Epistles of John - The Preterist Archive

—;
THE EPISTOLARY FORM. 3
entirely wanting at the commencement.
The author does not
mention himself, nor does he specify his readers, nor does he
address them with the greeting of peace. For the circumstance
that St John wrote the Epistle, ch. i. 4, " that their joy might
be full," is most assuredly not to be regarded as standing in the
place of the epistolary yaipeiv :
this was not recorded, as Diisterdieck
thinks, " because St John had the customary yaipzw in
his mind" (compare the Commentary on this passage). Our
Epistle is altogether destitute of the greeting. We have only
one parallel case—that of the Epistle to the Hebrews. But
we have seen (in our Introduction to that Epistle) that that
production lacks in many other respects the stamp of a proper
letter, and especially that free outpouring of thought which is
essential to it ;
a treatise
and therefore, that it must be regarded rather as
designed for careful study and repeated perusal, than
as a letter or communication in the ordinary sense. It may be
added, moreover, that, in the case of the Epistle to the Hebrews,
the absence of personal superscription and address has another
explanation ; viz., the fact—which hardly admits of doubt
that it was written only under the commission of the Apostle
Paul, and not by his own hand. But none of these "explanations
can be applied to the First Epistle of St John : it was
not, as we have seen, a production sent forth in the form of a
treatise, but a thoroughly epistolary outpouring of thought and
feeling; and then it was, as we shall see, absolutely and distinctively
from the very hand of the Apostle himself. This
makes the absence of introductory greeting doubly strange
and, in connection with this circumstance, the absence of
every
kind of benedictory greeting at the close will appear equally
remarkable. For even the Epistle to the Hebrews, which in
its character and design is very much more like a treatise, yet
at least in the close introduces a twofold benediction (Heb.
xiii. 20, 21, and 25) and greeting (ver. 24). But here everything
of the kind is wanting.
We may therefore venture to say that the First Epistle of
St John is of the essence of an actual epistle, but does not bear
the form of one.
This, however, needs its own explanation.
It must be held to be possible that an Apostle should send
to a church, or to a circle of churches, an epistle, without naming
his own name, the name of the author. There was not then