Revelation 1:9

The personality of the seer is made prominent in apocalyptic literature, to locate or guarantee any visions which are to follow. Here the authority with which this prophet is to speak is conditioned by his kinship of Christian experience with the churches and his special revelation from God. ἀδελφός (cf. Revelation 6:11; Revelation 12:10): for its pagan use as = fellow-member of the same (religious) society, cf. C. B. P. i. 96 f., and Dittenberger's Sylloge Inscr. Graec. 474, 10 (ἀδελφοὶ οἶς κοινὰ τὰ πατρῷα). θλίψει, put first as the absorbing fact of their experience, and as a link of sympathy between writer and readers; καὶ βασιλείᾳ, the outcome of θλίψις in the messianic order: distress no end in itself; καὶ ὑπομονῇ, patient endurance the moral condition of participation in ἡ θλίψις and ἡ βασιλεία, by which one is nerved to endure the presence of the former without breaking down, and to bear the temporary delay of the latter without impatience. While μακροθυμία is the absence of resentment at wrong, ὑπομονή = not giving way under trials. See Barn, ii., “the aids of our faith are fear and patience, long-suffering and self-control are our allies”; also Tertullian's famous aphorism, “ubi Deus, ibi et alumna eius, patientia scilicet”. ἐν Ἰησοῦ (a Pauline conception, only repeated in Apocalypse at Revelation 14:12), either with all three substantives or merely (cf. 2 Thessalonians 3:5) with ὑπομονή. In any case ὑπ. is closely linked to ἐν Ἰ.; such patience, as exemplified in Jesus, and inspired by him, was the cardinal virtue of the Apocalypse and its age. In the early Christian literature of this period “we cannot name anything upon which blessedness is so frequently made to rest, as upon the exercise of patient endurance” (Titius, 142). ἐγενόμην ἐν (“I found myself in”: implying that when he wrote he was no longer there), not by flowing waters (as frequently, e.g., En. xiii. 7), but in the small, treeless, scantily populated island of Patmos, one of the Sporades, whither criminals were banished sometimes by the Roman authorities (Plin. Hist. Nat. iv. 12, 23). Relegatio to an island was not an infrequent form of punishment for better-class offenders or suspects under the black régime of Domitian, as under Diocletian for Christians (cf. Introd. § 6). No details are given, but probably it meant hard labour in the quarries, and was inflicted by the pro-consul of Asia Minor. Why John was only banished, we do not know. As “the word of God and the witness of Jesus” are not qualified by any phrase such as ὅσα εἶδεν (Revelation 1:2, and thereby identified with the present Apocalypse), the words indicate as elsewhere (cf. διὰ, κ. τ. λ., reff.) the occasion of his presence in Patmos, i.e., his loyalty to the gospel (cf. θλίψις), rather than the object of his visit. The latter could hardly be evangelising (Spitta), for Patmos was insignificant and desolate, nor, in face of the use of διὰ, can the phrase mean “for the purpose of receiving this revelation” (Bleek, Lücke, Düsterdieck, Hausrath, B. Weiss, Baljon, etc.). Either he had voluntarily withdrawn from the mainland to escape the stress of persecution (which scarcely harmonises with the context or the general temper of the book) or for solitary communion (cf. Ezekiel 1:1-3), or, as is more likely, his removal was a punishment (cf. Abbott, 114 16). The latter view is corroborated by tradition (cf. Zahn, § 64, note 7), which, although later and neither uniform nor wholly credible, is strong enough to be taken as independent evidence. It can hardly be explained away as a mere elaboration of the present passage (so, e.g., Reuss, Bleek, Bousset); the allusion to μαρτύριον is too slight to have been suggested by the darker sense of martyrdom, and it is far-fetched to argue that the tradition was due to a desire to glorify John with a martyrdom. Unless, therefore, the reference is a piece of literary fiction (in which case it would probably have been elaborated) it must be supposed to be vague simply because the matter was perfectly familiar to the circle for whom the book was written. It is to those exercised in prudence, temperance, and virtue that (according to Philo, de incorrupt, mundi, § 1, cf. Plutarch's discussion in defect. orac. 38 f.) God vouchsafes visions, but John introduces his personal experience in order to establish relations between himself and his readers rather than to indicate the conditions of his theophany.