PROVENANCE
PROVENANCE
John writes from Patmos, a rocky and rugged island about six miles wide and ten miles long, some forty miles southwest of Ephesus in the Aegean Sea. The island was used by Roman authorities as a place of exile (see Pliny, Nat. Hist. 4.23), and John indicates that this was his reason for being there: "because of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus” (Rev. 1:9). Early tradition (e.g., Origen) says that the emperor himself condemned John to exile in Patmos, but it is more likely, considering John’s extensive ministry in Asia Minor, that it was a local Roman official from this region who sent John to Patmos is order to get him out of the way. 34