The Johannine Epistles Explained: 1 John, 2 John, and 3 John for Today's Church

TL;DR: The Johannine Epistles are three short New Testament writings—1 John, 2 John, and 3 John—that address identity, love, hospitality, and faithful witness in early Christian assemblies. Recent scholarship by Warren Carter, Judith Lieu, Christopher Seglenieks, Rikard Roitto, Jon-Michael Carman, N. S. Miura, Toan Do, Hugo Méndez, Paul Anderson, and Sherri Brown reads them not primarily as polemical attacks on opponents but as pastoral and covenantal formation documents for communities under pressure—even as scholars debate whether the long-assumed "Johannine community" ever historically existed. They speak directly to today's polarized, economically stratified, and networked churches.

Key Takeaways

1. The Johannine Epistles Function as Formation Documents, Not Polemical Tracts. Recent scholarship — Lieu's non-polemical reading, Miura's survey, Carter's 2024 pastoral reframing — has shifted the consensus away from treating 1, 2, and 3 John as weapons against reconstructed opponents. Their main rhetorical work is forming the identity and practices of those who remain, not destroying those who left.

2. 1 John and the Two Shorter Letters Are Different Genres With Different Pastoral Uses. 1 John lacks every standard letter feature; Lieu calls it "a literary-theological unity, addressed to a specific situation," building conviction through repetition and family metaphors. 2 and 3 John are genuine occasional letters from "the Elder" addressing concrete situations — itinerant teachers in 2 John, and the Gaius-Diotrephes hospitality conflict in 3 John. The distinction dictates ministry use: 1 John supports a sustained sermon series, while the shorter letters serve targeted studies on partnership and discernment.

3. Identity Is Gift Before Task — and the Grammar Proves It. 1 John 3:1 insists believers are "called children of God — and we are." Lieu shows 1 John consistently uses present and perfect tenses to ground believers in what they already "know, have, possess, and are." Seglenieks reads this through social identity theory: the letter reassures those who remained after others' departure that they "are in the right." Brown grounds the same language in Old Testament covenant inheritance. The letters preach assurance into existence before they ask for performance.

4. Love in 1 John Is Concretely Economic. 1 John 3:16–18 turns the test of love into material sharing: those who possess "this world's goods" yet refuse a sibling in need cannot claim God's love abides in them. Carman's 2020 JSNT study, applying Bruce Longenecker's economic scaling, argues the Johannine assemblies likely spanned ES4/ES5 (stable wealth) to ES7 (destitution), with householders like Gaius and Diotrephes — whose homes likely fell in the 400–600m² range — shaping mission funding and information flow through their decisions to host or refuse traveling brothers.

5. The "Johannine Community" Itself Is Now Contested. Hugo Méndez's 2020 JSNT article and 2025 Oxford monograph argue the Johannine writings are "a chain of literary forgeries" whose implied audiences are "probably fabrications." Paul Anderson defends a modified community hypothesis grounded in the Gospel's "dialogical autonomy." Most current scholars occupy a cautious middle: a network of assemblies, not a single community. The pastoral payoff: preachers should be modest about reconstructing exactly who the "antichrists" of 1 John were and resist mirror-reading current conflicts onto first-century opponents.

What Are the Johannine Epistles?

Direct answer: The Johannine Epistles are three short writings near the end of the New Testament—1 John, 2 John, and 3 John—traditionally associated with the same circle of authors or tradition as the Gospel of John. They were likely composed in the late first or early second century and addressed to early Christian assemblies linked by traveling teachers and shared tradition.

1 John is the longest and most theologically sustained of the three. It functions as a literary-theological discourse rather than a conventional letter; Judith Lieu describes it as "a literary-theological unity, addressed to a specific situation."1 2 John and 3 John are genuine occasional letters from "the Elder" addressed to specific recipients dealing with concrete situations: discernment of traveling teachers (2 John) and a hospitality dispute involving Gaius and Diotrephes (3 John).

For a comprehensive recent survey of the field, Toan Do's 2018 essay "The Epistles of John" in The State of New Testament Studies: A Survey of Recent Research (edited by Scot McKnight and Nijay K. Gupta) maps current debates on authorship, community history, opponents, and theology across all three writings.2

All three letters emerge from networked early Christian assemblies in the Greco-Roman world, where itinerant teachers, household patronage, and questions of belonging were everyday realities.

Why Do the Johannine Epistles Still Matter Today?

Direct answer: The Johannine Epistles still matter because they address pressures that look remarkably like today's church: identity questions after rupture, economic disparity, hospitality and authority disputes, and the need for faithful teaching across loose networks.

Modern congregations often function as networks—multi-site campuses, online gatherings, house churches, podcasts, and traveling speakers. The same questions the Elder navigated in 3 John surface in every era: Whose teaching gets a platform? Who decides? How does material sharing make love visible? What holds a community together when some leave?

These writings provide tested pastoral theology for networked, conflicted churches: identity spoken into existence before performance, love tested by economic solidarity, hospitality as mission strategy, and confession as community repair.3 Sherri Brown's work on Johannine covenant and discipleship reframes this further, reading the letters as documents that draw believers into ongoing covenant participation rather than merely demarcating insiders from outsiders.4

Are the Johannine Epistles Polemical or Pastoral?

Direct answer: Recent scholarship increasingly reads the Johannine Epistles as pastoral formation documents rather than primarily polemical writings. While they contain strong boundary language ("antichrists," "those who went out from us"), their main rhetorical work is to strengthen the identity and practices of believing recipients, not to attack opponents.

For much of the twentieth century, interpreters approached these writings through a polemical lens, reconstructing elaborate schisms and a unified "Johannine community" history. As N. S. Miura's survey shows, scholars often identified the "secessionists" using "mirror reading"—a method that has come under sustained methodological challenge because it requires extensive speculation about opponents based on slim internal evidence.5

Christopher Seglenieks similarly cautions that traditional reconstructions of the Johannine community are "reliant on flawed methods, notably reading the Gospel as a window into the life of a specific community," and he advocates a methodology that begins with the letters on their own terms.6

Warren Carter, in his 2024 study 1, 2, and 3 John: An Introduction and Study Guide, explicitly prefers a pastoral reading and treats the three letters as independent rather than derivative writings, challenging the dominant Brown–Martyn community-history hypothesis.7 Judith Lieu's "non-polemical reading" demonstrates how 1 John's rhetorical interplay of "we," "you," and "they" works primarily to draw the audience closer to "us" rather than functioning chiefly as polemic against outsiders.8 Sherri Brown reads the Johannine writings, including the Epistles, as fundamentally invitational—calling readers into ongoing discipleship and covenant participation rather than merely policing boundaries.9

Ministry implication: Preachers no longer need to hunt for hidden opponents in every verse. The writings can be preached as resources for formation rather than ammunition for debate.

Did the Johannine Community Actually Exist?

Direct answer: The "Johannine community" — the hypothesized network of churches behind the Gospel and Letters of John — is increasingly contested. Hugo Méndez has argued the community never historically existed and that the Johannine writings are a chain of literary forgeries. Paul Anderson defends a modified version of the community hypothesis. Most current scholars, including those drawn on in this article, occupy a cautious middle position.

The skeptical pole: Hugo Méndez. In "Did the Johannine Community Exist?" (Journal for the Study of the New Testament 42 [2020]: 350–74), Méndez of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill argues that the Gospel and three Epistles of John show "evidence of literary contact" between them and contain "dubious authorial claims," making them "unreliable bases for historical reconstruction, whose implied audiences and situations are probably fabrications."10 His constructive thesis is that the four Johannine texts represent "a chain of literary forgeries, in which authors of different extractions cast and recast a single invented character — an eyewitness to Jesus' life — as the mouthpiece of different theological viewpoints." Méndez has developed this argument further in The Epistles of John: Origins, Authorship, Purpose and in The Gospel of John: A New History (Oxford University Press, 2025).11

The defending pole: Paul Anderson. Paul Anderson, Professor of Biblical and Quaker Studies at George Fox University, has offered the most prominent scholarly response to Méndez. In "On Biblical Forgeries and Imagined Communities: A Critical Analysis of Recent Criticism," Anderson argues that the Johannine Gospel reflects an independent Jesus tradition embedded in genuine community history. His broader framework — the "Bi-Optic Hypothesis" developed in The Fourth Gospel and the Quest for Jesus (Bloomsbury, 2006) — reads the Gospel's composition as responding to the needs of actual churches over time, what he calls the Gospel's "dialogical autonomy." Anderson contributed a chapter to the 2024 Lexington volume The Johannine Community in Contemporary Debate, edited by Christopher Seglenieks and Christopher Skinner — the same volume that anchors much of the recent scholarship cited in this article.12

The middle position. Most of the scholars this article draws on occupy a cautious middle ground. Rikard Roitto observes that "the community to our best knowledge is a network of assemblies, not one single assembly. Such undefined use of 'community' gives the unfortunate impression that scholars think of the Johannine community as one group gathered in one place, which they do not."13 Warren Carter challenges the Brown–Martyn community-history hypothesis but does not endorse Méndez's forgery thesis.14 Judith Lieu likewise demonstrates skepticism toward over-determined community reconstructions without abandoning the premise that the writings address real audiences.15

For preachers and teachers, this debate matters because it tempers confident claims about exactly what happened in the Johannine network. The pastoral payoff of the letters does not depend on resolving the Méndez–Anderson debate; it depends on what the writings actually do in their readers.

How Are the Johannine Epistles Structured?

Direct answer: 1 John is a sustained pastoral discourse without typical letter openings or closings. 2 John and 3 John are short occasional letters (each fits on a single ancient papyrus sheet) from "the Elder" to specific recipients.

1 John uses repetition, antithetical contrasts, and family metaphors—"children of God," "brothers and sisters," "fathers," "young people"—to build conviction through return and reinforcement.

2 John addresses "the elect lady and her children," warning about deceivers who deny that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh.

3 John is addressed to Gaius, commending him for welcoming traveling brothers and confronting Diotrephes, who refuses to receive them.

This genre distinction matters for teaching. 1 John supports a sustained sermon series; the two shorter letters serve targeted studies on hospitality, leadership, and discernment.

What Does "Children of God" Mean in 1 John?

Direct answer: In 1 John, the phrase "children of God" identifies believers as those born of God who share in his life and reflect his character. The author insists this identity is gift before task: "See what kind of love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God—and we are" (1 John 3:1, NRSVUE).

Lieu's commentary highlights how 1 John's pervasive use of present and perfect tenses gives "much more awareness of what believers already are than what is yet in store"—a realized eschatology that grounds confidence in present identity rather than anxious striving.16

Christopher Seglenieks reframes the social dynamics of this language using social identity theory. He argues that 1 John presents not a narrative of exclusion (as in the Gospel's expulsion language) but a "narrative of desertion"—the outgroup is those who have left the ingroup. The repeated insistence that believers are "children of God" functions in part to reassure those who remained that "they are in the right" after the painful experience of others' departure.17

Sherri Brown locates this same language within a deeper Old Testament covenant framework. In her work with Francis Moloney, Interpreting the Gospel and Letters of John: An Introduction (Eerdmans, 2017), Brown argues that Johannine identity is grounded in the covenantal history of God's promises to Israel—so "children of God" is not theological abstraction but covenant inheritance language.18

Ministry implication: Pastors can build sermon series around 1 John 3:1–3 that help members internalize belonging before performance. The double insistence "called … and we are" speaks assurance into existence for those shaken by conflict.

What Does 1 John Say About Love and Money?

Direct answer: 1 John 3:16–18 treats material sharing as a primary, non-negotiable test of love. The passage anchors love christologically ("he laid down his life for us") and immediately applies it to everyday economics: anyone who possesses "this world's goods" yet refuses help to a sibling in need cannot claim God's love abides in them.

Jon-Michael Carman's 2020 study in the Journal for the Study of the New Testament applies Bruce Longenecker's economic scaling to the Johannine writings. Carman argues that the assemblies likely included members ranging "from ES4/ES5 to ES7"—from those with stable wealth down to those without resources to sustain life. Those in higher strata are "enjoined to watch for the needs of those below them."19

Carman further argues that hosting traveling Jesus followers in the Greco-Roman world required substantial financial outlay—food, lodging, and "sending on" guests for their next destination. Members like Gaius and Diotrephes who could repeatedly do so likely belonged to economic stratum ES5, possibly ES4.20

Ministry implication: Deacons, finance teams, and small groups can use 1 John 3:16–18 as the basis for congregational reflection: Where is compassion being withheld? How can love become legible in budgeting, mutual aid, and benevolence?

Who Were Gaius and Diotrephes in 3 John?

Direct answer: Gaius and Diotrephes are two named householders in 3 John. Gaius is commended by the Elder for welcoming traveling brothers and supporting their mission. Diotrephes is confronted for refusing to receive the Elder, refusing the brothers, and forbidding others from welcoming them.

Jon-Michael Carman argues that both men were householders in the upper-middle economic strata (ES5, possibly ES4) with houses likely in the 400–600m² range—enough domestic space and disposable resources to host multiple guests on multiple occasions.21

Drawing on Margaret M. Mitchell's lexicographical study, Carman notes that the verb ἐπιδέχομαι in 3 John 9–10 is best translated "to welcome, accept, or receive," not "acknowledge authority" as some older translations have it. This means Diotrephes's offense is concretely a refusal of hospitality and its associated information flow, not merely a doctrinal disagreement.22

Rikard Roitto's social-network analysis sharpens what is at stake. The Elder has only advisory influence; he "cannot command Diotrephes to accept his delegates." The exchange in 3 John is "a glimpse into an ongoing struggle between opposing members of the Johannine social network to keep one's own weak ties to local assemblies and to undermine the weak ties of competing voices."23

Ministry implication: Hospitality is never neutral. It shapes which teaching reaches a community. Multi-site churches, mission committees, and elder boards can use 3 John as a biblical template for guest-speaker and partnership policies.

Why Is Mirror-Reading a Concern in Johannine Studies?

Direct answer: Mirror-reading is the interpretive practice of reconstructing an author's opponents by reading polemical statements as direct mirrors of the opponents' positions. In Johannine scholarship, mirror-reading has been used to identify the "secessionists" of 1 John as Gnostics, Docetists, Cerinthians, or Jewish-messianic groups—but every such reconstruction requires speculation.

Miura's survey of 1 John scholarship documents how "the identification of the secessionists through 'mirror reading' became a problematic issue due to the need to speculate this identification based on little internal evidence."24

Roitto similarly cautions: "One should be wary of reading all contrastive language in the sermon as mirrors of schismatic opponents. Rather, the sermon aims to formulate the identity of the Johannine community."25

This methodological caution intersects with the Méndez–Anderson debate. If, with Méndez, the implied situations of the Johannine writings are partly fabricated, then mirror-reading them as transparent windows onto historical opponents is doubly problematic. If, with Anderson, the texts reflect genuine community history, mirror-reading still requires careful methodological controls.

Ministry implication: Pastors and teachers should be modest about claims regarding exactly who the opponents were and what they believed. The pastoral payoff of the letters does not depend on reconstructing the schism in detail.

How Do the Johannine Epistles Help Polarized Churches Today?

Direct answer: The Johannine Epistles model a "both-and" pastoral strategy: clear confession about Jesus combined with costly, embodied love for one another. They speak assurance to members who remain after conflict ("children of God—and we are") while calling the community to practices that restore relationships rather than deepen division.

Five concrete applications:

1. Preach identity before performance. Use 1 John 3:1–3 to ground ethics in gift, not anxiety.

2. Treat economic sharing as love made visible. Use 1 John 3:16–18 to audit benevolence and mutual-aid practices.

3. Develop hospitality policies modeled on the Elder's posture. Affirm faithful partners; address self-centered dynamics directly.

4. Resist mirror-reading current conflicts. Don't preach as if every dissenter is an "antichrist"; the letters themselves resist that move.

5. Build small-group rhythms of confession and intercession. Use 1 John 1:9 and 1 John 3:20 as anchors for restorative practices.

Seglenieks's reading of 1 John as a "narrative of desertion" rather than exclusion helps reframe how the writings reassure those who stayed without demonizing those who left—a posture especially useful in church splits.26 Sherri Brown's reading of Johannine literature as fundamentally invitational—"come and see"—further equips leaders to hold truth and welcome together.27

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the Johannine Epistles in the Bible? The Johannine Epistles are three short New Testament writings—1 John, 2 John, and 3 John—traditionally associated with the same circle as the Gospel of John. 1 John is a sustained pastoral discourse; 2 and 3 John are short occasional letters from "the Elder" to specific recipients.

Who wrote the Johannine Epistles? The writings are anonymous. 2 and 3 John identify the author only as "the Elder." Scholars debate whether one author wrote all three, whether they share an author with the Gospel of John, or whether they reflect a common tradition. Hugo Méndez argues for three separate authors in a chain of literary imitation; Judith Lieu argues the authorial anonymity is itself a deliberate rhetorical strategy.

What is the main message of 1 John? 1 John interlocks three themes: right confession about Jesus (especially that he came in the flesh), righteous practice, and love for fellow believers. It speaks assurance to believers as "children of God" and calls love down from abstraction into concrete sharing of resources.

What is the difference between 1 John, 2 John, and 3 John? 1 John is a long pastoral discourse without typical letter features. 2 John (13 verses) warns a specific recipient about deceivers denying the incarnation. 3 John (15 verses) commends Gaius for welcoming traveling brothers and confronts Diotrephes for refusing to do so.

Are the Johannine Epistles polemical? They contain strong boundary language, but recent scholarship increasingly reads them as pastoral formation documents whose main work is to strengthen believers' identity, not to attack opponents. Lieu's "non-polemical reading" has been particularly influential.

Did the Johannine community really exist? Scholars are sharply divided. Hugo Méndez (UNC Chapel Hill) argues the community never existed and that the Johannine writings are literary forgeries. Paul Anderson (George Fox) defends a modified community hypothesis grounded in the Gospel's "dialogical autonomy." Most scholars, including those drawn on in this article, occupy a cautious middle position: they speak of a network of assemblies rather than a single community while resisting the full forgery thesis.

Are the Johannine writings forgeries? Hugo Méndez has argued in JSNT (2020) and in The Gospel of John: A New History (Oxford, 2025) that the Johannine writings are a chain of literary forgeries by different authors who invented a "Beloved Disciple" figure to lend their works apostolic authority. This is a minority but increasingly discussed position; Paul Anderson has offered the most prominent rebuttal.

Who were Gaius and Diotrephes? Both are named householders in 3 John, likely in economic stratum ES5 (possibly ES4) on Bruce Longenecker's scale. Gaius is commended for hospitality to traveling brothers; Diotrephes is confronted for refusing them and forbidding others to welcome them.

What does 1 John 3:1 mean? "See what kind of love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God—and we are" insists that the believer's identity as God's child is a present gift, not a future hope or earned status. The double insistence ("called … and we are") speaks assurance into existence.

Why is mirror-reading a problem in Johannine studies? Mirror-reading reconstructs opponents from polemical statements, but the method requires extensive speculation. Modern scholars (Miura, Roitto, Seglenieks) caution that 1 John's contrastive language primarily forms insider identity rather than describing outsiders' beliefs in detail.

How do the Johannine Epistles speak to today's church? They address pressures that mirror contemporary church life: identity after rupture, economic disparity, hospitality and authority conflicts, and faithful teaching across networks. They model formation through identity, embodied love, and discerning hospitality.

What is covenant in the Johannine Epistles? Sherri Brown argues that Johannine literature is best read against the background of Old Testament covenant theology. "Children of God" language, the love command, and the call to abide all draw on covenant categories. This framework grounds Johannine identity in salvation history rather than abstraction.

Conclusion: The Johannine Epistles as Formation Documents

The Johannine Epistles still speak because they refuse to separate theology from practice or identity from ethics. They speak assurance into existence for the shaken, call love down from abstraction into economic solidarity, model discerning hospitality amid mission, and integrate confession as ordinary community repair.

Even as scholars debate whether the long-assumed "Johannine community" ever existed in the form earlier reconstructions imagined, the writings continue to do real pastoral work in real congregations. For pastors, teachers, and lay leaders, they function as living pastoral resources—not historical artifacts. May the same love that sent the Son continue to abide in us, forming us as children of God who love not in word or speech but in deed and truth (1 John 3:18, NRSVUE).

Further Reading

Warren Carter, 1, 2, and 3 John: An Introduction and Study Guide: Multiple Readings, Deconstructing Constructions (London: T&T Clark, 2024)

·Judith M. Lieu, I, II, & III John: A Commentary, New Testament Library (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2008)

Judith M. Lieu, The Theology of the Johannine Epistles (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991)

Christopher Seglenieks, "Desertion or Exclusion: Relationships with the Outgroup in the Johannine Writings" (book chapter)

Christopher Seglenieks, "Reading the Johannine Community in the Letters: A Method" (book chapter)

Christopher Seglenieks and Christopher W. Skinner, eds., The Johannine Community in Contemporary Debate (Lanham: Lexington/Fortress Academic, 2024)

Rikard Roitto, "The Johannine Information War: A Social Network Analysis of the Information Flow Between Johannine Assemblies as Witnessed by 1–3 John," Annali di Storia dell'Esegesi 39, no. 1 (2022): 47–62

Jon-Michael Carman, "Scaling Gaius and Diotrephes: Socio-economic Stratification in 1 and 3 John," Journal for the Study of the New Testament 43, no. 1 (2020): 28–43

N. S. Miura, "Mapping the Scholarship on 1 John," Annual of the Japanese Biblical Institute 46 (2021)

Toan Do, "The Epistles of John," in The State of New Testament Studies: A Survey of Recent Research, ed. Scot McKnight and Nijay K. Gupta (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2019)

Hugo Méndez, "Did the Johannine Community Exist?," Journal for the Study of the New Testament 42, no. 3 (2020): 350–374

Hugo Méndez, The Gospel of John: A New History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2025)

Paul N. Anderson, The Fourth Gospel and the Quest for Jesus: Modern Foundations Reconsidered (London: Bloomsbury, 2006)

Sherri Brown and Francis J. Moloney, Interpreting the Gospel and Letters of John: An Introduction (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2017)

Sherri Brown and Christopher W. Skinner, eds., Johannine Ethics: The Moral World of the Gospel and Epistles of John (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2017)

Sherri Brown, Come and See: Discipleship in the Gospel of John (New York: Paulist Press, 2022)

Endnotes

1. Judith M. Lieu, I, II, & III John: A Commentary, New Testament Library (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2008), as summarized in project document "Warren Carter and Judith Lieu on the Johannine Epistles." Lieu describes 1 John as "a literary-theological unity, addressed to a specific situation."

2. Toan Do, "The Epistles of John," in The State of New Testament Studies: A Survey of Recent Research, ed. Scot McKnight and Nijay K. Gupta (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2019), pp. 1551–1566.

3. For the pastoral-formation framing, see Warren Carter, 1, 2, and 3 John: An Introduction and Study Guide: Multiple Readings, Deconstructing Constructions (London: T&T Clark/Bloomsbury, 2024); Christopher Seglenieks, "Reading the Johannine Community in the Letters: A Method" (project source); Rikard Roitto, "The Johannine Information War: A Social Network Analysis of the Information Flow Between Johannine Assemblies as Witnessed by 1–3 John," Annali di Storia dell'Esegesi 39, no. 1 (2022): 47–62.

4. Sherri Brown and Francis J. Moloney, Interpreting the Gospel and Letters of John: An Introduction (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2017); Sherri Brown, Come and See: Discipleship in the Gospel of John (New York: Paulist Press, 2022).

5. N. S. Miura, "Mapping the Scholarship on 1 John," Annual of the Japanese Biblical Institute 46 (2021): 63–64.

6. Christopher Seglenieks, "Reading the Johannine Community in the Letters: A Method" (project source).

7. Carter, 1, 2, and 3 John, as summarized in project document "Warren Carter and Judith Lieu on the Johannine Epistles."

8. Lieu, I, II, & III John, and Judith M. Lieu, "Us or You? Persuasion and Identity in 1 John," Journal of Biblical Literature 127 (2008): 805–819, as discussed in Miura, "Mapping the Scholarship on 1 John," 81–82.

9. Brown, Come and See; cf. Sherri Brown and Christopher W. Skinner, eds., Johannine Ethics: The Moral World of the Gospel and Epistles of John (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2017).

10. Hugo Méndez, "Did the Johannine Community Exist?," Journal for the Study of the New Testament 42, no. 3 (2020): 350–374, here 350–351 (abstract and thesis statement).

11. Méndez, "Did the Johannine Community Exist?," 351; see also Hugo Méndez, The Gospel of John: A New History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2025).

12. Paul N. Anderson, "On Biblical Forgeries and Imagined Communities: A Critical Analysis of Recent Criticism," Bible and Interpretation (April 2020); Anderson, The Fourth Gospel and the Quest for Jesus: Modern Foundations Reconsidered (London: Bloomsbury, 2006); Anderson, chapter in Christopher Seglenieks and Christopher W. Skinner, eds., The Johannine Community in Contemporary Debate (Lanham: Lexington/Fortress Academic, 2024). On the "confidence vs. caution" framing of the debate, see Hugo Méndez, "The Elusive Contexts of the Johannine Literature: A Response to Paul Anderson," Bible and Interpretation (April 2020).

13. Roitto, "The Johannine Information War," 47.

14. Carter, 1, 2, and 3 John, as summarized in project document "Warren Carter and Judith Lieu on the Johannine Epistles."

15. Lieu, I, II, & III John, as summarized in project document "Warren Carter and Judith Lieu on the Johannine Epistles."

16. Lieu, The Theology of the Johannine Epistles (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), as summarized in project document "Warren Carter and Judith Lieu on the Johannine Epistles."

17. Christopher Seglenieks, "Desertion or Exclusion: Relationships with the Outgroup in the Johannine Writings" (project source).

18. Brown and Moloney, Interpreting the Gospel and Letters of John, esp. chapters on Johannine covenant theology and the Letters of John.

19. Jon-Michael Carman, "Scaling Gaius and Diotrephes: Socio-economic Stratification in 1 and 3 John," Journal for the Study of the New Testament 43, no. 1 (2020): 28–43, here 34–35.

20. Carman, "Scaling Gaius and Diotrephes," 37–41.

21. Carman, "Scaling Gaius and Diotrephes," 38, 40–41. ↩

22. Carman, "Scaling Gaius and Diotrephes," 36–37, drawing on Margaret M. Mitchell, "'Diotrephes Does Not Receive Us': The Lexicographical and Social Context of 3 John 9–10," Journal of Biblical Literature 117 (1998): 299–320 (as cited in Carman).

23. Roitto, "The Johannine Information War," 53–55.

24. Miura, "Mapping the Scholarship on 1 John," 63–64.

25. Roitto, "The Johannine Information War," 56.

26. Seglenieks, "Desertion or Exclusion."

27. Brown, Come and See.