Talk:John of Patmos

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Others contend that they were at least three separate individuals.

How could they have been more than three separate individuals? john k 07:49, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Because the Gospel may have been written by several individuals over time, rather than just one author. And that's not even to mention John the Presbyter, author of some of the epistles. The point is, it may be a mistake to automatically assume that each work was composed by a single lone individual-- they may be collaborations, redactions, forgeries, etc. (I'm not saying I believe that at all-- but just saying there are many scenarios in which more than one person could be considered the author of a work.)-Alecmconroy 10:34, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Merge

I have merged this article to Authorship of the Johannine works because:

• This article has no content that is not already discussed more fully on that page
• There is plenty of room on Authorship of the Johannine works that a separate article isn't needed (yet)
• There are so many articles on the the Johannine author(s) that reading is confusing

--Ephilei 16:50, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

I do not agree with the redirect/merger. John of Patmos has been a motif in western art, and a religious figure for a number of Christian churches. Therefore, someone may be search of John of Patmos and be disappointed when they show up at a discussion on biblical authorship. This article could use some expanding, and it can be confusing that there are a number of names to refer to a number of individuals that may or may not have been the same person. A solution may be to create an article like Johns in the New Testament or John (Christianity) to merge all the John articles. Say at the top of the page that some people think they are all the same, and some people do not, and then have a section on each one (the apostle, the evangelist, the presbyter, patmos, etc). I wouldn't oppose that as long as all the articles were merged, but I do not support merging this article to a discussion on authorship (because of the existence of Patmos in art, and as a distinct person in some traditions).-Andrew c 01:57, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

I similarly have some hesitancy about a merge. I might be open to it depending on what people said, but my first instinct would be to have the separate article where we can put what is known about each of hte individual figures and them also mentioning that they may all be the same individual. John of Patmos definitely need expanision-- there are whole books on what we can deduce about the author of Revelations, and it seems like "John of Patmos,the author of Revelation" is a wide enough topic that eventually we'd probably need a whole article one way or the other. In any case, it's not a good candidate for speedy merge. --Alecmconroy 05:32, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Points well taken. I've proposed a merge to Names of John as Alecmconroy suggested having a central pages to discuss the various identities related to John. Certainly I hope that eventually WP will have so much info on John of Patmos that he does need his own article! But that hasn't happened yet. (I'd love to see someone take up that task!) Until then, let's keep John's identities centralized. --Ephilei 21:21, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

After much research on the subject of John the Apostle, I am in a the corner of a centralized location for all of his history and works. The splintered history of the world have caused him and his works to be attributed to many Johns of different names. My conclusion is that they are all of the same origin. John the Apostle had an amazing long-life fraught with oppression and enlightenment. He went from being an endocrine-deprived young man(Beloved Disciple), to being an enlightened and exiled feminine male(St. John of Patmos), and then became the masculine male teacher (St. John the Evangelist). My personal theory is that John the Apostle suffered from a medical condition known as Prolactinoma (http://www.endocrine.niddk.nih.gov/pubs/prolact/prolact.htm), or a Prolactin-secreting pituitary tumor, which eased up later in his life. I believe that is what made him Jesus's Beloved Disciple, because in a sense he was both male and female. He also probably lived an extraordinary long time because of his condition. His life is a remarkable case-study in which faith overcame the adversity that his condition caused and led him to a life of self-enlightenment. John 7:33, 17 March 2007

I really don't think John of Patmos should be merged into Names of John. The modern scholars I've read (for my current dissertation on Ephesus) are fairly certain he is a distinct person from both John the Apostle and John the Evangelist. There is good evidence (from early Christian texts) that John of Patmos was probably from Ephesus, exiled on nearby Patmos for a time, then returned and died in Ephesus. His tomb was revered there, and later Irenaeus conveniently combined him with John the Evangelist to give the Gospel of John more legitimacy in Asia Minor. All very interesting! And obviously stuff I should add to the article, and I will. :) But all this to say - there seems to be ample reason to have "John of Patmos" as a separate article. HVH 02:38, 18 March 2007 (UTC)