<P> In her volume in the original Anchor Bible, J. Massyngberde Ford argues that the core of Revelation, chapters 4--11, was written by John the Baptist and later surrounded with a Christian beginning and ending, although this view is not held by the large majority of scholars . 70 AD is the likely date of writing according to Martha Himmelfarb in the recently published Blackwell series . </P> <P> Revelation is an apocalyptic prophecy with an epistolary introduction addressed to seven churches in the Roman province of Asia . "Apocalypse" means the revealing of divine mysteries; John is to write down what is revealed (what he sees in his vision) and send it to the seven churches . The entire book constitutes the letter--the letters to the seven individual churches are introductions to the rest of the book, which is addressed to all seven . While the dominant genre is apocalyptic, the author sees himself as a Christian prophet: Revelation uses the word in various forms twenty - one times, more than any other New Testament book . </P> <P> The predominant view is that Revelation alludes to the Old Testament although it is difficult among scholars to agree on the exact number of allusions or the allusions themselves . Revelation rarely quotes directly from the Old Testament, yet almost every verse alludes to or echoes older scriptures . Over half of the references stem from Daniel, Ezekiel, Psalms, and Isaiah, with Daniel providing the largest number in proportion to length and Ezekiel standing out as the most influential . Because these references appear as allusions rather than as quotes, it is difficult to know whether the author used the Hebrew or the Greek version of the Hebrew scriptures, but he was clearly often influenced by the Greek . He very frequently combines multiple references, and again the allusional style makes it impossible to be certain to what extent he did so consciously . </P> <P> According to several studies including a review by Dr James Tabor and Dr J. Massyngberde Ford, the Book of Revelation contains ancient pre-Christian texts of Jewish origin dating back to the time of John the Baptist and the communities of Qumran as well as antique Jewish texts . In several verses one can identify the ancient texts and that attributed to John, the latter having just added in the original text the words "Jesus Christ" (Rev 1: 1), "testimony of Jesus Christ" (Rev. 1: 2) or even "Jesus" (Rev 1: 9), and similar words in dozens of other verses . </P>

The book of revelation relies heavily upon this book of the old testament/hebrew bible
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