Book overviews
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Jude
Jude: a short polemic, an explicit quotation of 1 Enoch, a probable allusion to the Assumption of Moses, and what a canonical book citing a non-canonical one shows about how these categories formed.
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3 John
3 John: fifteen verses of church politics, a named opponent who refuses hospitality, and the rare value of a text with nothing doctrinal to say.
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2 John
2 John: a very short letter about who may be received, the anonymous elder who wrote it, and what it shows about how early congregations policed their networks.
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1 John
1 John: a community that has divided, a text with no named author, and the Comma Johanneum — a textual addition whose history can be traced document by document.
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2 Peter
2 Peter: a defence of a delayed expectation, near-verbatim dependence on Jude, a reference to Paul’s letters as scripture, and the slowest reception into the canon of any New Testament book.
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1 Peter
1 Peter: suffering as the central subject, the Greek that complicates the authorship claim, Babylon as a codeword for Rome, and Pliny’s letter from the same provinces.
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Philemon
Philemon: a private letter about a runaway or reassigned slave, why nobody disputes Paul wrote it, and how a text that refuses to state a principle became central to a long argument.
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Titus
Titus: a short letter of church order for Crete, the quotation from Epimenides, and the same authorship question that governs the other two Pastorals.
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2 Timothy
2 Timothy: a testament rather than a manual, the personal details that complicate the authorship argument, and what the external record can and cannot say about Paul’s death.
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1 Timothy
1 Timothy: church order rather than argument, the vocabulary evidence behind the authorship dispute, and why the earliest Pauline manuscript does not contain it.