The identification and examination of the elements that caused a schism in the Johannine community at the end of the first century CE

Abstract

A group of people within the Johannine community (2:18) contributed towards  destroying the (fellowship) of this community.  Because 1 and 2 John do not provide direct evidence of the identities of the community’s heretically inclined members, they are defined in different ways by different scholars. A search for socio-religious  circumstances which contribute towards  determining  the opponents and adherents of the author which created the agenda for the reconstruction of the phenomena that  caused this  schism. The nature of the schism comprises “Pneumatological,” “Christological” and “ethical” issues encoded in the polemical  language of slogans, dialectic discourse, confessions and denials. The schism in 1 John proves to be a matter of different  interpretations of a shared tradition.