Iii. Bibliography
GENERAL INTRODUCTION
I. BACKGROUND AND OCCASION OF THE THREE EPISTLES
THE ROMAN PROVINCE OF ASIA OCCUPIED roughly the western third of the peninsula which we call Asia Minor. The Romans gave it the name of Asia because it was the first territory on the continent of Asia to come under the direct control of the Roman state. For a century and a half before its incorporation in the Roman Empire, this territory had constituted the kingdom of Pergamum, whose rulers were friends and allies of Rome. When the last king of Pergamum died, in 133 BC, he bequeathed his realm to the Roman senate and people, and after deliberation they decided to accept the bequest. After reorganization as a Roman province, it was governed by a senior ex-magistrate called a proconsul, who was appointed by the senate, normally for one year. The province is therefore referred to sometimes as “proconsular Asia.” To begin with, the proconsul’s seat of government was at Pergamum, the capital of the former kingdom, but later it was moved to Ephesus, and there it remained throughout New Testament times. Asia was regarded as the wealthiest of the Roman provinces; its cities had been centers of Greek culture for many centuries.
Christianity may have been introduced to the province of Asia by individuals before the middle of the first century AD, but it was effectively established in the province during Paul’s Ephesian ministry, to be dated probably from the late summer of AD 52 to the spring of 55. So thoroughly did Paul and his colleagues prosecute the work of evangelization during those years that not only the people of Ephesus but “all the residents of Asia heard the word of the Lord, both Jews and Greeks” (Acts 19:10). The seven churches of Revelation, and other churches besides, were founded at that time, and the continuous history of Christianity in that territory can be traced from then until the Graeco-Turkish exchange of populations in 1923.
The intellectual activity of the cities of Asia could not leave the gospel unaffected. Among the Jews of the province—especially in Asian Phrygia, its most easterly region—there is ample contemporary evidence of syncretism in life and thought, of the fusion of their ancestral beliefs and practices with features from the older ethnic religions of Asia Minor and from more recent mystery cults and philosophical trends. The same sort of thing was not long in making its appearance among the Christians of the province. There is an ominous note in Paul’s Miletus address to the elders of the Ephesian church, when they are warned that from their own ranks “will arise men speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them” (Acts 20:30). An outstanding example of the threat presented by syncretistic tendencies to the unique essence of Christianity is the “Colossian heresy” which, only a few years after Paul’s Ephesian ministry, was rife in the church of Colossae and other cities of the Lycus valley (in Asian Phrygia) and which is refuted in the Epistle to the Colossians (c. AD 61). Worse was to follow—a landslide away from apostolic teaching1 is implied in the words of 2 Timothy 1:15, “You are aware that all who are in Asia turned away from me.”
The sixties of the first century, however, saw a welcome revitalizing of apostolic Christianity in proconsular Asia. This was due to the immigration of a number of Christians from Palestine shortly before the outbreak of the Jewish War in AD 66. These were not the more Judaistic members of the Jerusalem church who around the same time migrated to Transjordan, but outward-looking members of the church of Caesarea and other churches in the tradition of those Hellenistic believers who were dispersed after the martyrdom of Stephen and inaugurated the Gentile mission in Syrian Antioch and elsewhere. Those who migrated to proconsular Asia included some very eminent Christians—Philip the evangelist and his daughters, for example, whose tombs were pointed out some generations later in Hierapolis in Asian Phrygia, and “John the disciple of the Lord,” who is associated mainly with Ephesus2. The identity of this John has been much discussed. Those writers who mention him regard him as a companion of our Lord and an eyewitness of His ministry. More important for our purpose is his relation to the unnamed author of the three Epistles of John. Suffice it to say that here it is accepted that the Epistles were written by this “John the disciple of the Lord,” and also that he is the Fourth Evangelist.3
John lived to a great age, until the time came when he was the sole survivor of those who had been in close contact with Jesus before His death and resurrection. It needs little imagination to understand how eagerly he would be sought out and listened to by people who valued firsthand information about the deeds and words of his Master and theirs. We know of two leaders in the Asian churches in the first half of the second century who never forgot what they had heard from John— Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna, who told his own young disciples in turn “of his intercourse with John and the others who had seen the Lord,”4 and Papias, bishop of Hierapolis, who thought that what he could get from books would not help him so much as what came from “a living and abiding voice.”5
These men, and others before them, attached special importance to the testimony of a man like John when teachers came along presenting a new brand of doctrine with the claim that it was the original and authentic doctrine of Christ—perhaps secretly committed by Him to chosen vessels and transmitted orally by them until the time was ripe for wider publicity. What were Christians to do or say when claims like these were put before them? A decision on their validity was not so easy to reach in days before the New Testament documents were collected and in general circulation. It was not altogether satisfactory to reply, “This is quite different from what we have always been taught”—such a reply might betoken an excessively conservative clinging to tradition, and the new teachers might say that the doctrine which they brought was part of “all the truth” into which Jesus said the Holy Spirit would lead His followers. Moreover, the new brand of doctrine would probably be so completely in accordance with the prevailing climate of opinion that in the eyes of many thinking people this was manifestly the way in which the gospel was to be “restated” for their day if it was to have any chance of acceptance and indeed survival.
One form of “restating” the gospel which was very much in keeping with the current climate of opinion at the end of the first Christian century was that which its critics called “Docetism.”6 It sprang from a dualistic interpretation of the world, widely accepted in those days, which viewed matter as essentially evil and spirit as essentially good. There could be no peaceful coexistence between the two. In particular, it was unthinkable that there could be any direct relation between the supreme God, who was pure spirit and essentially good, and the material universe, which by definition was essentially evil. The biblical doctrine of creation must therefore be jettisoned, and the material universe must be regarded as the work of some inferior power or “demiurge.”7 The biblical doctrine of resurrection must also be jettisoned, for it was unacceptable to the Greek mind in any case, as reactions to Paul’s teaching in Athens and Corinth showed (Acts 17:32; 1 Corinthians 15:12 ff.). But the doctrine of resurrection was logically excluded by the dualistic worldview, which thought of the climax of redemption as the final liberation of the soul from its bodily shackles, not the receiving of a new (albeit “spiritual”) body as its vehicle of communication with a new environment.
It is in special relation to the person of Christ that this dualistic outlook gave rise to Docetism. The first disciples of Christ knew their Master to be a real human being; they also confessed him to be the Son of God, their Divine Lord. When this confession was understood—as it was by many Greek Christians—in metaphysical terms, it raised problems which were hotly debated in the great Christological controversies of the following centuries. To thoroughgoing dualists the problem was simply this: How could the true God indwell a human body of flesh and blood? The general Docetic answer to this problem was that, since such an indwelling was plainly impossible, the human body of flesh and blood was not a real one but an imaginary one. It only seemed to be so.8
One special variety of Docetism is associated with the name of Cerinthus, who flourished in the nineties of the first century, and who is traditionally represented as the bête noire of John the disciple of the Lord.9 Cerinthus, a man trained in Egypt but resident in the province of Asia, accepted the general dualistic worldview (including the creation of matter by an inferior power), but propounded a novel Christology. He distinguished the man Jesus (the son of Joseph and Mary, endowed with greater virtue and wisdom than other men), from “the Christ,” who descended on Jesus in the form of a dove after He was baptized, empowering Him to perform miracles and proclaim “the unknown Father,” but who left Him before He died, so that “Jesus suffered and rose again, while the Christ remained immune from suffering, since He was a spiritual being.”10 In spite of second-century tradition, however, it is not certain that it is his views exclusively that are controverted in 1 and 2 John.11
John writes with conscious authority, whether he is refuting the claims of those whose teaching denies that “Jesus Christ has come in the flesh” or directing churches to welcome visitors who bring the true gospel but to give no countenance to any doctrine which is inconsistent with it. If in some places there is a tendency to disregard his authority, as there was in the church ruled by Diotrephes, he is confident that a personal visit will suffice to reestablish his authority; Diotrephes will be cut down to size. John’s authority in this circle of churches is comparable to Paul’s in his Gentile mission field. “I will come to you soon, if the Lord wills,” writes Paul to the Corinthians, “and I will find out not the talk of these arrogant people but their power” (1 Corinthians 4:19).
But whereas Paul invokes the apostolic authority committed to him by the Lord, John does not argue in these terms. The word “apostle” is absent from his Epistles, and in the Gospel it occurs only once, and that in the general sense of “messenger” (John 13:16, “he who is sent”). John is the bearer and representative of what we should call “apostolic tradition” (although he does not describe it as “apostolic”); indeed, because of his personal association with the earliest days of Christianity, he is the embodiment of that tradition12—more particularly, the tradition as it is set forth in his Gospel.13 This tradition, together with him who embodies it, is vested with the authority of the Lord Himself—not only because it stems from Him as a matter of history but also because it is continuously validated by Him as the exalted and ever-living One, who is still active in the world by His Spirit in His servants.14 This is the authority by which John acts and writes, and of those who repudiated his authority he might well say, like Paul, “if I come again I will not spare them—since you desire proof that Christ is speaking in me” (2 Corinthians 13:2 f.).
II. THE THREE EPISTLES IN THE EARLY CHURCH
The first epistle of John was known in the province of Asia quite early in the second century. Ignatius, bishop of Antioch (martyred c. AD 110), has one or two possible allusions to it, especially in a passage in his letter to the Ephesian church where he speaks of the incarnation as “God having become in flesh,”15 which could be a typically Ignatian paraphrase of 1 John 4:2, 3. A telescoped quotation of these same two verses appears in Polycarp’s letter to the Philippian church (c. AD 120),16 and Polycarp’s contemporary Papias is said by Eusebius to have “made use of testimonies from the former epistle of John.”17 Other second-century writers in whom traces of this epistle have been recognized are the Gnostic Valentinus,18 Justin Martyr in Rome,19 and the anonymous author of the Letter to Diognetus.20
Later in the century, Irenaeus of Lyons21 and Tertullian of Carthage22 quote it explicitly and repeatedly, ascribing it to John the apostle and according it therefore unquestioned authority.
Towards the end of the second century two, if not three, of the epistles were not only known in the Roman church but recognized as canonical. The Muratorian list of New Testament books, drawn up at Rome c. AD 190 and preserved in a single incomplete Latin manuscript of the seventh or eighth century, discovered and published in 1740 by Cardinal L. A. Muratori (whence its designation) and now in the Ambrosian Library at Milan, gives a free quotation from the opening words of 1 John in connection with its account of the Fourth Gospel. The author of the list, wishing to emphasize that this Gospel presents the evidence of an eyewitness, goes on to say,
What wonder, then, that John in his epistles also should lay such bold claim to the following experiences, one by one, saying of himself, “What we have seen with our eyes and heard with our ears and our hands have handled, this is what we write to you.” For in these words he claims to be not only a spectator and hearer, but also a writer of all the Lord’s wonderful works in order.23
Later in the list, two epistles “of the aforementioned John” are said to be included in catholica,24 which presumably means that they were accepted in the Catholic Church. The identity of these two is uncertain. The compiler of the list may mean two in addition to the one already quoted (i.e. 2 and 3 John in addition to 1 John);25 he may mean 1 John together with one of the others; or, if 2 and 3 John were taken together as one (which is not very probable), he may mean 1 John together with 2 and 3 John. Most probably he means 1 and 2 John. There is evidence that 3 John was rendered into Latin by another (and later?) translator than 1 and 2 John.26 This being so, the Muratorian author, and the church whose New Testament canon he recorded, may well have known only 1 and 2 John.
This was the situation at the same time in Alexandria. Clement of Alexandria appears to have known 1 and 2 John only,27 whereas one or two generations later, in that same city, Origen and Dionysius knew 3 John as well. An African list of New Testament books of c. AD 360 (the Cheltenham or Mommsenian Canon) indicates that when it was drawn up “three epistles of John” were recognized in the church of Carthage, but the added words “one only” suggest that some conservative spirits were none too sure about 2 and 3 John. The evidence points to the canonical recognition of 1, 2 and 3 John in stages, one at a time.
Origen (c. AD 231) says that John “has left an epistle of a very few lines and, it may be, a second and a third, for not all say that these [i.e. the second and the third] are genuine.”28 According to Eusebius, writing c. AD 325, 1 John in his days belonged to the “acknowledged books” (homologoumena), while 2 and 3 John were “disputed” (anti-legomena), because “they might be the work of the evangelist or of someone else with the same name.”29 The authorized version of the Bible in Syriac (the Peshitta), published early in the fifth century, included 1 John but not 2 and 3 John. Not until the Philoxenian version of AD 508 were these two epistles (with 2 Peter, Jude and Revelation) included in an edition of the Syriac New Testament.
The first epistle belongs properly to the group of New Testament documents called Catholic (or General) Epistles, because they are not addressed to any one person or community. Origen applies the epithet “catholic” to 1 John,30 and his disciple Dionysius, bishop of Alexandria, also speaks of 1 John as John’s “catholic epistle”31—perhaps in contrast to 2 and 3 John, which are addressed to specified persons.32 Later, however, 2 and 3 John were also reckoned among the seven Catholic Epistles (James, 1 and 2 Peter, 1, 2 and 3 John, Jude);33 in this broader sense the term “catholic” meant more or less “canonical”34—canonical, that is to say, in addition to the Pauline epistles.
All three epistles are included in Athanasius’s list of twenty-seven New Testament books issued in AD 367, and in the similar lists approved by the Councils of Hippo (393) and Carthage (397).
III. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Among the numerous expositions of these Epistles there are seven which I have found outstandingly useful:
B. F. Westcott, The Epistles of St. John (London, first edition, 1883; fourth edition, 1902). This commentary, based on the Greek text, was reissued in 1966 by the Marcham Manor Press, Abingdon, Berkshire.
G. G. Findlay, Fellowship in the Life Eternal (London, 1909).
R. Law, The Tests of Life (Edinburgh, first edition, 1909; third edition, 1914). This study, described by A. M. Hunter as “a liberal education in Biblical theology,” was reissued in 1968 by the Baker Book House, Grand Rapids, Michigan, in its “Limited Editions Library.”
A. E. Brooke, The Johannine Epistles. International Critical Commentary (Edinburgh, 1912). Based on the Greek text.
C. H. Dodd, The Johannine Epistles. Moffatt New Testament Commentary (London, 1946). Based, like all the volumes in the same series, on James Moffatt’s translation.
R. Schnackenburg, Die Johannesbriefe. Herder’s Theological Commentary on the NT (Freiburg, third edition, 1965).
R. Bultmann, The Johannine Epistles. Hermeneia (Philadelphia, 1973)
J. L. Houlden, A Commentary on the Johannine Epistles. Black’s New Testament Commentaries (London, 1973).
Among shorter and more popular commentaries, these are worthy of special mention:
N. Alexander, The Epistles of John, Torch Commentaries (London, 1962).
J. R. W. Stott, The Epistles of John, Tyndale NT Commentaries (London, 1964).
R. R. Williams, The Letters of John and James, Cambridge Bible Commentary on the New English Bible (Cambridge, 1965).
Other works containing material relevant to the study of the three Epistles are:
O. Cullmann, The Early Church (London, 1956).
W. F. Howard, Christianity according to St. John (London, 1943).
T. W. Manson, On Paul and John (London, 1963).
W. Nauck, Die Tradition und der Charakter des ersten Johannesbriefes (Tübingen, 1957).
Further important contributions to the study of John’s Epistles— especially in the form of periodical or occasional articles—are mentioned in footnotes.
1 Although the apostles are not referred to as such in either the Gospel or the Epistles of John, this commentary uses the terminology “the apostolic (or the apostles’) teaching, fellowship or tradition” to denote what John prefers to call “that was from the beginning” (see commentary on ; ; ).
2 Polycrates, bishop of Ephesus, writing to Victor, bishop of Rome c. AD 190, mentions among the “great luminaries” who died and were buried in proconsular Asia Philip and two of his daughters (whose graves were in Hierapolis) and a third daughter (whose grave was in Ephesus), “and John, who leaned on the Lord’s breast, who was a priest wearing the petalon, a martyr and teacher; he also sleeps in Ephesus” (quoted bv Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. iii. 31.3; v. 24.2). The petalon was the inscribed plate of gold attached to the high-priestly mitre or turban; Polycrates’s language about it is best understood figuratively. Polycrates appears to have confused Philip the apostle with Philip the evangelist. His contemporary, the Phrygian Montanist Proclus, points clearly to the Philip of Acts 21:8 f. when he says in his correspondence with Gaius, a Roman presbyter, that “the four daughters of Philip, who were prophetesses, were at Hierapolis in Asia; their grave is there and so is their father’s” (quoted by Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. iii. 31.4). About the same time Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons, states that “John the disciple of the Lord, who leaned on His breast, himself also published the Gospel while he stayed at Ephesus in Asia” (Against Heresies iii. 1.1). In the time of Dionysius, bishop of Alexandria (c. AD 270), two places were pointed out at Ephesus as the site of John’s tomb (Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. vii. 25.16).
3 Identified in John 21:20-24 with “the disciple whom Jesus loved.” Cf. also John 13:23 ff. (where this disciple is described as “lying close to the breast of Jesus” at the Last Supper); 19:26 f. (where he stands near the cross); 20:2 ff., where he is convinced by the silent witness of the empty tomb); 21:7 (where he recognizes the risen Lord). See also pp. f.
4 From Irenaeus’s letter to Florinus, in which he reminds his former companion how Polycarp recalled “the things concerning the Lord which he had heard from them, His miracles and His teaching, and how Polycarp had received them from eyewitnesses of the Word of life and reported all things in accordance with the Scriptures” (quoted by Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. v. 20.6). Similarly, in his letter to Victor of Rome on the proper date of Easter, Irenaeus affirms that Polycarp had always followed the quartodeciman dating (i.e. he observed Passover on Nisan 14, after the Jewish precedent, irrespective of the weekday on which it fell) “in company with John the disciple of our Lord and the other apostles with whom he associated” (quoted by Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. v. 24.16). The absence of any reference to John in Pionius’s later Life of Polycarp (c. AD 250) does not weaken the testimony of Irenaeus. Pionius’s strong anti-quartodeciman convictions would be sufficient to dictate silence about John, who was regarded as the greatest authority for quartodeciman practice.
5 From his Exegesis of the Dominical Oracles, a work in five books now extant only in fragments quoted by later Christian writers, several of them by Eusebius, like the present one (Hist. Eccl. iii. 39.4). Among those about whose testimony he sought information he mentions “John” in a list of “disciples of the Lord” in the past tense, and “the elder John” as one of two “disciples of the Lord” in the present tense (see the whole quotation on p. ). If he means to distinguish two men called John, the former being presumably the apostle, the question arises whether “John the disciple of the Lord” referred to by other Asian writers should be identified with the apostle or with “the elder John.” This question remains unresolved; it was discussed by Dionysius of Alexandria in his day and by Eusebius fifty years later (Hist. Eccl. vii. 25.6-27). The late fourth century Apostolic Constitutions gives a list of bishops alleged to have been appointed to their sees by apostles, including “in Ephesus…John appointed by me John” (vii. 46). The independent value of this list is negligible, but it probably does bear witness to the tradition of two Johns at Ephesus, as does also a treatise (implausibly ascribed to Eusebius) found in some manuscripts of the Syriac Peshitta version, which mentions among three disciples of John the Evangelist “John, to whom he committed the presbyterate and the episcopal see after him.”
Irenaeus had no doubt that Papias was “a hearer of John and a companion of Polycarp” (Against Heresies v. 33.4). Eusebius, on the other hand, thinks that Papias makes it plain that, while he had heard Aristion and the elder John, “he had by no means been a hearer and eyewitness of the holy apostles” (Hist. Eccl. iii. 39.2, 7). But Eusebius was anxious that no suspicion of apostolic authority should attach to Papias’s millenarian views, of which he disapproved. The anti-Marcionite prologue to the Fourth Gospel, extant only in a corrupt Latin translation of the Greek original (which may be dated c. AD 175), seems to confirm Irenaeus’s testimony: “The Gospel of John was published and given to the churches by John while he was yet in the body, as a man of Hierapolis, Papias by name, John’s dear disciple, has related in his five exegetical books” (the adjective “exegetical” is a highly probable emendation).
Several legends about John were preserved in Ephesus and its neighborhood, including one about a former disciple of his who became a brigand chief and was sought out by John and restored to Christian fellowship (Clement of Alexandria, Who is the rich man who is saved? 42, quoted also by Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. iii. 23.5-19), and another to the effect that in extreme old age, when he was taken to meet fellow Christians, all he could do was to sum up the burden of his ministry by repeating the admonition, “Little children, love one another” (Jerome, Commentary on Galatians 6:10). No historical worth attaches to the apocryphal Acts of John (c. AD 160).
6 From Greek dokein, “to seem.” Cf. Ignatius, To the Smyrnaeans 2, where, after affirming his faith in Jesus incarnate, crucified and risen, he says, “He suffered all these things for us that we might be saved; and he truly suffered, even as he truly raised himself—not, as some unbelievers say, that he seemed to have suffered” (where the repeated “truly” is set in antithesis to mere seeming); similarly To the Trallians 10.
7 From Greek dēmiourgos, literally “public workman” (dēmio-ergos), “artisan”; it is the word used of God in Hebrews 11:10 (but not in a dualistic or gnostic sense) and translated “maker” in KJV, RV and RSV (NEB “builder”).
8 The Christianity with which Muhammad became acquainted in his early days appears to have been docetic in outlook. Hence the statement in the Qur’an (4.157), “they did not kill him and did not crucify him, but he was counterfeited for them” (i.e. it was an effigy or likeness or substitute of Jesus that was fastened to the cross).
9 As in the legend about John’s leaving the public baths at Ephesus in precipitate haste when he heard on one occasion that Cerinthus had entered: “Let us flee, lest the baths fall in while Cerinthus, the enemy of the truth, is within” (related by Irenaeus, Against Heresies iii. 3.4, as a story told by Polycarp).
10 Irenaeus, Against Heresies i. 26.1. Gaius of Rome, contemporary with Irenaeus, charged Cerinthus with teaching that the marriage supper of the Lamb would last on earth for a thousand years, and indeed held that the Johannine Apocalypse was the work of Cerinthus. Dionysius of Alexandria also ascribed millenarian views to Cerinthus (both Gaius and Dionysius are quoted to this effect by Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. iii. 28.1-5; cf. vii. 25.1-3).
11 R. M. Grant (A Historical Introduction to the NT, London, 1963, p. 233) thinks that John might have in mind the views of Menander of Antioch, a follower (it is said) of Simon Magus (his views are summarized by Irenaeus, Against Heresies i. 23.5).
12 “John conducts himself with the independence and sovereignty of one who was in a position to say, “La tradition, c’est moi!” (P. H. Menoud, L’évangile de Jean d’après les recherches récentes, Neuchatel & Paris, 1947, p. 77).
13 Cf. C. H. Dodd, Historical Tradition in the Fourth Gospel (Cambridge, 1963); J. A. T. Robinson, “The New Look on the Fourth Gospel,” in Twelve NT Studies, London, 1962, pp. 94 ff., an essay which ends with the words, “The decisive question is the status and origin of the Johannine tradition. Did this come out of the blue round about the year AD 100? Or is there a real continuity, not merely in the memory of one old man, but in the life of an ongoing community, with the earliest days of Christianity? What, I think, fundamentally distinguishes the ‘new look’ on the fourth Gospel is that it answers that question in the affirmative. But if we do assert this continuity, it is obviously going at one and the same time to reduce the necessity for making everything depend upon apostolic authorship and to make us very much more open to its possibility” (p. 106). The Johannine Epistles, it may be said, provide us with living evidence for the maintenance of the tradition both “in the memory of one old man” (the Elder) and “in the life of an ongoing community” (the companies addressed and referred to as adhering to what they had heard “from the beginning”).
14 Cf. O. Cullmann, “The Tradition,” in The Early Church (London, 1956), pp. 59 ff.
15 To the Ephesians 7.2. Cf. also John 1:14; 2 John 7. Ignatius does not hesitate to speak of Jesus as God.
16 “Every one who does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is Antichrist” (To the Philippians 7.1). Cf. 2 John 7. See p. .
17 Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. iii. 39.17.
18 Possible traces in the Valentinian Gospel of Truth (c. AD 140) are “the Father knows all things” (27.24; cf. 1 John 3:20) and “he came forth in flesh” (31.4 f.: cf. 1 John 4:2 f.).
19 Justin’s statement that “we are called God’s trueborn children, and so we are, if we keep his commandments” (Dialogue with Trypho 123.9) looks very much like a reminiscence of 1 John 3:1, coupled with 2:3.
20 Compare, e.g., “how greatly will you love Him who so loved you first?” (Diogn. 10.3) with 1 John 4:19.
21 E.g. Against Heresies iii. 16.5.
22 E.g. Against Marcion v. 16.
23 Lines 26-34.
24 Lines 68f. For practical purposes in catholica may be translated, “in the canon.”
25 So P. Katz, “The Johannine Epistles in the Muratorian Canon,” JTS n.s. 8 (1957), pp. 273 f.
26 Cf. A. Harnack, Zur Revision der Prinzipien der neutestamentlichen Textkritik (Leipzig, 1916), pp. 61 f.; T. W. Manson, “The Johannine Epistles and the Canon of the NT,” JTS 48 (1947), pp. 32 f.
27 Miscellanies ii. 15.66; Adumbrations iv. 437, etc.
28 Quoted by Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. vi. 25.10.
29 Hist. Eccl. iii. 24.17 f.
30 Commentary on Matthew, xvii. 19.
31 Quoted by Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. vii. 25.7, 10.
32 Cf. Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. vii. 25.11.
33 Eusebius refers to the seven epistles “called catholic” (Hist. Eccl. ii. 23.25).
34 In this sense Jerome sometimes renders Greek katholikos by Latin catholicus, sometimes by canonicus.