The Identity of John the Evangelist: Revision and Reinterpretation in Early Christian Sources by Dean Furlong

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Identity of John the Evangelist: Revision and Reinterpretation in Early Christian Sources by Dean Furlong Christopher W. Skinner dean furlong, The Identity of John the Evangelist: Revision and Reinterpretation in Early Christian Sources (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books/Fortress Academic, 2020). Pp. 191. $95. This reception-historical study is a revision of the author's doctoral research at Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam (2017), and attends to a number of debates that existed among early Christian writers. Furlong is not concerned with the historicity of the traditions surrounding the evangelist. Instead, he argues that the view that equates John the Evangelist with the son of Zebedee stands at the end, rather than the beginning, of a long and somewhat convoluted evolutionary process; it was not an assumption shared by the earliest sources commenting on the Johannine tradition. The identification of John the Evangelist with the son of Zebedee spawned a number of inconsistencies among early Christian writers discussing the Johannine texts. These include whether "John" was exiled during the reigns of Claudius, Nero, or Domitian—all of which are suggested in early Christian texts—and whether he suffered a martyr's death earlier in the first century or died of natural causes under Trajan's reign after previously recovering from being placed in a vat of boiling oil. According to F., two Johns appear in the earliest texts and they eventually become conflated, giving rise to these inconsistencies. The book is divided into three sections of nearly equal length. The first section is entitled "The Identity of the Evangelist" and consists of three chapters. In the first chapter, F. argues that Papias—the earliest author to discuss the identity of John—is best interpreted as having spoken of two different Johns, both of whom were followers of Jesus. One is identified as the apostle and the other as the elder. In chap. 2, F. examines the competing narratives regarding John's death and seeks to resolve the tension between those authors that narrate John's martyrdom and those that speak of John's natural death. F. concludes that a resolution can be found by recognizing that these two stories originally had reference to two different individuals. The final chapter of the first section is devoted to exploring the earliest presentations of John the Evangelist. The second section of the book is entitled "Conflated Figures, Revised Narratives" and also consists of three chapters. In chap. 4, F. deals with sources that date John's exile and death during the reign of Claudius (41–54 c.e.) and, in chap. 5, looks at the dispute between Hippolytus of Rome—who attributed the Fourth Gospel and the Apocalypse to the apostle John—and his opponent, Gaius, who attributed them to the heretical teacher Cerinthus. After surveying the evidence, F. concludes that the claim for apostolic authorship by John the son of Zebedee could have been an intentional ploy aimed at (1) establishing the [End Page 136] apostolic authority of the two works, and (2) putting to rest lingering doubts raised by Gaius and others. The final chapter of the second section examines the traditions surrounding John's exile under the reign of Domitian. F. concludes that Eusebius is responsible for creating this "fiction" by misinterpreting and misrepresenting a handful of statements from various early authorities. The third and final section of the book consists of four chapters and represents F.'s own reconstruction of the earliest traditions surrounding John and the authorship of the Johannine literature. As stated above, his substantial concern across these chapters is to establish his thesis that the identification of the evangelist with the son of Zebedee is a late tradition, resulting from a complex process that included an admixture of misunderstanding, misrepresentation, conflation, and apologetic. A great deal of information is found in this volume, and F. should be commended for his detailed engagement with a host of ancient sources. While in places his prose is dense and reads like a dissertation, he ultimately provides a valuable service for advanced students and scholars, first by examining all of this information in one place and, second, by offering a compelling narrative that accounts for the emergence of these contradictory...