Regular ricoblog readers already know that I have a strange fascination with the Pastoral Epistles.

Anyway, I was reading a bit of the Cambridge Greek Testament: Epistles of St. John, published in 1916. The discussion on the authorship of Second John states the following regarding the internal evidence (I took the liberty of changing the formatting a bit, the quote is from p. lxxi):

The internal [evidence] is hardly less strong than the external evidence in favour of the Apostolic authorship of the Second, and therefore of the Third Epistle: for no one can reasonably doubt that the writer of the one is the writer of the other. The argument is parallel to that respecting the Pastoral Epistles:

• There is much in these Epistles that cannot reasonably be ascribed to anyone but S. Paul
• These portions cannot be severed from the rest
• Therefore those portions which are not in his usual style were nevertheless written by him.

So here [with the Johannines]:

• The Second Epistle has so much that is similar to the First, that common authorship is highly probable.
• The Third Epistle has so much that is similar to the Second, that common authorship is practically certain
• Therefore the Third Epistle, though not like the First, is nevertheless by the same hand.

I don't know that I've ever heard of the distributive property applied to authorship studies (A = B; B = C; so A = C), so this is a new approach, at least to me. I can't say that the argument is appealing or convincing to me, but I'm not too concerned about the argument (at least with this post). What got my mind going was that the author compared the authorship situation of the Pastoral Epistles to the authorship situation of the Johannine Epistles.

So I immediately began to wonder: Has anyone ever posited (and seriously defended) a fragmentary hypothesis of the Johannines similar to what Harrison (and others) have suggested for the Pastorals?

I know that Anthony Kenny's book (Stylometric Study of the New Testament) uses his stylometric analysis to compare the Johannine Epistles to the Gospel of John in an effort to deduce authorship. I've also been told that Beale, in his NIGTC volume on Revelation, would discuss this sort of thing if anyone does. I'll check that volume out shortly (a friend of mine has it in his personal library) but I still have the question: Has anyone posited a "fragmentary" hypothesis for the Johannines? You know, 'genuine' Johannine fragments collected and expanded by either a (to follow Harrison's flavor) "dedicated Johannist" or (to follow Miller's flavor) a "Johannine Community"?

Just curious. If so, I'd like to compare the approaches/methods of each with the way folks have approached the Pastorals. If not ... it could be a fun (yes, my idea of fun is a little wacky these days) sort of approach to try to apply to the Johannines. 

Update (2005-06-08): I checked Beale, he doesn't really have anything. His section on authorship is only two pages, though. He basically says that not to many people today take the community of redactors hypothesis (pertaining to authorship of Revelation) seriously and therefore doesn't treat it.