I think most are agreed that the Revelation of John in its present form was produced in the early second century. Is there any basis for believing that the current Revelation of John may be based on an earlier source?John 1:
6 There was a man sent from God whose name was John. 7 He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all might believe. 8 He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light.
Revelation 1:
1 The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show his servants what must soon take place; he made it known by sending his angel to his servant John, 2 who testified to the word of God and to the testimony of Jesus Christ, even to all that he saw.
Revelation 1:
9 I, John, your brother who share with you in Jesus the persecution and the kingdom and the patient endurance, was on the island called Patmos because of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus. 10 I was in the spirit on the Lord’s day, and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet 11 saying, “Write in a book what you see and send it to the seven churches, to Ephesus, to Smyrna, to Pergamum, to Thyatira, to Sardis, to Philadelphia, and to Laodicea.”
Mark 1:
9 At that time Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. 10 Just as Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw heaven being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. 11 And a voice came from heaven: “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.”
1 John 1:
5 This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. 6 If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth. 7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.
1 John 2:
2 My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have an advocate with the Father—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. 2 He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.
There appear to be many different but strikingly similar Johns in Christian lore. We have a John mentioned as one of the pillars by Paul, we have "John the Baptist" who announces the coming of Jesus Christ, we have a John who has visions of Jesus Christ, and we have the epistles of John that describe Jesus Christ as an atoning sacrifice who came in the flesh.
I wonder about the possibility that there was some real John who had one of the early visions of Jesus, and that the legacy of this real John is reflected in these later Johns.
It seems quite possible that "John the Baptist" is a Markan invention. There may well have been a real person known as "John the Baptist", but I find it doubtful that any such real John the Baptist had anything to do with Jesus worship. It seems that what Mark did was associate some real John figure from the Jesus movement with John the Baptist. Indeed, I think it quite possible that John son of Zebedee and John the Baptist are two different fictional character that both stem from the same real John. That real John, it would seem, would be some figure known for having had visions of the sacrifice of Jesus (Joshua) and his future coming to earth to pass Final Judgement.
To what degree can the various John traditions be assessed to be independent, or to what degree is is all just building off of later narratives?