THE ISLAND OF BANISHMENT

Revelation 1:9 (contd)

JOHN tells us that, when the visions of Revelation came to him, he was in Patmos. It was the unanimous tradition of the early Church that he was banished to Patmos in the reign of Domitian. Jerome says that John was banished in the fourteenth year after Nero and liberated on the death of Domitian (Concerning Illustrious Men, 9). This would mean that he was banished to Patmos in about AD 94 and liberated in about AD 96.
Patmos, a barren, rocky little island belonging to a group of islands called the Sporades, is ten miles long by five miles wide. It is crescent-shaped, with the horns of the crescent pointing to the east. Its shape makes it a good natural harbour. It lies forty miles off the coast of Asia Minor, and it was important because it was the last haven on the voyage from Rome to Ephesus and the first in the reverse direction.
Banishment to a remote island was a common form of Roman punishment. It was a punishment usually handed out to political prisoners–and, as far as they were concerned, there were worse alternatives. Such banishment involved the loss of civil rights and all property except enough for a bare existence. People banished in this way were not personally ill-treated and were not confined in prison on their island but were free to move within its narrow limits. Such would be banishment for a political prisoner; but it would be very different for John. He was a leader of the Christians, and Christians were criminals. The wonder is that he was not executed straightaway. Banishment for him would involve hard labour in the quarries. The archaeologist and New Testament scholar Sir William Ramsay says that his banishment would be ‘preceded by scourging, marked by perpetual fetters, scanty clothing, insufficient food, sleep on the bare ground, a dark prison, work under the lash of the military overseer’.
Patmos left its mark on John’s writing. To this day, visitors are shown a cave in a cliff overlooking the sea, where it is said that Revelation was written. There are magnificent views of the sea from Patmos; and, as the commentator James Strahan says, Revelation is full of ‘the sights and the sounds of the infinite sea’. The word thalassa, sea, occurs in Revelation no fewer than twenty-five times. Strahan writes: ‘Nowhere is “the voice of many waters” more musical than in Patmos; nowhere does the rising and setting sun make a more splendid “sea of glass mingled with fire”; yet nowhere is the longing more natural that the separating sea should be no more.’
It was to all the hardships and pain and weariness of banishment and hard labour on Patmos that John went for the sake of the word given by God. As far as the Greek goes, that phrase is capable of three interpretations. It could mean that John went to Patmos to preach the word of God. It could mean that he withdrew to the loneliness of Patmos to receive the word of God and the visions of Revelation. But it is quite certain that it means that it was John’s unshakable loyalty to the word of God, and his insistence on preaching the message of Jesus Christ, which brought him to banishment in Patmos.

Barclay, W. (2004). The Revelation of John (3rd ed. fully rev. and updated., Vol. 1, pp. 47—49). Louisville, KY; London: Westminster John Knox Press.

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