9.4.1. Testimony of the Early Church

² “The earliest testimony recorded is that of Justin, who lived some time at Ephesus, the center of the region to which the book was sent, at a date when the generation to which it first came had not yet passed away.”—Isbon T. Beckwith, The Apocalypse of John (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2001), 349.

³ Ibid., 366-392.

⁴ “The testimony of Justin and Irenaeus is especially significant, since they lived in Ephesus and Smyrna when some of Revelation’s original readers would still have been alive. That the church could have been mistaken about who wrote Revelation virtually from the time it was written is inconceivable.”—John MacArthur, Revelation 1-11 : The MacArthur New Testament Commentary (Chicago, IL: Moody Press, 1999), 4.

⁵ “Justin Martyr in the mid-second century wrote that the apostle John was the author (Dialogue with Trypho 81.4), and this became the accepted view (so also Irenaeus, Against Heresies 4.20.11; Tertullian, Against Marcion 3.14.3; Clement of Alexandria, Paedagogus 2.108; Origen, De principiis 1.2.10).”—Grant R. Osborne, Revelation (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2002), 2-3. “Irenaeus . . . a younger contemporary of Papias and Justin . . . makes frequent and explicit reference to the Apocalypse as that of ‘John the disciple of the Lord’ and he shows distinctly that by this term he means John the Apostle. From this time on the same testimony appears generally in the fathers, e.g. Clement of Alexandrian, Tertullian, Origen, etc.”—Beckwith, The Apocalypse of John, 349-350.

⁶ “Papias . . . recognized the book, according to Andreas, as inspired, . . . from the manner in which Andreas refers to Papias’ view of the book, . . . he regarded him as agreeing with his own opinion, that the author was the Apostle.”—Beckwith, The Apocalypse of John, 349. “Papias was bishop of Hierapolis, near Laodicea, one of the seven churches.”—A. R. Fausset, “The Revelation of St. John the Divine,” in Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset, and David Brown, A Commentary, Critical and Explanatory, on the Old and New Testaments (Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 1997, 1877), Rev. 1:1.

⁷ Adela Yarbro Collins, “Book of Revelation,” in David Noel Freeman, ed., The Anchor Bible Dictionary (New York, NY: Doubleday, 1996, c1992), 5:700.

⁸ “These testimonies of persons contemporary with John’s immediate successors, and more or less connected with the region of the seven churches to which Revelation is addressed, are most convincing.”—Fausset, “The Revelation of St. John the Divine,” Rev. 1:1.

⁹ Ibid.