THE BOOK OF REVELATION This Book is unlike any other books contained in the New Testament, for rather than a historical account its purports to be a prophecy about the future -- specifically, the coming of the End Times. It describes how a prolonged period of plagues and disasters will ultimately lead to an era of peace, referred to as the 'New Heaven and a New Earth'. As such, the work is similar to other 'apocalyptic' works in the Jewish Bible (or 'Old Testament'), specifically the Book of Daniel.

St. John writing on Patmos, by the 16th century German artist Hans Burgkmair the Elder

The Book itself suggests that it was composed by "John, your brother who share with you in Jesus the persecution and the kingdom and the patient endurance," (Rev 1:9) on the island of Patmos. While historians have no reason to doubt that the book was written there, modern scholarship does question the suggestion that John was 'the beloved disciple' that 2nd century Church Fathers also associated with the author of the Gospel of John.

The Book's vision of great calamities that precede the coming triumph of God has been interpreted as a prophetic message to Christian communities, possibly in Rome, that were at the time undergoing a period of severe persecution. The purpose of the book may have been to give courage and succor to the beleaguered faithful, and to uphold the vision that Christ would triumph in the end. When the Book refers to a "beast' with the code 'six hundred sixty-six' (Rev. 13:18), it may obliquely target the emperor Nero Caesar, who launched the first major persecution against the Christians after the Fire of Rome in 64 CE.

Scholars have therefore suggested that Revelations was written during his reign, or towards the end of the rule of Emperor Domitian (81-96 CE) who likewise pursued a policy of Christian persecution.