Who wrote the book of Revelation?

Fundamentalists and conservative evangelicals in the pews — and still many in pulpits and even a fair bit in academia — stand by the idea that the “beloved disciple” John did.

Well, there may have been SOME John behind it. But, not that one.

That person didn’t write the Gospel of John, nor three letters attributed to him.

In fact, one person wrote John 1-20 (NOT counting the later "Hymn of the Logos, John 1:1-18) whether working from an original “Signs Gospel” or not, another appended John 21, somehow, later than that, John 7:53-8:11, the woman in adultery story got appended, and the whole schmeer, either before or after the adultery pericope, likely had some sort of editor or two, in multiple times, fighting back and forth between pro-Gnostic and anti-Gnostic takes on the whole ball of wax.

And, a different person yet, in all likelihood, wrote the three letters.

And, none of them wrote Revelation, and certainly didn’t write its core. Indeed, the likely author of that has nothing to do with any of the above, I venture.

The book almost certainly has a non-Christian core. That background has been discussed by James Tabor, as influenced by an older contemporary, J. Massyngberd Ford.

Ford wrote the original Anchor Bible volume on Revelation.

Here's my review of the volume on Amazon.

Her idea? John the Baptizer wrote it.

James Tabor offers his reconstruction of a pre-Christian text of Revelation

This is based on an earlier post speculating it was likely it had such a core.

As Tabor notes, he has an academic relationship with Ford.

They both seem to be on the right track, but neither seems totally correct.

I believe, contra Ford, that a follower of the Baptizer wrote it after his death, not John the B himself.

Accepting Paul's comment in Galatians as true, as well as others in Acts, John had disciples in Asia Minor. Given that its provenance has always been considered to be there, and many of the elements in the non-Christian core seem to fit the times of the 60s CE, that fits the idea of a “Mandean” (to use an anachronistic word) core, but not one from John himself. For that same reason, there’s no need to follow Tabor's specifics in trying to anchor Revelation to his pseudo-Clementines take on the whole New Testament and claim it is reflecting 40s-50s Judean politics.

Rather, it should be seen as the reaction of 60s-era diaspora apocalyptic Jews to the Temple Revolt.

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