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John the Presbyter was an obscure figure of the early Church who is either distinguished from or identified with the Apostle John, by some also John the Divine. He appears in fragments from the church father Papias of Hierapolis as one of the author's sources and is first unequivocally distinguished from the Apostle by Eusebius of Caesarea. He is frequently proposed as an alternative author of some of the Johannine books in the New Testament.
John the Presbyter appears in a fragment by Papias, a 2nd-century bishop of Hierapolis, who published an "Exposition of the Sayings of the Lord" (Greek κυριακῶν λογίων ἐξηγήσις — Kyriakôn logiôn exêgêsis) in five volumes. This work is lost but survives in fragments quoted by Irenaeus of Lyons (d. 202) and Eusebius of Caesarea (d. 339).
One of these fragments, quoted by Eusebius in his History of the Church (Book III, chapter 39), reads:
The interpretation of that text consists of two basic views: one view, first voiced by Eusebius of Caesarea, distinguishes between two Johns, the Apostle and the presbyter, while the other view, in line with most of Church tradition, identifies only one John.
The Church historian Eusebius of Caesarea, through whose quotation the above fragment survives, was the first to unequivocally distinguish a Presbyter John from the Apostle John. Accordingly he introduced the quotation with the words:
After quoting Papias, Eusebius continues:
Eusebius identifies John the Presbyter as the author of the Book of Revelation, the canonical status of which he disputed as he disagreed with its content, especially the Chiliasm implied in the "millennial kingdom".
The view of Eusebius was taken up by the Church Father Jerome in De Viris Illustribus (On Illustrious Men). In Chapter 9, which deals with the Apostle John and his writings, he ascribes to him both the Gospel and the First Epistle, and continues to say:
In Chapter 18, discussing Papias, Jerome repeats the fragment quoted above and continues:
Jerome's attribution of the Second and Third Epistle of John echoes the text of these books, in which the writer refers to himself ho presbyteros, which can be translated as "the presbyter, "the elder", "the ancient", "the old", the same word used by Papias.
The Decretum Gelasianum associated with Pope Gelasius I, though of later date, follows Jerome in accepting one letter of "John the apostle" and two letters of the "other John the elder".
In modern times, the distinction was frequently revived, mainly – and quite in contrast to Eusebius' views – "to support the denial of the Apostolic origin of the Fourth Gospel",[4] whose "beauty and richness" some scholars had difficulty in ascribing to a "fisherman from Gallilee".[5]
Much of Church tradition squarely attributed all the Johannine books of the New Testament to a single author, the Apostle John. The view expounded by Eusebius has not remained uncontested. The Catholic Encyclopedia of the early 1900s, for instance, stated that the distinction "has no historical basis".[4] To support this view, it related four main arguments:
In his "Letter to Florinus", which survives as a fragment, Irenaeus speaks of "Polycarp having thus received [information] from the eye-witnesses of the Word of life" and of John as "that blessed and apostolical presbyter".[8][9]
Recently Richard Bauckham, in his book Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, has made the argument for distinguishing between the Apostle John and John the Presbyter by a fresh engagement with the evidence of Papias, Eusebius, Irenaeus, Polycrates, and the Muratorian Canon.
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