John 21:25

The author apologises for the incompleteness and fragmentary character of his work.

Additional Note. John at Ephesus

According to the generally received tradition, which dates from at least the former half of the second century, the Apostle John, the son of Zebedee, after the martyrdom of St. Paul, 67 a.d., or more probably after the fall of Jerusalem, 70 a.d., migrated from Jerusalem to Ephesus, and there ruled the Churches of Asia Minor for more than a quarter of a century, and finally died a natural death in the reign of Trajan (about 100 a.d.), having first composed and published the Fourth Gospel, and the First Epistle of John, perhaps also the Second and Third Epistles and the Revelation. As the trustworthiness of this tradition has lately been challenged, it will be convenient to place before the reader a summary of the early evidence.

St. Justin Martyr (150 a.d.) attributes the Revelation to the Apostle John, and since that book is in the form of a pastoral letter to 'the seven churches which are in Asia' (John 1:4), Justin must have believed in the Asiatic sojourn of the Apostle.

St. Irenæus, who wrote in Gaul 177 a.d., but whose youth was spent in Asia, where he had been a hearer of St. Polycarp, a personal disciple of St. John, says:

'Thus all the elders testify, who were conversant in Asia with John the disciple of the Lord. And he remained among them up to the times of Trajan' (98-117 a.d).
'Afterwards John, the disciple of the Lord, who also had leaned upon His breast, himself published a Gospel during his residence at Ephesus in Asia.' 'While I was yet a boy, I saw thee (Florinus) in Lower Asia with Polycarp. I can even describe the place where the blessed Polycarp used to sit and discourse, and how he would speak of his familiar intercourse with John, and with the rest of those who had seen the Lord.'

Polycrates (who as bishop of Ephesus had special opportunities for knowing the truth) in a letter written to Victor, bishop of Rome, about 193 a.d., speaks of 'John who was both a witness and a teacher, who reclined upon the bosom of the Lord, and, being a priest, wore the sacerdotal plate. He fell asleep at Ephesus.'

Tertullian, 200 a.d., and Clement of Alexandria, 200 a.d., give similar evidence.

There are two main difficulties, which are held by some to throw a considerable doubt upon the truth of this tradition. (1) The ninth-century Chronicle of Georgius Hamartolos says, 'Papias, bishop of Hierapolis, declares in the second book of the Oracles of the Lord that John was put to death by the Jews.' Of course if Papias (130 a.d.) did say this, and if the execution of John took place in Palestine, the Ephesian ministry of the Apostle is excluded. But it is significant that the earlier ecclesiastical writers, most of whom, like Irenæus and Eusebius, were diligent students of Papias, seem to know nothing of this supposed Palestinian martyrdom of John, and, on the contrary, represent him as surviving all the other Apostles, and dying a natural death in extreme old age at Ephesus. Probably Georgius has misinterpreted some obscure statement of Papias, whose style is always slovenly, and often ambiguous. (2) Among the personal disciples of Jesus, according to Papias, were two Johns, John the Apostle and John the Presbyter (or Elder). It is suggested by some that the John who settled at Ephesus and was the instructor of Polycarp, was not the Apostle but the Presbyter. This view does not seem very probable. We are not told that the Presbyter had any connexion with Asia, and it hardly seems credible that Irenæus, who was a hearer of Polycarp, can have so completely misunderstood his Master's references to John, as to suppose that he meant the Apostle when he really meant the Presbyter.