[Remotectrlctr-users] S a brief summary of the historic evidence by which the Bible,

[McClod <con...@me...>]

 back upon the Hebrew idioms with which he was so familiar. Finally we
must remember that, after the analogy of the Old Testament prophecies,
this prophetic book is expressed in _poetic diction_. It is full of
images borrowed from the old Hebrew prophets, often spiritualized and
applied in a higher sense. Looking to the imagery alone, one may well
call this book a _grand anthology_ of the old Hebrew poets. But the
poetic diction of one and the same writer may differ widely from his
prose style, as we see in the case of Moses, Isaiah, and Jeremiah. If
the above considerations do not wholly remove the difficulty under
consideration they greatly relieve it. The apostolic authorship of the
fourth gospel and the first epistle of John is sustained by a mass of
evidence that cannot be set aside. That the same John also wrote the
visions of the Apocalypse is attested, as we have seen, by the almost
unanimous voice of antiquity. Far greater difficulties are involved in
the denial of the ancient tradition of the church than in the admission
of it. 3. The _date_ of the Apocalypse has been a matter of much
discussion, the great question being whether it was written before or
after the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans. The external testimony
strongly preponderates on the side of a late date; for the great body of
this tradition represents the banishment of the apostle to the isle of
Patmos as having taken place under Domitian who succeeded Titus, and
reigned from A.D. 81 to 96. This supposition also agrees with the fact
that the recipients of our Lord's seven messages (chaps. 2, 3) are the
seven churches of Proconsular Asia, among whom, according to the
unanimous testimony of the primitive church, the apostle spent the
latter years of his life. The hypothesis of an earlier date is but
feebly supported by external testimony. It re