 |
| Tomb of John the Apostle in Ephesus (Selçuk, Turkey) |
One cannot examine the relationship between 2 John and 3 John without looking at the wider picture of the Apostle whose name was ascribed as author of these two works. And especially the role his legend played in the struggle of the structure of the emerging Church from a rag tag collection of house churches founded by itinerant preachers, which after some significant time grew into more formal organizations with dedicated houses of worship ("synagogues" is the word used in the New Testament).
And no place was this legend more at the fore than Ephesus, where for all the world it appears that John replaced Paul as the patron saint, but only after great factional struggle. The replacement seems to have been not just limited to Ephesus, but probably all of Asia Minor and Anatolia. It is a struggle that left it's mark in several books of the New Testament. [
1]
