The New Testament contains four works bearing the name “John” and known to contemporary scholars as the “Johannine literature.”1 By far, the best known is the Gospel of John, one of the earliest accounts of the words and deeds of Jesus. Nestled toward the back of Christian Bibles, however, are three brief works sharing the same name as the Gospel: a set of epistles, or letters, which later scribes entitled “1 John,” “2 John,” and “3 John.”2
As suggested by the names of these works, early Christians attributed these to the same author as the Gospel, an author they had come to identify or conflate with a known disciple of Jesus: John, the son of Zebedee. Our earliest references to these epistles, dating to the second through the fourth centuries, embrace or at least attest to this tradition. Nevertheless, by the mid-twentieth century, scholars began to doubt that these texts shared a common author. They recognized subtle differences between these works – differences that pointed to the activity of different hands in the collection. Today, most credit the Gospel and Epistles of John to at least two, if not more, writers.3
The case for the separate origins and authorship of these works does not and should not rest on a single line of evidence. It is, instead, a cumulative case resting on the correlation of several features of the texts. That case incorporates two external lines of evidence: (a) the different circulation histories of these texts and (b) the fact that ancient Christians questioned the authenticity of some of them. It is also rooted in two internal features of the texts, specifically: (c) differences in thought and (d) differences in vocabulary and diction. In this chapter, I will lay out the data that make it unlikely that one author produced all four works – the faint fingerprints of different hands.
1.1 External Evidence
The first clue that the Gospel and Epistles of John do not share a common author is the fact that the texts share an uneven and problematic reception history. From the evidence that survives, it is clear that John was already circulating among readers by the early second century. But as R. Alan Culpepper observes, “each of the Epistles followed a different path toward its ultimate reception as an apostolic writing.”4 References to 1 John appear in texts dating to the early second century. By contrast, 2 John is not attested until the late second century, and 3 John does not enter the historical record until the late second or early third centuries CE. More problematically, when the latter two epistles surface, they do so as a focus of intense scrutiny by many early Christians, who doubted their authenticity for hundreds of years.
1.1.1 The Reception of the Gospel
We do not know precisely when the author of the Gospel introduced his text into circulation, though it is difficult to assign the text a date later than the early second century. The Gospel seems to have been written before Papias’ now-lost Exposition of the Sayings of the Lord, commonly dated to c. 125 or 130.5 Admittedly, the very few surviving fragments of the Exposition do not demonstrate that Papias knew or used the Gospel of John.6 Nevertheless, Eusebius mentions that Papias’ work incorporated “testimonies from the first Epistle of John and from the first [Epistle] of Peter likewise.”7 If, as I will argue in Chapter 2, there is good evidence that 1 John was dependent upon the Gospel, then John predates Papias’ work.8 In turn, perhaps the earliest known quotation from John appears in the works of Ignatius of Antioch, though scholars dispute the dating and even authenticity of these letters.9
More secure attestations of John appear in works dating to the mid to late second century. Justin Martyr (d. c. 165) seems to condense John 3:3, 5 in his First Apology.10 There is ample evidence that the Gospel of John was a significant inspiration for the Gnostic Apocryphon of John and the Valentinian Gospel of Truth, sources known to Irenaeus in the late second century. Irenaeus also references a now-lost commentary on John by the Valentinian writer Ptolemy.11 Ultimately, however, the first extant mentions of the Gospel appear in the writings of Irenaeus himself.12
1.1.2 The Reception of 1 John
All the available evidence suggests that 1 John also emerged by the early second century. As we have already seen, Eusebius says that Papias’ Exposition incorporated “testimonies from the first Epistle of John.”13 One also finds statements similar to 1 John in a few texts commonly dated to the second century, though it is not always clear if these texts allude to 1 John specifically since that text has significant linguistic overlap with the Gospel and 2 John.14 Once again, then, our first definitive reference to the work appears in the writings of Irenaeus. In the third book of his Against the Heresies, Irenaeus condemns those who deny the bodily resurrection of Jesus as “antichrists,” citing the words that “John, the disciple of the Lord” “testifies to us in his epistle” (i.e., 1 John 2:18–19, 21–22).15 Later in the same discussion, he cites another condemnation of the “antichrists” in 1 John (4:1–3) as the words of Jesus’ “disciple” “in the epistle.”16
As far as we can tell, 1 John enjoyed a mostly stable and positive reception – certainly a more stable one than 2 and 3 John. Nevertheless, some Christians questioned its authenticity. The fifth-century theologian Theodore of Mopsuestia is said to have rejected every one of the so-called Catholic Epistles, including 1 John, 2 John, and 3 John.17 And in his ninth-century biblical commentaries, the Church of the East bishop Ishoʿdad of Merv claims that though some patristic writers affirmed that the three Catholic Epistles of James, 1 Peter, and 1 John “are by the Apostles … others say they are not so at all, because their words do not square with those of the Apostles.”18 Ishoʿdad himself, in turn, would summarily reject the apostolic authorship of 1 John:
About this epistle also many have erred, [supposing] that it is John, from the title which is attached and inscribed upon it; both in the beginning and the composition of the discourse, which its author borrows; yet they ought to have searched and found out how much humbler the idea and disposition and authority of the words of this letter are than the sound words of the Evangelist …19
1.1.3 The Reception of 2 and 3 John
Unlike the Gospel of John and 1 John, no clear trace of 2 John appears in the historical record until the last quarter of the second century. The first writer to cite or mention the text is Irenaeus, who does both. In one place, he expressly attributes the letter to “John, the disciple of the Lord.”20 In another place, he confuses or conflates the letter’s contents with the contents of 1 John. In a section quoting multiple times from the epistles, Irenaeus cites 1 John, then introduces a line from 2 John as “words of the aforementioned epistle” immediately before providing a quote from 1 John, which he credits “again” to “the epistle.”21 Irenaeus never quotes from 3 John, which may indicate that he did know that letter.
Something similar holds for Clement of Alexandria, writing around the turn of the third century. In his extant writings, Clement speaks of 1 John as “the greater epistle” of John, suggesting his knowledge of at least one shorter epistle.22 No mentions of 2 or 3 John appear in his surviving works, but fragments of Clement’s Outlines (Hypotyposes) preserved in a sixth-century Latin translation indicate that he knew and utilized 2 John – and perhaps only 2 John. Discussing the Latin translation, Cassiodorus reports that Clement commented on only four catholic epistles in the Outlines. In turn, he reproduces comments from Clement on precisely four epistles: 1 Peter, Jude, 1 John, and 2 John.23
Other lines of evidence support the possibility that 1 and 2 John once circulated together without 3 John. Although there are issues with its text, the only surviving copy of the Muratorian Fragment indicates that “two [epistles] by John mentioned above are retained in the Catholic [Church].”24 References to 1 and 2 John alone also appear in writings from Lucifer of Cagliari (d. ca. 371) and Priscillan (d. 385) as well as the Codex Speculum.25 Additionally, several extant manuscripts support the possibility that 1 and 2 John once circulated together without 3 John. In the Latin tradition, the seventh-century Leon Palimpsest (MS 67 or “l”) seems to rely on a different source text for 1 and 2 John than it does for 3 John.26 Likewise, the Old Latin introduces 2 John 1 as a work of “John the Elder” (“Iohannes senior”) but does not apply similar language to 3 John 1.27
Instead, the first clear traces of a “third” letter surface extremely late, specifically, in the fourth century CE. The letter appears for the first time in the great fourth-century codices: Codex Sinaiticus (א) and Codex Vaticanus (B). It is also in the fourth century that we find the first extant quotations of the letter. Nevertheless, there is evidence that the text was already in circulation in the early third century. In his Church History, Eusebius reproduces quotations from two lost works by Origen (d. ca. 254) and Dionysius of Alexandria (d. ca. 264) that discuss a “third epistle.”28 Those references are interesting as the first mentions of the complete set of Johannine letters, but they are even more valuable as our first indications that 2 and 3 John were objects of intense criticism and suspicion in antiquity – a point that deserves closer examination.
1.1.3.1 Dispute over 2 and 3 John
As far as we know, the earliest work to have discussed the reception of the letters of 2 and 3 John is Origen of Alexandria’s Expositions on the Gospel According to John. Today, we possess only fragments of that work. One such fragment – the fragment of interest to us – appears in Eusebius’ Church History and discusses the works of the apostle John:
And in the fifth volume of his Expositions on the Gospel according to John, the same person [Origen] says this with reference to the epistles of the apostles: “But he who was made sufficient to become a minister of the new covenant … even Paul … did not so much as write to all the churches that he taught; and even to those to which he wrote he sent but a few lines. And Peter, on whom the Church of Christ is built, against which the gates of Hades shall not prevail, has left one acknowledged epistle, and it may be a second also; for it is doubted. Why need I speak of him who leaned on Jesus’ breast, John, who has left behind one Gospel, confessing that he could write so many that even the world itself could not contain them; and he wrote also the Apocalypse, being ordered to keep silence and not to write the voice of seven thunders? He has left also an epistle of a very few lines, and it may be, a second and a third; for not all say these are genuine. Only, the two of them together are not a hundred lines long.”29
If the quotation is Origen’s own, it is remarkable as (a) our earliest reference to 3 John, (b) our earliest reference to the complete set of three Johannine epistles, and (c) our first, clear evidence that not all third-century Christians regarded 2 and 3 John as “genuine” works. Because we do not possess Origen’s original discussion, however, we do not know whether Eusebius has reshaped or interpolated any part of this material. (James Barker, for one, speculates that the reference to 2 and 3 John may be a gloss by Eusebius.)30
The quotation’s distinction between “genuine” (γνησίους) and “doubted” (ἀμφιβάλλεται) works follows the language of Hellenistic authenticity criticism (Echtheitskritik) – the ancient field of study devoted to determining whether texts were wrongly or falsely attributed to specific authors. Evidently, some early Christians questioned the pedigrees of 2 and 3 John, holding them under suspicion as inauthentic works and later interlopers into the body of apostolic literature. One can safely assume that these suspicions impacted Origen since he never once cites 2 and 3 John in his voluminous literary output. Perhaps not coincidentally, other contemporaries of Origen also fail to cite either of the shorter Johannines, including the Latin authors Tertullian and Cyprian.
An echo of this dispute appears in our next extant discussion of 3 John, an authenticity-critical discussion of Revelation penned by the third-century writer Dionysius of Alexandria and reproduced by Eusebius.31 When enumerating the works of John, “the son of Zebedee,” within a larger argument against the Johannine authorship of Revelation, Dionysius lists only “the Gospel” and a singular “Epistle.” As Eusebius quotes him:
We should not readily agree that [the author of the Apocalypse] was the apostle, the son of Zebedee, the brother of James, whose are the Gospel entitled “According to John” and the Catholic Epistle. For I form my judgment from the character of each and from the nature of the language and from what is known as the general construction of the book that [the John therein mentioned] is not the same. For the evangelist nowhere adds his name, nor yet proclaims himself, throughout either the Gospel or the Epistle [οὔτε διὰ τοῦ εὐαγγελίου οὔτε διὰ τῆς ἐπιστολῆς].32
In turn, when Dionysius references 2 and 3 John in a later aside, he does so in terms that stop short of accepting their authenticity:
Then lower down [Dionysius] again speaks thus. “… But the evangelist did not write his name even at the beginning of the Catholic Epistle, but without anything superfluous began with the mystery itself of the divine revelation: ‘That which was from the beginning, that which we have heard, that which we have seen with our eyes.’ It was in respect of this revelation that the Lord also called Peter blessed, saying: ‘Blessed art thou, Simon Bar Jonah, for flesh and blood have not revealed it unto thee, but my heavenly Father.’ Nay not even in the second and third extant epistles bearing ‘John,’ although they are short, is John set forth by name [ἀλλ’ οὐδὲ ἐν τῇ δευτέρᾳ φερομένῃ Ἰωάννου καὶ τρίτῃ, καίτοι βραχείαις οὔσαις ἐπιστολαῖς, ὁ Ἰωάννης ὀνομαστὶ πρόκειται]; but he has written ‘the elder,’ without giving his name.”33
If these words are Dionysius’ own and not a gloss by Eusebius, then Dionysius knew 2 and 3 John.34 When Dionysius speaks of these shorter letters, however, he does so only in passing, “as a parenthesis.”35 And whereas he expressly calls 1 John an epistle “of” John, he calls 2 and 3 John merely “the second and third bearing [φερομένῃ] ‘John’” – that is, given the title “John.” This subtle distinction may indicate that Dionysius questioned the attribution of 2 and 3 John.36
This controversy over 2 and 3 John continued deep into late antiquity. In a discussion also drawing on the categories of Hellenistic authenticity criticism, Eusebius identifies 1 John among the “accepted” (ὁμολογουμένοι) texts and 2 and 3 John among those “known” (γνωρίμοι) but “disputed” or “spoken against” (ἀντιλεγομένοι) by Christians in the fourth century CE:
At this point it seems reasonable to summarize the writings of the New Testament which have been quoted. In the first place should be put the holy tetrad of the Gospels. To them follows the writing of the Acts of the Apostles. After this should be reckoned the Epistles of Paul. Following them the Epistle of John called the first, and in the same way should be recognized the Epistle of Peter. In addition to these should be put, if it seem desirable, the Revelation of John, the arguments concerning which we will expound at the proper time. These belong to the Recognized Books [καὶ ταῦτα μὲν ἐν ὁμολογουμένοις]. Of the Disputed Books [τῶν δ’ ἀντιλεγομένων] which are nevertheless known to most are the Epistle called of James, that of Jude, the second Epistle of Peter, and the so-called second and third Epistles of John, which may be the work of the evangelist or of some other with the same name.37
In another place, Eusebius clarifies that Christians who disputed specific texts did not read them publicly in their churches.38
Even sixth-century sources register continued divisions over the status of 2 and 3 John. In his Topographia Christiana, Cosmas Indicopleustes indicates that “the Church from the first has held the Catholic Epistles to be doubtful,” outlining the range of opinions in his day:
In fact most of the authorities deny that these Epistles were written by the Apostles, but assign them to some other authors – simple Presbyters … But others receive also the Epistle of James along with these two [the first Epistle of Peter and the first of John] while others receive them all. Among the Syrians, however, none are found except only the three already mentioned, namely, the Epistle of James and that of Peter and that of John – while the others do not even find a place among them. The perfect Christian ought not therefore to depend upon books that are doubtful, seeing that those which have been admitted into the Canon, and which are commonly acknowledged, suffice to declare everything concerning both the heavens and the earth and the elements and the whole scheme of Christian doctrine.39
Cosmas’ note that “the Syrians” do not “find a place” for 2 and 3 John suits what we know of the evolution of the Syriac Bible. The Greek New Testament was translated into Syriac at least once before the fourth century – a translation known as the “Old Syriac” (Vetus Syra). We possess only two manuscripts of this translation, the Curetonian and the Sinaitic Syriac, each of which contains only the four Gospels. Nevertheless, scholars agree that the Old Syriac also incorporated Acts and the Pauline epistles since quotations of these texts with renderings different from those in the later Peshitta version survive in the writings of early Syriac writers, including Aphrahat and Ephrem. By contrast, no such quotations exist for the Catholic Epistles or Revelation, indicating that these books – including all three Johannine epistles – “were not accepted as canonical by the early Syriac-speaking Church.” This situation shifted in the fifth century when the Peshitta itself emerged. In its earliest form, the Peshitta contained three, but only three, Catholic epistles: James, 1 Peter, and 1 John.40 As Lieu notes, “the fact that 2 and 3 John were not translated into Syriac at the same time as 1 John” indicates that the translation surfaced in “a time and place when they were not known or were rejected.”41 Copies of the Peshitta with this smaller, twenty-two-book New Testament survived into the medieval period among East Syriac Christians. At a later time, the smaller Johannine letters also found a place in the Syriac Bible. In the sixth and seventh centuries, two miaphysite bishops, Philoxenus of Mabbug and Thomas of Harqel, undertook new translations, hoping to bring the then-extant Syriac texts in line with contemporary Greek manuscripts. Their versions, the Philoxenian (508) and the Harklean (616), incorporated all the remaining Catholic epistles in their Greek models, including 2 and 3 John. Consequently, copies of both letters were inserted into West Syriac recensions of the Peshitta.
Evidence of these controversies is also littered across early lists of accepted or canonical books from other regions. As we have seen, the only surviving copy of the Muratorian Fragment (possibly 4th c.) accepts not three but only “two of the above-mentioned (or, bearing the name of) John.”42 One of these must be 1 John as the fragment expressly cites 1 John 1:1–3 as the words of “John … in his epistles.”43 The other is presumably 2 John. A Western text, the African Cheltenham or Mommsen List (ca. 360), contains a scribal correction under the main text indicating that of the Epistles of John, not three but “one only” (una sola) should be regarded as canonical.44 The pseudepigraphal Canon of Amphilochius of Iconium indicates that although some Christians believe an “unfalsifiable canon of divinely inspired scriptures” should be limited to “one” epistle of John, others admit “three” of John.45 Likewise, Pseudo-Chrysostom’s Synopsis of Sacred Scripture lists only 1 John.46
Finally, a sixth-century writer, Oecumenius, gives us a window into what later became a developed body of arguments marshaled against the idea that 2 and 3 John were penned by the same author as 1 John:
There are some people who think that this and the following letter are not by John the beloved disciple but by someone else of the same name. The reasons they give for this are that in both letters he describes himself as the elder and addresses a single correspondent (either the Elect Lady as here, or Gaius), which is not the case in the Catholic Epistle (1 John). Moreover, he starts with a personal introduction in both these letters, which is missing from 1 John. In answer to these points we would say that he did not put an introduction in his first letter because he was writing neither to a particular church nor to a specific individual. The fact that he calls himself an elder rather than an apostle may be due to the fact that he was not the first missionary to preach the gospel in Asia Minor. There he followed Paul, but unlike his predecessor, who merely passed through, John remained in the province and ministered directly to the local people. Nor did he refer to himself as a slave of Christ because as the beloved disciple he had the confidence that he had gone beyond the fear of slavery.47
These arguments may not explain the reasons why Christians were initially skeptical of these works, but they give us a clear sense of how that skepticism was defended in later centuries.
1.1.3.2 Explaining the Absence
Our earliest surviving references to the Gospel of John and 1 John date to the early second century. The shorter texts, however, do not surface until much later – 2 John in the second half of the second century and 3 John no earlier than the third century – and they were subject to more intense criticism than the first two. For scholars who assume a first-century dating for all three texts, this staggered attestation and uneven reception require special explanations.
The most popular explanation for the late introduction of 2 and 3 John into the historical record is that they were too unremarkable to be cited. Klaus Wengst writes that any early silence concerning the letters “is certainly due to the fact that they offer little quotable in their brevity.”48 In the same vein, a recent introduction to the Gospel and Letters of John finds it “unsurprising, given the brevity of the two other letters … that they are not used by the church in the second century or even into the third century.”49 As popular as this explanation is, however, it passes over a crucial fact about the reception of these texts. The epistles we know as 2 and 3 John are not merely absent from the historical record; they were also suspected of being spurious works. Raymond Brown is correct:
If the only problem were lack of citation by church writers, one could rightly argue that II and III John are the shortest works in the NT and that there would have been little occasion to cite them. But more is involved; for when II and III John are mentioned in the third and fourth centuries, there is marked doubt about them.50
One must explain the origins of that deep and persistent opposition.
In their attempts to explain that opposition, some scholars propose that 2 and 3 John faced skepticism because they do not expressly or clearly position themselves as letters by an apostle. Raymond Brown, for one, speculates that although Christians embraced the Gospel of John and 1 John as the work of an apostle, 2 and 3 John are addressed from “the Elder/Presbyter” – a title that many ancient Christians would not have recognized as an appropriate title for an apostle. In his view, this “lack of apostolic authorship constituted a serious obstacle to the acceptance of the shorter Epistles as Scripture.”51 The problem is that our earliest sources do not neatly map onto this hypothesis. As we have seen, the earliest writers who seem to know and reject 2 and 3 John, Origen and Dionysius, assume that the letters position themselves as works by the apostle John. Conversely, the first authors to credit 2 and 3 John to a different hand than 1 John, namely, Eusebius and Jerome, accept the text as canonical. More problematically still, Brown’s proposal cannot explain why 2 John had a somewhat more positive reception than 3 John. If the term “Elder/Presbyter” in 2 and 3 John were the primary obstacle to their acceptance, then one would expect both letters to come under the same scrutiny. Instead, as we have seen, 2 John enters the historical record several decades earlier than 3 John, and it seems to have circulated in some circles that were negative towards 3 John.
Admittedly, Brown anticipates this second objection in his argumentation. To counter it, he adds a further motive for the rejection of 3 John, arguing that it might have been excluded from canonical lists since it was not “addressed to a church” like 2 John but “addressed to an individual.”52 The fact that Brown’s model requires multiple, stacked speculations speaks to its inelegance. More to the point, the explanation makes little sense as the same early sources that affirm 2 John but not 3 John – for example, the writings of Irenaeus and Clement of Alexandria as well as the Muratorian Fragment – recognize other personal letters in the New Testament, such as Philemon, 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, and Titus.53 Although later Christians supported their doubts about 2 and 3 John with arguments similar to Brown’s, these reasons are unlikely to be the core reason for the marginalization of these works.
1.1.3.3 A More Compelling Explanation
In the end, there is a more straightforward explanation for the problems surrounding 2 and 3 John – frankly, an explanation consistent with attested early Christian views toward the letters. The letters of 2 and 3 John may be works by different hands from those that penned the longer Johannine works. This explanation satisfyingly explains both the absence of these works for some time and the disputes that surrounded them for centuries. The two letters might not have been written until a much later date than John and 1 John, and Christians might have been skeptical of these letters precisely because of their late appearance, if not also because of other suspicious features.
1.2 Internal Evidence
The external evidence offers us reason to suspect that the Gospel of John and at least some of the Epistles emerged in different contexts, as works of various hands. This suspicion grows when we examine the letters closely. As Raimo Hakola writes, “the majority of scholars nowadays think that the gospel and the epistles were not written by a single hand” since “despite the similarities in the style and in theology, there are also marked differences which suggest that the gospel and the epistles have emerged in different situations …”54
In isolation, differences such as these do not necessarily indicate multiple authorship. One could attribute any single divergence between texts to various factors such as different genres, different situations, a development in the author’s thought, or even the declining abilities of an aging author. But it is precisely the correlation of these differences with one another and with the reception history outlined above that suggests something more is at play. Each difference, stacked upon the previous one, makes it less and less likely that these texts reflect a single mind.
1.2.1 John and 1 John
Since John and 1 John emerge at roughly the same point in the historical record – the early second century CE – one might be inclined to assign both texts to a single author. Through the first half of the twentieth century, however, scholars began documenting subtle but demonstrable differences in the language of the two texts. They also noticed essential divergences in the thought world of the two. Mapping those differences lends weight to the idea that different writers penned the two texts.
1.2.1.1 Divergences in Language
John and 1 John have impressive continuities in their language. They take up common idioms and even rely on similar rhetorical devices. Nevertheless, the two also have distinct linguistic profiles, including different levels of grammatical clarity, different preferred syntactical constructions, and different idioms. These differences undermine the idea that the Gospel and 1 John share a common author.
Clarity of Expression
Far and away, the most startling and global contrast between the Gospel and 1 John is a linguistic one. The Gospel has a relatively smooth and accessible Greek style. The Epistle, by contrast, is notoriously dense with grammatical issues, including a convoluted and tortured syntax, non-sequiturs, confusing arguments, and ambiguities that create a minefield of interpretive problems. David Rensberger, for one, speaks of “the frustratingly obscure syntax so common in 1 John.”55 Similarly, John Painter writes that the “syntax” of the epistle “is so unclear that problems confront the reader in almost every verse.”56 Judith Lieu observes that “a lack of grammatical precision” is “characteristic of the author’s style.”57 And Rudolf Bultmann can find examples of syntax that are “most difficult, indeed almost incomprehensible.”58 The problems begin in the opening lines of the text – a passage called “a grammatical tangle” (C. H. Dodd), a “morass” and “scramble,” which “borders on incongruence” (Robert Kysar), and an example of “incoherence” with an “undeniable crudity of expression” (James L. Houlden).59
For Raymond Brown, the differences between the Gospel and 1 John are so pervasive and palpable that they suggest the two were composed by different hands:
I am persuaded that there is a marked difference between the two works in terms of clarity of expression. Having translated both GJohn and I John, I found the first relatively simple, while the obscurity of the second was infuriating … If one studies my notes (following the units of text in the commentary) wherein I point out the number of scholars divided over the grammar and meaning of almost every verse in I John, one might well conclude that, simply from the viewpoint of translating correctly, there are more difficulties in any two chapters of I John than in the whole of the much longer John … the greater obscurity of the Epistles becomes an argument for difference of authorship.60
Similarly, John Painter remarks, “the author of 1 John lacks the fundamental literary skills manifest in the Gospel” – an issue that “does not make common authorship probable.”61 As a close reader of John and 1 John, I could not agree more.
Rhetorical Questions
Beyond the more confused language of 1 John vis-à-vis the Gospel, scholars detect minor differences in the rhetoric of each text. Perhaps the most telling is the use of rhetorical questions to advance argumentation. As Dodd notes, rhetorical questions are “common in the Greek philosophical Diatribé, as also in the Epistles of Paul and James.”62 They are also a favorite device of the author of 1 John; four examples appear in the letter, as brief as it is:
Who is the liar …? (2:22)
And why did he murder him? (3:12)
Who is it that overcomes the world? (5:5)
Strikingly, no rhetorical questions are used to advance argumentation in John’s much more extensive discourse material.63 Their presence in 1 John betrays an author with a subtly different rhetorical style.
Vocabulary
Another noted divergence between the Gospel and 1 John concerns their vocabulary. Scholars have long noted that 1 John foregrounds many terms that do not appear in the Gospel. Some unique expressions encode ideas that set the epistle apart from the Gospel, many of which we will discuss below (e.g., “atonement/expiation” [ἱλασμός; 2:2; 4:10], “antichrist” [ἀντίχριστος; 2:18], “last hour” [ἐσχάτη ὥρα; 2:18], “confess sins” [ὁμολογῶμεν τὰς ἁμαρτίας; 1:9]). A few others encode notions found in the Gospel but, curiously, under different terms encountered in other early Christian texts. These include: “Spirit of God” (πνεῦμα τοῦ θεοῦ; 4:2) and “day of judgment” (ἡμέρᾳ τῆς κρίσεως; 4:17). Divergences such as these further confirm that the author of 1 John is a different person from the author of the Gospel.
1.2.1.2 Different Ideas
The case for distinguishing the authors of John and 1 John is not one-dimensional. Beyond the linguistic and stylistic divergences identified above, scholars also recognize critical differences in the ideas communicated in both texts. Most prominently, the epistle assumes future-eschatological ideas shared with other early Christian traditions but missing from John (e.g., the coming of “antichrists”). One can also discern differences in the way the texts construct the “new commandment,” Jesus’ death, the Spirit, and “light” and “darkness” symbolism. These ideas indicate other streams of influence and a different mind than one can detect in the Gospel.
Coming “Antichrists”
One of the most prominent, even signature, themes of the Epistles of John is the coming of “antichrist.” The concept is elaborated multiple times in 1 John (2:18–23; 4:1–6), and it is one of the few ideas taken up in the very compressed space of 2 John (v. 7). In the former, the coming of “antichrist” is presented as an established or known point of eschatological expectation, one with which the text’s readers are supposed to be familiar. In turn, both 1 and 2 John articulate a single understanding of “antichrist.” Each claims that this expectation has been fulfilled not in a single person but in the manifestation of the one “spirit of antichrist” in many individuals:
… you have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come …
For many deceivers have gone out into the world – those who will not acknowledge the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh – this is the deceiver and the antichrist. (2 John 7)
By contrast, the Gospel never uses the term “antichrist.” More problematically, it is difficult to map the Epistles’ concept of an “antichrist” onto the Gospel; no single text in that work anticipates the future emergence of a single or multiple human antichrists.64 For that matter, the Gospel also contains no clear notion of a single “spirit of antichrist” or “spirit of error” that inhabits “the world” as a counterpart to “the spirit of truth” as 1 John does (1 John 4:3, 4, 6; cf. John 14:16–17; 16:13). As Hakola correctly observes, one must look to other streams of influence for these notions:
The idea that there are different spiritual beings in the world that act either on the side of God or against God has clear parallels in Jewish apocalyptic and dualistic thinking. The clearest parallels to the juxtaposition of the Spirit of truth and the Spirit of error are found in the doctrine of the two spirits in the Qumran Community Rule (1QS III, 7–9) and in The Testament of Judah (20:1; cf. also T. Sim. 2:7; T. Jud. 19:4; T. Levi 3:3). The pattern of thought appearing in these sources forms a much closer background to 1 John 4:1–6 than the more refined concept of the Spirit-Paraclete found in Jesus’ farewell speeches in the gospel.65
“Last Hour”
Interwoven with the “antichrist” theme is a second prominent eschatological concept unique to 1 John: the “last hour.” Once again, the epistle suggests its readers’ familiarity with this point of eschatological speculation. It also clearly defines its parameters; according to the text, the signature sign of the arrival of “the last hour” is the “coming” of the “antichrist” or “antichrists”: “Children, it is the last hour … now many antichrists have come; therefore we know that it is the last hour” (2:18).
Here again, 1 John assumes a developed concept absent from the Gospel. The term “last hour” does not appear in the Gospel. The text utilizes two tantalizingly similar idioms; it speaks of “the hour” of Jesus’ departure, which is defined by the coming of the Spirit (2:4; 4:21, 23; 5:25, 28–29; 7:30; 8:20; 12:23; 16:2–4, 25, 32; 17:1), and it also references “the last day” (6:39–40, 44, 54; 11:24; 12:48). Nevertheless, the text does not expressly relate these concepts or otherwise link vocabularies of the “last” and “hour.” For that matter, it is not clear how one could map any concept in the Gospel onto the “last hour” since the last hour’s defining characteristic – the future emergence of the “antichrist” – presupposes another idea that is absent from the Gospel. In the end, then, the “last hour” is vaguely similar to expressions the Gospel uses but is not identifiable with any of them. It is the sort of expression an author might use who wants to evoke, imitate, or adapt the language of the Gospel, albeit in less careful ways or to communicate a distinct concept.
“Coming” and “Manifestation”
In 1 John, the “last hour” has a definite end point: a future, visible, second coming of Jesus (2:28). The text describes that event multiple times, using an expression found nowhere in the Gospel. In one place, the event is called the “coming” (παρουσία) of Jesus (2:28), an expression widely represented in other Christian sources, including the letters of Paul, the Gospel of Matthew, and the epistles of James and 2 Peter.66 In another place, it is called the “day of judgment” (4:17), an expression found in Matthew and 2 Peter.67 First John also refers to this future event as the time Jesus will be “revealed,” identifying it as the time when humans will be transformed into the form and existence Jesus possesses: “it does not yet appear what we will be, but we know that when he is revealed [φανερωθῇ], we will be like him, for we will see him as he is” (3:2; cf. 1 Cor. 15:23).
There is no denying that 1 John has broken new ground here; no line in the Gospel makes the above points, at least in the same language.68 But the divergence is more profound since the ideas 1 John expresses stand in tension with what the Gospel teaches. In John, believers do not await a future time for Jesus to come and reveal himself; instead, Jesus comes and reveals himself now, making it possible for humans to “see him” precisely through a spiritual indwelling: “I am coming to you … the world will see me no more, but you will see me; because I live, you will live also. On that day, you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you … I will love them and reveal myself to them” (14:18–21). A careful reader can detect a divergence in thought between these texts. As Raimo Hakola writes, the ideas in 1 John “are familiar from other, non-Johannine, Christian sources but hard to connect with the thought of the gospel.”69 They suggest a different author – an author embedded in other fields of eschatological speculation and less attuned, or receptive, to how the Gospel utilizes the same concepts.
“New Commandment(s)”
Not all divergences between John and 1 John concern eschatology. Another subtle but meaningful contrast between the two concerns the “new commandment.” In John 13:34, Jesus reveals this commandment to his disciples, glossing it as a single, simple instruction: “a new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; even as I have loved you, that you also love one another.” The author of 1 John alludes to these words: “I am writing you no new commandment, but an old commandment which you had from the beginning; the old commandment is the word which you have heard” (2:7). In 1 John, however, the author does not gloss what this commandment is immediately. When he does, he defines it in more complex – arguably, overloaded – terms than the Gospel. Now it as a double command, in which “believing” has first place and “love” has second place: “and this is his commandment, that we should believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us” (3:23).
The formulation found in 1 John is not un-Johannine in content; both of its elements resemble the language of the Gospel. But the difference between these formulations is noticeable. In 1 John, we see a different way of construing the “new commandment” that suggests a different concept at play and, potentially, a different mind.
“Anointing”
In two places, 1 John speaks of an “anointing” that comes from God, which “dwells in” humans, and which “teaches [humans] about everything” (2:20, 27). Although cryptic, these lines may refer to the Spirit, who John’s Jesus claims “dwells with you, and will be in you” and who “will teach you all things” (John 14:26).70 This supposition finds support in the fact that “the anointing” is counterposed to the “spirit of antichrist,” as the “spirit of truth” later is (1 John 2:19–24; cf. 4:2–6).
To quote Dodd, the language of these verses “betrays a way of thinking about the Spirit which is not quite that of the Fourth Gospel.”71 The Gospel never casts the Spirit, or the act of receiving the Spirit, as an “anointing.” Other early Christian texts do, however – for example, “God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit” (Acts 10:38; cf. Luke 4:18; 2 Cor. 1:21). The presence of this metaphor in 1 John suits an author other than the one who composed the Gospel, one familiar with different images for the Spirit’s reception among humans.
Blood Cleansing
As Raymond Brown observes, if one considers the simple number of references to “blood” in each work, “proportionately ‘blood’ is far more important in I John” than in the Gospel.72 No less distinctive is what 1 John attributes to that substance; drawing on sacrificial vocabularies, the epistle casts Jesus’ blood as the agent of purifying human sin: “if we walk in the light … the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin” (1:7; cf. “forgive” and “cleanse” in 1:9).
The ideas 1 John communicates answer to a wide range of early Christian writings that cast Jesus’ “blood” as the basis or instrument of forgiveness or that cast it as a cleansing agent (e.g., Rom 5:9; Acts 20:28; Col 1:20; Eph 1:7; 2:13; Heb 9:14; 10:22; 1 Pet 1:2, 18–19; Rev. 1:5; 5:9; 7:14). They also give 1 John a distinct profile from John. In all its extensive discourse material, the Gospel never takes up the image of blood cleansing sin. In John, it is the “word” of Jesus that makes humans “clean” (15:3).
“Expiation”
In two places, 1 John refers to Jesus using a specific ritual term associated with sacrifice: “atonement” or “expiation” (ἱλασμός).73 In one verse, the epistle presents Jesus as “the atonement for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world” (2:2). In another, the epistle asserts that “God … sent his Son to be the atonement for our sins” (4:10). Paul applies a very similar term to Jesus in Romans, where he claims that “God put [Christ Jesus] forward as an atonement [ἱλαστήριον] by his blood” (Rom. 3:25). Vocabularies of “atonement” are not explicit in the Gospel of John, however.
“Light” and “Darkness”
Both the Gospel and 1 John incorporate “light” and “darkness” imagery, but the two deploy that imagery in different schemes. On the one hand, the Gospel imagines the coming and going of Jesus as the coming and going of “light” from the world. Early in the text, Jesus frames his manifestation on earth as an illumination of all human beings: “the light has come into the world” (3:19). Later, however, Jesus reveals that the light will eventually depart, plunging the world into darkness: “the light is with you for a little longer. Walk while you have the light lest the darkness overtake you” (12:35). Amidst this darkness, however, believers will continue to possess the “light”: “believe in the light, that you may become children of light” (12:36). The imagery here mirrors the concept that the world will no longer be able to see Jesus but that those who believe will, through Jesus’ spiritual indwelling (14:19–20).
The presentation of Jesus as “light” finds a rough parallel in 1 John 1:5. But 1 John builds a different scheme from this image. The epistle presupposes a gradual conquest of the darkness of this present age by the light: “the darkness is passing away, and the true light is already shining” (2:8). There are no easy ways to anchor this statement in the thought of the Gospel.
1.2.2 John and the Shorter Epistles
Because 2 and 3 John are so brief, each containing fewer than 250 words, my comments on them will be briefer. We have already seen that the reception history of 2 and 3 John suggests they might have been written much later than the Gospel. That impression grows when we examine the language and ideas of the letters more closely.
1.2.2.1 2 John
Since 2 John is so compact, it has less doctrinal content to compare or contrast with that of John. Nevertheless, it contains one teaching that distinguishes the Epistles from the Gospel: the notion of “antichrist.” Like 1 John, 2 John speaks of “antichrists” and describes the emergence of “many antichrists,” who are identified by what they confess or do not confess concerning Jesus.
The letter also contains certain linguistic peculiarities that give it a different cast from the Gospel and, frankly, 1 John. Some can be explained by the fact that 2 John follows different literary conventions and has slightly different interests.74 Nevertheless, a few examples point to different authorship. First, the letter uses the adjective “elect” or “chosen” (ἐκλεκτός; v. 1) in ways that find weak parallels in other Johannine works but stronger parallels in other New Testament literatures (e.g., 2 Pet. 5:13). The text also warns its readers to “watch/take heed” (βλέπετε) in order to gain a “full reward” (μισθὸν πλήρη; v. 8) – idioms that are not found in other Johannine texts, but which “have a Synoptic ring to them” as Schnackenburg acknowledges.75 And last, the expression “dwell/abide/remain in the teaching” (μένων ἐν τῇ διδαχῇ; v. 9) uses the familiar Johannine verb “to dwell/abide/remain” (μένω) but pairs that verb with an object with which it is never paired in the other texts (“teaching”; διδαχῇ). The letter also contrasts that verb with a verb never set in such a contrast in the other Johannine texts: “to go ahead” (προάγων; v. 9).
1.2.2.2 3 John
Third John is not well suited to a doctrinal contrast since it mostly lacks doctrinal content. But as I will explore in greater detail in Chapter 2, 3 John is undeniably different from the Gospel and other epistles in its language. As Judith Lieu writes, the epistle has an “uneven relationship with the rest of the Johannine literature, which otherwise is characterized by a consistent … set of language patterns; although undoubtedly Johannine, and appealing to those values, 3 John uses its own vocabulary.”76 A few of these differences are sufficient to illustrate this point. First, 3 John is the only Johannine text to use the term “church,” and it uses it not once, but three times (“ἐκκλησία”; vv. 6, 9, 10). The epistle is also peculiar for referencing God (or Jesus) by the metonym “the Name”: “they have gone out for the sake of the Name” (v. 7) – something done in no other Johannine text.77 No less unusual is the wording of the health wish at the beginning of the letter: “I pray in all respects that you are prospering and are well, just as your soul prospers” (v. 2). The language and concept of one’s “soul prospering” does not answer to a known thread of Johannine theology.
As one can see, these differences do not reflect or flow organically from the generic differences between 3 John and, for example, the Gospel. They are an independent set of peculiarities, one which any model of the epistle’s origin must integrate. In practice, they increase the challenges confronting anyone who would assign the Gospel and Epistles to the same author.
1.3 Conclusion
Most critical scholars do not believe that the Gospel and Epistles of John were written by the same hand. That view is based on the convergence of multiple lines of evidence, each of which, stacked upon the other, strains the hypothesis of single authorship to the breaking point. One might be able to work out special explanations for individual differences explored above. For example, one might speculate that a supposed single author for all these texts altered facets of his theology across his career. But it is more difficult to explain how those theological differences emerged and why they coincide with unrelated linguistic differences. (Of course, with this greater complexity come more points of potential vulnerability or dubiousness.) And even if one could overcome those obstacles, one would be even harder pressed to explain every facet of the unusual reception history of these texts – to offer viable reasons for why these texts surfaced in different periods, why they circulated separately, and why so many early Christians questioned their authenticity (to different degrees, no less). At some point, the explanations become too numerous, involved, and complex; the probabilistic load proves too great.
Instead, the simplest and most elegant explanation is that the Gospel and Epistles stem from multiple authors. In one stroke, this thesis cuts through all the data above, offering a single, satisfactory solution to multiple problems. This solution, then, is the preferred one.
Of course, once we determine that multiple authors are represented in the collection, we are left with the question: how many? To solve that riddle, we must examine a wider breadth of data than we have explored here. After all, the many divergences between the Gospel and Epistles only tell half of the story. For all their differences, the four Johannine works are also bound together by a much more impressive body of similarities, ones that have long been cited as evidence that the texts share a single author. As we will see, those similarities will ironically strengthen the case for multiple authors in the collection. This is because they are the kind of convergences that make better sense when we posit multiple authors for the Gospel and Epistles – specifically, signs of direct literary borrowing, as would occur between multiple authors. But crucially, they are also the kind of convergences that can help us fully resolve the number of authors in this collection and the order in which they wrote.
