The Beloved Apostle?: The Transformation of the Apostle John Into the Fourth Evangelist (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9781532610233)

Second-century Christians had a significant role in shaping the import of the literary sources that they inherited from the first century through their editorial revisions and the church traditions that they appended to them. Michael J. Kok critically investigates the supposed clues that encouraged select Christian intellectuals to infer that John, one of Jesus' chosen twelve apostles, was the mysterious "disciple whom Jesus loved" and to ascribe the fourth canonical Gospel as well as four other New Testament books back to him. Kok outlines how the image of Saint John of Ephesus was constructed. Not all early Christians approved of the fourth canonical Gospel and some expressed strong reservations about its theology, preferring to link it with a heretical adversary rather than with an authoritative Christian founder figure. Discover how the moves made in the second century were crucial for determining whether this Gospel would be preserved at all for posterity, much less as part of the scriptural collection of the developing Orthodox Church.

Author: Michael J. Kok
ISBN-10: 1532610238
ISBN-13: 9781532610233
Publisher: Cascade Books
Language: English
Published: 11/03/2017
Pages: 186
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 0.85lbs
Size: 8.50h x 5.50w x 0.56d