Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of Graph Search.
Concept
Authorship of the Johannine works
Summary
The authorship of the Johannine works (the Gospel of John, the Johannine epistles, and the Book of Revelation) has been debated by biblical scholars since at least the 2nd century AD. The debate focuses mainly on the identity of the author(s), as well as the date and location of authorship of these writings.
Although authorship of all of these works has traditionally been attributed to John the Apostle, only a minority of contemporary scholars believe he wrote the gospel, and most conclude that he wrote none of them. Although some scholars conclude the author of the epistles was different from that of the gospel, most scholars agree that all three epistles are written by the same author or school of thought.
With respect to the date and location of authorship of these writings, there is general agreement that all four works probably originated from the same Johannine community. That community is traditionally and plausibly either attributed to Ephesus or Damascus, circa AD 90-110.
In the case of Revelation, many modern scholars agree that it was written by a separate author, John of Patmos, c. 95 with some parts possibly dating to Nero's reign in the early 60s.
The first supposed witness to Johannine theology among the Fathers of the Church is in Ignatius of Antioch, whose Letter to the Philippians some claim references John 3:8 and alludes to John 10:7-9 and John 14:6, but none of these are direct quotations or contain information exclusive to John. Polycarp of Smyrna quotes about the "antichrist" in his Epistle to the Phillipians 7:1, a sure reference from the letters of John because the antichrist doctrine is not found in the textual record before the Johannine letters. Justin Martyr also alludes to ideas in John, though this reference is not certain, so the dating of John is not settled.
The earliest testimony to the author was that of Papias, preserved in fragmentary quotes in Eusebius's history of the Church. This text is consequently rather obscure.
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.