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The Destination and Purpose of the Johannine Epistles

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2009

Extract

In a previous article I argued that the fourth Gospel may best be understood as an evangelistic appeal addressed to Greek-speaking Diaspora Judaism to accept as the Christ him whom ‘the inhabitants ofJerusalem and their rulers’ (‘the Jews’ of this Gospel) refused to acknowledge. If this thesis is to establish itself it must be prepared to account for the evidence of the Johannine Epistles. For, whether or not they come from the same hand as the Gospel, the milieu they presuppose is so similar that any theory about the nature of the community for which the Gospel was written which will not fit the evidence of the Epistles is bound to be precarious.

Type
Short Studies
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1960

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References

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page 60 note 1 The only other New Testament writer apart from the Author to the Hebrews to refer to Cain.Google Scholar

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page 61 note 3 Immediately before listing the doctrinal points which, as we have seen, indicate the more Jewish character of the Epistles, Dodd writes: ‘The Epistle is not only less Hebraic and Jewish; it is also more free in its adoption of Hellenistic modes of thought and expression’ (op. cit. p. liii).Google Scholar

page 61 note 4 Pace Bultmann, this looks increasingly to be a late, post-Christian element in Gnosticism, and is absent even from The Gospel of Truth in the middle of the second century.Google Scholar

page 62 note 1 Adv. Haer. 1, xxvi, I: ‘Post baptismum descendisse in eum ab ea principalitate quae est super omnia Christum figura columbae, et tunc annuntiasse incognitum patrem et virtutes perfecisse; in fine autem revolasse iterum Christum de lesu, et lesum passum esse et resurrexisse; Christum autem impassibilem perseverasse existentem spiritalem.’Google Scholar

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page 63 note 7 Ed. Sedlacek, L., C.S.E.O., Scriptores syri: versio. Series II, vol. CI (Rome, Paris, Leipzig, 1910), p. 1, II. 30 ff. The text is quoted by Bardy, op. cit. p. 353.Google Scholar

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page 63 note 12 Op. cit. p. 373.Google Scholar

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