The Johannine Corpus in the Early Church

by Hill, Charles E.

• ISBN13: 9780199264582
• ISBN10: 0199264589
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-05-20
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

How were the Johannine books of the New Testament received by second-century Christians and accorded scriptural status? Charles E. Hill offers a fresh and detailed examination of this question. He dismantles the long-held theory that the Fourth Gospel was generally avoided or resisted byorthodox Christians, while being treasured by various dissenting groups, throughout most of the second century. Integrating a wide range of literary and non-literary sources, this book demonstrates the failure of several old stereotypes about the Johannine literature. It also collects the fullevidence for the second-century Church's conception of these writings as a group: the Johannine books cannot be isolated from each other but must be recognized as a corpus.

Author Biography

Charles E. Hill is Professor of New Testament at the Reformed Theological Seminary, Orlando, Florida.

Table of Contents

The Orthodox Johannophobia Theory

The Making of a Consensus

The State of the Question

Consequences of the Question

The Three Empirical Bases for the Consensus

The Orientation of the Following Study

An Observation about Method: The Quotation Standard

The Johannine Writings in the Second Century

John among the Orthodox c.170-200

John and 'The Gnostics'

John among the Orthodox, before 170

The Evidence for a Johannine Corpus

Evidence from Common Use

Evidence from Intertextual Use

The Manuscript Evidence

The Johannine Writings, in Corpus and Canon

Brief Concluding Essay

The Myth of Orthodox Johannophobia

The Consciousness of a Johannine Corpus

Johannine Origins and History

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