Similarly, the deutero-Paulines presuppose concrete situations and address specific communities or individuals (e.g., the Colossians, Timothy). Since these letters ‘were probably not sent … as part of a continuing relationship of direct and indirect communication’ (Lieu 2014: 129), however, recent studies caution against incorporating these details into historical reconstructions. The same details are more likely verisimilitudes – literary fictions mimicking features of Paul’s genuine correspondence:
[O]n the assumption of pseudonymity, a pseudepigrapher poses as the apostle Paul in order to write a letter to the Colossians, who, in turn, are fictional addressees masking an unknown actual group of recipients, about a situation which may well prove to be as much a construct as the author (Paul) and the recipients (the Colossians) … [one must] take into account the pseudepigraphal attempt to achieve a ‘reality effect’ by employing tropes and concerns from authentic Pauline letters to lend the forged writing an air of verisimilitude (Lincicum 2017: 172).
What holds true for the deutero-Paulines should also hold true for the Johannines – texts that already show signs of literary contact and disguised authorship. These documents are not the independent products of a single community of like-minded churches. Rather, they are successive pseudepigrapha, which present themselves as the work of the same invented figure: a nameless eyewitness to the life of Jesus, recognized by his distinctive idiolect. This figure was invented by the author of John as an authenticating device for his gospel and was later coopted by the author(s) of the epistles in support of other agendas. In this case, the narrative world built around that figure – a community of house-churches linked by emissaries – should be seen for what it is: a literary invention. We have no external evidence for the network envisioned by the epistles because no such network existed.
Literary Contact in the Johannine Corpus
As Raimo Hakola (2015: 7-8) notes, ‘the coexistent similarities and subtle differences in the style and theology [of] the Fourth Gospel and the Johannine Epistles … formed a crucial building block in the emergence of the theory of a specific Johannine group or school’. The subtle differences between the gospel and epistles dismantled the traditional view that they shared a common author. In turn, the affinities between the same texts ‘set them apart from other surviving early Christian literature’, suggesting their origin in a discrete community with distinctive beliefs and language patterns (de Boer 2018: 212 n. 6). There is, however, another way to explain those similarities. One can credit them to direct contact and literary borrowing. Writers in different social and geographic contexts can achieve similar convergences if one is familiar with the work of the other and chooses to incorporate that work’s language and ideas in his or her own text. The idea that the four texts are related in this way is hardly outside the mainstream of Johannine scholarship. On the contrary, ‘the vast majority of scholars assume that one of the Johannine texts is the model for the others’ (Parsenios 2014: 13). But scholars have failed to connect this observation to the question of the community’s existence. If these texts show signs of literary contact, their similarities would neither require nor demonstrate the existence of a Johannine community. Scholars do not insist that Mark and Matthew were written within a single community; literary borrowing provides a sufficient explanation for their overlap.
Verbal Similarities
Since literary borrowing entails the reuse of language, its most obvious evidence is similarity of expression. With respect to the Johannines, ‘it is difficult to find … works more similar in expression’. At least 37 expressions (phrasal or clausal strings) are highly characteristic of the Johannines and present in at least John and 1 John. Of these, 26 appear nowhere else in the NT. These expressions include:
Given their brevity, the epistles are especially dense with these parallels. In 1 John – a text with only 105 verses – one finds over 70 points of contact to the language of the gospel. Taken together, 2 and 3 John – 28 verses in total – have 54 points of contact with the gospel and 74 with 1 John (Marty 1925: 202-203). In a discussion of any other ancient texts, such an extensive network of linguistic correspondences would be considered strong evidence of a literary relationship. When scholars make a case against literary contact, they do so by stressing the differences between the language of the Johannines above their similarities. Judith Lieu (2008: 17) argues that ‘there is no compelling evidence of a direct literary relationship between 1 John and the Gospel’ since ‘the consistent subtle differences of wording, inference, context, and combination even where close parallels appear suggest that both writings draw independently on earlier formulations’. Similarly, Hakola (2015: 90) insists that ‘clear differences in how common idioms and themes are developed’ point away from ‘direct literary dependence’ between the texts. The problem with this objection is that ‘the absence of agreement … says nothing about the presence of agreement’ when assessing literary relationships (Goodacre 2012: 36). A literary relationship exists between texts whether one is 5% derivative from the other or 95% derivative. Indeed, ‘only one direct-connect parallel is required to demonstrate literary dependence between two documents’ (Zamfir and Verheyden 2016: 260). This is especially true since plagiarists and imitators are known to incorporate language selectively and to rework whatever language they do choose to incorporate at different rates. In short, the only positive evidence one can offer against literary dependence is the absence of similarity – not the presence of differences.
For 1 John and John:
For gJohn and 3 John:
1 John and 2 John:
2 John and 3 John:
Direction of Influence
If the Johannine texts stand in a single, if branching, lineage, where does this lineage begin? Which text came first and served as a model for the others? Here again, scholars have had trouble disentangling their answers from the community hypothesis; many existing proposals order the texts against existing reconstructions of the Johannine group’s history. The most popular identifies the gospel with an initial, formative period of the community’s development given its interest in Jews and the synagogue but dates the epistles, which lack these interests, to a later time. If we set aside this dubious approach and focus strictly on the textual data, we still have reasons to assign the gospel priority. Consider the first site of overlap between John and 1 John: their opening lines. The gospel has strong, independent motivations for using the phrase ἐν ἀρχῇ in its first clause. The expression is one of several parallels to LXX Gen. 1 in the prologue – a passage Boyarin (2001: 243-84) characterizes as a midrash on the creation account. The term ἀρχή also appears in the first clause of Mark – a generic template for John, with which the text’s author was likely familiar: ‘the beginning [ἀρχὴ] of the gospel of Jesus Christ’ (1.1). By contrast, no such motivations exist for the phrase’s appearance in 1 John. In this case, 1 John probably takes up the expression in imitation of the gospel (Parsenios 2014: 13). Certain lines in 1 John also seem to presuppose the gospel (Köstenberger 2009: 93).
The text’s passing reference to ‘water and blood’ in 5:6-8 is opaque to readers not familiar with the gospel (cf. 19.34). So too is the text’s confusing characterization of the mandate to love as ‘no new commandment’ but also a ‘new commandment’ (2.7-8; cf. Jn 13.34). If the gospel predates 1 John, it should also predate 2 or 3 John. Given their brevity, it is prima facie unlikely that either was a source for the Johannine tradition. The two, after all, contain only a limited number of expressions found in John or 1 John. The fact that both texts enter the historical record at a late date and are disputed from their first mention also suggests their later composition and derivative character. Lieu (2008: 239) builds a persuasive case for 2 John’s ‘close literary dependence’ on 1 John from its severely abbreviated argumentation – the result of an author trying to compress the contents of 1 John onto a single sheet. Individual arguments in 2 John can be ‘difficult to understand … without reference to the passage in 1 John’ to which they correspond, presupposing knowledge of that text (Lieu 2008: 252). The same compression also produces grammatical difficulties, including a perplexing sentence structure at vv. 5-6 and an abrupt shift from plural to singular at v. 7. 3 John also contains evidence of its later composition. Towards the end of the epistle, the sender claims to have previously ‘written something to the church’ (v. 9). If, as many scholars believe, that letter corresponds to one of 3 John’s extant companions – probably 2 John – it should date to the latest stratum of Johannine texts.
At present, this critique has made only a limited impact on the study of the epistles. Lieu (2014: 129) questions the practice of reconstructing the shape of the Johannine community from 2 John on the grounds that it is pseudepigraphal. Since she assumes the independence of the other Johannine works, however, she concludes that ‘the idea of “the Johannine community”’ ‘cannot be avoided’ (2014: 139). As I see it, it is time to extend this critique further, aiming it not only against the witness of individual texts to a Johannine community but against the very premise that such a community existed. Lieu limits her critique to 2 John because she sees its pseudepigraphy as exceptional. It is not. Rather, disguised authorship is a core and consistent feature of the Johannine corpus – one that contaminates its entire witness to a ‘Johannine community’.
Authorial Claims in John
- An Invented Author:
- Although the gospel constructs its implied author as an eyewitness to Jesus, we have every reason to doubt this claim. Even if the gospel preserves ‘primitive, undeveloped material’ of historical value (Anderson 2009: 382), that material accounts for only a fraction of its contents. A larger percentage of the text is of suspect historicity, including entire discourses whose style, tone and contents differ so radically from the sayings of Jesus preserved in Paul and the Synoptics as to indicate ‘creativity … on a large scale’ (Lincoln 2007: 187). That these discourses are the author’s fabrications is clear from the fact that ‘when Jesus, the literary character, speaks, he speaks the language of the author and his narrator’ (Culpepper 1983: 40). In certain passages, ‘it is impossible to tell when Jesus … stops speaking … and when or if the narrator speaks’, most notably 3.13-21, 31-36 (Culpepper 1983: 41). In short, Jesus’ voice has been commandeered by the author, who makes him the mouthpiece of an intricate system of ideas foreign to the Synoptics, including the need to be ‘born from above’, ‘abide’ in God, and ‘walk in the light’. Embellishment is compatible with eyewitness testimony (Hengel and Schwemer 2007: 490-91).
- But fabrication of the scope and kind seen in John – hundreds of verses of invented discourse material, amounting to a systemic refiguration of Jesus’ teachings – is another matter altogether. This kind of refiguration evokes gospels like Thomas and Mary – texts that extensively colonize Jesus’ voice to introduce novel theologies. That John’s theology meets our standards of orthodoxy should not obscure its use of the same strategy. Tellingly, Thomas also claims eyewitness credibility; so too does the Gospel of Peter. ‘Introducing an eyewitness was a standard historiographical convention’ in antiquity, ‘used to authenticate revisionary works that otherwise might have been questioned for their novelty in form and content’ (Litwa 2018: 355). For this reason, ‘first-person speech and eyewitness accounts’ are encountered frequently in literary forgeries – so much so as to be ‘virtually characteristic’ of them (Speyer 1971: 51). John’s eyewitness claim may serve to authenticate its own fabrications.
More to the point, the eyewitness claimed by the text is probably a fabrication in his own right. Since the literary turn in Johannine studies (1980s–), an increasing number of writers have argued that the ‘disciple whom Jesus loved’ may be a mere literary device or invention:
Even details like those encountered in Jn 21 – discussions of the eyewitness’s death – appear in other texts as verisimilitudes. The author had every incentive to invent such an eyewitness. Besides supporting the credibility of his fabrications, the device would have positioned his text more competitively in a crowded field of gospels. Mark and Matthew do not claim to be eyewitness accounts. Luke, in turn, expressly distinguishes himself from ‘those who … were eyewitnesses’ (1.2). ‘If’ the author of John ‘knew the Synoptic Gospels (as seems likely to many), he may have used the eyewitness convention to outperform his perceived competitors’ (Litwa 2018: 355).
Authorial Claims in 1 John:
Rewriting an Eyewitness Claim:
Despite these obvious links, many Johannine scholars fail to connect the authorial claims of John and 1 John. They fail to do so because of the scholarly assumptions before them – namely, that the texts have different authors and that a complex community history lies behind their formation. Certain writers, including Brown (1982: 136), go so far as to deny that 1 John claims an eyewitness as its author, arguing that 1.1-4 only implies the author’s ‘vicarious participation’ in the eyewitness experience of others. Bart Ehrman’s critique of this view rings true: ‘When more critical commentators – Brown, Lieu, Schnackenburg, and others – reject the idea that the author is claiming to be an eyewitness to the fleshly reality of Jesus in his public ministry, it is almost always because they are convinced that in fact he was not an eyewitness’ (Ehrman 2012: 423). Each ‘fails to consider the possibility that the author wants to portray himself as an eyewitness in order to validate his claims about the real fleshly existence of Jesus … following established patterns of forged writing from antiquity’ (Ehrman 2012: 422 n. 32, 423). Nevertheless, even those scholars who recognize the literary deceit at play can find it difficult to disentangle their conclusions from the premise that John and 1 John have different authors. In the same discussion, Ehrman identifies 1 John as an ‘anonymous’ text, which does not construct its implied author as any ‘specific’ persona (Ehrman 2012: 419, 425). In fact, 1 John co-opts a very specific identity: it positions itself as an exhortation penned by the same author who wrote John – an author who, however enigmatic, was accepted as a flesh-andblood figure by those who embraced the gospel.
Authorial Claims in 2 and 3 John:
What is true of 1 John is true of the other epistles. Although 2 and 3 John construct their implied author(s) in a more developed cast than the implied author of 1 John, styling him ‘the Elder’, they do nothing to deter their readers from conflating these figures. On the contrary, they invite that move. For this reason, even today, most critical commentators speculate that the three letters were penned by a single author.32 2 John lays claim to the eyewitness by condensing one of his supposed literary products: 1 John. The letter presumes the same situation as 1 John, citing the threat of ‘antichrists’ who ‘have gone out into the world’ and who deny ‘the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh’ (v. 7; cf. 1 Jn 2.18-19; 4.1-3). It also constructs an implied author with the same ideological position and idiolect as the implied author of 1 John. In short, it presents itself as his work. 3 John continues this program. By presenting itself as a letter from ‘the Elder’ and deploying his familiar formulae and greetings, the text introduces itself as the work of the same hand as 2 John. But 3 John reaches further back in the Johannine tradition. Near the end of the letter, ‘the Elder’ emulates the affidavit of the gospel’s narrator, positioning himself as the same figure: ‘We also testify, and you know that our testimony is true’ (3 Jn 12). This statement – the only instance of a first person plural in the epistle – evokes the narratorial voice of John and 1 John. In turn, the claim ‘you know our testimony is true’ may allude to the gospel on another level, reminding the text’s real readers of their existing trust in the author.
An Invented Community:
Scholars imagine the Johannine community as a network of churches, whose representative writers had direct or indirect interpersonal links to one another. In most reconstructions, the Beloved Disciple was the founder and visible leader of the community. But if John is pseudepigraphic and its implied author – the Beloved Disciple – a mere literary invention, that image becomes untenable. We would no longer be able to reconstruct that disciple as a historical figure. If the gospel is a contaminated source for historical reconstruction, so too are the epistles. By claiming an invented figure as their implied author, these letters expose themselves for what they are: extensions of a fabrication and fabrications in their own right. A strictly literary character does not have flesh-and-blood associates (3 Jn 1, 12). He does not write letters (3 Jn 13), send emissaries (3 Jn 9) or make personal visits (2 Jn 12). The world of the epistles, as complex and concrete as it may seem, is a Potemkin village, no more substantial than its cognates in known forgeries. In fact, the world of the Johannines is less substantial than these cognates – a fact that suggests its artificiality. Built as they are on the memory of a historical figure, letters such as Ephesians and 3 Corinthians imagine Paul addressing real, named communities with which he had contact (Acts 19.1; 1 Cor. 16.8).
Similarly, the Pastorals portray Paul corresponding with known associates (Gal. 2.1; 1 Cor. 4.17). The Johannines, by contrast, do not reference a known location or figure. John claims an unattested, nameless figure as its author. In 1 John, the same figure remains nameless and addresses no one by name. This anonymity is even more striking in 2 John given its epistolary format. In that text, the author assumes a title suitable for any early Christian leader but specific to none: ‘the Elder’.35 In turn, he addresses an equally untraceable and enigmatic ‘elect lady’, sending greetings from ‘the children’ of her ‘elect sister’. The epistle, in short, constructs a world beyond time and space. 3 John takes a different tack by assuming the guise of a personal letter to a named recipient – a strategy with distinct benefits for a pseudepigrapher.36 Since the text’s invented author is fabricated, however, the names in the letter are probably a tease. We are no more likely to find 3 John’s ‘Gaius’ or ‘Demetrius’ than 2 Timothy’s ‘Carpus’, let alone the coat in Carpus’s possession (4.13).
Did the Johannine community exist? In this article, I have argued that this question cannot be addressed apart from evidence of literary contact between all four Johannine texts and the pseudepigraphic character of the same works. Taken together, these features cast John, 1 John, 2 John and 3 John as unreliable bases for historical reconstruction, whose implied audiences and situations are probably fabrications. Whatever social matrices stand behind these texts, those matrices are not the network depicted in the epistles – the network on which the hypothesized ‘Johannine community’ is patterned. If we can no longer reconstruct the external world of the Johannines from their narrative worlds, a new history of these texts must be written. That history should begin with a single individual: an author who drew on various sources, including the Synoptics, to compose a new gospel. His knowledge of the Synoptics indicates he lived no earlier than the end of the first century. The conclusion to his gospel, in turn, suggests his aim. He wrote to advance the idea that ‘eternal life’ – a state linked to the ‘age to come’ in the Synoptics (Mk 10.30; Mt. 25.46; Lk. 18.30) – is available ‘now’ to those who believe (20.31). He characterizes the transition to this ‘eternal life’ as a spiritual resurrection (5.24-25).
Notions of a spiritual resurrection appear in two Pauline pseudepigrapha (Col. 3.1-3; Eph. 2.1-7) but are condemned in other works (2 Tim. 2.17-18; possibly 1 Cor. 15.12), suggesting their controversial character. To lend his views greater credibility, our author adopted a strategy familiar from the Gospels of Thomas and Mary: he constructed a narrative in which Jesus himself articulates his views. Although our author was probably attached to a local Christian assembly, we have no way of knowing whether he developed his ideas within that assembly or within another. He might have synthesized them through experiences in several contexts and networks; his gospel reveals a range of influences. We also have no idea how many others in his immediate social circle shared his views. Perhaps he held them in common with a handful of others; perhaps his formulation of these views was distinctive. It is entirely possible that his views were unpopular and the focus of considerable debate among his peers. The recognition that our author was embedded in a specific social matrix does not entail a congregation of ‘Johannine Christians’ in lockstep around him, as in the community hypothesis.
In fact, we cannot even assume that our author’s local congregation was the first to encounter his text. Like other literary works, ancient pseudepigrapha could surface in a variety of ways and locations, even at some remove from the author (Starr 1987: 216). Our author could have deposited his text in a literary collection or library; he could have sent it under false pretenses to one or more individuals able to copy it; or he could have personally carried it to a community in which he was unknown. Wherever the author planted his text, we have every reason to suspect that he anticipated and hoped for ‘broader dissemination in Christian circles … from the outset’ through ‘further, secondary distribution’ (Gamble 1995: 101, 106-107). Mark, a template for his project, was already in wide circulation, as were Matthew and Luke. To extend his text’s reach, our author positioned it as the memoir of an unknown disciple of Jesus. In so doing, he effaced his own contributions, vanishing into history. His strategy succeeded. The text was shared widely and repeatedly copied, amplifying its authority. Though it met resistance in some quarters, it carved out a dedicated readership beside Mark and other gospels. Those communities that accepted the text accepted its authorial claims as a matter of course, embracing its enigmatic implied author as a historical figure – as much the object of speculation as of reverence. That figure’s rising popularity triggered a second phase of ‘Johannine’ authorship. Falsely authored letters were common in antiquity, not least in Christian circles (Speyer 1971: 79-82). Writers seeking to advance their own views co-opted the identities of Jesus’ earliest followers and composed letters in their names. As the enigmatic disciple of John was woven into the same collective memory as Peter, Paul and Jude, his identity became a viable mask for other would-be pseudepigraphers. In all likelihood, they assumed this mask fairly quickly. The anonymity of 1, 2 and 3 John suits a period when the disciple had not yet been conflated with a known associate of Jesus. Imitating the disciple’s voice, these pseudepigraphers, one or more in number, recast him as an expert witness to Jesus’ coming ‘in the flesh’. They wrote in a consistently ‘Johannine’ idiom not because they had adopted it in their daily speech, but to achieve their pseudepigraphal aims. Since the terms ‘community’ or ‘school’ imply interpersonal links and/or authorizing agencies, they are not appropriate for the full set of Johannine writers.
Having concealed their identities, these authors probably never met, or never met as such. The differences between their works also suggest their different extractions, if not also geographical locations. Instead, we should identify these writers as a succession of pseudepigraphers – a chain – developing the same historicizing fiction. In its ultimate form, that fiction would depict a shadowy disciple of Jesus writing within a no less shadowy network of churches.
Dating
As Kummel states (Introduction to the New Testament, p. 446):
“No other NT letter, not even Phlm has so completely the form of a Hellenistic private letter as II and III John. Both are real letters.” Kummel also states (op. cit., p. 449): “II and III John were written by the same author. They use the same language, they agree in their length and in their epistolary form (address, introduction, conclusion). In the heading they carry the same distinctive self-designation: ο πρεσβυτερος.”
Concerning this title, Kummel writes (op. cit., p. 451):
“There are therefore two possibilities: either a man unknown to us who was perhaps a member of the presbyterion (cf. I Tim 4:14) bore this title in some special sense without our being able to know anything more certain about him, or ο πρεσβυτερος is a reference to the fact that this man belonged to the circle of ‘those presbyters’ whom Papias and Irenaeus and Clement present as guardians and bearers of the apostolic tradition.” The question of whether this author is to be identified with the presbyter John mentioned by Papias cannot be answered with any certainty.
The earliest attestation for 2 John comes from Irenaeus, and the Muratorian Canon accepts two letters of John only. Because the author appears to stand in the Johannine tradition that is thought to have flourished in the first quarter of the second century, 2 and 3 John have been dated to the same time period.
Raymond E. Brown dates it most likely after the Gospel according to John; thus ca. AD 100.
Raymond E. Brown on the Johannine Epistles
1 John:
In style and vocabulary there are so many similarities between I John and John that no one can doubt that they are at least from the same tradition. Indeed, I John makes most sense if understood as written in a period following the appearance of the Gospel, for the clear concern with the confl ict between Johannine Christian Jews and other synagogue Jews who did not believe in Jesus (those who are called “the Jews” in the Gospel) was no longer a major issue. Rather a division among Johannine Christians themselves has now occurred, sparked by different views of Jesus. One group held that his actions set a moral standard to be followed; the other contended that simply believing in the Word was all that mattered, and what Christians did had no more importance than what Jesus did.
Authorship: Traditionally it was assumed that the same writer composed John and the three Epistles (or Letters) of John. The similarities between I John and John are slightly consistent; yet there are surprising differences:
1. The Prologue of I John does not emphasize the incarnation of the personif ed Word, as does the Prologue of John.* 2. I John assigns to God features that the Gospel assigns to Jesus, for example, in I John 1:5 God is light (cf. John 8:12; 9:5).* 3. There is less epistolary emphasis on the Spirit as a person. Christ is the Paraclete in I John 2:1. 4. Final eschatology is stronger in I John than in John. The Parousia is the moment of accountability for Christian life (I John 2:28–3:3). 5. The Dead Sea Scroll parallels (especially vocabulary) are even closer in I John than in John.
2 John:
II and III John are alike in their letter format. Both describe the writer as “the presbyter.” II John
has similarities of content to I John, especially in vv. 5–7: the commandment to love one another (I John 2:7–8); and condemnation of “many deceivers gone out into the world, not confessing Jesus Christ come in the fl esh” (I John 2:18–19). Most scholars think that the presbyter composed all three works. II John is sent to a Johannine community (which doesn’t exist as shown from evidence before), where no secessionists have gone. The presbyter instructs that community not to let such false teachers into “the house”.
- 3 John:
- The shortest book in the NT and very similar to II John in format, style, authorship, and length, III John is, nevertheless, quite unlike I and II John in subject matter. There is no critique of moral indifference or christological error, only of complicated church relationships that involve rival authority. In one community a certain Diotrephes has kept out traveling missionaries, including those from the presbyter. His refusal of hospitality causes the presbyter to write III John to Gaius, seemingly a wealthy person in a neighboring community. Gaius has been providing hospitality, and the presbyter wants him to take over larger responsibility for helping the missionaries, particularly the well-known Demetrius.
Could the idea of Johannine Christianity be a descendent of one of Paul’s churches?
Looking at literary connections, one of the more interesting clues is the so-called Johannine thunderbolt in Matthew 11:25-27 and Luke 10:21-22. This has often been described as an “erratic boulder” of Johannine thought in the synoptic tradition.
“I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden (ἔκρυψας) these things from the wise and clever (σοφῶν καὶ συνετῶν) and revealed (ἀπεκάλυψας) them to babes (νηπίοις), indeed Father, for such was your gracious will. All things have been delivered (παρεδόθη) to me by my Father and no one knows (ἐπιγινώσκει) the Son except the Father and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal (ἀποκαλύψαι) him.”
There are many parallels to this language in the Gospel of John:
“The Father loves the Son and has placed everything in his hand” (3:35), “If you knew me, you would know my Father also” (8:19), “My sheep know me just as the Father knows me and I know the Father” (10:14-15), “If you really know me, you will know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him” (14:17), “I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you” (15:15), “I have revealed you to those whom you gave me out of the world” (17:6). Now what is interesting is the connection with the thunderbolt and 1 Corinthians 1-4. This section has a very distinctive character embodying a wisdom theology with parallels to the thunderbolt as well as other material found in the Gospel of Thomas, John, and some of the deutero-Paulines. Paul quotes from Isaiah 29:14 LXX on the Lord frustrating the “wise” (σοφῶν) and “clever” (συνετῶν) in 1 Corinthians 1:19. In 3:1, Paul says he taught his brothers as “babes” (νηπίοις) in Christ. Paul also refers to “God’s wisdom, hidden (ἀποκεκρυμμένην), which he foreordained before the ages” (2:7). This phrase also closely parallels Matthew 13:35: “I will utter what has been hidden (κεκρυμμένα) since the foundation of the world”. Paul says that God has revealed (ἀπεκάλυψεν) the wisdom to the believers (2:10). There is also content in this section, particularly in 1 Corinthians 2:9 and 4:8, that parallels content in the Gospel of Thomas (2, 17), and the use of βάθη in 2:10 bears similarity with Revelation 2:24 and the writings of Valentinius and other gnostics. So this unusual material in Paul resembles the thunderbolt which itself resembles content in John.
Since this material in 1 Corinthians occurs in the midst of a polemic about sectarianism in Corinth involving Apollos, a number of scholars believe that Paul here is incorporating and critiquing Apollos’ views. Acts portrays Apollos as an Alexandrian Jew from the John the Baptist movement whose teaching was regarded by Aquila and Prisca as somewhat deficient. Stephen Patterson (“From John to Apollos to Paul” in Christian Origins and the Establishment of the Early Jesus Movement, Brill: 2018) has developed an interesting reconstruction of Apollos’ views from 1 Corinthians and the references in Acts, with Apollos drawing on Platonism and sapiential Judaism (such as found in Wisdom of Solomon) like Philo of Alexandria. The question of whether the Johannine prologue also reflects views in common with Philo and the Wisdom of Solomon is pertinent here too (compare John 1:5, 9 with Wisdom 7:26, 30).
«It is unlikely that an apostle would identify himself simply as ‘the elder’ or ‘the presbyter’ as does the writer of 2 and 3 John; and 1 John is anonymous.»
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