Loading...In this post I continue my summaries of the books of the New Testament “In a Nutshell” by turning to the letters of 2 and 3 John. Because these are so brief, I will deal with them together in a single post, explaining their themes and emphases and exploring the question of who wrote them, when, and why.
For a one-sentence, fifty word summary of the two together, how ‘bout this:
2 and 3 John are letters by an author called the “elder,” the first addressed to a community and the other to one of its prominent members, warning against believers who preach a false understanding of Christ and who refuse to welcome Christian travelers because they disagree with their views.
I can now move on to a more extensive overview of these two books.
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Exactly how big a split did the issue of whether Jesus was fully human or fully divine cause. Could this have been the basis for the development of the Trinity as a theological construct – a kind of compromise on the issue to maintain unity in the early church?
By the time you get to the trinitarian controversies, the docetist option had pretty much disappeared from the mainstream. But in a sense, trying to decide how Jesus *could* be both God and human is indeed what ultimately let to the doctrine of the Trinity.
Professor Ehrman, I enjoyed your recent podcast on the Proto Gospel of James. In chapter 17:3 it says,
“And they came to the middle of the journey, and Mary said to him, “Joseph, take me down from the donkey, because the one who’s inside me is pushing to come out.” Does this infer that Jesus was not born in Bethlehem?
Yup. they hadn’t gotten there yet! Go figure.
Given the prophesy that the Messiah was to be born in Bethlehem according to Micah 5:2 and was a major part of the infancy narrative of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, why do you think the author of the Proto Gospel of James would have made such an error, if that is the right term?
She was in the *vicinity* of Bethlehem, I suppose. And part of the plot doesn’t work if he’s in a town (finding a midwife coming down a hill; the cave filled with light; Joseph watching time stand still in the country side, etc)
One thing that intrigues me about the letters of John is the statement in the Muratorian Fragment about “two” letters of John, not three. And the MF certainly knows 1 John because it quotes from from the opening verses. I have wondered if 2 and 3 John were written as cover letters for GJohn and 1 John. First John almost comes across more as a sermon or homily since it has no salutation nor epistolary conclusion. So maybe MF is referring to 2 and 3 John as the “two” letters, and not 1 John. But OTOH, when MF quotes from 1 Jn 1:1-3, it alludes to it as an “epistle.” And even without standard epistolary elements, 1 John still sounds like a letter because the author refers to writing 13x in the short five chapters. It’s odd that MF mentions two letters of John, not three. Thoughts?
Yes, and there’s no reason to assume he means 1 and 2 John instead of 1 and 3 John! Not sure if you’ve seen Hugo Mendez’s book on John that just came out (he goes after the “Johannine Community” idea) (to my chagrin!) (but maybe he’s right). He has another book due out in December on the Johannine epistles in which he argues that each has a different author, each trying to imitate his predecessor. I don’t know just now if he dates them or explains things like hte MF, but I’m eager to find out!
Yes, I’ve read his article on this and heard him on some podcasts, and really look forward to the books. I’m curious to see what he thinks the purpose of 2 and 3 John would then be, among other things.
Where does the idea that a person can’t be both human and divine come from? It’s either one or the other, and that’s it.
The church has taken this and constructed things so that only Christ can be both human and divine. For the rest of us, it’s like no way. Only Christ is both human and divine, and the rest of us are just lumps of clay.
Didn’t Christ himself make his students his brothers and sisters and his equals at a certain point?
Most people in most places assume that things that are not human cannot be human (a dog, e.g., or a rosebush, or the moon). Gods and humans are usually understood to be different things.
But a rosebush, the moon, and dogs can be divine. (though some dogies might need to work on it a little bit).
There’s even a Pauline verse that goes something like; “We see God reflected in creation.” Isn’t this the same or similar to seeing “the divine” reflected in creation?
There’s even a verse where Jesus is quoted as saying something like; “We are as gods” or something like that. This doesn’t make us all of God, or nothing but God, though maybe with this last one maybe we can be.
It’s like there are two different and opposite theologies in the bible. One says we can’t be and are not divine and are just garbage. The other states that we are divine and should embrace it.
Maybe they collected and composed the bible just to confuse the daylights out of us, and that’s why it exists?
You get people going like they are God or they are all of God or something like that. It’s worrisome that this could cause real psychological arrogance and harm both to them and others.
Going with: We all get a piece of God and a piece of the Light seems to be a much more humble and balanced way of looking at things.
It doesn’t have to be all or nothing.
Check out the Eastern Orthodox doctrine of theosis. Goes back to Athanasius if I’m not mistaken.
Dr. Ehrman, I just got through reading a book review of “Domination: The fall of the Roman Empire and the rise of Christianity” by Alice Roberts. I haven’t read the book and don’t know if you have, or intend to, but I thought I’d ask you about it since this book is right up your alley. The book review says that Roberts claims of Christianity’s success is primarily due to its swift penetration of the upper echelons of Roman society.
From the review, it seems that Roberts is suggesting that the Roman socioeconomic system was reorganized around the Christian church and the lucrative nature of leadership positions within the church. I don’t know how much truth there is to these propositions, but I’m curious what your thoughts are on them.
I haven’t read it yet, so don’t know. But in my book Triumph of Christianity I try to show that this view of Christianity’s success is demonstrably wrong, if by that we mean why it became the dominant religion of Rome. It certainly ended up changing thins significantly once the Roman rulers were devoted Christians, but that’s not the same thing as explaining it’s “success.” It’s one of the effects of its success.
As you know, we will all be dead someday. So, I’m wondering if you have any plans to permanently archive your entire ehrmanblog.org for posterity. You probably are aware that there are ways to archive websites for posterity and, given the amount of work you put in and the amount of information on your website, it seems fitting that it should be archived digitally on CD/DVD as well as archivally preserved on the internet for future generations and their scholars. It would be a shame if it was all lost.
Do you have any plans for such an archival process for when you pass on (either by old age or sudden untimely death)? I would hate to see all your excellent posts and excellent replies to comments be lost after you are no longer in this mortal sphere.
Best.
Everything is archived already and fully accessible to anyone; and by the time I’m dead, no one will know what CD/s and DVD/s are/were! But thanks for the thoughts.
I’ve usually thought of the gnostic sects (including docetists) as stemming from a Greek background, where the material world was seen negatively and the emphasis naturally shifted to the spiritual nature of Christ (standing in contrast to early Jewish-Christian groups like the Ebionites, who highlighted Christ’s humanity). And I’m sure that’s right, But then I realized that in the Old Testament, whenever the Lord appears, the language often says he “appeared” to someone (for example, Gen 18:1: “the Lord appeared to Abraham…”). That made me wonder if some of the earliest forms of docetism, such as the “separatists” mentioned in the Johannine epistles, might actually have had Jewish origins, not because of a disdain for the flesh, but because they understood Christ’s earthly ministry in continuity with the Old Testament theophanies: divine appearances in human form without full incarnation. Do you think that’s possible/likely?
I’d say it’s a common feature with Greek and Roman theophanies as well: the gods “become human” but not really. There have been suggestions that Gnostiism came out of failed Jewish apocalyptic thinking (when the “end” did not come, the dualism became more readical than now and then, to down here and up there, and down here became inherently evil). THere’s a logic to that, but now it’s pretty clear to most Gnostic scholars that the ultimate source is some kind of Middle Platonism (in conjunction with elements of Judaism and Xty of course)