The Johannine Epistles 9781472556448

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PREFACE.

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THE following Commentary is an attempt to apply to the Johannine Epistles the method of historical interpretation, the only method of exegesis which can claim to be scientific. I do not mean by historical interpretation a series of ingenious attempts to fit the Epistles into the scheme of known facts, dates, and places of early Christian history, and to assign them, or their constituent parts, to definite persons, places, and decades. A more modest, but equally difficult task has been attempted, that of determining, in the light of our knowledge of Christian life and thought at the end of the First and beginning of the Second Century, what the writer seems to have intended his readers to understand by the words which he addressed to them. When that has been done we may permit ourselves to draw conclusions, or hazard conjectures, about the author's theology, or the value of his words for later generations. The process is possible, even, if we do not know the writer's name, or the exact place and date of his activity. The question of authorship has been deliberately avoided. It cannot be profitably discussed apart from the wider question of the date and authorship of the Fourth Gospel. But we can, I believe, determine what it was that the writer wanted to say to definite groups of men and women whom he knew, as a spiritual father to his own children in the Faith, and whose circumstances he enables us to depict, at least in outline. The method' attempted carries with it one necessary result, a prominence given to matters connected with exhortation VII

INTRODUCTION. -+--

§ I.

THE EPISTLES AND THE GOSPEL.

(a) Identity of Authorship.

THE discussion of the question whether the First Epistle and the Gospel are by the same author may· seem to many to be almost a waste of time. The view· which at first sight must seem obvious has always heen maintained by the majority of scholars who have investigated the mbject. The list includes men of widely divergent views, among whom Eichhorn, Credner, De Wette, Lucke, Ewald, Keim, and Huther may be mentioned. And the patent similarity of style, language, and ways of thinking between the two writings might reasonably be regarded as leaving no room for doubt. But the views of a minority of competent scholars cannot be ignored, especially as the number of those who reject the traditional view has been largely increased in modern times. Baur's view, that the explanation of the obvious connection between the two writings is. to be found in imitation rather than ~n· identity of authorship, meets with an increasing number of supporters who have a right to· be heard.· The most careful and exhaustive discussion of the question is contained in H. Holtzmann's article in the JahrlJUch fijI' Protestantische Tlzeologie, 1882, p. 128, which forms the second of his series of articles on the "Problem of the First Epistle of S; John' in its relation to the Gospel." He has collected, and stated with absolute fairness, all the evidence on the subject which can be derived from the vocabulary, style, and content of the Epistle, as compared with the GOllpel. In the present sectiQn the freest use has been made of his article, and most of the lists are practically taken from his. The list of phrases common to the two writings is very striking. An attempt has been made to bring out its true

NOTES ON 1 JOHN. 1-4. Introduction. 1. & ~v d:rr' clpX~i] What the writer has to announce about the Word of Life, the revelation of life, is no new discovery. The revelation began with creation. It was continued in the history of the nations and the People, in the work of Prophets, Psalmists, Legislators. It culminated in the earthly life and teaching of Jesus of Nazareth. The mystery, which is as old as creation, was gradually revealed, till it was completely manifested in Jesus the Christ, the Son of God. The words 'lrfpl 'rOO AOyov 'T7ji ~w11i necessitate some such interpretation of the phrase. It cannot refer to the eternal, pre-existent nature of the personal Word, though in the writer's conception this is no doubt included. The whole message of God's revelation, as it has been gradually unfolded, is the object of the writer's clYYf.')..la. The mystery which he takes his part in "revealing" is concerned with the eternal reality underlying the phenomena apparent to sense-perception and needed to explain them. What he has to say is one stage in its unveiling; his words are part of a process of teaching which began when "God said, Let there be light." Cf. Rothe, p. IS; part of his note may be quoted or paraphrased. "The thought of an original being, which has its object in itself, is indeed the most abstract thought to which human consciousness can reach; but yet it lies close to hand, and no one can dispense with it who examines attentively himself and his surroundings. That which falls under the cognizance of sense-perception shows itself to the careful observer to be untrue. But every intelligent man must feel the desire to find somewhere an existence which has not come into being, but which is from eternity, and to be able to rest on this. This the Apostle has found. He cries triumphantly to his readers that he knows of a Being, transcending all that is transitory, the ground of what is temporal and finite. Such a reality can only be found in so far as it is revealed under material forms and enters into the world of matter. In Christ the writer claims to have found this eternal reality, which transcends the limits of I

APPENDIX.

THE OLD LATIN VERSION. IN the following pages an attempt has been made to show to what extent the Old Latin Version, or Versions, of these Epistles is known or can be recovered With the exception of the first eight verses of 1 In. i., the whole of the First Epistle is contained in MSS which are predominantly Old Latin in character. The Fleury Palimpsest, edited by M. Berger in 1889, and more recently by Mr. Buchanan in Old Latin Biblical Texts, NO.5, contains 1 Jn. i. 8-iii. 20 j the Freisingen Fragments, edited by Ziegler in 1876, contain 1 In. iii. 8 (apparuit filius) to the end of the Epistle. The Tractates of Augustine give us a complete text as far as 1 In. v. 3. For the first eight verses Augustine's text has been given till the Fleury Palimpsest begins (i. 8 -rimus quoniam). This is followed till iii. 8 in hoc, after which Ziegler's Freisingen Fragment is used. In the case of the Fleury Palimpsest, M. Berger's text has been used. Where Mr. Buchanan differs from M. Berger the readings of the former are added intra lineas. l This text is fol1owed by an apparatus criticus in which the attempt is made to give the variants from this text which are found in the Vulgate (Vg.), in the text contained in Augustine's Tractates on the Epistles (Aug., quotations from other works of Augustine, which are only cited when they differ from the Tractates, are quoted as Aug.), and in the quotations from Latin writers whose works have been published ill the Vienna Corpus. No quotations have been included from works not available in that edition, except in the case of Tertullian where Oehler has been used for treatises not yet published in the new edition, and Irenaeus (Stieren). The readings of the Perpignan MS, Paris Bibl. Nat. Lat. 321, which I

This refers" to words and letters which both editors treat as legible.

wholly or in part.

I.,