4. Contents of Third Epistle.— The Third Epistle also deals with the question of hospitality to travelling missionaries and teachers, emphasizing in a particular instance the duty of Christians in this respect, as the Second deals with its necessary limitations. The objects of the letter are to claina a suitable welcome for some travelling missionaries about to visit the Church of Caius to Avhom the letter is addressed, and to re-instate Demetrius in the good opinion of the members of that church. The connexion of Demetrius with the missionary band is a matter of uncertainty. But it is clear that he had fallen under suspicion, and that Dio- trephes, a prominent member of Caius's church, had succeeded in working on the resentment felt at the 'Elder's' support of a 'suspect,' to raise the question of the Elder's right to interfere in the affairs of the church, and to persuade his fellow-Christians to ignore a letter which the Elder had written to the church on the subject. On the whole, it is improbable that this letter (mentioned in v.^) is to be identified M'ith the Second Epistle, which does not deal with the questions which must have been discussed in such a letter. But it is evident that the majority of the church are inclined to take the side of Diotrephes against the Elder, whose right of supervision is in serious danger of being set aside, though he is still confident that he can maintain it by personal intervention.
5. Historical background of the shorter Epistles. — Several interesting attempts have been made to reconstruct the historical background of the two shorter E]iistles, among which mention should be made of the ingenious suggestions of J. Chapman [JThSt V. [1903-04] 357, 517), who finds the Demetrius of the Third Epistle in Demas (2 Ti 4^"), and identifies the church addressed as Thessa- lonica, while in the Second Epistle (cf. v.* with Jn 10"^-) he finds a warning addressed by the Presbyter, who may or may not be the son of
648
JOHN, EPISTLES OF
JOPPA
Zebedee, to the Church of Rome (cf. 1 P 5^^)^ against the Falwe Teachers who are trying to get a hearing in tlie metropolis now that the First Epistle has closed the Asiatic chiirclies to them. Vernon Bartlet's sound criticism {JThSt vi. [1904- 05] 204) of the difficulties of these hypotheses should also be mentioned, and Rendel Harris's vigorous support of the view that the Second Letter is addressed to an individual lady and not to a church. Harnack's contribution (TU xv. 3) to the interpretation of the Epistles is of far more permanent value. He has shown the importance of their evidence as throwing light on an obscure period in the development of ecclesiastical organiza- tion in Asia, when the old missionary organization is breaking down, and the monarchical episcopate is beginning to emerge. He is, however, on less sure ground in arguing that the 'Presbyter' is fighting a losing battle against the new movement. It is at least as probable that he sees in it the best way of dealing with the dangers caused by the private ambitions of prominent members of the local churches, such as Diotrephes and other vpo- dyovres. But Harnack is probably right in his view that the differences found in the Ignatian Epistles jjoint to a stage of development later by some fifteen or twenty years.
6. Date. — The questions of authorship and date cannot be discussed satisfactorily apart from the wider question of the authorship of the Fourth Gospel. If the view maintained above is correct, that the autlior of the Gospel wrote the Epistles at a somewhat later date, to emphasize those points in its teaching which seemed needed to meet the special dangers of somewhat changed circum- stances, the date of the Epistles cannot be very long before or after the close of the 1st century. The only natural interpretation of the language of the first verse of the First Epistle is that the author claims to have been an eye-witness of the Ministry, unless indeed we are driven by other considerations to regard this as impossible. The tradition which assigned the two shorter Epistles to the 'Elder' offers the least difficult solution of a difficult prob- lem. In the present state of our knowledge we must rest content with the suggestion that the same author is responsible for the First Epistle and the Gospel in something very like the form in which they have come down to us. It is probable that he has used the ideas and the recollections of another who was better qualified than himself to tell of the ' sacred words and no less sacred deeds ' of the Lord, and to interpret them in the light of Christian experience.
The external evidence, which cannot be discussed in detail here, if naturally interpreted, points to similar conclusions. There is very little ground for doubting that Papias and Polycarp knew and valued the Epistles, or at least the first two Epistles. Probably the name of Ignatius should be added to the list. The traces of Johannine thought in his Epistles are clear. Reference may be made to tlie articles by H. J. Bardsley in JThSt xiv. [1912-13] 207, 489, though he has hardly succeeded in proving the literary use of apostolic documents. But the absence of direct references to the Apostle JoliQ, where we might reasonably expect tliem, are undoubtedly significant. The practically unanimous evidence of writers at the close of the 2nd cent, as to the Apostle's residence at Ephesus till the days of Trajan must be interpreted in the light of the probability of confusion between Elder and Apostle, and the strong probability that the work of Papias contained a statement of the martyrdom of John, the son of Zebedee. There are no serious grounds for setting aside the tradi- tion which connects all the Johannine books with Asia Minor, and especially with Ephesus.