The Emperor Domitian was assassinated by members of his court on this day in 96 CE, setting an upper bound on the time when the Book of Revelation was written (scholars believe it was completed before the end of Domitian's reign).
The book's author, John of Patmos, is not to be confused with the Gospel writer John. The John of Revelation was likely an Aramaic-speaking Jew born in Roman-occupied Judea who ended up in forced exile on the island of Patmos off of Asia Minor after the 70 CE Roman defeat of a Jewish rebellion in Jerusalem.
Breaking with his Jewish roots to embrace the new Jesus movement, John wrote in a rusty, Hebraized Greek about a series of coded "visions" portending the collapse of the Roman Empire. Many later Christian eschatologists - even today - have chosen to read John's symbolism literally.
