Second Letter of John written

Thirteen verses, written by someone who calls himself the elder, and addressed to the lady chosen by God and to her children.

Who the lady is has been argued over since antiquity. The two candidates are a specific woman whose household hosted a congregation, and a congregation itself addressed as a woman, which is a usage found elsewhere in early Christian writing. The greeting at the end, from the children of your sister, who is chosen by God, points fairly strongly to the second, since it would otherwise mean a woman's nieces and nephews sending regards without their mother.

The elder is not named. Second-century writers refer to a figure at Ephesus known as John the elder, and whether he is the same person as the apostle was already unclear to them.

The letter is short enough to be a single sheet of papyrus, and it says so: I have much to write to you, but I do not want to use paper and ink. Instead, I hope to visit you and talk with you face to face.

Its content is the same as the longer letter compressed to a few sentences. Walk in love, which means walking in obedience to his commands. Many deceivers have gone out into the world, who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh.

Then the instruction that has caused all the trouble: if anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not take them into your house or welcome them. Anyone who welcomes them shares in their wicked work.

Read as a rule about ordinary hospitality it is repellent, and it has been used that way. Read in its setting it is narrower. There were no inns worth the name for a travelling teacher, and no church buildings; a visiting preacher stayed in a member's house and taught the congregation that met there. Receiving him was not politeness but sponsorship, and it gave him a platform.

The instruction is about not funding and housing men who are dismantling the community, and it is addressed to a household with a church in it.

A manual of church practice from around the end of the first century deals with the same problem and sets out practical rules for how long a travelling prophet may stay before he is a false prophet, which is three days.

The letter is one of the shortest documents in the ancient world to survive complete, and its length is determined by the sheet it was written on.

How it survived at all is a fair question. A single sheet addressed to one congregation, containing thirteen verses of instruction largely duplicated elsewhere, was preserved and copied because of who was believed to have written it.

The elder writes that it has given him great joy to find some of the lady's children walking in the truth, which implies that not all of them were, and nothing more is said about the rest.

The elder's stated preference for talking face to face rather than writing is repeated in both short letters, and it is a reminder that letters were a substitute for presence rather than the normal way of teaching.