Good point, and I was going from long term memory, but as I glance through his work again, it does not appear that his Johannine redactor is responsible for very much; the bulk of the gospel seems to precede the epistles:andrewcriddle wrote: ↑Thu Dec 24, 2020 7:50 amIIUC Raymond Brown believed proto-John was earlier than the epistles and was common ground between the author of the epistles and his opponents. He accepted that canonical John was later than the epistles.
374-376 I shall now present a reconstruction of the community history, warning that while it explains many factors in the Gospel, it remains a hypothesis and "perhaps" needs to be added to every sentence. The reconstruction covers not only the Gospel and its redaction but also the Johannine Epistles.... Four phases are involved. (1) A phase preceding the written Gospel but shaping its thought (up to the 70s or 80s). In or near Palestine, Jews of relatively standard expectations, including followers of JBap, accepted Jesus as the Davidic Messiah, the fulfiller of the prophecies, and one confirmed by miracles (see the titles in John 1). Among them, insignificantly at first, was a man who had known Jesus and become his disciple during the public ministry and who would become the Beloved Disciple. To these first followers were added Jews of an antiTemple bias who made converts in Samaria (John 4). They understood Jesus primarily against a Mosaic background (as distinct from a Davidic one): Jesus had been with God, whom he had seen and whose word he brought down to this world. The acceptance of this second group catalyzed the development of a high, preexistence christology (seen against the background of divine Wisdom) that led to debates with Jews who thought that Johannine Christians were abandoning Jewish monotheism by making a second God out of Jesus (5:18). Ultimately the leaders of these Jews had Johannine Christians expelled from synagogues (9:22; 16:2). The latter, alienated from their own, turned very hostile to “the Jews,” whom they regarded as children of the devil (8:44). They stressed a realization of the eschatological promises in Jesus to compensate for what they had lost in Judaism (whence the strong theme of replacement in the Gospel). At the same time the Johannine Christians despised believers in Jesus who did not make the same public break from the synagogue (exemplified by the parents of the blind man in 9:21-23; also 12:42-43). The disciple mentioned above made this transition and helped others to make it, thus becoming the Beloved Disciple.
(2) The phase during which the basic Gospel was written by the evangelist. Since “the Jews” were considered blind and unbelieving (12:37-40), the coming of the Greeks was seen as God’s plan of fulfillment (12:20-23). The community or part of it may have moved from Palestine to the diaspora to teach the Greeks (7:35), perhaps to the Ephesus area — a move that would cast light on the Hellenistic atmosphere of the Gospel and on the need to explain Semitic names and titles (e.g., rabbi, Messiah). This context brought out universalist possibilities in Johannine thought, in an attempt to speak to a wider audience. Rejection and persecution, however, convinced Johannine Christians that the world (like “the Jews”) was opposed to Jesus. They looked on themselves as not of this world which was under the power of Satan, the Prince of this world (17:15-16; 14:30; 16:33). In their relation to other Christians, they rejected some as having so inadequate a christology that they were really unbelievers (6:60-66). Others symbolized by Simon Peter truly believed in Jesus (6:67-69) but were not deemed so perceptive as the Johannine Christians symbolized by the Beloved Disciple (20:6-9). The hope was that the divisions between them and the Johannine community might be healed and they might be one (10:16; 17:11). However, the Gospel’s one-sided emphasis on the divinity of Jesus (shaped by struggles with the synagogue leaders) and on the need for love of one another as the sole commandment (13:34; 15:12, 17) opened the way for some in the next generation whose whole knowledge of Jesus came from that Gospel to develop exaggerated views.
(3) The phase during which the Johannine Epistles, I and II John, were written (ca. AD 100). The community split in two: (a) Some adhered to the view represented by the author of I and II John (another Johannine writer distinct from the evangelist). He complemented the Gospel by stressing the humanity of Jesus (come in the flesh) and ethical behavior (keeping the commandments); (b) Many seceded (at least, in the view of the author of l John 2:18-19) and were antichrists and children of the devil because they had so exaggerated Jesus’ divinity that they did not see any importance in his human career or in their own behavior (beyond simply believing in Jesus...). Yet in the Johannine community there was no structure sufficiently authoritative to enable the author to discipline the secessionists who were actively seeking more adherents; he could only urge those who were puzzled about truth to test the Spirits (I John 4: 1-6).
(4) The phase during which III John was written and the redactor added chap. 21 (AD 100-110?). The disintegration of the Johannine community led to a development of pastoral structure and brought those sympathetic to the christology described under 3a closer to the larger “church catholic.” In III John, even though the writer did not like him because he had become authoritative, Diotrephes probably represented this new trend which was alien to the preceding Johannine reliance on the Spirit alone as teacher. Similarly in John 21:15-17 Jesus gives Simon Peter the task of feeding the sheep and thus recognizes human pastors alongside Jesus, the model shepherd. This development would ultimately bring some Johannine Christians into the larger church and preserve the Johannine heritage for that church. On the other hand those sympathetic to the christology described under 3b above (perhaps the larger group) fed their interpretation into docetism (where Jesus was deemed not truly human) and gnosticism (where this world was considered so distorted that it was not God’s creation) and ultimately Montanism (where Montanus became the embodiment of the Paraclete to guide the church).
His limiting of the redactor's work to merely adding chapter 21 here may be shorthand, since I think he does give the redactor a few other passages, especially doublets, in the main body of the gospel, but still, it appears to me, unless I am missing something, that most of the gospel he dates to before the penning of any of the epistles.