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The Apocalypse, or Revelation, ascribed to John, seems to have been one of many productions of the kind which appeared early in the second century. It is similar to the Revelation of Cerinthus, and may have emanated from the same source.3

Even Eusebius calls Revelation "spurious" and further relates the words of Dionysius (c. 200-265), saint and head of the Alexandrian school after Origen:

Some of our predecessors rejected the book and pulled it entirely to pieces, criticizing it chapter by chapter, pronouncing it unintelligible and illogical, and the title false. They say it is not John's and is not a revelation at all, since it is heavily veiled by its thick curtain of incomprehensibility: so far from being one of the apostles, the author of the book was not even one of the saints, or a member of the Church, but Cerinthus, the founder of the sect called Cerinthian after him ... 4

This devout and orthodox Christian writer Dionysius also admits that the author of the Gospel and Epistles attributed to John was not the same as that of Revelation. Says he:

To sum it up, anyone who examines their characteristics throughout will inevitably see that Gospel and Epistle have one and the same colour. But there is no resemblance or similarity whatever between them and Revelation; it has no connection, no relationship with them; it has hardly a syllable in common with them. Nor shall we find any mention or notion of the Revelation in the Epistle (let alone the Gospel), or of the Epistle in the Revelation.5

This debate over Revelation is a recurring theme in the early Christian writings, in which a number of fathers and doctors at one point or another express their doubts as to the authenticity of not only Revelation but also virtually every text in the canon. This skepticism is all the more peculiar considering it was claimed that the apostolic lineage was continuous and "unbroken," and that there were allegedly established churches all along whose authorities surely would have known for a fact whether or not any apostle had written biblical texts. It also reveals the tremendous amount of duplicity engaged in by clergy and biblicists who continue to present to the credulous populace that the books of the Bible were in fact written by those whose names are attached to them, knowing fully well that this assertion is false.

The book of Revelation was rejected by a number of churches, particularly the eastern ones, because they knew it was a spurious manuscript compiled from much older texts. As Pike says, "The Apocalypse or Revelations, by whomever written, belongs to the Orient and to extreme antiquity. It reproduces what is far older than itself."6 Higgins concurs:

That the work called the Apocalypse of St. John . . . is of very great antiquity is clearly proved by the fact that it makes the year only 360 days long-the same length that it is made in the third book of Genesis . . . 7

Based on its astrological imagery, Massey evinced that Revelation, rather than having been written by any apostle called John during the 1st century CE, was an ancient text dating to 4,000 years ago and relating the Mithraic legend of one of the early Zoroasters. The text has also been attributed pseudepigraphically to Horus's scribe, Aan, whose name has been passed down as "John." Jacolliot claimed that the Apocalypse/ Revelation material was gleaned from the story of Krishna/ Christna, an opinion concurred with by Hotema, who averred that the book was a text of Hindu mysteries given to Apollonius. In fact, the words "Jesus" and "Christ," and the phrase "Jesus Christ" in particular, are used sparingly in Revelation, revealing they were interpolated (long) after the book was written, as were the Judaizing elements. Indeed, it is admitted by Christians that the book was worked on by a number of hands, including those of Andrew, Bishop of Caesarea, who wrote parts of Revelation in the 6th-7tt1 centuries CE.

Despite all the brouhaha surrounding it, Revelation is not a "book of prophecy." Hotema reveals