical Symphony
18:01
that. Ignores the reality that artists
18:03
evolve, they experiment, and sometimes even their early work
18:06
had chaotic, unstructured moments.
18:09
You cannot put a writer into a strict dramatical straitjacket
18:12
and demand they never deviate from a set pattern.
18:14
That is a very apartment comparison.
18:16
Writers alter their style based on their subject matter, their
18:19
emotional state, and their target audience.
18:22
To use grammatical anomalies as the sole basis for stripping the
18:26
Book of Revelation from the Apostle John while actively
18:29
ignoring the massive grammatical anomalies in his confirmed
18:32
letters is shallow historical thinking.
18:35
Let us trace the consequences of this.
18:37
We know Dionysius's arguments were weak and heavily biased,
18:41
but they caused a massive wave of doubt.
18:43
What was the historical fallout of this critique on early
18:47
Christianity? The historical fallout was
18:49
severe. Dionysius's prestige as the
18:51
Bishop of Alexandria greatly influenced a man named Eusebius.
18:55
Eusebius was an incredibly influential church historian in
18:58
the 4th century. He wrote the famous
19:00
Ecclesiastical History, which is one of our primary sources for
19:03
early Church history. Eusebius absorbed Dionysius's
19:06
anti chilius bias, his intense dislike of the literal
19:10
millennial Kingdom concept. Eusebius also absorbed that
19:13
incredibly weak 2 tombs rumor we discussed earlier.
19:16
Eusebius weaponized that rumor to rewrite history, did he not?
19:20
He did. Eusebius lived during the time
19:22
of Constantine, when Christianity became accepted by
19:25
the Roman Empire. Eusebius hated chiliasm because
19:28
the church was now in a position of cultural dominance.
19:32
Why wait for a future earthly Kingdom when the Emperor is a
19:34
Christian right now? So Eusebius used the two tunes
19:38
theory to reinterpret a quote by the early church Father Papias.
19:41
Eusebius essentially invented the theory of a man named John
19:44
the Elder, who he claimed was a completely different person from
19:48
the apostle John. He argued that this supposed
19:50
John the Elder wrote Revelation. Eusebius went so far in his bias
19:54
that he openly insulted Papius, calling him a man of very little
19:59
intelligence simply because Papias believed in a literal
20:01
Millennium based on revelation. That is brutal.
20:04
He is attacking the intelligence of a man who was reportedly
20:07
discipled by the apostles themselves just to protect his
20:10
own allegorical theology. It is astonishing how close the
20:13
Book of Revelation came to being pushed out of the accepted texts
20:16
entirely. But it was rescued by another
20:19
major failure from Alexandria, a man named Athanasius.
20:22
Athanasius essentially saved the Book of Revelation for the
20:25
Canon. Athanasius is famous for
20:27
standing against the world on major theological issues.
20:30
He looked at the situation regarding Revelation and valued
20:34
the unanimous early historic consensus of the Church over the
20:37
biased modern critical theories of Dionysius and Eusebius.
20:41
Athanasius recognized that the earliest Christians, the ones
20:45
closest to the apostles in time and geography, uniformly
20:49
accepted the Apostle John as the author.
20:51
Figures like Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, and Tertullian all
20:54
affirmed it. Athanasius trusted that early
20:57
collective witness over the speculative literary analysis of
21:01
the 3rd and 4th centuries. This brings us to a crucial
21:03
synthesis for you listening right now, we can draw 4 core
21:07
principles from this historical myth. 4 principles for
21:10
evaluating ancient texts. The first principle, theological
21:13
bias, heavily distorts objective textual analysis.
21:16
Dionysius hated the idea of a literal Millennium and that bias
21:20
blinded into the actual textual data.
21:22
He twisted facts and fabricated statistics to fit his preferred
21:25
theology. The second principle is vital
21:28
for understanding early Christian history.
21:31
For the early Church, Apostolic authorship was the primary
21:34
requirement for canonicity. A book was considered
21:38
authoritative because it was tied directly to an apostle who
21:41
was commissioned by Christ. If you remove the Apostle John
21:45
as the author, the Book of Revelation loses its claim to be
21:48
authoritative scripture. The early Church understood this
21:51
mechanism, which is why Dionysius attacked the
21:54
authorship rather than the contents directly.
21:56
Principle #3 Relying solely on internal literary evidence like
22:01
grammar, counting, and vocabulary lists to overturn a
22:04
strong ancient consensus is highly subjective and incredibly
22:08
dangerous. You can cherry pick data to
22:10
prove almost anything you set out to prove, just as Dionys
22:13
Anesius did with his fabricated list of 19 missing words.
22:16
And the fourth principle, ancient traditions preserved by
22:19
the earliest Christians, are remarkably reliable.
22:22
The believers in the 1st and 2nd centuries living in Ephesus
22:25
we're not ignorant. They knew who lived in their
22:27
city and who wrote their texts. Assuming that modern critics
22:30
sitting hundreds of years later always know better and can
22:34
overrule early testimony based on subjective literary analysis
22:38
is an arrogant historical posture.
22:40
We owe a high level of respect to the collective accuracy and
22:43
integrity of those early Christian communities.
22:46
Having completely dismantled the arguments against John's
22:49
authorship, let us pivot and build the positive case.
22:53
Let us look at the hidden linguistic fingerprints that
22:56
prove the Apostle John really did write the Book of
22:59
Revelation. Because when you look closely at
23:01
the Greek text, the documents are astonishingly connected.
23:04
Where should we begin with the vocabulary parallels?
23:07
We should begin with a massive theological concept.
23:10
Across the entire New Testament, only the Gospel of John and the
23:13
Book of Revelation call Christ the Word.
23:16
In Greek, the phrase is ho logos.
23:18
This is a uniquely Johannian fingerprint.
23:21
No other New Testament writer uses this specific title for
23:25
Jesus. And it gets even more specific
23:26
than a title. Both texts uniquely quote
23:29
Zechariah chapter 12, verse 10. They shall look on him whom they
23:32
pierced. You find this quotation in John
23:35
19.37 describing the crucifixion, and you find it
23:39
again in Revelation 1.7 describing Christ's return.
23:43
Can you explain the fascinating mechanism at work in the
23:46
original languages here? This is a major smoking gun.
23:49
Usually when New Testament writers quote the Old Testament,
23:52
they use the Septuagint. The Septuagint is the standard
23:55
Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament created by
23:58
scholars in Alexandria centuries earlier.
24:00
It was the default Bible of the early church, but in this
24:04
specific instance, both the Gospel of John and the Book of
24:07
Revelation completely ignore the standard Septuagint translation.
24:11
Instead, they both bypass the Greek and translate directly
24:14
from the Hebrew text, and they both use the highly specific
24:17
Greek verb acentio, which means I Pierce.
24:21
This word perfectly matches the original Hebrew text of
24:23
Zechariah, but it differs completely from the vocabulary
24:26
used in the Septuagint. To have two books use the exact
24:30
same highly unusual, independent translation of a specific Hebrew
24:33
word is an undeniable authorial fingerprint.
24:36
It points directly to a single author who knew Hebrew and chose
24:40
to translate it his own unique way.
24:42
That is the kind of hard evidence that is impossible to
24:45
dismiss as coincidence. We also see shared unique terms
24:49
across the books. The Greek word Arnaudian for
24:52
lamb is used extensively in Revelation to describe Christ.
24:56
And the only other place that appears in the entire New
24:58
Testament is in the Gospel of John chapter 21.
25:00
Both. Books use the rare verb sknu,
25:03
meaning to Tabernacle or dwell. Both books share the distinct
25:07
theological concept of offering living water.
25:10
But let us move from vocabulary to syntax.
25:13
What does the statistical data on grammatical quirks tell us?
25:16
The statistical data heavily favors a single author.
25:20
You mentioned articular participles earlier.
25:22
Let us explain what that actually is.
25:24
Think of an articular participle as a very specific linguistic
25:27
habit in English. It would be like a writer
25:30
constantly referring to the running man instead of the man
25:33
who runs. It is a quirky way of
25:34
constructing a sentence in Greek using a participle with a
25:37
definite article. The frequency rate of this
25:40
construction per 1000 words is incredibly high in the Johannian
25:43
letters. First, John is at 19.6.
25:46
Second, John is 20.4. Third John is 18.3.
25:50
In the Book of Revelation, it sits right in that same tight
25:53
cluster at 17.7. To give you context, the average
25:57
frequency for the entire higher New Testament is just 11.4.
26:01
This statistical probability of these texts sharing the specific
26:05
high frequency grammatical habit by pure coincidence is
26:09
practically 0. TAD is brilliant.
26:11
It is a mathematical fingerprint.
26:13
You cannot fake a subconscious grammatical habit across
26:16
multiple documents. Are there other syntax anomalies
26:18
like that? Yes, another massive statistical
26:21
anomaly is the use of the Anarthrus Jesus.
26:24
In Greek, writers typically put the definite article before a
26:27
proper name, so grammatically they would write the Jesus.
26:31
And an arthrous use means writing the name Jesus without
26:34
the definite article. The Gospel of John uses the
26:36
Anthrus Jesus in astonishing 93 times.
26:40
Revelation uses it 9 times. First, John uses it five times.
26:43
In stark contrast, the Apostle Paul and the Apostle Peter
26:46
almost never rate the name this way.
26:47
It is a highly specific, idiosyncratic writing habit
26:50
entirely unique to John. We also see the text sharing
26:53
common ways of expressing time in action.
26:55
Both books frequently use the partative eek, which means some
26:59
of. They also share a very specific
27:01
use of the futuristic present tense of the verb erkumai,
27:05
meaning I come. Both books use this present
27:08
tense to stress the absolute salute, imminence, and certainty
27:11
of Christ's return. Beyond the grammar and syntax,
27:14
we see distinct conceptual parallels.
27:16
In both the Gospel and Revelation, Christ refers to God
27:20
uniquely as my Father. The title Son of Man functions
27:23
in both books, specifically as a judge who executes divine
27:26
justice. Furthermore, both texts draw
27:29
distinct, sharp dividing lines between genuine believers and
27:32
superficial followers. The author does not do nuance
27:35
well when it comes to spiritual allegiance.
27:37
You are either in the light or in the darkness.
27:40
You are of the truth or of the lie.
27:42
That sharp, uncompromising binary is a hallmark of John's
27:45
mind. So we have all these undeniable
27:47
connections. The statistical syntax.
27:49
The shared translation of Zechariah.
27:50
The sharp conceptual binaries. But to maintain total
27:53
objectivity here, we have to admit an obvious reality.
27:56
If you sit down and read the Gospel of John and then you read
27:59
the Book of Revelation, Revelation reads differently.
28:01
The tone is aggressive, the structure feels chaotic.
28:05
So how do we reconcile these distinct stylistic differences
28:10
if the author is the exact same person?
28:12
Gave us a few theories that scholars suggest.
28:14
Some scholars suggest John used a secretary and Emanuensis, who
28:18
heavily edited the Greek for him in the Gospel to make it
28:21
smoother, but did not edit Revelation.
28:24
But we have to reject that theory.
28:26
Heavy secretarial changes conflict with the core doctrine
28:29
of divine inspiration. The Orthodox belief is that God
28:32
inspired the author's words, not a secretary's heavy-handed edits
28:36
to the point where the author would not even recognize his own
28:39
work. Another theory is a long time
28:41
lapse. People change how they write
28:43
over 40 or 50 years. Could that explain the
28:46
difference in grammar and tone? The dating constraint rules out
28:49
a massive time lapse. The historical evidence strongly
28:52
suggests the Gospel of John, the Epistles, and the Apocalypse
28:55
were all written within a very tight window, likely between
28:58
8085 and 8095. You do not completely forget how
29:02
to write normal Greek syntax in a span of 10 years.
29:04
So it is not a secretary and is not a long passage of time.
29:08
It comes down to genre and the author's mental state.
29:11
Writing a historical narrative like the Gospel requires a
29:14
completely a different literary framework than writing
29:18
apocalyptic literature. How does the genre affect the
29:20
grammar? This is where the research of
29:22
scholar Verne Poythras is incredibly illuminating.
29:26
Poythras analyzed the Book of Revelation and categorized the
29:29
text into two distinct styles, visionary narrative and
29:32
expository discourse. Expository discourse is when the
29:36
author is just explaining something directly to the
29:38
reader, like the introduction and conclusion of the book.
29:41
Poythras found that when revelation switches to
29:44
expository discourse, its conjunctions and sentence
29:47
structures match the Gospel of John perfectly.
29:50
So the weird broken grammar isn't everywhere in the book.
29:52
No, the weird fractured grammar only happens during the
29:56
visionary sequences. When John is describing the
29:58
actual visions of multi headed beasts, falling stars, angels
30:02
and cosmic judgments, that is when the Greek language
30:05
completely breaks down. Which leads to a fascinating
30:08
conclusion about his mental state.
30:10
The text repeatedly describes John's prophetic state as being
30:14
in the Spirit, in Greek, in Numati.
30:18
We see this in Revelation 1.10, Four point 2, and so on.
30:22
Do we think that this unusual, intense prophetic state
30:25
radically altered his normal cognitive and linguistic
30:28
expression? That is the most logical
30:30
synthesis of the evidence. He became a product of his
30:32
prophetic state. The sheer intensity of receiving
30:35
direct apocalyptic visions resulted in a fractured, intense
30:39
and grammatically unusual output.
30:42
He was experiencing things that standard human language was
30:44
never designed to handle. It is like trying to run a
30:47
massive modern video game through a computer from the
30:50
1990s. Oh, that is a great way to think
30:52
about it. The hardware John's human brain
30:54
and his standard Greek vocabulary simply does not have
30:57
the processing capacity to render the cosmic divine visions
31:00
he is seeing in real time. The system overloads, the
31:04
grammar fractures, and the language bends until it
31:06
completely breaks. That analogy perfectly captures
31:09
the mechanism at work. When John is writing his Gospel,
31:12
he is reflecting on historical events from decades past.
31:16
He has time to process, to choose his words carefully, to
31:19
structure his narrative. But when he is in the Spirit
31:22
receiving the Apocalypse, he is overwhelmed by the immediate,
31:26
terrifying reality of the Divine Presence.
31:28
The grammatical anomalies are not the result of ignorance.
31:31
They are the byproduct of overwhelming awe.
31:34
To sum up our investigation for you today, we started in the 3rd
31:37
century with Dionysius of Alexandria, a Bishop who let his
31:41
political and theological hatred of a literal Millennium drive
31:44
him to create incredibly flawed, biased attacks against the
31:48
Apostle John. We watched as those weak
31:50
arguments, built on rumors and fabricated statistics, infected
31:55
early church historians like Eusebius.
31:57
But then we looked at the hard data.
31:59
We saw this thephristical vindication of John's Greek
32:02
vocabulary. We found the undeniable
32:04
linguistic fingerprints, from the shared independent
32:07
translation of Zechariah to the highly specific statistical
32:10
quirks of articular participles linking the Gospel directly to
32:13
the Apocalypse. We leave you with a final idea
32:15
to ponder. We discussed how John's mental
32:18
state while in the spirit literally fractured and altered
32:22
his standard use of Greek grammar.
32:24
What does that suggest about the sheer physiological and
32:27
psychological weight of receiving a divine vision?
32:30
Consider how encountering the Absolute Divine does not just
32:34
inform the human mind, it completely disrupts normal human
32:37
communication. It forces the human brain to
32:40
push language to its breaking point just to describe the
32:44
indescribable. It is a staggering thought to
32:46
consider the weight of that experience.
32:48
Like we said at the beginning, historical study in antiquity is
32:51
murky, but sometimes when you look close enough at the Muddy
32:54
Waters you find and the precise, undeniable fingerprints that
32:57
have been there all along. Thank you for joining us for
32:59
this deep dive into the textual history of the apocalypse.
33:03
Keep reading, keep questioning, and we will see you next time.