Before Jerusalem Fell

Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons 65
upon the single testimony of Irenaeus, who wrote according to the
best authorities, about 100 years after the death of John. . . .
. . .
one clear and explicit testimony, when not opposed by other evidence,
would be allowed by all fair critics to control the argument;
but not so when many other considerations tend to weaken it.75
It is widely – even if not universally – recognized that Irenaeus’s
stature in early Church history caused many later Church fathers to
depend – sometimes too uncritically – upo”n his witness alone to
conclude many matters. For instance, Guthrie (a late date advocate
regarding Revelation) agrees with Streeter’s assertion that all Church
fathers after Irenaeus simply repeated his view regarding the origin
of the Gospel of Matthew.’G This problem undoubtedly is true in
many other connections as well, and is illustrative of our concern.
Regarding Irenaeus’s opinion on the banishment of John, the
fact of the matter is that he is “the ultimate source in every case” of
the early fathers.77 Other scholars of note express a hesitancy on
similar grounds to succumb to the drift of external evidence in this
regard. T. Randell notes that “the clear and positive external testimony
against it is not strong, being reducible (as it seems to us) to
the solitary statement of Irenaeus, near the end of the second centu~,
that the Apocalypse was seen towards the close of Domitian’s
reign. . . . Irenaeus, writing a century after the fact, may easily
have made the mistake of putting the name of one famous persecuting
emperor instead of the other, and it is remarkable that his statement
is supported by no other writer earlier than Victorious of Pettan, after
a second interval of a century. Eusebius and Jerome, in the fourth
century, do not strengthen what they merely repeat .“7 8
Milton Terry
agrees: “When we scrutinize the character and extent of this evidence,
it seems equally clear that no very great stress can safely be laid upon
it. For it all turns upon the single testimony of Irenaeus. “7 9
Moses Stuart expresses the same sentiment when he perceptively
argues that
75. Terry, Herrrwwu tics, pp. 237, 239.
76. Guthrie, Introduction, p. 29 n.4.
77. C. C. Torrey, Z7u Apocalypse ofJohn (New Haven: Yale, 1958), p. 78.
78. T. Randell, “Revelation,” in vol. 22 of T/u Pulpit Commentary (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, rep. 1950), p. iv.
79. Terry, Hemwmdscs, p. 237.