About St. John
About St. John
Knowledge of the life of St. John of Patmos (also known as the
'Theologian' or the 'Divine'), the author of the Book of Revelation,
which includes the letters to the seven Churches of Asia Minor,
mostly comes from apocryphal stories recorded after his death.
Christian tradition i
den�tifies him with Other New Testament figures
of the same name, St. John the Evangelist, the traditional author of
the Fourth Gospel who is also claimed to be St. John the Apostle.
The accounts of the Gospels agree that the lat�ter is the son of Zebedee; together with his brother James (the Greater), he decided
to follow Christ while fishing in the lake Galilee. He became one of
Christ's closest dis�ciples and is said to have been with him on
various sig�nificant occasions such as the Transfiguration and the
Crucifixion. According to the Fourth Gospel, also known as the
Gospel of John (In 19:26-27), on the cross:
When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple there whom he loved,
he said to his mother, Woman, behold, your son. ' Then he said to
the disciple, 'Be�hold, your mother. ' And from that hour the
disciple took her into his home.
The disciple whom he loved is thought to have been St. John. He is
said to have been martyred like his brother St. James and buried in
Jerusalem. Another tradition holds that taking the Virgin with him,
St. John traveled to Ephesus in Asia Minor, was exiled to the island
of Patmos, wrote the Fourth Gospel and the Book of Revelation there
and finally returned to Ephesus where he died and was buried. The
second half of the first century was full of disasters for the early
Christians.
The Romans at first regarded Christianity as a new
Jewish movement. Like the others it 'was expected to disappear or
survive as a sect after the crucifixion of Christ.
When this did not happen and Christians began to challenge (probably
not in quantity but in essence) the accepted doctrine of the
Synagogue and Rome, its leaders were caught and eliminated. St.
Stephen and St. James the less (the traditional brother of Christ)
were stoned to death and St. James the Greater put to the sword. St.
Peter and St. Paul were taken to Rome and executed. Many believers
had to leave Palestine and seek shelter in other countries. It is
during this period, probably during the Jewish Revolt (66-70) which
ended with the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem that
St. John, taking the Virgin with him, traveled to Ephesus.
At that time Ephesus probably had a population of over hundred and
fifty thousand, which must have included a large number of Jews, and
about a thousand or more Jewish and Gentile Christians. Following
the Jewish Re�volt, Jews and Jewish Christians of the diaspora began
to lose
their favorable position in Roman eyes and fall into
disgrace. To the discontent of the Jews, the Gentile Christians,
since they had not participated in the revolt, were treated better.
However by this time the solid Christian communities established
during the first missionary wave had been weakened by dissensions
and declining numbers. On arriving in Ephesus , St. John was shocked
to see how some Christians had compromised with pagan practices, a
situation which he refers to in his first letter of the Revelation.
This is addressed to the Christians in Ephesus.
The first part of the major ancient source which is thought to have
narrated the arrival and first stay of St. John in Ephesus is lost.
What survives relates mostly to his return from Patmos exile; how he
began proclaiming the Gospel in Ephesus , his contests with both
pagans and heretics among his own community, his miracles and his
death there.
In the Book of Revelation St. John does not give any detailed
information about the cause of his exile. He merely says that he was
exiled to Patmos on account of the word of God and the testimony of
Christ (Rv1 :9). Preaching was not a capital crime which would lead
to banishment.
As long as they did not cause disturbances the Roman
administration allowed the people under their rule to worship
whatever god or cult they chose. Chris�tians were not regarded as
criminals in Roman eyes but members of an illicit religion.
When he was serving as the governor of the province of Bithynia, the
younger Pliny wrote to Trajan asking the emperor's advice on what to
do with the Christians whose numbers kept on increasing. The
governor admitted that although he executed Christians as his
predecessors had done, he did not know the exact nature of their
crime. Pliny's letter is the first documented account of Christian
presence in Anatolia. Trajan, although in the course of time he
changed his opinion, did not regard the Christians as dangerous.
In Ephesus it is probable that St. John was accused of being an
agitator. Being the most prominent figure of his group he might have
been chosen to serve as an example. The worst punishment reserved
for criminals not sentenced to death, was to strip them of their
civil rights and material possessions and banish them to a remote
cor�ner of the empire or to an isolated spot. If St. John had been
accused of refusing to sacrifice to the imperial cult, especially
the cult of Domitian (81-96) which was then established in Ephesus ,
this would have been a capital crime punishable by death. The huge
edifice to the south of the state agora in Ephesus was the first
temple of the imperial cult erected in Anatolia and its impact must
have been on the Christians in this city.
A late Greek tradition has it that after arriving in Ephesus the
story of St. John's miracles reached the ears of Domitian and he was
called to Rome. Here his power was tested in front of the emperor by
making him drink a cup of poison which killed a criminal but did not
harm him, and by
asking him to raise a girl who had supposedly been
slain by an evil spirit. Domitian, impressed by what he had
witnessed, decided only to banish him to Patmos. His banishment
lasted until the death of the emperor.
A tradition popular only among Latin authors, relates that St. John
was first taken to Rome as prisoner upon the order of the emperor
and cast into a cauldron of hot oil at the Latin Gate (the origin of
the feast of St. John 'Port Latin' or at the 'Latin Gate,' May 6),
but he came out unscathed.
The place chosen to banish St. John was one of the volcanic islands
scattered in the Aegean about eighty kilometers south of Ephesus ,
and was used as a penal colony. A later Byzantine chronicle refers
to the island as being 'deserted and uncultivated, covered with and
made impassable by thorns and shrubs, and by reason of its aridity
completely barren', St. John was exiled to Patmos together with his
young disciple Prochorus, one of the deacons of the Jerusalem church
(Acts 6:5). On the way to Patmos he rescued a boy who fell from the
ship into the sea. The length of his exile is claimed to have been
one and half, or five or fifteen years. During his stay there he did
not stop preaching the Gospel and converting the inhabitants. A
tradition has it that when his activity was heard at the Temple of
Apollo, the priests asked help from a famous magician called Kynops
whose most popular trick was to jump into the sea and come out after
a while, unharmed. In front of the witnesses challenging St. John,
he did the same.
St. John extended his arms in the form of a cross and prayed '0
Thou, who didst grant to Moses by this similitude to over�throw the
Amalek, 0 Lord Jesus Christ, bring down Kynops to the deep of the
sea; let him never more behold this sun, nor converse with living
men', After a short while the pet�rified body of the magician
surfaced as a rock on the water a short distance away. The local
fishermen claim that to this day the bad taste of the shellfish
caught around ther rock derives from this magician. On Patmos St.
John was unchained and free to go wherever he wished. It was in a
grotto on Patmos that he wrote the Fourth Gospel and received the
visions of the last book of the New Testament known as the Book of
Revelation. Some of the imagery, for instance:
Then the sky was divided like a torn scroll curling up, and every
mountain and island was moved from its place. (Rv 6:14) or Every island fled, and mountains dis�appeared
(Rv 16:20)
is thought to have been inspired by the island. The Book of
Revelation gives few facts about St. John's life, except for the
fact that he had a Jewish background and probably a priestly
ancestry. So far as is known, he remained celibate. In art he is
often shown as an old man on Patmos, seated and writing his book,
standing or sitting in front of a cave and looking up into heaven,
and writing or dictating to his disciple Prochorus. Sometimes he is
shown sitting alone writing the Fourth Gospel. In such
representations the inscription on the Gospel or open scroll in his
hand or in front of his disciple Prochorus reads In the beginning
was the Word (In 1 : 1). His attribute is an eagle, because his
words carry the reader up to heaven and paper, ink, and a scroll are
the common accessories of such compositions.
St. John's Patmos exile terminated with Domitian's death. However,
his ship was wrecked on leaving Patmos and swimming on a cork St.
John landed at Miletos; from there he went to Ephesus. Afterwards he
is said to have governed the churches in Asia and given advice to
their elders until his death in the reign of Trajan (98-117). The
apocryphal tradition mentions that one day while preaching in the
Temple of Artemis the altar and other objects in the temple and half
of the temple itself, collapsed. Once he was challenged by
Aristodemus, high priest of the Temple of Artemis, the Roman Diana,
to show the superiority of the Christians' God by drinking out of a
poisoned cup. When St. John made the sign of cross over the cup, the
poison emerged in the shape of a serpent, and he drained the vessel.
St. John also restored to life two criminals under sentence of death
who had been made to test beforehand the result of the poison.
Having witnessed the miracle both Aristodemus and the procon�sul of
Ephesus are said to have accepted Christian faith. Among the other
miracles he is said to have performed in Ephesus was the raising of
Drusiana, a widow with whom he had lodged before he was exiled to
Patmos. As her funeral passed by she sat up in her coffin at St.
John's command and went home to prepare a meal for him. During his
residence in Ephesus he is claimed to have gone to Smyrna where he
won St. Polycarp to Christianity and made him the bishop of the
city.
Another tradition claims that during his last years St. John built a
hut on the isolated Ayasuluk hill and lived there and wrote the
fourth book of the New Testament known by his name. He is thought to
have died at a great age, claimed to have been a hundred and twenty,
around the year 100 and to be buried on the hill. This may be the
reason why he is sometimes depicted as a very old man with a long
white beard, even when he is in the early years of his life in
Palestine.
According to tradition, after his tomb was dug, he laid himself down
in it and gave up his spirit. The following day his body was not
found because presumably he had ascended to heaven. Another
tradition claims that only his sandals were found and the earth over
his grave was moving as if stirred by his breathing. The Latin
tradition has it that after his prayer there appeared over him a
great light at which no one could look; then he laid himself down
and gave up his ghost. Immediately manna issued from his tomb and
continued issuing forth. By the end of the second century most of
the churches in western Anatolia regarded him as their founder.
About St. John
St. John and The Seven Churches
Letters to Seven Churches
Map of Seven Churches
The Book of Revelation
The Early Christians
The Gospel of St. John