9.1. Apostolic Authorship Opposed

² “The first to reject apostolic authorship was Marcion, the second-century Gnostic who rejected all non-Pauline books (apart from an edited version of Luke) . . . because of their Jewish influence. Dionysius . . . was the first to develop a series of arguments for his position, . . . Dionysius believed that ‘another (unknown) John’ wrote Revelation.”—Grant R. Osborne, Revelation (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2002), 3.

³ “Toward the middle of the third century Dionysius the Great, bishop of Alexandria, in his opposition to millenarianism and apparently influenced by Caius, took up anew the question of the authenticity of the Apocalypse . . . concluding that the John who wrote it was not the Apostle, he nevertheless accepted it as divinely inspired . . . The criticism of so illustrious a figure in the church as Dionysius could not fail to exert influence, especially in Egypt and the east.”—Beckwith, The Apocalypse of John, 341.

⁴ “Twelve of the nineteen terms or expressions with which Dionysius says the Apocalypse has no connection or affinity . . . are found in the book, some of them with great frequency.”—Robert L. Thomas, Revelation 1-7 (Chicago, IL: Moody Press, 1992), 6-7.

⁵ “Following in his [Dionysius’] footsteps Eusebius, . . . bishop of Caesarea . . . saw a second John as the author of the book.”—Beckwith, The Apocalypse of John, 341.

⁶ [Osborne, Revelation, 3], [John MacArthur, Revelation 1-11 : The MacArthur New Testament Commentary (Chicago, IL: Moody Press, 1999), 6].

⁷ “The Dutch reformer Desiderius Erasmus, German reformer Martin Luther, and Swiss reformer Ulrich Zwingli . . . all regarded it as a nonapostolic work. All three did so largely because it teaches a literal thousand-year earthly reign of Christ. Essentially, John Calvin and Luther simply ignored John’s Revelation.”—Crutchfield, “Revelation in the New Testament,” 33.