How to Read the Book of Revelation

No book of the Bible has been read in more contradictory ways than the Book of Revelation. Some readers treat it as a coded timetable of the last days and match its beasts to the news. Many others never open it.

The Orthodox Church holds it as Holy Scripture, yet the East received it slowly, and it is never read aloud in the Divine Liturgy. Her Fathers also faced early the question behind much modern speculation: is the "thousand years" of Revelation 20 a future earthly kingdom?

In brief

Revelation presents itself as a prophecy given to "His servant John" on Patmos. St Irenaeus places the vision "towards the end of Domitian's reign," in the mid-90s AD, and St Justin Martyr attributes it to "John, one of the apostles of Christ." Several fourth-century Eastern lists left it out, partly because chiliasts (believers in a literal thousand-year earthly reign) and Montanists leaned on it; the commentary of St Andrew of Caesarea (611) helped the East receive it fully. Papias, Justin and Irenaeus held chiliast views; the Church did not follow them, and she confesses in the Creed that Christ's Kingdom "shall have no end." The thousand years are the present age of Christ's reign in His Church. There is one Second Coming, visible and glorious, followed by the general resurrection and the Last Judgement, and no rapture before it.

Thesis: Revelation is inspired Scripture that the Church reads as a vision of Christ's victory and of the worship of heaven, not as a coded calendar, and her settled teaching rejects both chiliasm and the rapture.

What kind of book is Revelation?

The book names itself in its first lines: "The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave Him to show His servants," a "prophecy" that blesses "he who reads and those who hear" it (Revelation 1:1-3, NKJV).¹ It is a letter to seven churches and an apocalypse, a kind of writing that, like Daniel, uses visions and symbols to show what is happening behind visible history. Its centre is Christ, "a Lamb as though it had been slain," standing in the midst of the throne (5:6).

Revelation is not chiefly about the Antichrist. It is about the slain and risen Lamb who already reigns, and about the Church that worships Him while she suffers.

Who wrote it, and when?

The author calls himself John, "your brother and companion in the tribulation," who was "on the island that is called Patmos for the word of God and for the testimony of Jesus Christ" (1:9).² St Justin Martyr, in the second century, speaks of "a certain man with us, whose name was John, one of the apostles of Christ, who prophesied, by a revelation that was made to him."³ (See Justin Martyr: What the Earliest Christian Apologist Tells Us.)

The date comes from St Irenaeus of Lyons, who had seen St Polycarp of Smyrna "in my early youth." He says the vision "was seen no very long time since, but almost in our day, towards the end of Domitian's reign."⁴ The scholar Werner Georg Kümmel agrees: "According to the oldest tradition [in Iren., Adv. Haer. 5.30.3] Rev was written toward the end of the reign of Domitian (81-96)."⁵ Some scholars prefer a date before AD 70, but the Domitianic date has the stronger ancient support.

{{strong: The earliest external testimony, from St Irenaeus, dates the vision to the end of Domitian's reign, in the mid-90s AD.}}

The first serious doubt about authorship came from inside the Church. St Dionysius of Alexandria, in the third century, compared the Greek of Revelation with that of the Gospel of John. Eusebius preserves his conclusion: "that this book is the work of one John, I do not deny. And I agree also that it is the work of a holy and inspired man. But I cannot readily admit that he was the apostle." The writer, he said, uses "barbarous idioms, and, in some places, solecisms."⁶ Yet he would not discard it: "I could not venture to reject the book, as many brethren hold it in high esteem."⁷

The Orthodox Church honours the author as St John the Theologian. The difference in Greek is real; the difference of genre, a vision written in exile as against a Gospel, is one possible explanation.

Why the East received Revelation slowly

In the West and in Alexandria the book was received firmly. St Athanasius's Festal Letter for 367, whose list matches the twenty-seven books of today's New Testament, ends: "And besides, the Revelation of John."⁸ The canon on Scripture of the African Church (Carthage) closes with "The Revelation of John, j. book."⁹

Elsewhere in the East the picture was different. Eusebius placed the book among the accepted writings "if it really seem proper," and in the same chapter, with the same proviso, among the rejected ones.¹⁰ St Cyril of Jerusalem's list for catechumens ends with St Paul's fourteen letters: "But let all the rest be put aside in a secondary rank." Revelation is absent.¹¹ So is it from the list attached to the Synod of Laodicea (canon 60, whose genuineness the NPNF editor calls "most questionable") and from the 85th Apostolic Canon.¹² The Council in Trullo (692) ratified the Apostolic Canons, Laodicea, Carthage and Athanasius together in its second canon, without settling the difference between their lists.¹³

Eugenia Scarvelis Constantinou, an Orthodox scholar who wrote her doctoral dissertation on Andrew of Caesarea and translated his commentary, summarises the story: the Apocalypse "was consistently recognized as an apostolic document from the second century through the early fourth century," but "eventually came under attack due to its association with controversies such as Montanism and chiliasm." She adds that "the question of its status in the canon has never been 'officially' resolved."¹⁴ (See Montanism and the New Prophecy and How Was the Biblical Canon Actually Formed?)

Revelation is canonical Scripture in the Orthodox Church. The African canon and St Athanasius's letter, both confirmed at Trullo, name it; it stands in every Orthodox Bible; and, as Fr Stephen De Young writes, St Andrew's commentary "came to be embraced by the entirety of the Orthodox Church, and through it, the book of Revelation itself."¹⁶ The slow reception shows only that she received it with care.

{{very-strong: Revelation is canonical Holy Scripture in the Orthodox Church, although the wider East accepted it more slowly than the West and several fourth-century Eastern lists omit it.}}

Why it is not read in the Divine Liturgy

The OCA's catechism The Orthodox Faith states: "the only book of the New Testament writings which is not read liturgically in the Orthodox Church is the Book of Revelation because of its apocalyptic character."¹⁵ The Orthodox priest and biblical scholar Fr Stephen De Young adds a historical reason: by the time St Andrew's commentary won the book wide acceptance, "the liturgical traditions of the East were already long established," lectionary included.¹⁶ Yet absence from the lectionary is not absence from worship.

St Andrew of Caesarea: the Church's guide

In 611 St Andrew, archbishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia, wrote a commentary on the whole book. Constantinou calls it "the most important Greek patristic commentary on the Book of Revelation," and notes that "a large percentage of Apocalypse manuscripts contain the Andreas commentary," so that in the East the text and its patristic reading travelled together.¹⁷

Andrew writes that the binding of Satan in chapter 20 "expresses the destruction of the devil that occurred through the passion of our Lord," and "The demonstration that the devil is bound is the disappearance of idol worship, the destruction of pagan temples." On the thousand years: "It is in no way good to understand the 'thousand years' as referring to a thousand years as such." He gives his own reading, granting that the exact span "is known to God alone": "Therefore, the 'thousand years' are the time from the incarnation of the Lord until the arrival of the antichrist."¹⁸ Andrew expects a real Antichrist and a real end; what he refuses is a literal, earthly millennium.

Four modern ways of reading Revelation

Western interpreters usually sort readings into four schools, which Steve Gregg's Revelation: Four Views sets side by side.¹⁹

• Preterist: most prophecies were fulfilled in the Roman world of the first centuries; conservative preterists date the book before AD 70.
• Historicist: the book surveys church history to the end, often with a day standing for a year; many Protestant historicists identified the Antichrist with the papacy.
• Futurist: almost everything after chapter 3 is still to come; this is the view of most contemporary North American evangelical teachers.
• Idealist (or "spiritual"): the book portrays the struggle between Christ and evil in every age.

The Orthodox reading fits no single box. With St Andrew, the Church reads Revelation chiefly as a revelation of Christ and of His Church in every age, close to the idealist view, while confessing real future events: the visible Second Coming, the general resurrection, the Last Judgement, eternal life and eternal punishment (20:11-15; 21:1-8). A reading that turns Revelation into a code for the news has left the Fathers behind.

666: what can be known?

"Let him who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man: His number is 666" (13:18). In Greek and Hebrew, letters also served as numbers. The scholar P. J. Williams observes that "the number of conjectures as to the significance of the number of the Beast in Revelation 13:18 almost seems to exceed 666."²⁰

The best-known modern proposal is that 666 spells "Nero Caesar" in Hebrew letters (nrwn qsr). It draws support from a variant: manuscripts known to Irenaeus, and the papyrus P115, read 616, which matches the Latin form "Nero." In Williams's words, "The omission of nun brings the total down by exactly 50 from 666 to 616." He cautions that the papyrus is not conclusive and offers another explanation of 616.²¹

{{debated: The number 666 may encode the name "Nero Caesar" in Hebrew letters; this is a scholarly proposal, not a settled fact.}}

St Irenaeus knew the 616 reading and preferred 666, found "in all the most approved and ancient copies." He weighed several names, then stopped: "We will not, however, incur the risk of pronouncing positively as to the name of Antichrist."²² That restraint is the Church's own.

The millennium: what the Fathers held and what the Church teaches

The early chiliasts

Revelation 20 says that an angel bound Satan "for a thousand years," and that the martyrs "lived and reigned with Christ for a thousand years. ... This is the first resurrection" (20:2-5).²³ Some early Christians read this as a future earthly kingdom between Christ's return and the final judgement, a view called chiliasm.

Papias of Hierapolis taught, in Eusebius's summary, "that there will be a period of some thousand years after the resurrection of the dead, and that the kingdom of Christ will be set up in material form on this very earth." St Irenaeus passes on, from "the elders who saw John," a saying about vines whose every grape would "give five and twenty metretes of wine,"²⁴ and he opposed those who would "allegorize" such promises.²⁵ St Justin wrote: "I and others, who are right-minded Christians on all points, are assured that there will be a resurrection of the dead, and a thousand years in Jerusalem."²⁶ (See Irenaeus of Lyons.)

{{strong: Several second-century writers, including Papias, St Justin and St Irenaeus, held a chiliast reading of Revelation 20.}}

Yet Justin admits in the same chapter "that many who belong to the pure and pious faith, and are true Christians, think otherwise."²⁷ Chiliasm was the opinion of some, never the confession of the whole Church.

Why the Church did not follow them

Eusebius judged that Papias had misread the apostles, "not perceiving that the things said by them were spoken mystically in figures," and that later writers adopted the idea because of "the antiquity of the man."²⁸ In Egypt, when Nepos taught "a certain millennium of bodily luxury upon this earth," St Dionysius met the presbyters and teachers of Arsinoë, "sitting with them from morning till evening for three successive days," until Coracion, the leader of the movement, declared "that he would no longer hold this opinion."²⁹ St Augustine, who admitted "I myself, too, once held this opinion," taught that the thousand years are the present age: "the Church could not now be called His kingdom or the kingdom of heaven unless His saints were even now reigning with Him, though in another and far different way."³⁰ St Andrew said the same in the East.

The Creed seals the matter. Of Christ the Church confesses: "He shall come again with glory to judge the living and the dead; Whose Kingdom shall have no end."³¹ St Cyril of Jerusalem taught this clause from Gabriel's words in Luke 1:33 and warned: "should you ever hear any say that the kingdom of Christ shall have an end, abhor the heresy."³² His unnamed target, the NPNF editors explain, was Marcellus of Ancyra, condemned for teaching an end to Christ's kingdom.³³ The principle reaches further: a reign of Christ that lasts a thousand years and then gives way is not the Kingdom the Creed confesses. Fr Michael Pomazansky's Orthodox Dogmatic Theology explains that the "first resurrection" "signifies spiritual rebirth into eternal life in Christ through baptism," and holds that after the Second Ecumenical Council "it became no longer permissible at all for an Orthodox Christian to hold these opinions."³⁴

The Orthodox verdict is clear. Chiliasm, ancient or in its modern premillennial forms, is an error. The Fathers who held it are honoured for their faith, but on this point the Church did not follow them. The saints reign with Christ now, and His Kingdom will have no end.

Is there a rapture?

Many Western Christians expect a "rapture": Christ taking believers out of the world before a time of tribulation, followed later by His visible return and a thousand-year reign. The idea belongs to the nineteenth-century dispensationalism of John Nelson Darby and the Scofield Reference Bible (see What Is Dispensationalism?). Its key text is St Paul's promise that "we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air" (1 Thessalonians 4:17).³⁵

The Fathers read that verse as part of the one Second Coming. St John Chrysostom explains why the faithful are caught up: "For when a king drives into a city, those who are in honor go out to meet him; but the condemned await the judge within."³⁶ The passage opens with the Lord descending "with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God" (4:16), hardly a secret event. The English edition of Pomazansky's Dogmatic Theology calls the rapture "unheard of before the nineteenth century" and a misreading of this text.³⁷

The Orthodox answer is plain: there is no rapture. Christ will come once more, visibly and in glory, to raise the dead and judge the living and the dead. Protestants who hold the rapture rightly long for His coming; the teaching itself is an error with no root in the Fathers. (See Heaven, Hell, and Final Judgment: An Orthodox Guide.)

The heavenly liturgy

If Revelation is not read at the Liturgy, it is everywhere in it. The living creatures cry, "Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, Who was and is and is to come!" and the elders "cast their crowns before the throne" (4:8-10). An angel stands "at the altar" with a golden censer, and the incense rises "with the prayers of the saints" (8:3-4). The book ends with the cry of the Church: "Even so, come, Lord Jesus!" (22:20).³⁸

An Orthodox Christian recognises all of this: the altar and the censer, the thrice-holy hymn, the prayers of the saints, the Lamb who was slain and lives. At the Great Entrance the faithful sing: "We, who mystically represent the Cherubim, And chant the thrice-holy hymn to the Life-giving Trinity, Let us set aside the cares of life."³⁹ The Divine Liturgy is the Church on earth joining the worship John saw in heaven (see What Happens During the Divine Liturgy?). Read this way, Revelation is less a riddle than an icon.

Objections

"If the Orthodox never read Revelation in church, it cannot really be Scripture to them."

The lectionary is a selection of readings, not a canon list. The OCA gives the reason as the book's "apocalyptic character," and the lectionary took shape before the East had settled the book's place.

"Justin and Irenaeus were close to the apostles, so their chiliasm must be the original faith."

Closeness in time does not make every opinion apostolic, and Justin himself says that "true Christians" thought otherwise. The Church weighs individual Fathers by the faith of the whole Church, expressed here in the Creed.

"Revelation 20 plainly says a thousand years."

The same book gives the Lamb "seven horns and seven eyes" (5:6); no careful reader takes every number in an apocalypse literally. The New Testament says believers are already raised with Christ (Colossians 3:1; Ephesians 2:5-6). Reading the "first resurrection" as new life in Christ follows that teaching rather than avoiding the text.

What we can say confidently

• Irenaeus dates Revelation to the end of Domitian's reign, and Justin attributes it to the apostle John.
• Several fourth-century Eastern lists omit it, while Athanasius and the African canon include it.
• It is the one New Testament book not read in the Orthodox lectionary, yet its imagery shapes the Divine Liturgy.
• St Andrew of Caesarea's commentary (611) became the Eastern guide to the book and reads the thousand years as the age from the Incarnation to the Antichrist.
• Papias, Justin and Irenaeus held chiliast views; the Church did not adopt them, and the Creed confesses that Christ's Kingdom "shall have no end."
• The rapture is an error; there is one visible Second Coming, then the general resurrection and the Last Judgement.

What remains disputed

• Whether the same John wrote both the Gospel and the Apocalypse, given their different Greek; tradition says yes, and scholars remain divided.
• The date: ancient testimony favours Domitian's reign, but some scholars argue for a date before AD 70.
• The meaning of 666: the "Nero Caesar" proposal is widely held but unproven, and 616 has more than one explanation.
• The exact steps of the book's full acceptance in the East.

Conclusion

Revelation told Christians under threat that the slain Lamb already reigns and that every power raised against Him will fall. The Church refused to let it become an earthly utopia or a timetable and kept its vision in her worship. She does not wait for a thousand-year kingdom or for an escape from the world. She waits for her Lord, who will come again in glory, and of whose Kingdom there shall be no end. She prays: "Even so, come, Lord Jesus!"

Notes

1. Revelation 1:1-3; 5:6 (NKJV), https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Revelation+1%3A1-3&version=NKJV. All Bible quotations are from the New King James Version.
2. Revelation 1:9 (NKJV).
3. Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho 81, trans. Marcus Dods and George Reith, ANF 1, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/01286.htm.
4. Irenaeus, Against Heresies 5.30.3, trans. Alexander Roberts and William Rambaut, ANF 1, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0103530.htm (a minority of scholars take the Greek verb to mean that John, rather than the vision, "was seen"; Eusebius, Church History 3.18, reads it of the Apocalypse); on Polycarp, Against Heresies 3.3.4, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0103303.htm.
5. Werner Georg Kümmel, Introduction to the New Testament, 466-68, as quoted at Peter Kirby, "Book of Revelation," Early Christian Writings, http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/revelation.html.
6. Dionysius of Alexandria, in Eusebius, Church History 7.25.7, 26, NPNF2 1, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/250107.htm.
7. Dionysius, in Eusebius, Church History 7.25.4 (see note 6).
8. Athanasius, Festal Letter 39.5 (for 367), trans. R. Payne-Smith, NPNF2 4, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/2806039.htm.
9. Code of Canons of the African Church (419), canon 24, trans. Henry Percival, NPNF2 14, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3816.htm.
10. Eusebius, Church History 3.25.2, 4, trans. Arthur Cushman McGiffert, NPNF2 1, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/250103.htm.
11. Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lecture 4.36, trans. Edwin Hamilton Gifford, NPNF2 7, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/310104.htm.
12. Synod of Laodicea, canon 60, NPNF2 14, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3806.htm; Apostolic Canons, canon 85, NPNF2 14, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3820.htm.
13. Council in Trullo (692), canon 2, NPNF2 14, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3814.htm.
14. Eugenia Scarvelis Constantinou, Andrew of Caesarea and the Apocalypse in the Ancient Church of the East: Studies and Translation (PhD dissertation, Université Laval, 2008), author's abstract, as reproduced at https://silouanthompson.net/2013/06/andrew-of-caesarea-and-the-apocalypse-in-the-ancient-church-of-the-east/.
15. The Orthodox Faith, vol. 2, Worship, "The Divine Liturgy: Epistle," Orthodox Church in America, https://www.oca.org/orthodoxy/the-orthodox-faith/worship/the-divine-liturgy/epistle.
16. Stephen De Young, "Is the Book of Revelation Canonical in the Orthodox Church?" The Whole Counsel Blog, Ancient Faith Ministries, 15 August 2018, https://blogs.ancientfaith.com/wholecounsel/?p=311.
17. Constantinou, abstract (see note 14).
18. Andrew of Caesarea, Commentary on the Apocalypse on Revelation 20:1-3, English translation as reproduced at SermonIndex, "Revelation 20," https://sermonindex.net/commentary/ecf/REV/20 (the page does not name the translator, and this wording has not been checked against the printed Constantinou translation). The complete English translation is Andrew of Caesarea, Commentary on the Apocalypse, trans. Eugenia Scarvelis Constantinou, The Fathers of the Church 123 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2011).
19. Steve Gregg, ed., Revelation: Four Views: A Parallel Commentary (Thomas Nelson), as summarised in "4 Views of Revelation - Steve Gregg," Plain Truth Ministries, https://ptm.org/4-views-of-revelation.
20. P. J. Williams, "P115 and the Number of the Beast," Tyndale Bulletin 58, no. 1 (2007): 151, https://www.galaxie.com/article/tynbul58-1-09.
21. Williams, "P115 and the Number of the Beast," 151-52 (see note 20).
22. Irenaeus, Against Heresies 5.30.1, 3 (see note 4).
23. Revelation 20:1-7 (NKJV), https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Revelation+20%3A1-7&version=NKJV.
24. Eusebius, Church History 3.39.12, trans. Arthur Cushman McGiffert, NPNF2 1, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/250103.htm; Irenaeus, Against Heresies 5.33.3, ANF 1, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0103533.htm.
25. Irenaeus, Against Heresies 5.35.1, ANF 1, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0103535.htm.
26. Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho 80 (see note 3).
27. Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho 80 (see note 3).
28. Eusebius, Church History 3.39.12-13, trans. Arthur Cushman McGiffert, NPNF2 1, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/250103.htm.
29. Eusebius, Church History 7.24.1, 6-9 (see note 6).
30. Augustine, City of God 20.7, 20.9, trans. Marcus Dods, NPNF1 2, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/120120.htm.
31. "The Symbol of Faith," Orthodox Church in America, https://www.oca.org/orthodoxy/prayers/symbol-of-faith.
32. Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lecture 15.27, NPNF2 7, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/310115.htm; Luke 1:33 (NKJV).
33. NPNF2 7, notes to Catechetical Lecture 15.27 ("The person meant by Cyril, though he withholds the name, is Marcellus of Ancyra"), with the Eastern bishops' description of Marcellus as one who "seeks to set bounds to the perpetual, eternal, and timeless kingdom of our Lord Christ," https://tertullian.org/fathers2/NPNF2-07/footnote/fn21.htm. Compare the First Council of Constantinople (381), canon 1, which anathematizes the Marcellians, NPNF2 14, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3808.htm.
34. Michael Pomazansky, Orthodox Dogmatic Theology (St Herman of Alaska Brotherhood), excerpt "The Error of Chiliasm," OrthoChristian.com, https://orthochristian.com/86555.html.
35. 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17 (NKJV), https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+Thessalonians+4%3A16-17&version=NKJV.
36. John Chrysostom, Homily 8 on First Thessalonians, trans. John A. Broadus, NPNF1 13, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/230408.htm.
37. Pomazansky, "The Error of Chiliasm" (see note 34).
38. Revelation 4:8-10; 8:3-4; 22:20 (NKJV).
39. "Cherubic Hymn," OrthodoxWiki, https://en.orthodoxwiki.org/Cherubic_Hymn. English translations of the hymn vary.

Bibliography

Primary sources

• The Holy Bible, New King James Version. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1982.
• Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 1: Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho; Irenaeus, Against Heresies. Buffalo: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1885.
• Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, vol. 1: Eusebius, Church History, trans. A. C. McGiffert (1890); vol. 4: Athanasius, Festal Letter 39, trans. R. Payne-Smith (1892); vol. 7: Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lectures, trans. E. H. Gifford (1894); vol. 14: The Seven Ecumenical Councils (Constantinople I, Laodicea, Carthage, Trullo, Apostolic Canons), trans. Henry Percival (1900).
• Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, vol. 2: Augustine, City of God, trans. Marcus Dods (1887); vol. 13: John Chrysostom, Homilies on First Thessalonians (1889).
• Andrew of Caesarea. Commentary on the Apocalypse. Trans. Eugenia Scarvelis Constantinou. The Fathers of the Church 123. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2011.

Orthodox and patristic sources

• Orthodox Church in America. "The Symbol of Faith" and The Orthodox Faith, vol. 2, Worship (online texts).
• De Young, Stephen. "Is the Book of Revelation Canonical in the Orthodox Church?" Ancient Faith Ministries, 2018.
• Pomazansky, Michael. Orthodox Dogmatic Theology. Platina, CA: St Herman of Alaska Brotherhood.
• Constantinou, Eugenia Scarvelis. Andrew of Caesarea and the Apocalypse in the Ancient Church of the East: Studies and Translation. PhD dissertation, Université Laval, 2008.
• "Cherubic Hymn." OrthodoxWiki.

Other scholarship and reference

• Kümmel, Werner Georg. Introduction to the New Testament, as quoted at Early Christian Writings (Peter Kirby).
• Williams, P. J. "P115 and the Number of the Beast." Tyndale Bulletin 58, no. 1 (2007): 151-53.

Sources from other traditions and views

• Gregg, Steve, ed. Revelation: Four Views: A Parallel Commentary. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1997.