The Third Letter of John

Third John, the shortest document in the New Testament (at 219 words), is a private letter composed by “the elder” (Gk presbyteros), a leading figure in the Johannine community and most likely the author of 2 John as well. It conforms to the genre we today would call a “letter of recommendation” (see 2 Cor 3.1–3), and commends the loving behavior of two of the elder’s associates, Gaius and Demetrius. A third figure, Diotrephes, a fellow church member, appears to have rejected the elder’s leadership. None of these named characters is known apart from this letter. Although some early Christians, like the church father Origen (according to Eusebius, Historia Ecclesiastica 6.25.10), questioned whether the same “John” who wrote the Gospel and the first two letters attributed to him also wrote 3 John, the general view prior to the rise of critical biblical scholarship was that John, the son of Zebedee (see, e.g., Mt 4.21; Mk 1.19; Lk 5.10; Jn 21.2; Gal 2.9) wrote the Gospel and the three epistles. Scholars are also divided whether the author of 2 and 3 John also wrote 1 John. Most scholars agree that the author of the Fourth Gospel is not the same as the author of the epistles; indeed the author of the three Johannine letters does not claim to have written the Gospel. Yet some suggest that the Elder (3 Jn 1) and “the Beloved Disciple (Jn 21.24) may be identical. If the Elder were “the Beloved Disciple,” that is, an eyewitness and companion of Jesus, that would further support the identification of the author of 3 John as ethnically Jewish. In any case, there are clearly thematic connections between the three letters and the Fourth Gospel, suggesting that they likely arose among the same social group.

Scholars have attempted to reconstruct a situation of a Johannine community from the Gospel and the three epistles of John; all such reconstructions remain hypothetical. It appears likely that the community viewed the “beloved disciple” of John’s Gospel (21.24) as its founder. Community members appear to have faced challenges both from Jews who did not believe in Jesus’ messiahship (the focus of the Gospel), and from its own members, who debated both the divinity of Jesus and claims to church leadership. Given the differences in the opposition, the writing of John’s Gospel and the three letters likely occurred at different stages in the community’s history.

The elder seems to view himself and his audience as ethnically Jewish, since he differentiates his audience from the “Gentiles” (Gk ton ethnikon), translated “nonbelievers” in the NRSV, v 7. His identity and that of his community, as he understands it, rests primarily in their common belief, as opposed to a shared ethnicity. They are all “brothers” who “testify” to, “walk in,” and are “co-workers in” the same “truth” (3–4,8,12). Significantly, the author of 3 John does not mention the shared rejection of pagan practices such as eating meat offered to idols, or a shared observance of distinctively Jewish ritual practices, which, in contrast are so central to discussions of Jewish and Christian identity in Paul’s letters and Luke/Acts. The language of “truth” and “love” in 3 John warrants its association with the early communities who produced the Gospel of John and 1–2 John.

Although the NRSV in v 7 (following most Christian commentators; see Acts 5.41; 1 Jn 2.12; 3.23; 5.13) translates “for the sake of the name” as “for the sake of Christ,” the phrase could mean “for the sake of the name of God.” This may reflect the Jewish circumlocution ha-Shem (Heb for “the Name”) used infrequently for the name of God (the tetragrammaton) in the Tanakh (Lev 24.11; Deut 28.58), but very frequent in rabbinic texts (as in the Heb expression kiddush ha-Shem, [“sanctification of the Name”], in e.g., b. Avod. Zar. 27b; b. Sanh. 74a,b). In any case, 3 John does not explicitly mention Jesus or the Christ. Nor has it any explicit references to the Tanakh/LXX. Nevertheless, 3 John hints, through its language, at the author’s Jewish ethnic background. Unlike the Gospel, this epistle lacks the dramatic and polemical differentiation from the “Jews” (Gk ioudaioi). Thus 3 John’s interest for Jews rests primarily in the linguistic hints that suggest the author’s Jewish ethnic background, and its representation of an early stage in the development of Jewish-Christian Johannine communal identity before this Johannine sect began to differentiate themselves dramatically and polemically from other Jews.

Jonathan Brumberg-Kraus