I, II, & III John

A Commentary

Judith M. Lieu

• Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
• Year: 2008
• ISBN:
  9781611644906
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Commentary

The New Testament's three letters attributed to John have always provided remarkable theological riches for the Christian tradition, including the assertion "God is love." Each letter shows how an early Christian author responded to threats against authority by recourse to the correct teachings of the faith and a proper understanding of the relationship between Jesus and God. Together, these letters argue for a bond of unity among believers, based on fidelity to the truth of God.

The New Testament Library offers authoritative commentary on every book and major aspect of the New Testament, as well as classic volumes of scholarship. The commentaries in this series provide fresh translations based on the best available ancient manuscripts, offer critical portrayals of the historical world in which the books were created, pay careful attention to their literary design, and present a theologically perceptive exposition of the text.

COMMENTARY

1 JOHN

1 John 1:1–4—The Prologue

Beginnings of documents are important, for they alert the reader to what to expect from all that follows. In some types of texts the author(s) and/or the intended reader(s) are hidden, giving subsequent readers the feeling of unmediated access to their meaning.¹ In others the author(s) and/or reader(s) take center stage, and where both are present the relationship between them shapes all that follows; in such cases subsequent readers may feel themselves to be observers of how this relationship is played out, or they may find themselves invited into it. The opening of 1 John emphatically belongs to the second of these main types: “we” address “you,” explicitly seeking to enrich the relationship thus established. In that sense 1 John is evidently not an essay or a narrative, but closer to a letter. Yet ancient letters for over a millennium followed a remarkably stable pattern, opening with a formal salutation in the third person, often followed by a word of greeting: “X to Y (greeting).” Other New Testament letters follow a pattern apparently established by Paul with a distinctive offer of the divinely given grace and peace (e.g., 1 Cor 1:3).² First John does not do either of these, and, in contrast to what might be expected in a letter, neither the author(s) nor the readers are further identified, for example by their names or location. Moreover, although from 1:4 onward there is a repeated emphasis on this as a written document (cf. 2:1, 7–8, 12–14, 21, 26; 5:13), these initial verses use the language of proclamation, which, while not inappropriate for a written communication, retains a sense of direct oral address. First John may for convenience be called a letter, but its opening alerts us to its distinctive strategy.

The opening of a letter usually not only identifies the author and addressees but also establishes the relationship between them, for example, whether there is a disparity in status. This can be done explicitly, such as in the way that Paul emphasizes his apostolic status (Gal 1:1), or implicitly in the language, for example in the way that different forms of the standard opening greeting were used in different social contexts. Although using neither of these techniques, these verses establish a clear distinction between “we” who initiate the relationship and “you” who receive. The vigor with which that is done in this opening salvo sets a tone that is not fully maintained in what follows, although it is recalled at the end of the letter (5:13). Not only does the author after these verses write only in his own person, the first person singular, but he also repeatedly expresses confidence in the faith of those whom he addresses (see 2:20, 27). By contrast, here at the start they are invited to recognize themselves as those who have much to discover, dependent on those with the authority to guide them, but as the letter proceeds this opposition between “we” and “you” is progressively challenged.

The confident assertion of an incontrovertible authority to proclaim and persuade those addressed could suggest that these verses serve the function of the exordium or proemium in the construction of a spoken or written discourse, according to the rules of classical rhetoric: in this the subject of the discourse was set out and the credibility of the speaker established for the audience. Such rhetorical analysis has proved useful in the understanding of the argumentative structure of other New Testament writings. However, although 1 John does at times appear to use rhetorically effective strategies, the letter as a whole is not easily analyzed in these terms.

More generally, these opening verses are sometimes described as a prologue because they introduce what follows but are not themselves part of the argument. Calling them a prologue has sometimes invited a comparison with the prologue of the Fourth Gospel (John 1:1–18), which shares some of the same language with these verses and which is in some ways also disconnected from what follows. These commonalities of language are due to the fact that both the Gospel and 1 John draw on earlier ideas and formulations that had already begun to take a characteristic form within what can be called “the Johannine tradition,” but they are applied in different ways.³ This pattern of evoking and reworking familiar material will prove to be one of the notable characteristics of 1 John, and essential to its persuasive effectiveness. Moreover, the two “prologues” also have very different emphases and functions. One of these differences is precisely this focus here on the “we” whose experience gives them the authority to proclaim to “you,” who, it is implied, have not had the same direct experience. What that experience is shall be discussed in detail in the commentary; although the language of seeing and hearing evokes the idea of immediate eye- or ear-witness, the object is not a person but an object (“that which…,” v. 1), or, more abstractly, “eternal life” (v. 2). The goal of this proclamation is fellowship between those who make it and the audience, a fellowship that is not merely a social community because it is also a fellowship with God and with God’s Son, Jesus Christ. It is only with the last verse, verse 4, that what could have been understood as oral proclamation is identified as what is now being written; this verse may be treated as the conclusion of this prologue because by introducing the “writing” it prepares for the chapters to follow.

1 John 1:1–3—Opening

Although the general theme of the first three verses can be easily described, their structure is difficult. Verse 2 does not seem to be tightly connected to verse 1 or to verse 3, which itself repeats some of the words of verse 1 as if resuming following a parenthesis. On a more detailed level, the final words of verse 1 are in their present context imprecise, while it is not clear whether the opening words, “That which was from the beginning,” stand apart as a sort of heading. One reason for this lack of coherence appears to be that the author is alluding to and reworking earlier ideas and formulations; some of these were perhaps familiar to the first readers, while they may be equally familiar to later readers because they were also used in the prologue and elsewhere in the Gospel of John.

1:1 That which^a was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we beheld and our hands felt, concerning the word of life—2 and the life was revealed, and we have seen and we bear testimony and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was in the presence of the Father and was revealed to us—;^b 3 that which we have seen and heard we proclaim to you also so that you too may have fellowship with us.^c Indeed, our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.

a. One problem, discussed in the commentary, is the relationship of the four relative clauses in v. 1 to one another: although all begin with the relative pronoun “[that] which” (ho), the last three in v. 1 could either be parallel to the first or dependent on it.

b. Although the earliest Greek manuscripts did not have any such punctuation, the dashes around v. 2 (following NA²⁷ and most translations) indicate that this appears to be a self-contained sentence without any close link to its context other than the introductory “and.” These problems of translation are inseparable from those of interpretation discussed below.

c. The structure of these opening verses is difficult to trace; although grammatically the sentence begun at v. 1 continues to the middle of v. 3, the semicolon in the translation at the end of v. 2 indicates that only at the beginning of v. 3 does the language begin to flow more naturally. This means that the opening clauses are left without a main verb, which is perhaps what it would feel like for those listening to it being read out loud.

[1] The opening words of the letter sound two notes that will echo on through the argument: the appeal to “the beginning” and more generally to that which is already assured, and the further appeal to “we” and to our experience, although the identity of that “we” will change as the letter progresses. While at this point the ability to relate to “the beginning” apparently characterizes the “we” whose voice is here heard, later the author will recall the readers to the “command you have had from the beginning” (2:7), and he will urge them to let “what you have heard from the beginning” remain in them (2:24; cf. 3:11). In those passages it would seem that “the beginning” takes them back to the origins of their faith experience (see commentary), and in the present context the following “we have heard” and the identification of “the word” of life at the end of this verse similarly suggest something proclaimed. However, in 2:13–14 the author reassures those whom he calls “fathers” that they have known “the one from the beginning,” while in 3:8 he describes the devil as sinning “from the beginning”; this might suggest an earlier, even a primordial, beginning. It is not surprising that some subsequent interpreters have seen a connection with the opening words of the prologue of the Fourth Gospel, “In the beginning was the word,” and have concluded that here also the reference is to the time before creation. Yet the sustained use of the neuter “that which,” repeated before each of the following verbs and resumed at the beginning of verse 3, creates an emphatic difference from the masculine both of 2:13–14 and of “the word” of John 1:1. This difference from the Gospel is highlighted by the curiously loose connection (“concerning”) with “the word of life” at the end of the verse. For 1 John the opening appeal is not to a (preexistent) person but to some thing whose identity and significance is defined by its relationship with the beginning, i.e. its “ab-origin-ality.”

Just how important this is for 1 John is indicated by its position as the opening words of the letter. Grammatically this takes the form of a relative clause (“That which…”), and within the structure of the opening sentence as a whole it must be the object of the main verb, which is postponed until verse 3 (“we proclaim to you”). Some English versions address this by repeating that verb at the beginning of verse 1 (cf. NRSV), but although this results in a more fluent translation, it loses the intended rhetorical focus on the continuity from the beginning. There is a further grammatical obscurity in this opening volley, namely the relationship of the four relative clauses (“that which”/“which”) to one another. It would be possible to translate them in parallel with one another, “that which was from the beginning, that which we heard,” and so forth, hence as a series of descriptors, all of equal significance; the whole sequence would then serve as the object of the main verb, “we proclaim” (postponed until v. 3), where the object is resumed by the middle two of the relative clauses, in reverse order, “what we have seen and heard.” Translations that move the verb “we proclaim” to the front necessarily adopt this interpretation (see NRSV). In the translation given here, however, the opening clause takes a lead position, “That which [or “what”] was from the beginning”; it is then further qualified by three subordinate relative clauses as something “which” we have heard (and so forth). It is true that this makes the link with verse 3 less smooth—it would be expected that what we proclaimed there would be “that which was from the beginning”—but it seems to represent better the dramatic opening and its pervasive presence as a theme in the letter.

Although this repeated concern may be driven in part by disquiet about novelty (see 2:7–8), it particularly expresses a strong sense of the continuity that binds the readers of this letter to the tradition into which they have been brought, a sense that is not merely defensive. It is within this framework that the use of the first person plural “we” in these verses should be understood. Elsewhere the author represents himself—a masculine author is being assumed here—in the singular (“I”; cf. 2:1), and, as we shall see, the plural “we” more commonly binds author and readers together (e.g., 1:6). At this point, however, the “we” who have heard, seen, and proclaim (v. 3) are different from “you.” Although much effort has sometimes gone into an attempt to identify the “we” as if the reference were to a specific group, this misunderstands the force of the opening verses. The intentional effect is to deflect attention away from the author as if he were speaking only on his own authority or of something that ultimately depends only on his experience and on his interpretation of it. Instead it creates a sense of corporate unity and of continuity reaching beyond the present situation and players; as the readers acknowledge the claims that “we” make they will also find themselves invited to make common cause and identify themselves with that “we” (see 4:4–6, 14; and commentary). Perhaps in the face of other challenges to their loyalty or of uncertainty about where they belong, readers who find themselves addressed embark on a reading journey that will disclose the way forward.

The language of sensory experience appears to have been readily used in Johannine circles to express believers’ appropriation of the faith tradition, almost invariably in association with others, as members of those who claim “we.…” Thus the author will include the readers with him when he says, “We have seen and bear witness that the Father has sent the Son as savior of the world” (4:14), while the author of the Gospel probably reflects a similar convention in John 1:14 (see also John 3:11). Here giving first place to hearing before seeing effectively provides the framework within which all claims to see are to be placed, that of the obedient reception of the message and its further transmission; hence subsequently it is with having heard that “from the beginning” is associated (2:24; 3:11). Even so, the language remains surprisingly realistic, particularly the assertion that “we have seen with our eyes” and, even more so, “our hands felt,” where the simple past tense (the aorist) could be taken to refer to a particular past event. If in such terminology the author is drawing on earlier traditions and language, two possible sources for his thought may be traced.

The first of these is suggested from later in the letter: 2:11 will speak of the darkness as having blinded the eyes of the one who hates a brother. That verse itself echoes a number of scriptural passages, including Isa 59:9–10 where the people complain that, although they wait for light, there is darkness and they walk in the gloom, and then continue, “We grope like the blind along a wall, groping like those who have no eyes” (see commentary on 2:11). The verb translated here as “grope,” which is also used of the blind Isaac gropingly touching and “recognizing” Jacob-in-disguise as Esau (Gen 27:21–22), is the verb translated “felt” in 1 John 1:1 (psēlaphaō). This results in the irony that just as the language appears to become more assertively physical, so it becomes more insecure, open to misapprehension. First John contains repeated echoes of Second Isaiah, although because these are not explicit quotations it is rarely possible to determine how far they contribute to the author’s argument or how far he was conscious of them. Second Isaiah, where the appeal to hearing and sight is frequently made, certainly helped shape the language and the imagery of the Johannine tradition, and is even more clearly influential in the Fourth Gospel. Another possible intertext might be Psalm 115 (= LXX 113:9–26) with its vivid mockery of the idols of the nations, who “have eyes and will not see, have ears and will not hear, have noses and will not smell, have hands and will not touch (psēlaphaō)”; those alert to this echo would find a satisfying inclusio with the intriguing closing exhortation of the letter, “Keep yourselves from idols” (5:21; see commentary). To turn to whatever might be represented by the idols would be to reject those who have seen, heard, and touched.

For modern readers, although not necessarily for the earliest ones, a more familiar echo would be the narratives of encounters with ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half-title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• Bibliography
• Introduction
• Commentary
• Index of Ancient Sources
• Index of Subjects