The first epistle of John was, according to tradition, written by John the disciple. The text of the epistle does not name an author, but its content suggests that it was written by an eyewitness of Jesus’s ministry (1 John 1:1), and its style closely matches the Gospel of John. By the end of his life, John was thought to have emigrated to the Christian communities of western Asia Minor (near Ephesus), so this epistle is usually assumed to be directed at local conditions in that area. It is written to a community of Christians who have evidently undergone a painful split; some people whom they thought had been part of their group had gone over to false teachers instead (1 John 2:19). Many scholars think that the false teaching in question may have been an early form of the heresy of Docetism, which taught that Jesus was a spirit without a corporeal body and only appeared to be crucified and die on the cross. By contrast, John insists on the physical nature of Jesus’s body: “By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that