Revelation 1:11

Revelation 1:11, γράψον (cf. Herm. Vis. II. iv. 3); this emphasis put upon the commission to compose and circulate what he sees in the vision, is due to the author's claim of canonical authority and reflects a time when a literary work of this nature still required some guarantee, although at an earlier date smaller oracles had been written and accepted (e.g., that which determined the flight of the early Christians to Pella, Eus. H. E., iii. 5, 3). John's role, however, is passive in two senses of the term. He seldom acts or journeys in his vision, whereas Jewish apocalypses are full of the movements of their seers; nor does his vision lead to any practical course of action, for unlike most of the O.T. prophet he is not conscious of any commission to preach or to reform the world. The prophet is an author. His experience is to be no luxury but a diffused benefit; and as in Tob 12:20 (“and now … write in a book all that has taken place”) and 4 Esd. 12:37 (“therefore write in a book all thou hast seen, and thou shalt teach,” etc.), the prophet is careful to explain that composition is no mere literary enterprise but due to a divine behest. The cities are enumerated from Ephesus northwards to Smyrna (forty miles) and Pergamos (fifty miles north of Smyrna), then across for forty miles S.E. to Thyatira, down to Sardis, Philadelphia (thirty miles S.E. of Sardis), and Laodicea (forty miles S.E. of Philadelphia). Cf. on Revelation 1:4 and Introd. § 2. Except Pergamos and Laodicea, the churches lay within Lydia (though the writer employs the imperial term for the larger province) which was at that period a by-word for voluptuous civilisation.