The Chosen Lady in the Second Conciliar Epistle of John the Theologian

Abstract

There are twenty-one epistles written by the apostles in the Holy Scriptures of the New Testament. The works of Judas, Peter, James and John are «conciliar», because the doctrinal instructions set out in them are addressed to a wide range of Christians, and not only to specific communities and people, so they do not have a specific addressee. However, the second epistle of John the Theologian has stylistic and semantic features that distinguish it from the «conciliar » ones. Therefore, the purpose of the study is to examine the history and specifics of the letter of the youngest of the disciples of Jesus Christ, as well as to compare known interpretations of the text to determine the recipient of the apostolic conversion, which allows us to understand the reason for the indisputability of the conciliarity of this message. In writing the work the methods of theoretical research were used which include analysis, comparison and induction. The results showed that the two main versions of the authorship of the Second Epistle of John the Theologian — literal and allegorical — have arguments behind them and find their supporters in domestic and foreign biblical scholarship. Independently of each other, each of them gives a general character to a seemingly private letter written simultaneously to one person and to the entire Christian Church in order to strengthen the whole community and personal faith during the period of persecution of Christianity and false teaching.