RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
John XXlIl John the Apostle
placed by the Evangelists among the first acts of the ministry of Jesus in Galilee after the imprisonment of John the Baptist, whose disciples they had apparently been, therefore being fully acquainted with the personality and teaching of Jesus.
With Peter the two brothers formed the inner circle of his associates, whom he took with him to the house of Jai'rus, to the mount of the transfiguration, and to Gethsemane. A comparison of Mark x. 35 with Matt. xx. 20 shows that they shared their mother's ambitions for 3. His their future; though it must not be Character, forgotten that in reply to the searching question of Jesus, they declared their readiness to go through all the trials and sufferings which must precede his glorification. It is they, with Peter, who come to the mind in reading of strife as to precedence among the apostles (Matt, xviii. 1; Mark ix. 33; Luke xxii. 24). In Connection with one of the admonitions of Jesus on these occasions occurs the account of John's complaint of the man who worked wonders in his name without being his avowed disciple (Luke ix. 49). It was not their own honor, however, that they wished to see avenged by a divine judgment upon the Samaritan village in the following passage (ib. verses 51-56). It can scarcely be doubted that it was such expressions of an unchastened spirit that caused Christ to give them the name of Boanerges (Mark iii. 17). That both the brothers afterward learned to master their impetuous wrath and their jealous ambition is amply attested. A story of James preserved by Eusebius (Hist, eccl., II., ix. 2, 3) gives a touching evidence of it; and the whole history of John speaks for it, though his natural disposition appears not extirpated but purified and regulated in the words and actions of his old age. It must have been his natural gifts and fiery zeal which procured for him, even in the lifetime of his elder brother, so commanding a position among the apostles and in the church of Palestine (Acts iii. 1-11, iv. 13, 19, viii. 14). In Acts xv., indeed, he does not appear so prominently as Peter and James in the discussions of the council at Jerusalem; but Paul names him with them as a pillar of the Church (Gal. ii. 9) . Paul refutes the assertions of his Galatian opponents by facts which he could not have invented and would not have adduced if they were not demonstrable; all that those assertions prove is that John, like Peter and James, continued to live, with the churches immediately subject to their guidance in Palestine, according to the forms of the Jewish law, while they solemnly declared themselves satisfied with the missionary vocation of Paul and the independence of his non-Jewish converts. The position of John in regard to these burning questions of the middle of the first century is the last historical notice of him in the New Testament, outside of the Johannine writings themselves.
II. The "Writings Attributed to John: The works to be discussed under this heading are five books of the New Testament, viz., the Fourth Gospel, three Epistles, and the Book of Revelation or Apocalypse.
1. The Apocalypse: This comes first in order
because it is the only one which bears John's name upon its face. If the author of such a pastoral letter to the seven churches of Asia 1. Prelim- did not think it necessary to identify inary Con- himself any further than by the bare siderations. mention of his name and his designation as a servant of God, it follows that his personality must have been well known to all these churches, somewhat widely scattered throughout Asia Minor, and that at the time of its composition there was no other John in those parts with whom he could be confused. It follows, again, from the addresses to the individual churches that the writer was as well acquainted with the circumstances of these churches as the churches were with him. A third fact to be borne in mind is that the book was not only destined originally to be read in their gatherings, but that in these very churches it was actually received from the beginning of the second century as a divine revelation.
Papias, bishop of Hierapolis near Laodicea, attests its credibility about 125; Justin includes in his "Dialogue with Trypho" (written about 155 a.d.) a report of a discussion held at Ephesus
2. External to prove that the gift of prophecy had Testimony, passed over from the synagogue to the
Church; the " presbyters in Asia," whom Irenaeus reveres as disciples of John, taught by his own lips, occupied themselves with a discussion of the number of the beast (Rev. xiii. 18) ; the " Acts of John," composed in the same province hardly later than 160-170 by one " Leucius " of the school of Valentinus, attributes the order of the seven churches to the successive migrations of the apostle. About the same time the Alogi (q.v.), who, in their opposition to Montanism, wished to see all prophecy, and thus the Apocalypse with the other Johannine writings, banished from the Church, could press this demand only by the assertion that the heretic Cerinthus, John's contemporary at Ephesus, had foisted the Apocalypse on the Church under John's name. Baur and his school held to Johannine authorship, and, in fact, considered the Apocalypse the only authentic work of the apostle. Those who could not accept the book as written by the brother of James, and yet shrank from the pseudonymous theory, at least in the
3. John the startling form in which it was held by Presbyter, the Alogi and Caius of Rome, cast
about to find another John who would serve the purpose. Thus Dionysius of Alexandria (c. 260) attempted to support the possibility of there having been such a man, at the time and place, by the fact of the existence of a twofold tradition as to the burial-place of John at Ephesus. Eusebius followed him, and discovered the other John in the prologue of Papias (Hist, eccl., III., xxxix. 5, 6), calling him " John the Presbyter." This view has been taken by Liicke, Bleek, Ewald, and others in modern times; and recently a strong tendency has shown itself to make this " John the Presbyter " responsible for all that bears the name of John (Meyer-Bousset, Harnack). Even John Mark, who was set aside by Dionysius as out of the question, has been taken up by Hitzig as the author of the whole Apocalypse, and by Spitta as the
John the Apostle