been written by persons who were either Jesus’ own disciples or
companions of his earliest apostles.
We encounter a slightly different problem with Revelation
and the letters of John and Paul. Revelationopens with a clear
statement of the author’s name: ‘The revelation of Jesus Christ,
which God gave him to show his servants what must soon
take place; he made it known by sending his angel to his servant
John’ (Revelation1.1). Shortly afterwards, the main account of
Revelationis cast as an address from ‘John to the seven churches
that were in Asia’ (1.4). Other than that, the author says nothing
about himself. From the second century, however, Christians
identified this John with the disciple, the son of Zebedee, and so
with the author of the fourth gospel and three letters also in the
New Testament. Examination of the style and content of these
various texts by modern scholars suggests, however, that this
ancient identification is wrong (Schnelle 1998: 519–23). As for
the three New Testament letters ascribed to John, whereas the
SecondandThird Epistles of John state clearly that they were
written by ‘the elder [presbuteros in Greek] John’, the First
Epistle of Johncontains no such claim. Although early Christians
saw all three letters as having the same author, modern scholars
are divided on the issue: some see the three letters as the work
of one author (e.g. Johnson 1999: 561–2); others argue that the
author of the first letter is different from the author of the other
two (e.g. Schnelle 1998: 454–5).
When we turn to Paul’s letters, the author’s identity seems
at first glance to be more securely established. All of the New
Testament letters attributed to him begin by identifying the author
as ‘Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle’ (thus
Romans1.1), or by some similar form of words. And yet, of the
thirteen letters that begin this way, six (Colossians,Ephesians, 2
Thessalonians, and the pastoral letters, Titus and 1 and2 Timothy)
are regarded by most New Testament scholars to be forgeries
written at a slightly later time by other authors who saw them-
selves as Paul’s successors and wrote under his name. They did
so in an effort (ultimately successful, as the letters’ inclusion in
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