1 John
Home > New Testament > 1 John 1 John At a Glance Letter Genre: (3/5) *** Reliability of Dating: (2/5) ** Length of Text: Greek Original Language: Ancient Translations: Modern Translations: English Estimated Range of Dating: 90-120 A.D. Chronological List of Early Christian Writings Discuss this text on the Early Writings forum. Text American Standard Version King James Version World English Bible Resources e-Catena: References to the New Testament in the Church Fathers Patristic References to 1st John, Chapters 1 2 3 4 5 Edgar Goodspeed: The Epistles of John Offsite Links Perseus NT (English/Greek/Latin) How Can I Be Sure? : An EasyEnglish Commentary NAB Introduction An Introduction to the New Testament: The Johannine Epistles The Letters of John: Comfort and Counsel for a Church in Crisis The Tests of Life, a Study of the First Epistle of St.
John IVP Commentary Books Burton L. Mack, Who Wrote the New Testament? : The Making of the Christian Myth (San Francisco, CA: HarperCollins, 1996), pp. 215-222. Raymond Edward Brown, An Introduction to the New Testament (New York: Doubleday, 1997), pp. 383-394. Udo Schnelle, translated by M. Eugene Boring, The History and Theology of the New Testament Writings (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1998), pp. 453-468. Georg Strecker, The Johannine Letters : A Commentary on 1, 2, and 3 John (Fortress Pr 1996) John R. W. Stott, The Letters of John : An Introduction and Commentary (Wm. B. Eerdmans 1988). Colin G. Kruse, The Letters of John (Wm. B. Eerdmans 2000). Howard I. Marshall, Epistles of John (Wm.
B. Eerdmans 1994). Recommended Books for the Study of Early Christian Writings Information on 1 John The relationship of 1 John to the fourth gospel has been the subject of much scholarly debate. Kummel argues that the gospel and the letter are from the same author (Introduction to the New Testament, pp. 442-5). Norman Perrin presents a solution that connects the redactor of John with the author of the letter (The New Testament: An Introduction, pp. 222-3): Are the gospel and letters from the same author? They have a unity of general style, tone, and thought that seems to indicate they are, especially in the case of the letters and the discourses in the gospel. But a closer examination reveals a poverty of style in the first letter compared to the gospel - "the author works to death a few favorite constructions, and his vocabulary is more limited than that of the gospel" - and some real differences in thought.
The latter aspect of the matter is particularly important since these differences concern eschatology and the sacraments. The author of the letter has a strong hope for the future, a version of the traditional Christian hope for the parousia (2:17, 18, 28; 3:2, 3; 4:17), and he has a great interest in the sacraments of the church (2:12, 20, 27; 3:9; 5:1, 6). In the gospel of John the main thrust is toward the denail of the hope of the parousia, on the grounds that the first coming of Jesus was the decisive event and no further coming, no further judgment, is to be expected (3:16-21, 36, and elsewhere). But throughout the gospel are individual sayings that express the more traditional Christian hope (5:27-29; 6:39-40; 44b, 54; 12:48).
Similarly with the sacraments: the gospel as a whole puts its major emphasis on the idea that men are brought to faith by their response to the church's proclamation (3:31-36 and elsewhere), and has no particular concern for the sacraments. Yet the words "water and" in 3:5 make that verse an unmistakable reference to baptism, where no such reference exists apart from those two words; 6:51b-58 makes the discourse on the bread of life sacramental, whereas without those verses it is not; and 19:34b-35 introduces an allusion to baptism as it interrupts the continuity of the narrative. These indications suggest that the gospel has been redacted from an original text with no future parousia hope or concern for the sacraments, and that such a hope and concern were introduced into the gospel by the author of the first letter.