“Add Unto…Take Away”

Revelation 22:18 For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book:

Revelation 22:19 And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.

Revelation 22:20 He which testifieth these things saith, Surely I come quickly. Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus.

Revelation 22:21 The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen.

I will refer to the “Holy Bible” (containing the Old and New Testaments, I use the King James version) as just the Bible from now on. 

The truth is that “the words of the book of this prophecy” and “the words of the prophecy of this book” do NOT mean the Bible.

According to the Vatican, the Bible is a canon [1] or collection of writings of many different prophets and centuries, one of which is the book of Revelation, the last book in the collection, which was written by the end of the 1st century after the death and resurrection of Christ. Catholic beliefs include that the Bible did not come into existence as a collection until the late 4th century. [2] 

Other scholars have also set the writing of the Book of Revelation around the end of the 1st century AD. [3][4] 

From these facts, we know that the warning phrases pertain only to the Book of Revelation, as the Bible did not exist as a whole collection until almost 300 years after the Book of Revelation was written. The writer of the Book of Revelation could not have known of the existence of the Bible!