The Title used in the Authorized Version of our English Scriptures, and retained by the English Revisers, is “The Revelation of St. John the Divine,” a name given to the book by the early church, though many of the older manuscripts omit “the Divine”. Our American Revisers read, “The Revelation of John;” but the more correct title is the one that is commonly used, and that is printed in the upper margin of the text, simply “The Revelation,” i. e. the unveiling, or uncovering [viz. of the mystery of the divine purpose and method in human life and history]—the opening words of the book itself—or, if preferred, the original Greek name, “The Apocalypse”,(9) which perhaps should have been retained without translation as in the Douay Version, but of which “The Revelation” is the exact equivalent. The phrase “of St. John”, or “of John”, may properly be omitted because of its ambiguity; for the book is declared in its opening sentence to be “the Revelation of Jesus Christ”, i. e. a revelation of or from Jesus Christ, and it is only in a secondary sense “the Revelation of John”, i. e. a revelation made to and recorded by John. The occasion for the use of this title, “The Revelation of St. John”, in the first centuries was in order to distinguish the canonical Apocalypse from many others then in circulation, but this necessity has long since ceased to exist. For us it stands alone, it is _the_ Apocalypse, the Revelation.
That the Author of the Revelation was named John we have no reason to doubt, if we believe the statements of the book itself, for this is distinctly affirmed three different times.(10) He is also further described in one form of the title as “the Divine,” i. e. the one who discoursed about God, or the theologian. This latter designation, though of uncertain origin and date, and omitted by the American Revisers as without sufficient support, is yet undoubtedly as old as the latter part of the third century(11) while it may be much older, and has therefore some claim to traditional authority. The title, however, in any form is subsequent to the book itself. The statements of the Author concerning himself and his relations to the church in Asia, appear to the general reader to be decisive, and to indicate with sufficient clearness that the writer was none other than John the son of Zebedee, the apostle whom Jesus loved, though this is not the view of the majority of the later critics. Some consider it to be the work of another John known to tradition as the Presbyter;(12) others attribute it to an unknown author of that name, or to some one writing under that name. But notwithstanding the frequency and positiveness with which the Apostolic Authorship and the Unity of the Book have been called in question during the last half century, the entire results of critical research may with some confidence be said not to have discredited either of them.(13)