PROVENANCE
PROVENANCE
Whether one thinks in terms of apostolic authorship or of a Johannine school, the most likely provenance is Ephesus. The evidence that John the son of Zebedee (and for that matter Philip the evangelist and his daughters) moved to Ephesus at the time of the Jewish War (A.D. 66-70) and ultimately died there is not overwhelming, but it is consistent. It depends in large part on the witness of Polycrates, bishop of Ephesus, writing to Victor, bishop of Rome, c. 190 (so Eusebius, H.E. 3.31.3; 5.24.2), and the witness of Ireneus (Adv. Haer. 3.1.1), who knew both Papias and Polycarp. Several witnesses could also point to the tombs of Philip and his daughters and of the beloved disciple. (See discussion in chaps. 5 and 23.)
Those who judge the external evidence to be late and unreliable deny any connection with Ephesus and postulate other centers, largely on the ground of conceptual links with literature thought to come from those centers. Thus, on the ground that the Johannine Epistles are tied in some way to the fourth gospel and that the fourth gospel shares some conceptual links with Odes of Solomon, thought to have originated in Syria, Kummel cautiously postulates Syria.14 Methodologically, this approach appears to be far too cavalier with specific historical witnesses and far too trusting of our ability to establish the closest conceptual links (not to mention our utter ignorance of how far a document such as the Odes of Solomon circulated toward the end of the first century).