[4][5] John is considered to have been exiled to Patmos during a time of persecution under the Roman rule of Domitian in the late 1st century.

Revelation 1:9 states: "I, John, both your brother and companion in tribulation... was on the island that is called Patmos for the word of God and for the testimony of Jesus Christ."

Adela Yarbro Collins, a biblical scholar at Yale Divinity School, writes: Early tradition says that John was banished to Patmos by the Roman authorities.

(Pliny, Natural History 4.69–70; Tacitus, Annals 4.30)[6]According to Tertullian (in The Prescription of Heretics) John was banished after being plunged into boiling oil in Rome and suffering nothing from it.

[9][citation needed] Other early Christian writers, such as Dionysius of Alexandria and Eusebius of Caesarea, noting the differences in language and theological outlook between this work and the Gospel,[10] discounted this possibility, and argued for the exclusion of the Book of Revelation from the canon as a result.