Nothing personal Ed. I’m sorry we got off to a bad start on this thread as well. I wish I had answered this question on the other thread.
I don’t agree with your dates, so there is no contradiction for me.
The accepted frame of reference for the text is 68 A.D. The New Catholic Encyclopedia states, “Some scholars believe that the historical background of Apocalypse was the reign of Nero. . . The preparatory vision in Heaven serves as a second prophetic investiture for the revelation of God’s interventions from the Resurrection of Christ to the fall of Jerusalem. [Some scholars] find apocalyptic allusion to different phases of the Jewish war of 66-70” (NCE, LAH).
I believe the human author of the book of Revelation to be none other that St. John the Apostle. The list of early Chuch Fathers who accepted St. John’s authorship is formidable: Melito, Papias, Justin Martyr, Iranaeus, Hippolytus, Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Cyprian, Athanasius, Cyril of Alexandria, and Basil, to name the most prominent.
Since there is broad support among scholars that the book was authored by one man and that its frame of reference is 68 A.D., I see no convincing reason to abandon the traditional Church position: St John is the author.
By 96 A.D. St. John was an invalid according to St. Jerome? Who “was with difficulty carried into the Church, and could speak only a few words to the people.”
So, even if your dating is correct, the author’s intended frame of reference for the text is 68 A.D. Personally, I believe that St. John saw the visions and wrote them down around the same date as the frame of reference.
Peace,
Ryan