Authorship of the Johannine works

Scholars have debated the authorship of the Johannine works (Gospel of John, the first, second, and third epistles of John, and the Book of Revelation) since at least the third century. Beasley-Murray notes, "Everything we want to know about this book [the Gospel of John] is uncertain, and everything about it that is apparently knowable is matter of dispute (sic)." [George R. Beasley-Murray, "John: Word Biblical Commentary Volume 36 Second Edition (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1999), xxxii] The main debate centers on (1) Whether these works were authored by the same person, and (2) The identity of the author(s).

Ancient tradition attributes all the books to John the Apostle.Stephen L Harris, "Understanding the Bible," (Palo Alto: Mayfield, 1985), 355] In the 6th century, the Decretum Gelasianum argued that Second and Third John have a separate author known as "John, a priest" (see John the Presbyter). [Since the 18th century, the Decretum Gelasianum has been associated with the Council of Rome (382), though historians dispute the connection.] Higher criticism, representing most liberal Christian and secular scholars, disputes whether John the Apostle authored any of these works.

Viewpoints on the issue of authorship in each of the Johannine works range from affirming the authorship of the Apostle, to affirming the authorship of another author, to theories of group authorship. Many modern scholars agree that Revelation was written by a separate author, "c." 95 with some parts possibly dating to Nero's reign in the early 60s.claim that the theory of Johannine authorship was created by the early Church to give more authority to the work which they were using to combat Gnosticism.

The Rylands Library Papyrus P52, typically dated to around 100-175 , suggests, according to Christian apologists, that the text of the "Gospel of John" spread rapidly through Egypt. The front of the fragment contains lines from the Gospel of , and the Gospel was popular among the Gnostics at least as early as among the "orthodox".

Various objections to John the Apostle's authorship have been raised. First of all, the "Gospel of John" is a highly intellectual account of Jesus' life, and is familiar with Rabbinic traditions of Biblical interpretation. The Synoptic Gospels, however, are united in identifying John as a fisherman. The "Acts of the Apostles" refers to John as "without learning" or "unlettered" (bibleref|Acts|4:13|NIV).

Objections are also raised because the "disciple whom Jesus loved" is not mentioned before the Last Supper. [Craig Keener, "The Gospel of John: Volume One," 84 notes, "One could argue that the beloved disciple is not one of the Twelve because he is not mentioned by the 'beloved disciple' until the last discourse and passion narrative (one could also use this to separate sections of the gospels into sources).; Robert Kysar, "John, the maverick Gospel," (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1976), 919) ] However, tradition has identified this disciple with the unnamed disciple of the first chapter, and at any rate, there is no reason to suppose that the final meal with the disciples was the first contact that this individual (or any other, for that matter) had with Jesus. The structure of the Gospel also partially explains the "disappearance" of the disciples from the center of the action. The first twelve chapters, the "Book of Signs", concerns Jesus' preaching and miracles among the Jewish people, while the relation of the Last Supper concentrates on his relation to the disciples in particular.

The title ("beloved disciple") is also strange to Beasley-Murray because "if the beloved disciple were one of the Twelve, he would have been sufficiently known outside the Johannine circle of churches for the author to have named him." [Keener, "The Gospel of John: Volume 1, 84; See also George R. Beasley-Murray, "John," (Waco: Word Books, 1987), lxxiii] But Beasley-Murray's argument only holds water if there is not some other reason for the anonymous writing style.

Raymond E. Brown, among others, posit a community of writers rather than a single individual that gave final form to the work. [Raymond Brown, "The Gospel According to John," (Garden City: Doubleday, 1966), chapter 11.] In particular, Chapter 21 is very stylistically different from the main body of the Gospel, and is thought to be a later addition (known as the "appendix"). Among many Christian scholars the view has evolved that there were multiple stages of development involving the disciples as well as the apostle; R.E. Brown (1970) distinguishes four stages of development: traditions connected directly with the apostle, partial editing by his disciples, synthesis by the apostle, and additions by a final editor. At the very least, it seems clear that in chapter 21 someone else speaks in the third person plural ("we"), ostensibly as the voice of a community that believes the testimony of this other person called the "beloved disciple" to be true.

Most scholars date the writing of the Gospel to "c." 90Fact|date=February 2007. John the Apostle, if the principal author, would have been a remarkably old age for the time, when life expectancies were much shorter. On the other hand, if the apostle had actually lived to such an age, it would explain the tradition reported in John 21, that many believed that Jesus had said the apostle would not die (which may have led to the legend of Prester John). A date later than the early second century is excluded because P52, our earliest manuscript evidence of the Gospel, dates from before the middle of the second century. Even in the early church there was a doubt over its authenticity, and both Marcion (heretical founder of Marcionism) and Celsus (a pagan critical of Christianity in general) heavily criticized it as a clear forgery. The debate focused around not only its differences from the other Gospels, but also its teaching about the Paraclete, which was important in the early "charismatic" movement known as Montanism.

Literary criticism in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries

Theories such as the two-source hypothesis have been circulated for the Synoptic Gospels, but there has been little agreement about the literary sources for the Johannine works. Julius Wellhausen, one of the fathers of documentary hypothesis, argues that there are "different sources" that make up different parts of the Torah. [Jean-Louis Ska, "A Plea on Behalf of the Biblical Redactors," "Studia Theologica" 59 (2005): 4-18 notes that Wellhausen believes a "priestly redactor or editor is responsible for the present shape of the Pentateuch."] He claimed to be able to separate the base document from the editings. He praised the base document, while condemning the later editor for intrusion. Other critical scholars, such as E. Schwarz, listed dozens of "apories" or indications of rupture in the narratives and discourses.

Criticism in the early twentieth century centered on the idea of the "Logos" ("word"), which was perceived as a Hellenistic concept. Thus H. J. Holtzmann hypothesized a dependence of the work on Philo Judaeus; Albert Schweitzer considered the work to be a Hellenized version of Pauline mysticism, while R. Reitzenstein sought the work's origin in Egyptian and Persian mystery religions.

Rudolf Bultmann took a different approach to the work. He hypothesized a Gnostic origin (specifically Mandaeanism which maintains that Jesus was a mšiha kdaba or "false prophet," ) for the work. He noted similarities with the Pauline corpus, but attributed this to a common Hellenistic background. He claimed that the many contrasts in the Gospel, between light and darkness, truth and lies, above and below, and so on, show a tendency toward dualism, explained by the Gnostic roots of the work. Despite the Gnostic origin, Bultmann commended the author for several improvements over Gnosticism, such as the Judeo-Christian view of creation and the demythologizing of the role of the Redeemer. He saw the Gospel as an investigation into a God who was wholly Other and transcendent, seeing no place in the vision of the author for a Church or sacraments.

Bultmann's analysis is still widely applied in German-speaking countries, although with many corrections and discussions. Wide-ranging replies have been made to this analysis. Today, most Christian exegetes reject much of Bultmann's theory, but accept certain of his intuitions. For instance, J. Blank uses Bultmann in his discussion of the Last Judgment and W. Thüsing uses him to discuss the elevation and glorification of Jesus.

In the English-speaking world, Bultmann has had less impact. Instead, these scholars tended to continue in the investigation of the Hellenistic and Platonistic theories, generally returning to theories closer to the traditional interpretation. By way of example, G.H.C. McGregor (1928) and W.F. Howard (1943) belong to this group.

More recent criticism

The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in Qumran marked a change in Johannine scholarship. Several of the hymns, presumed to come from a community of Essenes, contained the same sort of plays between opposites – light and dark, truth and lies – which are themes within the Gospel. Thus the hypothesis that the Gospel relied on Gnosticism fell out of favor. Many suggested further that John the Baptist himself belonged to an Essene community, and if John the Apostle had previously been a disciple of the Baptist, he would have been affected by that teaching.

The resulting revolution in Johannine scholarship was termed the "new look" by John A. T. Robinson, who coined the phrase in 1957 at Oxford. According to Robinson, this new information rendered the question of authorship a relative one. He considered a group of disciples around the aging John the Apostle who wrote down his memories, mixing them with theological speculation, a model that had been proposed as far back as Renan's "Vie de Jésus" ("Life of Jesus ", 1863). The work of such scholars brought the consensus back to a Palestinian origin for the text, rather than the Hellenistic origin favored by the critics of the previous decades.

In any case, the "Qumran fever" that was raised by the discovery of the Scrolls is gradually dying down, with theories of Gnostic influences in the Johannine works beginning to be proposed again, especially in Germany. Some recent views have seen the theology of Johannine works as directly opposing "Thomas Christians". [Riley, Gregory J., 1995. "Resurrection Reconsidered: Thomas and John in Controversy". Minneapolis.]

Hugh Schonfield, in the controversial The Passover Plot and other works, saw evidence that the source of this Gospel was the Beloved Disciple of the Last Supper and further that this person, perhaps named John, was a senior Temple priest and so probably a member of the Sanhedrin. This would account for the otherwise inexplicable knowledge of and access to the Temple which would not have been available to rough fishermen and followers of a disruptive rural preacher from the Galilee, one who was being accused of heresy besides. And probably for the evanescent presence of the Beloved Disciple in the events of Jesus' Ministry. On this reading, the Gospel was written, perhaps by a student and follower of this Disciple in his last advanced years, perhaps at Patmos.

Historicity

Writing non-fiction in antiquity differs greatly from modern autobiography. [Craig Keener, "The Gospel of John: Volume 1, (Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers, 2003), 82 notes, "The question of authorship is not decisive for substantial historical reliability.] Authors such as Dodd note that even Plato would have probably changed the words of Socrates quite a bit. [C.H. Dodd, "Historical tradition in the Fourth Gospel," (Cambridge: University Press, 1963), 17]

With the exception of Renan's "Vie de Jésus", which praised the historical and geographical details present in the Gospel, virtually all critical scholars before the 20th century denied any historical value of the work, largely basing their conclusions on seven particular theses: first, that the tradition of authorship by John the Apostle was created "ex post facto" to support the book's authority; second, that the book does not proceed even indirectly from an eyewitness account; third, that the book was intended as an apologetic work, not a history; fourth, that the Synoptic tradition was used and adapted very freely by the author; fifth, that these deviations are not due to the application of other sources unknown to the authors of the Synoptic gospels; sixth, that the discourses in the Gospel express not Jesus' words, but those of the evangelist; and therefore, that the fourth Gospel has no value in supplementing the Synoptics.

In favor of the historical and eyewitness character of the Gospel, a few passages are pointed to. John's chronology for the death of Jesus seems more realistic, because the Synoptic Gospels would have the trial before the Sanhedrin occurring on the first day of the Passover, which was a day of rest. However, this could simply be due to the authors of the gospels having a clearer and more neutral account of events than would be held by someone present at the time. Schonfield agrees that the Gospel was the product of the Apostle's great age, but further identifies him as the Beloved Disciple of the Last Supper, and so believes that the Gospel is based on first hand witness, though decades later and perhaps through the assistance of a younger follower and writer, which may account for the mixture of Hebraicisms (from the Disciple) and Greek idiom (from the assistant).

Fredriksen sees the Fourth Gospel's unique explanation for Jesus' arrest and crucifixion as the most historically plausible: "The priests' motivation is clear and commonsensical: 'If we let [Jesus] go on.... the Romans will come and destroy both our holy place and our nation.' Caiaphas continues, 'It is expedient that one man should die for the people, that the whole nation not perish' (John 11:48,50) [Paula Fredriksen, "What you see is what you Get: Context and Content in Current Research on the Historical Jesus," "Theology Today" 52, no. 1 (1995): 75-97]

First epistle

The phraseology of the first letter of John is very similar to that of the fourth gospel, so that the question of authorship is often connected to the question of authorship of the gospel. There are several turns of phrase that occur only in the Gospel and First Epistle and nowhere else in the New Testament, such as "have a sin", "do the truth", "remain" in some mystical state (in the Father, in the Son, in my love), and so forth. Both works have a very Semitic flavor to the Greek -- many sentences begin with "all" or with "and", use of "literary inclusion" (the repetition of a phrase to indicate that the material between the inclusions belongs together), minimal use of the Greek illative particles. Both works have the same basic concepts that are being explored: the Word, the Only Begotten, the incarnation, the passing from death to life, the truth and lies, etc.

The book was not among those whose canonicity was in doubt, according to Eusebius; however, it is not included in an ancient Syrian canon. Theodore of Mopsuestia also presented a negative opinion toward its canonicity. Outside of the Syrian world, however, the book has many early witnesses, and appears to have been widely accepted.

Given the similarity with the Gospel, most critical scholars assign the same authorship to the epistle that they assign to the Gospel. Most refer to a Johannine school from which the letter stemmed, possibly even from the hand of the apostle himself.

econd and third epistles

While tradition normally assigns the second and third epistles to John the Apostle, the fact that the author identifies himself as "the presbyter" (or "the elder", "the aged-one", "the priest") cast doubt on this assignment, even within the early Church. There are enough literary and theological similarities with the first epistle that these two are normally assumed to have stemmed from the same circle of theologians. Thus most scholars assume that some personality in the circle of disciples of John was the author of these books. The similarities between the two books make it unlikely that they have two separate authors. This hypothetical author is usually called "John the Presbyter" to distinguish him from the apostle.

Medieval legend, on the other hand, equated "John the Presbyter" with "John the Apostle", and since some read chapter 21 of the Gospel as indicating that John the Apostle never died, produced the story of Prester John, who was said to be the apostle, still alive and writing in the Middle Ages.

Revelation

The author of the Book of Revelation identifies himself as "John", so that the book has been traditionally credited to John the Apostle. Reference to the apostle's authorship is found as early as Justin Martyr, in his "Dialogue with Tryphon".Justin Martyr, "Dialogue with Trypho", 81.4] Other early witnesses to this tradition are Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, and Tertullian.Fact|date=March 2007 Origen, Bishop Melito of Sardis and Papias also attest to John as the author.Fact|date=March 2007 The Apocryphon of John claims John as both the author of its self and Revelation. [S. Giversen. Apocryphon Johannis Copenhagen: 1963 p. 49] Donald Guthrie writes

In the third century, Bishop Dionysius of Alexandria rejected apostolic authorship, but accepted the book's canonicity.Fact|date=March 2007 Dionysius believed that author was another man also named John, John the Presbyter, teacher of Papias, bishop of Hieropolis. Eusebius of Caesarea later agreed with this.Fact|date=March 2007

The most common reason for suspecting an author different from the apostle John is its radically different style. The Book of Revelation contains grammatical errors and stylistic abnormalities whereas the Gospel and Epistles are all stylistically consistent. Contemporary scholarsFact|date=March 2007 note that when Revelation and the Gospel refer to Jesus as "lamb" they use different Greek words, and they spell "Jerusalem" differently. There are differing motifs between the book and the Gospel: use of allegory, symbolism, and similar metaphors, such as "living water", "shepherd", "lamb", and "manna". The "Book of Revelation" does not go into several typically Johannine themes, such as light, darkness, truth, love, and "the world" in a negative sense. The eschatology of the two works are also very different.Fact|date=March 2007

Revelation is written in a specific genre of apocalyptic literature which differs from the style of the gospels and the epistles. To account for the differences, some scholars have suggested a secretary was used in some works, but not others to smooth out the Greek style used in his other books. [The Open Bible, copyright 1985 by Thomas Nelson Inc.]

Other motivations for doubts to an apostolic authorship are the author's lack of reference to knowing Jesus, as the apostle John did, and the belief that John died too early as a martyr between 64 and 70.Fact|date=March 2007 However, the apostle John is widely accepted as the only apostle not a martyr, living into the 90s.Fact|date=March 2007

The estimated dates of Revelation indicate it was written during the life of the apostle John. According to early tradition of Irenaeus, Eusebius and Jerome, the writing of this book took place near the very end of Domitian's reign, around 95 or 96. Others contend for an earlier date, 68 or 69, in the reign of Nero or shortly thereafter. ["Before Jerusalem Fell", ISBN 0930464206. Powder Springs, GA: American Vision, 1989.] Because authorship was one of several considerations for canonization, several Church Fathers rejected RevelationFact|date=August 2007.

Minority views

According to Epiphanius, one Caius of Rome believed that Cerinthus, a Gnostic, was the author of the Book of Revelations. [ [http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/encyc02.cerinthus.html?highlight=epiphanius,hær,xxviii#highlight Cerinthus] at CCEL.org ]

See also

* John the Apostle
* John the Evangelist
* John the Presbyter
* Gospel of John
* Disciple whom Jesus loved
* John 21
* Textual criticism
* Higher criticism
* Authorship of the Pauline epistles
* Rylands Library Papyrus P52

notes

External links

* [http://www.biblegateway.com/cgi-bin/bible?passage=JOHN%2B21%3A20-24&showfn=on&showxref=on&language=greek&version=WHNU&x=19&y=11 John 21:20-24] at [http://www.biblegateway.com/ Bible Gateway] , or [http://www.biblegateway.com/cgi-bin/bible?passage=JOHN%2B21%3A20-24&showfn=on&showxref=on&language=english&version=NIV&x=12&y=5 the same passage in English (NIV)] . (Other texts, the other passages mentioned, and other translations are also available at the same site.)
* [http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/john.html Discussion of the view that John the Apostle did not write the book] (and links to related material) at [http://www.earlychristianwritings.com Early Christian Writings] .
* [http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08492a.htm New Catholic Encyclopedia article]
* [http://www.oca.org/pages/orth_chri/Feasts-and-Saints/May/May-08.html Orthodox Church of America's take]
* Some material moved in from other pages on Wikipedia, including John the Evangelist, John the Apostle, and .