The Johannine Corpus in the Early Church: Review
In this seminal work, the author takes aim at what he calls the “orthodox Johannophobia paradigm,” that is, the notion that John‟s Gospel was avoided by orthodox second-century Christians owing to its popularity among heterodox groups such as the Gnostics.
According to this thesis, it was not until Irenaeus used the Fourth Gospel to refute the heretics that John’s status in the canon was assured. As Hill persuasively shows, however, this paradigm, although widely held, lacks adequate support in the available sources.
