The Johannine Letters in Sum

This will be the final post in my thread on the Gospel and Letters of John. Here I will reflect further on what we can about the epistles and the context out of which they emerged.

If you want to read more, check out my chapter in The New Testament: A Historical Introduction.   In that chapter I explain how views similar to those found in these Johannine writings eventually contributed to what we now call Gnosticism.  (That, of course, is a whole *other* story.)  As always, at the end of the...