Indications that Revelation was written before AD 60

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For the Preterist position to be valid, a date for Revelation of at least pre-AD 70 is foundational.  Internal evidence of the book itself should take precedence over any historical testimony.  There are those holding the Preterist position who have already written thorough treatments of a pre-AD 70 date by using these internal evidences as well as the historians' testimonies, including Irenaeus, who is typically misunderstood as "proving" a late date.

The following post is not an attempt to repeat this same groundwork that others have laid down.  I am taking internal evidence in a somewhat different direction in order to prove that Revelation was written, not only before AD 70, but even earlier - PRIOR TO AD 60.  Some of these points I have already introduced on this forum elsewhere, but I thought perhaps it might be well to collect them all under one heading here in order to locate them more readily.  As a caution to those who prefer short, snappy comments, this is a bit longer study that is divided into several sections based on the 5 points of focus below.

A pre-AD 60 date is proved by triangulating the dates for the following events or time periods found in Revelation:

#1)  -  the persecution of the church at Smyrna from the probable dates of AD 60-70
#2)  -  the Laodicean earthquake of AD 60
#3)  -  the identity and time in office (AD 63) for the 7th king from the scarlet beast of Rev. 17
#4)  -  the time interval necessary for the dispersion throughout the Christian world of John's letters to the 7 churches
#5)  -  the 666-year history, prior to the year John wrote Revelation, of the Sea Beast in Rev. 13 with its leopard, bear, and lion features. 

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To begin with #1), Smyrna's church, as of John's writing, had some of her members who were ABOUT TO BE THROWN INTO PRISON by Satan/the adversary, and she was ABOUT TO SUFFER TRIBULATION FOR 10 DAYS (Rev. 2:10).  This soon-coming "ten days" cannot be a literal number of 10 twenty-four hour days, anymore than the fall of Babylon/Jerusalem took "one hour" of 60 minutes to accomplish (Rev. 18:10).

I believe it is symbolic of 10 YEARS, with a probable ending point of no later than AD 70.  This would indicate a tribulation that started around AD 60.  Although this could not apply to the Neronic period of oppression, (which started in AD 64 after Rome's "deadly wound" by the fire which demolished much of the capitol city), it most definitely applies to the persecution originating from Ephesus, as a reaction to Paul's intense 3 years of ministry to that area (Acts 20:31), which had saturated all of Asia with its effect (Acts 19:10).

This persecution was perpetrated not only by the Jewish population who hated Paul's message (Acts 19:9), but also by the league of silversmiths led by Demetrius.  This man jump-started that riot against Paul, whose teaching was endangering their craft which served the temple of Diana (Acts 19:24-27).  The Ephesian riot occurred around AD 57, and the seriousness of this genuine "tribulation" is described by Paul to the Corinthians in II Cor. 1:8 (Interlinear).  "For not do we wish you to be ignorant brethren, as to our tribulation which happened to us in Asia, that excessively we were burdened beyond our power, so as to despair even of living." 

The persecution originating from Ephesus would soon have fanned out to affect all the nearby 7 churches of Asia, INCLUDING SMYRNA, some 30 plus miles away.  This is when her 10 days/years of persecution  would have started, as repercussions following the AD 57 Ephesian riot.  In vastly-understated terms, it is called "no small stir about That Way" found in Acts 19:23.  Priscilla and Aquila in their ministry to Paul in this region were said by him to have "laid down their necks" for his life's sake (Rom. 16:3-4).  So the label of "tribulation" for this time period is not an exaggeration.

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Next, as to point #2), the Laodicean earthquake is often used as proof of a late date for Revelation.  Those who argue for a late date will point to this AD 60 event as proof that the Laodiceans could not possibly have had enough time to experience the devastation of the quake, rebuild the city, and then have a long enough period of time go by for the church to become complacent, comfortable, and "lukewarm" in their faith before the siege of Jerusalem in AD 70 had taken place. 

I contend that this Laodicean earthquake date of AD 60, according to Tacitus, is proof that Revelation is written just prior to the AD 60 quake.  The Laodicean church was rebuked through John's writing for voicing her self-satisfied assurance of wealth and comfort.  The language they were using to prove how well-off they were is hardly the manner that would be adopted by a church recuperating from a disastrous earthquake a few years earlier. 

Christ's warning to the Laodicean church is that "I am ABOUT TO SPUE YOU OUT OF MY MOUTH".  This imminent "spueing her out of His mouth" is speaking of the soon-coming earthquake in AD 60, which was about to shake up this smug, wealthy church, so that she would realize how ill-equipped her faith really was, spiritually speaking, to face the surge of disasters that would accompany the end of the age in AD 70.

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For point #3), the following is used to prove a composition date for Revelation that is in a time period before AD 63.  It involves the much-discussed list of kings from the scarlet beast of Revelation 17.  It had 7 heads, which were not only 7 mountains (the 7 hills that Jerusalem sat upon - Mt. of Olives, etc.), but the 7 heads also represented 7 kings.  The 6th king on the list of these 7 kings of Revelation 17 is not nearly as important as the term in office for the 7th king when it comes to dating Revelation.  But how are these kings to be defined?

In disagreement with many Preterists who pin the identification of the 6th king on Nero, (and arrive at an AD 66-68 date for Revelation), I'm afraid the list of 7 kings on this Scarlet Beast has absolutely nothing to do with the 10 emperors of Rome (which are identified with the Sea Beast instead), and everything to do with the HIGH PRIESTS OF THE HOUSE OF ANNAS.  There were exactly 7 of them, with an 8th, a grandson of Annas, who also served as high priest in AD 65-66. 

Why should this particular family of high priests be distinguished from all other high priests who ever served?  Because Annas, as the patriarch of this conniving avaricious family that is excoriated in the Talmud for their corruption, was ultimately the one responsible for the conspiracy to put Christ to death.  This family of high priests was the main feature of the rich man and Lazarus parable, which Christ gave as a condemning example of supreme greed.  Caiphas, the son-in-law of Annas, played the role of the rich man.  He wished to have Abraham send someone to "his father's house" (which would be Annas and the temple) to warn him and Caiphas' "5 brothers" (Annas' 5 sons, who also served as high priests, one after another, as they monopolized the high priesthood in the years leading up to the AD 70 era).  Israel was, after all, called a "kingdom of priests" by God in Exodus 19:6.  Her royalty was originally founded in her priesthood, not her kings, such as Saul, David, Solomon, etc.

I can claim that these high priests are called "kings of the earth" (ge - the land of Israel - not kings of Rome) by quoting Christ himself from Matthew 17:25.  "Of whom do the KINGS OF THE EARTH take custom or tribute? of their own children (sons) or of strangers (others)?"  The entire thrust of Christ's question to Peter was to demonstrate that Christ, (who would become our high priest), as a true Son of His Father's House (the temple), had every right to be exempt from paying the half-shekel temple tax collected by the agents of the "kings of the earth" - the high priests.  These high priests and their sons were exempt from paying this half-shekel temple tax themselves - they were "free" from that obligation.  To demonstrate His utter humility, Christ used the coin Peter pried out of the fish's mouth to pay it anyway.

Using this true definition of "kings" as high priests, the list of kings in Rev. 17 and the rather odd language describing their actions aligns perfectly with the appointment and tenure of each of the 7 and the 8th high priest coming from the House of Annas.  Here is how Revelation 17 reads, (with this understanding of "kings"/high priests in place), when it is held up side by side with a chronology of the dates of appointments for the high priests of the 1st century.

Revelation 17:8  -  "The (scarlet) beast that thou sawest WAS"  (the Judean Scarlet Beast which originated as an independent kingdom of Israel in approximately 142 BC after the Maccabean victories),   "and IS NOT"  (because this Scarlet Beast of an independent kingdom of Israel was lost after almost 80 years when Pompey subjected Judea to Roman tribute in 63 BC)  "and IS ABOUT TO ASCEND OUT OF THE BOTTOMLESS PIT'  (the abyss being the equivalent of a state of death, as it is compared to in Rom. 10:7 - by this we can see that the Scarlet Beast of an independent kingdom of Israel was about to revive when the Zealot uprising would throw off the yoke of Roman governance in AD 66 - the beginning of the Roman / Jewish war)  "and go into destruction"  (because this temporary independence for Israel under the Zealot uprising lasted only until Israel was crushed by the Romans at the close of the AD 70 siege).

Revelation 17:10  -  "and there are 7 kings: five are fallen"  (the first 5 high priests of the House of Annas would have died as of John's writing - we know Jonathan son of Annas was murdered by the Sicarii around AD 55-56)  "and ONE IS"  (still living - which would be the former high priest Theophilus, to whom Luke was writing in Acts 1:1 and Luke 1:3 - who lived at least until Paul's 2-year imprisonment at Rome.)  "and the other IS NOT YET COME;"  (into office),  "and WHEN HE COMETH"  (Ananus son of Annas was appointed as high priest in AD 63)  "he must continue a SHORT SPACE"  (because he was deposed after serving a brief 3 months.  His offense was in overstepping the bounds of his office's authority by executing James the Just, Christ's half brother.)  "And the beast that WAS"  (the Scarlet Beast that had once existed for almost 80 years following the Maccabean victories)  "and IS NOT"  (because this independent kingdom was lost after Pompey put Judea under tribute to Rome in 63 BC, as even the disciples admitted to Christ that this independent kingdom was gone  in Acts 1:6)  "even he is AN EIGHTH"  (because the Scarlet Beast which would be revived in AD 66 under the Zealot uprising would be led by the 8th member of the House of Annas, the grandson Mattathias ben Theophilus, who served from AD 65-66)  "and is OF THE SEVEN"  (Mattathias was in the genetic line of the House of Annas)  "and goes into destruction"  (because both Mattathias and the Scarlet Beast kingdom of an independent Israel over which he was the appointed high priest leader from AD 65-66 were both destroyed by the end of the AD 70 siege).

This chronology shows us that Revelation was written at least sometime before AD 63 when Ananus, the 7th "king" / high priest of the House of Annas had been appointed as high priest.  To my mind, all of this above fits the description of Revelation 17's group of the 7 and the 8th king so much better than the rather awkward fit of the 10 emperors that belong with the Sea Beast of Rev. 13.  These 7 and 8 kings are actually on a different beast - the scarlet colored one in the wilderness (the wilderness always being indicative of a feature of Israel, not Rome).  THIS MEANS THAT THERE ARE ACTUALLY A TOTAL OF 3 BEASTS IN REVELATION - not just two.  The Sea Beast is of Gentile, Roman origin.  The Land Beast and the Scarlet Beast were both of Judaic origin.  There are too many differences between the Sea Beast and the Scarlet Beast for them to be one and the same.  They are counterparts of each other. 

Just as the faithful in Israel had been looking through the ages for The True Prophet that would come before The True Messiah, the Land Beast had rejected both John the Baptist and Jesus, and had become the False Prophet system  that was seeking to identify and advance the cause of a False Messiah that would arise from among many pseudo-Christs coming from the Scarlet Beast in the wilderness.  Each of them would claim to be the long-awaited Messiah, and by the close of the AD 70 era, they would all have been eliminated.

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Point #4) is another indication to me that Revelation could NOT have been written in the mid-60's while the Neronic persecution was in full swing.  The main purpose of John was to prepare the believers for the upcoming days of vengeance on the Jews and the war to come on the saints under Nero.  There would need to be some time for these letters of warning to filter through the churches in all the Mediterranean world for this to be beneficial.  To warn them of upcoming trials that had already begun under Nero after AD 64 would be similar to sending a warning of icebergs in the area to a sinking Titanic.

A date just prior to AD 60 for Revelation would give time for this information to work its way through the Christian "postal service", starting from the churches in Asia, and spreading to those believers nearer to Rome and to those living in Judea.  The Christian "pony express" would not have been in any kind of efficient working order after Nero had begun his AD 64 persecution.  Dead people and those in hiding can't deliver mail very well.

All this tells me that the "tribulation" that John said he was in (Rev. 1:9) should NOT be attributed to the Neronic persecution after AD 64, but to the tribulation's after-effects in Asia from the Ephesus riot around AD 57.  This is why John's epistle is addressed principally to the 7 churches in Asia, and not to those in Judea.

Patmos is just off the coast of Ephesus, and was under the jurisdiction of the Ephesian authorities.  If John truly was unsuccessfully boiled in oil, (sometime after Nero had risen to power in AD 54,as recorded by Tertullian), and then kicked out of Ephesus since that didn't succeed in killing him, I can see why he would have ended up at Patmos.  It would have been a nearby solution to dispose of his influence.  The city evidently was so inflamed at that point against Paul's teaching that Paul was forced to "sail by Ephesus" on his voyage to Jerusalem's Pentecost feast, to avoid being arrested in Ephesus and consequently miss the feast.  He stopped at Miletus instead, just below Ephesus, and sent messengers to the Ephesian elders to meet him in Miletus and bid them a final farewell from that location, knowing he would never see them again in this world.

Ephesus apparently was a powder-keg by that time.  The Ephesian Jews who also traveled to the Pentecost feast at this same time (around AD 58) were the very ones who recognized Paul and his Ephesian traveling companion, Trophimus, in the city of Jerusalem (Acts 21:27-29).  Their level of hatred for Paul and his message was still so intense that they attempted to kill him, then and there, outside of the very doors of the temple.  Which ultimately led to Paul's imprisonment and his voyage to Rome to testify of Christ, even to those in the very household of Nero himself.  As God fully intended.

The #5) point listed above is what confirms the date of Revelation most conclusively for me.  The 666 number John gave to identify the Sea Beast of Rev.13 was a number that John's readers were to "calculate", using a little wisdom.  Since the Sea Beast of Rev. 13 had lion, bear, and leopard features, these were a reflection of Daniel's ancient Beast empires of the Chaldean, the Medo-Persian, and the Greek kingdoms respectively.  This shows us that Rev. 13's Sea Beast had existed ever since the "lion" kingdom of Nebuchadnezzar's time - specifically when he came to deport the first group of Jewish captives to Babylon in 607 BC (which year is said to have begun the 70-year exile period for the Jews, prophesied by Jeremiah).

If we count forward in time 666 years from 607 BC, we arrive at the year AD 59.  What John was telling his readers to do was to count the AGE of the Sea Beast up to that time, using the number of 666 years to calculate this, from the year he was writing Revelation. 

Any semi-studious person of Jewish background would have recognized the year of the first deportation of Jews from Jerusalem in 607 BC as the beginning of those 666 years of the Sea Beast's biography.  Such a humiliating episode of Jewish history was not easily forgotten.  This means John had to have been writing Revelation around the AD 59 year, which aligns with all the previous 4 points of internal proof for dating Revelation.

Conclusion?  When the dating evidences for each of the points above intersect with each other, they lead me to conclude that Revelation's date of composition could not have been earlier than AD 59, or later than AD 60.  This may have been somewhat wearying to sift through, but I hope it proves helpful to those willing to take a serious look at this topic from a slightly different angle.  If anyone reading this can locate contradictions, gaps in logic, or incorrect material, please feel free to bring it to my attention, as I most definitely don't want to mislead anyone by what I've posted.

[notreligus]

The simple answer as to why some believe that Revelation was written prior to A.D. 60 is the timing of the reign of Nero.   Nero is claimed to have treated Christians more even harshly than Domitian, and Domitian ordered that Christianity be considered a crime against the Roman state. 

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notreligus  -  Thank you, I appreciate your taking the time to read and respond to this.

Agreed, the level of persecution for the Christians under Nero did exceed that of Domitian's reign.  However, I believe it is a persecution that hadn't materialized yet as of John's writing Rev. 1:9.  Since he had come to power in AD 54, Nero certainly was the emperor in place at the time of Revelation's composition, but Christianity had not yet been recognized as being totally distinct from Judaism at that point.  As you know, for a time, it had shared an umbrella of nominal protection that Judaism enjoyed as a state-sanctioned religion - at least, up until AD 64, at which time the fire at Rome was blamed on the Christians.  Somewhere around that time, it had come to the attention of the emperor that Judaism and Christianity did not share the same identity.

Nero's Jewish proselyte wife, Poppaea, more than likely had a hand in this.  Josephus was introduced to her in AD 63, when he went to Rome in an attempt to have a couple of accused high priests released from imperial custody.  He got a favorable reception from Poppaea, and succeeded in having the high priests freed.  We cannot know for certain that the subject of the Christian faith came up in their conversation, and enlightened the empress as to just how truly opposed to Judaism the concepts of Christianity were.  But it can't be just a coincidence that shortly thereafter, the AD 64 fire of Rome afforded Nero an opportunity to shift the blame to the Christians, whose principles of faith stood in direct opposition to his wife's religious sympathies.  (If this is the case, then Josephus was the catalyst for getting the Neronian persecution started.  As God intended for this to play out.)

You may already be familiar with the ancient Syriac Peshitta's title page for the book of Revelation which does say that John was sent to Patmos by the emperor Nero's authority.  For the sake of others who may read this, the quote is as follows:
     
     "Again the revelation which was upon the holy John the Evangelist from God when he was on the island of Patmos where he was thrown by the Emperor Nero."

We cannot infer from this statement that Nero's widespread "war with the saints" was already raging against all of Christianity when Revelation was written.  This sentence only claims that because of the testimony of the individual John himself, he alone had run afoul of the Roman authorities under Nero's rule.   The entire tone of Revelation is that of anticipation and warning of soon-coming calamity. 

My perception is that John was experiencing persecution around AD 59-60 in the aftermath of the  AD 57 Ephesian riot.  This consequently laid the groundwork for the even greater imperial persecution by Nero that targeted the Christian faith in late AD 64 following the fire at Rome.  And that Revelation was written just before AD 60, with the prospect of Nero's persecution on the horizon.