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