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To: topcat54; xzins

Indirectly, there is. It says it was penned while John was in exile on Patmos. We know from numerous Church fathers, Irenaeus and Eusebius among them, that Yochanan was exiled to Patmos during Domitian's reign. Therefore, the Apostle couldn't have died before Domitian's reign and was around in the 90s AD.


12 posted on 09/19/2005 10:46:08 AM PDT by Buggman (L'chaim b'Yeshua HaMashiach!<p>)
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To: Buggman; xzins
We know from numerous Church fathers, Irenaeus and Eusebius among them, that Yochanan was exiled to Patmos during Domitian's reign.

Are these the same church fathers that replaced "authentic Christianity", aka Messianic Judaism, with the gentile church?

That tradition comes to us primarily from Irenaeus through Eusebius. As I have pointed out elsewhere, the testimony of Irenaeus still amount to a tradition and is open to interpretation. He was not a firsthand witness of these events. His accuracy and precision as to what he was describing is not universally accepted.

This is how Schraff records Irenaeus' words: "We will not, however, incur the risk of pronouncing positively as to the name of Antichrist; for if it were necessary that his name should be distinctly revealed in this present time, it would have been announced by him who beheld the apocalyptic vision. For that was seen no very long time since, but almost in our day, towards the end of Domitian’s reign."

The ambiguity exist in how to interpret the phrase "For that was seen", does "that" refer to John, his vision, or the account of his vision.

John could very well have been exiled under Domitian, yet had his revelation during an earlier exile under Nero. No one has claimed that he was only exiled once.

15 posted on 09/19/2005 11:34:14 AM PDT by topcat54
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