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After ca. CE 77 the apostle John alone may have remained of the twelve original apostles for there is no evidence that any of the others were still alive. As Peter�s successor John became responsible for oversight of the church-at-large and for the task of completing the Scriptures. In fulfilling his charge, he completed his gospel account, three epistles, and finally Revelation.
Ultimately it was up to John to seal permanently the compendium we know as the New Testament. The existence of the John Rylands Papyrus, dating to ca. 115, infers that John saw to it that the New Testament was set out in the codex form in the late 90s. This task would overcome the sheer bulk involved in using scrolls and it would safeguard the "inspired" order of the New Testament and define the canon for all ages of the Church of God.
The Emergence of Apostasy
Even from a cursory reading of II Peter, I, II, and III John, Jude, and Revelation it is evident that at the time of their writing serious discord, heresy, and internal conflict troubled the Church of God. The apostle Jude, in his epistle written ca. CE 80-90, reported that the apostasy described in II Peter had worsened significantly. Jude told of the state of the Church in the seventies or eighties. He found it necessary to write to the Church concerning incorrect teaching since false teachers, who had secretly crept into it, abused God�s grace and taught sexual perversion. This was reminiscent of Paul�s comment, ca. CE 56, at Romans 3:8 where he protested his being slandered by false teachers.
What was the nature of the Church at this time? Significant change in the Church occurred during the postwar period CE 70-135. In CE 70 the ancient church was decidedly Judeo-Christian but by CE 135 Gentiles had become the majority in Christendom (see The Struggle for Supremacy for more information). Keep in mind that John's writings (his gospel, I, II, II John, and Revelation), Jude, and II Peter are Judeo-Christian documents written from a Semitic, Judeo-Christian (Nazarenes) perspective.
Moreover, that Orthodox Christianity, as it sought to become the exclusive religion of the empire, distanced itself from the Judeo-Christian Churches of God and all Jewish Christian sects and adopted a severe anti-Semitic stance. This is the primary reason why the later Orthodox bishops, in the East (the Greeks) and West (the Latins), so strongly resisted their inclusion in their lists of recognized books (for more information see The Rise of the Orthodox). Their Judeo-Christian essence is why some denominational scholars continue to resist acknowledging their apostolic authorship today. Their symbolism is from a Jewish perspective, in this case from the qehal'el, and the heresies they report, condemn, and combat relative to the gentilization of Christianity. This conflict largely resulted from the leadership vacuum left upon the deaths of the apostles.
The apostles simply did not hand down any centralized form of governance for the Church. They simply left the governance of the Church to Jesus Christ as its head. The Church of God at Jerusalem under the leadership of Simeon the son of Cleophas was no longer a force in the governance of the greater Church. When the apostles abandoned Jerusalem after James' murder the congregation retained the honor of being the mother of all churches absent the authority it once had (see The Cenacle). The leadership of the greater Church of God was wherever the apostles were at any given time. In essence, nearly all congregations were on their own. This was true in Judeo-Christianity as well as in emerging Gentile Christianity. The changes in doctrine and praxis were evolutionary not revolutionary. There may have been local leaders who developed followings after themselves but accounts of these movements are not extant.
As a result of the growing divergence in doctrinal perspective Christianity became quite fragmented. By the end of the Apostolic Period, if indeed it ended in CE 135 and not earlier, there were many Christianities--Jewish Christians, Judeo-Christians, and Gentile Christians. In the context of the transitional period CE 70-135 an aged apostle John sought to keep his Judeo-Christians, the Nazarenes in the homeland and their Hellenistic counterpart in Asia Minor, within the fold. Keep in mind that he wrote to the qehal'el, the Church of God, not to Jewish Christian (Ebionites), Judeo-Christian, or Gentile derivative movements. To explicate his writings one must keep in perspective John's fundamental Nazarene, qehal'el, Judeo-Christian standpoint. When placed in this perspective it should become apparent that the primary problem John addresses is the gentilization of the apostles' doctrines.
At the writing of John�s gospel, probably completed in the late eighties, the Church understood Scripture to include both the Hebrew Scriptures and the apostolic complement although the latter was not yet complete. John may have incorporated Jude�s epistle in the Scriptures prior to finishing his own gospel account. The apostle John, apparently, decided that the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke did not sufficiently address the account of Jesus� ministry.F1 According to Eusebius:
Matthew, also having first proclaimed the gospel in Hebrew, when on the point of going also to other nations, committed it to writing in his native tongue, and thus supplied the want of his presence to them, by his writings. But after Mark and Luke had already published their gospels, they say, that John, who during all this time was proclaiming the gospel without writing, at length proceeded to write it on the following occasion. The three gospels previously written, having had been distributed among all, and also handed to him, they say that he admitted them, giving his testimony to their truth, but that there was only wanting in the narrative the account of the things done by Christ at the first of his deeds and at the commencement of the gospel. (Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 3.24, Boyle 1955:108.)
Eusebius believed this omission led to John�s gospel. He wrote:
For these reasons the apostle John, it is said, being entreated to undertake it, wrote the account of the time not recorded by the former evangelists [and apostles] and the deeds done by our Saviour, which they have passed by (for these were the events that occurred before the imprisonment of John,). This very fact is intimated by him when he says, "this beginning of miracles Jesus made," and then proceeds to make mention of the Baptist, in the midst of our Lord�s deeds, as John was at that time "baptizing at �non near Salim. (Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 3.24, Boyle 1955:109.)
Important aspects of Jesus� ministry remained to be written and preserved. Other matters pertaining to Jesus� ministry lacked clarification. John recognized his responsibility to address those matters he saw as insufficiently reported in the other three gospel accounts. In his gospel, John preserved for the Church the knowledge of the foot-washing aspect of the Christian Passover and many details of Jesus� life prior to his public ministry. The gospel of John reflects the life, issues, and condition of the Church in the eighties and more likely the end of the decade, and responds to the false teaching, misunderstanding, and heresies prevalent at that time, i.e. the Gnostic and the variant Christianities which later emerged as Orthodox and Byzantine. While Gnosticism became a troubling problem for the Church of God it was its ultimate gentilization that eventually overwhelmed it. Eusebius attests to the acceptance of the gospel of John in the ancient Church. He states:
And of these his gospel, so well known in the churches throughout the world, must first of all be acknowledged as genuine. That it is, however, with good reason, placed the fourth in order by the ancients, may be made evident in the following manner. (Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 3.24, Boyle 1955:107.)
John�s Confirmation of the New Scriptures
The apostle John astutely confirmed the veracity of the Christian Scriptures. He established this point by his selection of material, wherein appears a quotation of Christ which includes a comment concerning the nature of Scripture. Breaking into Christ�s answer to Jews who were threatening to stone him, John wrote a fascinating statement. He recorded, "and the Scripture cannot be broken" (John 10:35). He wrote it at a time when the Judeo-Christian reader understood "Scripture" to be the Hebrew Scriptures and the existing, yet still open, set of apostolic writings.
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Generally translators take the phrase "and the Scripture cannot be broken" to be part of the argument stated by Jesus. Nevertheless, while early translators incorporated the phrase into the text in the King James Version, it is now correctly set out as a parenthetical thought in the NASB and RSV. The phrase was not necessary to complete Jesus� statement, nor did it necessarily strengthen his argument, for the Jews in question already knew the authority of the Hebrew Scriptures. The authority of the Hebrew Scriptures, particularly the Written Torah, was not in issue. The phrase was an insertion by John which some translators fittingly sense as a parenthetical comment. The phrase as a parenthetical statement by the apostle John corroborates his confirmation of the veracity of the set of apostolic writings as having the authority of the Hebrew Scriptures for the Church of God.
The Book of Revelation
The Romans banished John to the Isle of Patmos ca. CE 95 (Revelation 1:9). Tradition placed this during the persecution of Domitian. According to Eusebius during Domitian�s reign an aged John lived in exile on the island of Patmos because of his testimony to the word of God (Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 3.18, 23, Boyle 1955:101-102, 104-107).
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Upon his release, ca. CE 96, the Romans permitted John to return to Ephesus. "After fifteen years of Domitian�s rule," says Eusebius, "Nerva succeeded to the throne. By vote of the Roman senate, Domitian�s honors were removed and those unjustly banished returned to their homes and had their property restored to them. This is noted by the chronicles of the period. At that time too, [ca. CE 96] the apostle John, after his exile on the island of Patmos, resumed residence at Ephesus, as early Christian tradition records" (Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 3.20, Schaff and H. Wace 1986:xxx, see also Boyle 1955:103).
The use of the past tense "was" in Patmos at Revelation 1:9 suggests that John saw the vision in Patmos, but that it was after his release and return to Ephesus ca. CE 96 that he finished writing the book of Revelation. John lived to a great age and wrote his gospel account, three epistles, and the book of Revelation.F2 John remained at Ephesus until his death, ca. CE 98, at the time of Trajan (Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 3.23, Boyle 1955:103-105, 116).
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After John�s death many of those who were part of the Hellenistic branch of Judeo-Christianity listened to false teachers and began to look for new leaders and new ideas. Data illustrating this phenomenon is set forth in the Revelation 2 and 3 account of the seven congregations in Asia Minor. The Church entered a period where local overseers, or "bishops," became increasingly autonomous as did doctrinal understanding. From a Judeo-Christian perspective apostasy continued to develop, particularly in the West.
With the book of Revelation John closed the canon of the New Testament and circulated the book of Revelation throughout the Judeo-Christian congregations of Asia Minor. Presumably the apostle John died of old age and natural causes. His successor is unknown.
The traditions of Greco-Roman Christianity suggest Byzantine bishop Polycarp of Smyrna, the acknowledged leader of the Gentile Greco-Roman bishops in the east but not of the Judeo-Christian bishops, as John's successor. There is no verifiable reliable evidence in support of this idea although some data certainly suggests Polycarp's theology was more in common with Greco-Roman Gentile theology than with the Judeo-Christianity of the apostle John. The point is that it was self-serving for Orthodox Byzantines like the ardent Nicene Eusebius to link Polycarp with the apostle John in order to certify themselves. Some Protestant groups have latched onto the John-Polycarp connection in order to establish an apostolic succession link within their own denominational history in order to avoid any linkage between their groups and the Roman Catholic Church (see McGoldrick 1994).F3
F1"Indeed, "according to Harry Y. Gamble," it was apparently the aim of each Gospel writer to offer an adequately comprehensive document which would stand on its own" (Gamble 1985:24).
F2The Book of Revelation is ascribed to the apostle John by all early writers. See Justin Martyr, Dialog with Trypho 81, Roberts and Donaldson 1987:240).
F3McGoldrick, an anti-successionist providing a fairly detailed review of the literature, deals with the issue of the true Church existing in every period of history in the Christian era independently from the Roman Catholic Church. A. N. Dugger and C. O. Dodd illustrate a denominational account of successionism as generally understood in the seventh day Churches of God (Dugger and Dodd 1972) as does Herman L. Hoeh for the Radio Church of God and its Church of God predecessors (Hoeh 1959).
Taken from The First Christians by Michael P. Germano and edited for the worldwide web.
Copyright �1992, 1993, 1995, 1996, 2000 by Michael P. Germano. All Rights Reserved.
Page last edited: 11/28/04 08:44 AM
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