With the translation of Rudolf Schnackenburg’s commentary on the Johanine epistles, one of the most remarkable periods in history of Johanine scholarship comes to a close. In less than thirty years, the English-speaking world has been blessed with three major commentaries on the gospel and three major commentaries on the epistles, all by the same three scholars. The mid-sixties to mid-seventies saw the publication in English of the German commentaries on the Fourth Gospel by Rudolph Schnackenburg and Rudolf Bultmann and of the commentary on the gospel by American scholar Raymond E. Brown in the Anchor Bible series. Then came the commentaries on the epistles: first Bultmann’s (ET1973), then Brown’s (1982), and now Schnackenburg’s. Because of the close (however disputed) relationship between the Gospel of John and the Johanine epistles, it is inevitable that these great commentators on the gospel would eventually turn their attention to the epistles. 1 John contains some of the most memorable and oft-quoted verses in the entire Bible: “God is love and those who abide in love abide in God, and God in them….Those who say, ‘I love God,’ and hate their brothers and sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen” (4:17,20). Yet despite the attractive simplicity of 1 John’s message, virtually every sentence in the epistle, as Brown notes, can be interpreted in three ways. Hence the need, if for no other reason, for multiple commentaries. Rudolf Schnackenburg’s Johanine Epistles first appeared in German in 1953. Since then it has gone through several editions, with two extensive revisions incorporating much recent research, particularly as a result of the discovers of the biblical and Jewish sectarian documents at Qumran and of the gnostic texts at Nag Hammadi. As in Schnackenburg’s commentary on the Gospel of John, one of the salient features of his commentary on the epistles is its extensive excursuses on such subjects as fellowship with God, heretical gnosis, the love of brothers and sisters, the Antichrist, love as the nature of God, and on being children of God and being born of God. The translation has been masterfully accomplished by Reginald and Ilse Fuller.