Do you know of useful on-line sites for research in Patrology, History of Interpretation and related matters? I'm rather new on the Internet and my personal library is very limited.
I can give you a list of excellent books I have been drawing from but online resources seem to be somewhat spotty. I'm sure you know of earlychristianwritings.com which is a useful resource and newadvent.org/fathers which has a good collection of patristic writings.
The Johannine Community must be used as a very wide-embracing concept in order to include Revelation AND the Gospel (which are ideologically very different). However, even if they have to be described as sort of "cousins", what you say about the history of traditions and sources still stands (and agrees perfectly with what I have found on James).
This is a very complex and fascinating issue. The term "Johannine community" is somewhat an ill-defined modern concept yet it is a convenient shorthand of indicating that the five Johannine compositions in the NT do have a common relationship and shared provenance, if only in a collective of Asia Minor churches that were divergent in different ways from each other. Now, if we abandon the traditional view that all five writings came from the same writer and specifically view Revelation as from a different writer than the Gospel (as linguistic, stylistic, and theological evidence indicates and as noticed as early as Dionysius of Alexandria), we are left with the problem of the three letters. 1 John goes most naturally with the Fourth Gospel and bears manifold resemblances in language in thought. 2 and 3 John are distinguished from 1 John in that 1 John is a theological tract while 2 and 3 John are epistles; moreover 1 John is anonymous while 2 and 3 John are signed by "the presbyter". The identical phrasing of 2 John 12 and 3 John 13-14 also strongly suggests they were written by the same individual. The "note for members of the church" mentioned in 3 John 9 may well be 2 John. The only figure from that age who is known to us as "the presbyter" is John the Presbyter who is referred to in exactly this fashion by Papias and Irenaeus, and so Eusebius and Jerome regarded John the Presbyter as the author of 2, 3 John, and the traditional attribution of these letters to "John" (attested as early as Irenaeus who quotes 2 John as "John's words," and the Muratorian Canon which mentions the "two letters" of John) also supports this identification. Eusebius and Jerome in fact viewed 2, 3 John as from a separate author than 1 John; the former they attribute to John the Evangelist and the latter they attribute to John the Presbyter. The witness of the Muratorian Canon also attests a collection of "two epistles," mostly likely 2, 3 John as distinct from 1 John.
The internal evidence of 2, 3 John depicts the author as a presbyter not of a single church, but someone with broader authority, addressing a number of churches (2 John 1) and who travels around visiting different churches and individuals in a manner reminiscent of Paul (2 John 12, 3 John 13-14). This fits with the figure of John the Presbyter as well. But the big mystery is the relationship with 2, 3 John with 1 John and the relationship with the three letters and Revelation. Connecting 1 John with 2, 3 John would connect John the Presbyter with the Fourth Gospel, and if John the Presbyter is also connected with Revelation, that would connect the latter -- however un-Johannine it is in language and outlook -- with the Fourth Gospel.
There are a number of threads that run through these books in complex ways. 2 John 1-2 shows connections with 1 John and the Gospel. The presbyter writes: "All who have come to know the truth because of the truth that lives in us and will be with us forever." This phrasing is similar to 1 John 2:21 ("It is not because you do not know the truth that I am writing to you but rather because you know it already") and is very close to the thought in John 14:16-17: "He will give you another Advocate to be with you forever, that Spirit of truth whom the world can ever receive since it neither sees nor knows him but you know him, because he is with you, he is in you." Similarly, 2 John 5-6, in its reference to love as a "new commandment," directly parallels 1 John 5:3 and John 13:33-34. Another example is the trope of "making joy complete" (John 15:11 = 1 John 1:4 = 2 John 12). Referring to Jesus' followers characteristically as "little children" or "children of God" runs through all four (John 8:47, 13:33 = 1 John 2:18, 4:6, 5:21 = 2 John 1, 13 = 3 John 4, 11). There is a common theme of "seeing God" and doing good and loving fellow brothers (1 John 4:12, 20 = 3 John 11). The redactional notice in John 21:24 closely resembles 3 John 12. Finally, there is the characteristic use of the neologism antikhristos "antichrist" in 1 John 2:18, 22, 4:1-3 and 2 John 7. These resemblances do not necessarily recommend common authorship but require at least that they all derive from the same intellectual and conceptual milieu. There are linguistic differences between 2, 3 John and the Gospel + 1 John (cf. ei tis for the Johannine ean tis, koinonein for Johannine koinonian ekhein, and un-Johannine resemblances to Pauline language) that suggest that they were not all written by the same author. But 1-3 John and the Gospel can be clearly grouped together into a "school" or "community". Note, for instance, that only 1 John and 2 John in the NT use the expression "come in the flesh" but 1 John has eleluthos en sarki and 2 John has erkhomenos en sarki (1 John 4:2; 2 John 7).
But what of Revelation? Its literary and conceptual links are far more tenuous. Revelation ignores many of the most characteristic and favorite terms in the Fourth Gospel (e.g. aletheia, alethes, anti, pantote, khara, etc.), spells Jerusalem differently (e.g. Ierousalem instead of Ierosoluma, uses a different word to refer to Jesus as the "lamb" (arnion in Revelation, amnos in the Gospel), the theme of "loving God" is absent, the conception of believers as "children of God" is also absent, and the overall apocalyptic expectation that is foreign to the Gospel of John. There are however literary connections with the Johannine writings. Revelation 1:7 refers to the piercing of Christ, which reflects a Johannine addition absent in synoptic versions of the passion narrative (John 19:33-37, possibly also alluded to in 1 John 5:6-8; the wording in both John and Revelation diverges from the LXX of Zechariah 12:10). The "name" of Jesus as the "Word of God" (ho logos tou theou) reflects both John 1:1-18 and 1 John 1:1, his designation as the Creator is consistent with John 1:1-3, and Jesus' deity is further implicit in the titles "the Alpha and the Omega" and "the Almighty" (Revelation 1:8, 3:14, 19:13, 22:13). The words "faithful witness" and "faithful and true witness" in Revelation 2:13, 3:14 reflects the language in the redactional notices of John 19:35, 20:31, 21:24. In fact, the term alethinos "true one," which occurs 10 times in Revelation, occurs only 17 times elsewhere in the NT -- and 13 of these were in the Gospel of John and 1 John (it elsewhere occurs only once in Paul and 3 times in Hebrews). Other striking parallels in wording include Revelation 2:2 "you cannot bear evil men" (ou dune bastasai kakous) = John 16:12 "you cannot bear them" (ou dunasthe bastazein), Revelation 6:8 "his name [was] Death" (onoma auto thanatos) = John 1:6 "his name [was] John" (onoma auto Ioannes), Revelation 6:11 "a little while longer" (eti khronon mikron) = John 7:33 "a little while longer (eti khronon mikron), Revelation 20:6 "the one having part in" (ho ekhon meros en) = John 13:8 "you have no part with me" (ouk ekheis meros met emou), and Revelation 22:7 "the one thirsting let him come" (ho dipson erkhestho) = John 7:37 "if anyone thirsts, let him come" (ean tis dipsa, erkhestho). The last example is particularly striking. There are also some conceptual parallels. The crucifixion of Jesus representing the defeat of Satan is expressed in John 12:31-32 and Revelation 5:5, 12:10-11. The rejoicing of world at Jesus' death is stated in John 16:20 and Revelation 11:10. The depiction of Jewish opposers as the spawn of Satan or followers of Satan instead of being "really Jews" or "the offspring of Abraham" is stated in John 8:37-44 and Revelation 2:9. The motif of Jesus coming to a believer's house to lodge with him appears in John 14:23 and Revelation 3:20. The strident polemic in 1, 2 John against heresy and "antichrists" (1 John 2:22-26, 4:2-6; 2 John 7-10) has the same tone with similar polemic in Revelation 2:2-7, 15, 24. The mention of "the whole world lying in the power of the Evil One" in John 5:19 also recalls Revelation 12:10-13. Finally, the church of God is depicted as a woman in 2 John 1, 5 and Revelation 21:9, 22:17. So there are similarities in language and thought, but the differences are far greater. The internal evidence alone would suggest that Revelation had only tangential relation to the Johannine community.
But the external evidence is quite weighty. First of all, Revelation itself is adressed to the Asia Minor churches of Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea -- the very same region that John the Presbyter had influence in the early 2nd century. The author is also identified as John (1:1, 9). It is also interesting that the church John has the mildest criticism for is Ephesus, and that is the same church John the Presbyter had oversight of. The main criticism that John has for Ephesus was that they "have less love than you used to," a concern stressed in the admonitions of 1 John 4:7-21 and 2 John 4-6. The earliest known use of Revelation is found in the Ignatian epistles (A.D. 115-117) that were addressed to the same region of Asia Minor. In his epistle to the Philadelphians, Ignatius plays on the words of Revelation 3:12 that were addressed to the church in Philadelphia. In Revelation, those who resist the influence of those "who profess to be Jews" are promised to be "made into pillars [stulon] in the sanctuary of God, and they will stay there forever; I will inscribe [grapho] on them the name of God [onoma tou theo]." Ignatius playfully changes the wording to declare those who follow Jewish influence as tomb epitaphs: "If anyone expounds Judaism to you, do not listen to him. For it is better the hear about Christ from a man who is circumcised than about Judaism from one who is not. But if either of them fail to speak about Jesus Christ, I look on them as tombstones [stelai] and graves of the dead, upon which only the names of men [onomata anthropon] are inscribed [gegraptai]" (IgPhil 6:1). This attests the circulation of Revelation early in the 2nd cent. among the very churches that Revelation was addressed to.
Ignatius also provides some of the earliest evidence of John's Gospel. He cites a Johannine saying in Philadelphians 7:1: "The Spirit [pneuma] is not deceived because it is from God; for it knows from where it comes and where it is going [gar pothen erkhetai kai pou hupagei]." Compare John 3:8: "The wind [pneuma] blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going [pothen erkhetai kai pou hupagei]." If not from John's Gospel, the saying is nonetheless Johannine and not of the synoptic tradition. Similarly Philadelphians 9:1 says concerning Christ: "He himself is the door of the Father," which is reminiscent of John 10:9. In his epistle to the Ephesians 5:2, Ignatius makes reference to the "bread of God" (artos tou theou, cf. John 6:33). Ignatius appears to have been familiar with both the Fourth Gospel (or material cognate with it) and Revelation and used material from both in his epistles to the churches of Philadelphia and Ephesus. He also undoubtedly shared in the Fourth Gospel's explicitness of professing Jesus as God.
Polycarp of Smyrna, according to Irenaeus, was a listener of John the Presbyter and friend of Papias of Hierapolis. Both Polycarp and Papias, as leaders of churches in Asia Minor and associates of John, could be reasonably be called part of "the Johannine community" and what they have to say is very interesting. In his Epistle to the Philippians (c. A.D. 135), Polycarp betrays his familiarity with the Johannine epistles. Polycarp gave a polemic against docetism similar to that of 1, 2 John and quoted 1 John 4:2-3 and 3:8: "For everyone 'who does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is antichrist'; and whoever does not acknowledge the testimony of the cross 'is of the Devil'." (Polycarp 7:1) Polycarp's letter thus gives the earliest evidence of the Johannine letters. His epistle elsewhere betrays Johannine vocabulary, such as planes "error" (Polycarp 2:1; 1 John 4:6, 2 John 7), poion to thelema "doing the will" (Polycarp 2:2; 1 John 2:17), agape making one far from harmatian (Polycarp 3:3; cf. 1 John 3:9-11), peripatounta "walking" in the entole "commandment (Polycarp 5:1; 1 John 2:6-7), peripatounta "walking" in the aletheia "truth" (Polycarp 5:2; 3 John 4), zosomen di autou "we might live through him" (Polycarp 8:1; 1 John 4:9), and so forth. Polycarp shows a familiarity with the Johannine epistles but not Revelation.
There is another connection between Polycarp and the Johannine epistles. According to Irenaeus (Adv. Haer. 1.26.1), Polycarp related a story of John going to a bathhouse in Ephesus and seeing the heretic Cerinthus within, he bolted out exclaiming: "Let us flee lest the bath fall, for Cerinthus, the enemy of truth, is within." Cerinthus was a docetist and taught that Christ descended on the human Jesus and left during the crucifixion. May the heresy of Cerinthus be that alluded to in 1 John and Polycarp's epistle? Interestingly, Eusebius (HE, 3.28.1) mentioned a particular Caius (c. A.D. 290) who makes a totally bizarre reference to the Revelation of John as a forgery penned by Cerinthus: "Cerinthus by means of revelations which he pretends were shown to him by angels, says that after the resurrection the kingdom of Christ will be set up on earth, and that the flesh dwelling in Jerusalem will again be subject to desires and pleasures. And being an enemy of the scriptures of God, he asserts, which the purpose of deceiving men, that there would be a period of a thousand years for marriage festivals." The divergences here between the actual Revelation of John and this description of Cerinthus' apocalypse (e.g. references to fleshly pleasures and marriage festivals) suggests that Cerinthus, John's opponent, had edited his own version of Revelation and Gaius was unfamiliar with the original. However, Dionysius of Alexandria also regarded the Apocalypse of John as a Cerinthian forgery and in the third century, Revelation was known in Egypt under Cerinthus' name. Whatever the actual literary relation between Cerinthus and Revelation, this would seem to constitute another link between John and Cerinthus. Epiphanius (Adv. Haer. 51.3.6) however goes further and also attributes to Cerinthus the Fourth Gospel; one working hypothesis adopted by certain scholars is that Cerinthus published an early, more gnostic version of the Fourth Gospel, which was subsequently edited (perhaps in Ephesus) and republished in the Johannine community.
Papias of Hierapolis (ca. A.D. 140) shows affinities with the entire Johannine corpus. His work drew on oral gospel traditions but these show an affinity to the Fourth Gospel. In Fr. 3:3, Papias designates Jesus as the Truth in a manner reminiscent of John 14:6. In the same text (3:4), he names the apostles in the same order as John 1:40-43; 11:16. The expression "commandments given by the Lord" recalls 1 John 2:6-7. Papias (Fr. 3:17, 4, 23) reports the same story of the interpolation of John 7:53-8:11 and the interpolation itself may have originated either from his own writings or that of his predecessors. According to Fr. 6, the second book of Papias' Expositions discusses the death of the Beloved Disciple as fulfilling the prophecy in the appendix of John 21:23. In Fr. 31, John 14:2 is cited: "In my Father's house there are many rooms." The Johannine emphasis on Christians as "children" was also discussed by Papias (Fr. 15). The Codex Vaticanus Alexandrinus even supplied a tradition that Papias was a copyist of the Fourth Gospel (Fr. 19). Papias also knew and quoted 1 John, according to Eusebius (Fr. 3:17), and he was definitely familiar with Revelation (Fr. 10). Papias also gave an interpretation of Revelation 12:7-9 (Fr. 11, 24), and his grotesque Jesus saying on the productivity of grapes and grain in the Kingdom of God (Fr. 15) as reported to him by John the Presbyter (and his other chiliast expectations of the Kingdom), shows that he was within the same intellectual millieu as Revelation and attributed John the Presbyter as the source of these traditions. That makes John the Presbyter a pretty good candidate of the "John" who Revelation claims was its author. It is pretty clear at least that Papias inherited his chiliasm from John the Presbyter. And the acrimonious connection between John and Cerinthus, the alleged father of chiliasm, makes the connection even more enigmatic. Might Cerinthus and John the Presbyter come from the same chiliast circle and both adopted the same apocalyptic writing that lay at the core of Revelation, which led Gaius and others to confuse Revelation with Cerinthus' writing? As for the classic Johannine writings, the latest layer of redaction in the Fourth Gospel, according to Koester, added apocalyptic references to "the resurrection on the last day" (John 5:27-29; 6:39, 40, 44; cf. Revelation 20:4-5, 12-14). 1 John, for all its resemblance to the Fourth Gospel, also has an apocalyptic urgency: references to "the world is coming to an end" (2:17), "this is the last hour, the antichrist is coming, this is how we know this is the last hour" (2:18), and "facing the Day of Judgment without fear" (4:17), and the imminent "coming" of Christ (2:28).
There are so many uncertainties -- did the author of Revelation mainly adapt an older apocalypse and compose the introductory letters of Asia Minor (ch. 1-4)? Could the same personality be behind 2,3 John and Revelation? What role did Cerinthus play in the composition and transmission of the Fourth Gospel and Revelation? Did the Gospel of John pass through John the Presbyter's hands at some point (adding the John 8 interpolation attested by Papias as a "John the Presbyter" tradition and the ch. 21 appendix which has clear affinities to 2, 3 John)? The latter would explain how the Gospel became attached to his name, even if it originally had an origin outside of his community. Perhaps both the core of Revelation and the original form of the Gospel originated outside of John the Presbyter's community but both were accepted and used to varying degrees in the Asia Minor churches. Despite these uncertainties, I think there are some good reasons for considering the Revelation of John as part of the literature of the Asia Minor "Johannine" community, though removed in thought and language from the Fourth Gospel and 1 John.
Leolaia
