Reading the New Testament Letters in CONTEXT

OK, we return now to some of the books in the New Testament attributed to John.  I have talked at some length about the Gospel of John and the community that appears to lie behind it.  I now move to the three epistles of John, found among the catholic or general epistles near the end of the New Testament.  (When I was at Princeton Seminary, one day I went into the mens room and over the three urinals, in sequence, someone had written, as graffiti, 1 John; 2 John; 3 John.  I guess it was a...