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The Ancient World Behind the Text: Ideas
The customs, offices and ideas a first reader knew without being told, what each meant then, and the nearest thing you already know.
Early false teachers and splits
Late in the first century a group left the churches John wrote to, taking a different view of Jesus with them. Some may have denied that he was the Messiah; others that he truly became human, as the Docetists and Cerinthus later taught.
A few members walk out of a church and start meeting across town, saying the old teaching was too simple. Something like that happened in the churches John wrote to: people who had belonged left, and John calls them liars, deceivers and antichrists. What exactly they taught is harder to say. Some scholars think they stopped calling Jesus the Messiah so that they could stay in the synagogue. Others think they held that Jesus only seemed to be human, a view later called Docetism, from a Greek word meaning to seem, or that a divine Christ came on the man Jesus at his baptism and left him before the cross, as a teacher named Cerinthus taught. The sources leave both possibilities open.
Keener and the cultural backgrounds notes call one point beyond dispute: "the primary troublemakers are clearly" secessionists. These were people who had belonged to the community and withdrawn. John tests them on two counts: whether they love their fellow believers, and whether they hold a true view of who Jesus is. Keener sets out three possible settings. Believers had been expelled from the synagogue, and some of their colleagues went back by denying that Jesus was the Messiah. Or false prophets urged compromise with idolatry, the imperial cult above all. Or movements were heading toward Gnosticism. Wright and Bird think denials of Jesus' messiahship and of his true humanity were both in play, and that the rival teachers left after failing to win support. Docetism takes its name from the Greek verb dokeo, to seem: Jesus only seemed to be human. It appealed to anyone who held that God could not be touched by change, suffering or shame. It had a pagan precedent in Ovid, whose Vesta snatched Julius Caesar away so that "what died by the steel was Caesar's shadow" (Wright and Bird). Cerinthus was an Egyptian who came to Ephesus and was remembered as John's gnostic opponent. He taught that the Christ came on Jesus at his baptism and left him before the cross (Wright and Bird, citing Irenaeus). Keener dates his teaching around AD 100. Greek gods had ichor, a watery fluid, in place of blood, so some may have taken the water and blood of John 19:34 for a demigod's. Gnostic systems proper are "not really attested until decades after 1 John" (the cultural backgrounds notes). Irenaeus reports, from hearers of Polycarp, that John at Ephesus "rushed out of the bath-house without bathing" on finding Cerinthus inside (Against Heresies 3.3.4).
An analogy: a breakaway congregation that keeps the old name and the old hymns but changes what it says about the founder. Those who stay behind have to spell out what the founder really taught and why it matters.
Because former members had left with a different view of Jesus, 1 John 4:2 makes the confession that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh the test of a spirit, and 2 John 7 calls the same deceivers antichrists. John 19:34-35 stresses that blood and water came from the side of a man who had truly died, which Wright reads as an answer to those who would soon say otherwise.
Not a split whose teaching we can read. A modern breakaway leaves its own statements behind, but John's opponents survive only in his replies, so what they taught has to be inferred. A denial that Jesus was the Messiah and a denial of his true humanity are both proposed, and the full Gnostic systems came decades later.
What the secessionists denied. Keener and the cultural backgrounds notes keep several settings open. On 1 John 4:2-3 Keener thinks a Docetic denial more likely than a Jewish one. For 2 John he judges a relativizing of Jesus, to allow compromise with paganism, more likely than synagogue pressure. The ESV and CSB Study Bibles read 1 John 4:2 against a denial of Jesus' true humanity. Wright and Bird hold that denials of his messiahship and of his humanity were both in play. On Gnosticism, the ESV Study Bible says that John had it in mind "can neither be proven nor ruled out", and the cultural backgrounds notes and Carson place the developed systems later. Carson, Moo and Morris conclude that John faces "an embryonic Docetism or Cerinthianism". Raymond Brown, as they report, held that the secessionists denied the significance of Jesus' humanity for salvation, not the humanity itself. Wright, in his commentary, reads the antichrists of 1 John 2:18-27 as rival messianic movements, as political as religious, that drew believers away. He finds that 4:1-6 looks like an early branch of what became Gnosticism, while warning that the group may be one we know nothing of.
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- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-passages\/1john-5-1-12\/","n":"1 John 5:1-12, Water, blood and three witnesses","s":"Whoever believes Jesus is the Christ is God's child, and loving the parent means loving the child. Faith overcomes the world. Jesus Christ came by water and blood, not by water only, and three testify, the Spirit, the water and the blood; God's testimony is that he has given eternal life in his Son.","r":"1 John 5:1-12"}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-passages\/2john-7-13\/","n":"2 John 7-13, Deceivers at the door, paper and ink","s":"Many deceivers who refuse to confess that Jesus Christ came in the flesh are abroad in the world; such a one is the deceiver and the antichrist. Whoever runs ahead and does not keep to Christ's teaching does not have God, and the readers are not to take such a person into the house or greet him. The elder would rather not use paper and ink, and hopes to talk face to face.","r":"2 John 7-13"}
- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, introduction to 1 John (Situation), on 1 John 1:1-4, 2:22-23, 4:2-3 and 5:6-13, and introduction to 2 John (Situation)
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, Introduction to 1 John (Background), and notes on 1 John 2:22, 4:2 and 5:6
- ESV Study Bible, Introduction to 1 John (Purpose, Occasion, and Background), and study note on 1 John 4:2
- CSB Study Bible, Introduction to 1 John, and note on 1 John 4:2
- N. T. Wright and Michael F. Bird, The New Testament in Its World, ch. 33, The secessionists, and Excursus: Docetism 101
- N. T. Wright, John for Everyone, Part Two, comment on John 19.31-37
- D. A. Carson, A Quick Introduction to the New Testament, Longstanding Interpretive Traditions
- Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3.3.4, in The Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 1
- D. A. Carson, Douglas J. Moo and Leon Morris, An Introduction to the New Testament, ch. 21, 1, 2, 3 John, Purpose
- N. T. Wright, Early Christian Letters for Everyone, comments on 1 John 2:15-29 and 3:11-4:6
