Bible (New Testament): English Standard Version

The epistle of 2 John is one of the shortest books of the Bible, amounting to just 13 verses. The author of this letter, traditionally considered to be John, identifies himself simply as “the elder” (as also in 3 John). He writes the letter to “the elect lady and her children” (2 John 1). The meaning of this form of address is debated, but one of the leading explanations is that John is using “elect lady” as a metaphor to refer to a particular local church, with the children being the members of that church (2 John 13). The letter touches briefly on themes that were also present in the epistle of 1 John: a warning against those who do not acknowledge Jesus as having come in the flesh, a categorization of such people as “antichrists,” a central focus on loving each other as the main hallmark of Christian practice, and the importance of abiding in Christ and showing love for him by following his commandments: “[…] love one another. And this is love, that we walk according to his commandments […]” (2 John 5-6; compare with John 15:10; 1 John 5:3).

Third John is similar to 2 John, a very short letter—just 15 verses—from “the elder,” once again assumed by tradition to be John the disciple. This letter is written to a particular person named Gaius. The occasion for the epistle seems to be as a letter of recommendation for a man called Demetrius (3 John 12) and to encourage Gaius to show hospitality for ministry workers who are traveling through the area: “You would do well to send them on their journey in a manner worthy of God. For they have gone out for the sake of the name” (3 John 6-7). The church with which Gaius was involved had been dealing with some discord. John mentions a man named Diotrephes, who apparently had been exercising a problematic form of leadership by acting selfishly, not recognizing apostolic authority of others, and not practicing hospitality to other Christians who were traveling through. Third John, then, offers a brief but important picture of the way that the dispersed Christian community maintained its contacts, often by upholding hospitality as a primary virtue.

Jude closes out the section of general epistles, and, like the preceding two letters, it is relatively short, with just 25 verses. The author of the epistle identifies himself as “Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James” (Jude 1), which would make him a part of Jesus’s family (like James, he would be an adelphos of Jesus, variously interpreted as a half-brother, step-brother, or cousin). Some critical scholars doubt the traditional attribution and assume that the epistle is a later pseudonymous work, so one can find dating estimates for the book that run from the mid-first century through the early second century CE.

Much of Jude’s content resembles sections of 2 Peter, but most scholars assume Jude to have been the primary source for this material. Unusual for a New Testament book, it makes direct reference to noncanonical sources, including the pseudepigraphal (“wrongly attributed”) books of 1 Enoch and the Testament of Moses. Jude offers several stern warnings against false teachers, particularly stressing the dangers involved in groups who have given themselves over to sensuality or to speculative theologies concerning angels and spiritual powers. His rhetoric against such false teachers is harsh, but for Christians who have been led astray he adopts a gentler tone, encouraging believers to “have mercy on those who doubt” (Jude 22) and to make efforts to save them from falling into heresy. He closes his epistle with a doxology that is one of the most majestic and articulate prayers of the New Testament: “[…] to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen” (Jude 25).