Epistles
John's Epistles are exactly what they say they are: epistles. That's just a fancy word meaning letters. So essentially, we're sorting through some of the elder's really old mail. Easy peasy lemon squeezey, right?
But hold up a second. 1 John isn't really a letter in the traditional sense. While 2 John and 3 John were sent to other Christians outside the community, 1 John is addressed to the people in the elder's community.
Does that make it a letter? Or is it more of a sermon? Or even an essay?
Either way, we think it would be pretty cool if someone were sitting around analyzing our emails two thousand years from now. (Source, 1178)