The Epistles of John. Samuel M. Ngewa

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СКАЧАТЬ that it was not uncommon to have a document attached to an authoritative figure for the purpose of its acceptance has been proposed, to explain away the traditional view, but that needs to be weighed against the extent of testimony of the early church fathers.

6. A significant point of similarity between the Gospel of John and 1 John is the use of vocabularies such as logos (word) found in John 1:1, 14 and 1 John 1:1 to refer to Jesus, paraklētos (advocate/comforter) in John 14:16, 26; 15:26; 16:7; and 1 John 2:1; entolē kainē (new commandment) in John 13:34 and 1 John 2:7, 8; and gennaō (I give birth to) in John 3:3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8; and 1 John 2:29; 3:9; 4:7; 5:1, 4, 18, just to mention some. For more detailed listing, see Brooke 1912: i–xix; Painter 2003: 58–73; and Jobes 2014: 25–27. The use of dualism (for example darkness and light, love and hate, truth and falsehood, God and devil) is also another important element of similarity between the two writings.

7. Assumption is usually made from a study of the Synoptic Gospels that Peter, James, and John would be the most likely candidates for the description, “disciple whom Jesus loved.” While Jesus had twelve disciples, these three constituted what appears to be an inner circle (see, time of transfiguration: Matt 17:1–8; Mark 9:2–19; Luke 9:28–36; occasion of healing Jairus’ daughter: Mark 5:37–42; Luke 8:51–56; and at Gethsemane: Matt 26:37–46; Mark 14:33–42). Peter is eliminated because he is mentioned alongside the disciple whom Jesus loved (John 13:23–24; 20:2; and 21:20–21) and James is eliminated because he was killed no later than AD 44 when Herod Agrippa (the killer) died (Acts 12:2) and no New Testament book was written that early. This leaves John who also meets the criteria of the author having been a Jew and a witness of what is recorded in the gospel. For more on this, see Ngewa 2003: 429–30; and Keener 2003: 89–91.

8. Polycarp lived AD 69–155 and in his letter to the Philippians (7:1) uses words that are a clear quotation from 1 John 4:2–3 and 2 John 7 (Jobes 2014: 31). While this may prove more that the Epistles of John were known to Polycarp than that John wrote them, it does at least weaken one of the arguments used to deny Johannine authorship, that is, they were written after John had died. For Polycarp to have quoted it as authority, the gap between when it was written and when he could have quoted it need to be long enough for its authority to have been established.

9. While Papias’s witness, quoted by Eusebius (Eccl. Hist. 3.39), is center of the debate as to whether Papias’s use of “Lord’s disciple” and “elder” have the same person in view or two persons (John the apostle and his follower), the ambiguity is not sufficient basis to dismiss the view that the two refer to the same person, namely John the apostle (see Carson 1991: 69–70). It is within good judgment to view John the apostle as the same person mentioned twice (as an apostle and then as a living witness), with the first mention placing him alongside Andrew, Peter, Philip, Thomas, James, and Matthew (fellow apostles) while the second mention (using the phrase “John the elder”) places him alongside Aristion. Also see Keener 2003: 95–98.

10. Of the several places where Irenaeus quotes from 1 John in his work, “Against Heresies,” 3.16.5, is a clear witness for he attributes his quote from 1 John 2:18–22 to Saint John.

11. Others include Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Tertulian (see Guthrie 1970: 864–65). Schnackenburg says, “The tradition of the early church since the time of Irenaeus (d. 202 CE) and Clement of Alexandria (d. ca. 211) ascribes both GJohn and 1 John unequivocally to John the apostle, the son of Zebedee” (1992: 40–41). See also Yarbrough 2008: 5.

12. The argument that has been most influential to those who deny Johannine authorship is the assumption that beliefs go through a process of thesis, antithesis, and then synthesis (as advocated by F. C. Baur in the nineteenth century) with John belonging to the synthesis stage and therefore written later than first century AD. Without going into details (for that will not serve any purpose here) the basis of this argument is that there is no revelation; all beliefs take the process of thought development. Non Johannine authorship, in this case, then becomes an assumption (John belongs to synthesis stage) based on another assumption (there is no revelation, but only development of beliefs). That is not sufficient ground to make us doubt the witness of the church fathers.

13. See for example, deSilva 2004: 452–54. Drawing from the different usage of shared vocabularies and such other observations, deSilva says, “Differences in thought and emphasis, which suggest at least a very different situation, also tend to point to different authors” (2004: 453). Brown also, working with a Johannine community view says, “We have in the Gospel and Epistles traces of development within a particular Christian community over several decades” (1997: 404).

14. Brown also assigns to 1 John a date later than the Gospel but from a different perspective. He works with the assumption of a Johannine School with at least four stages, “the beloved disciple (who was the source of the tradition), the evangelist, the presbyter of the Epistles, and the redactor of the Gospel” (Brown 1988: 106). In the fuller commentary he says, “Most probably I John was written not only after GJohn but after an interval long enough for a debate to have arisen about the implications of GJohn and for a schism to have taken place. Recognizing the approximations, if one dates the evangelist’s final work (i.e., GJohn without the redactor’s additions) to ca. AD 90, I John may feasibly be dated to ca. 100” (Brown 1982: 101).

15. See Ngewa 2003: 430. When the alternative position that the writings of John do not all need to be attributed to John but to a Johannine school or community is accepted, the date of one (for example, the Gospel) does not need to be the same time as the other. Those who assume a Johannine community argue that John had disciples who so much took after him that they also thought and expressed themselves like their master. Such scholars see the similarities between the Gospel and the epistles within this context of master-follower influence. The position adopted here, however, is that the similarities exist because the Gospel and the epistles had the same author.

16. Jobes 2014: 29.

17. Yarbrough 2008: 17.

18. Lieu 2008: 101.

19. Lieu 2008: 102.

20. The context is not very clear. Demetrius may have been someone whose company Gaius needs to keep over against Diotrephes who is in the wrong or he could have been someone Gaius needs to lend a helping hand to. In any case, he is a third and important character in 3 John. See fuller discussion in the commentary.

21. Jobes 2014: 27.

22. deSilva (2004: 452), who views the three epistles as written about the same time but to different audiences, relates 1 John to “the most approximate audiences of the author’s circle, seeking to insulate them against the secessionists’ position and consolidate their allegiance in the wake of the schism”; 2 John to “a more distant house church (or perhaps a set of churches) to warn them about СКАЧАТЬ