218 Luca Marulli hesitate refusing hospitality to the Elder himself! — and showing Gaius his (the Elder’s) re-established honorable status, the Elder engages in a written depiction of Diotrephes whose purpose is to convince Gaius of the ridiculous and evil pretensions of Diotrephes, regardless of whether or not the Elder had the opportunity — or the power — to challenge his opponent. Ridicule and evil coexist in the oxymoronic expression lovgoi" ponhroi" fluarw'n hJma'" (“babbling evil words against us”, v. 10). The ' verb fluarevw is a NT hapax, but the cognate adjective fluvaro" appears in 1 Tim 5,13. Literally, fluarevw means “to spout nonsense”, but also to produce “childish babbling”, and fluvaro" refers to a “babbler who talks at random” (65). Interestingly enough, Plutarch and Philo use this verb in the context of unreliable speech: “…if Phocion continues to talk nonsense, are you going to believe him?” (Plutarch, Phoc. 27,9), and “…these people spread endless nonsense” (Philo, Contempl. Life 19) (66). If Diotrephes is depicted as babbling, his utterances do not seem so innocuous to the Elder: the lovgoi" ponhroi'" remind Gaius of the gravity of the situation (cf. 1 John 3,12; 2 John 11). To complicate the matter, and make Diotrephes appear the more foolish and evil, the Elder adds: “and not content with that, he doesn’t receive the brethren, and also hinders those who want [to welcome them] and puts them out of the congregation” (v. 10). The triple — and perhaps excessive — recurrence of the conjunction kaiv (polysyndeton) surely gives more impetus to the single phrase containing a triple accusation to be read all in one go (67), and the repetition of the verb ejpidevcomai (68) in this section ties Diotrephes’ refusal to receive the (65) “Uttering nonsense”: Xenophon, Hell. 3,1,18.6.12; Philo, Dreams 2,291; Josephus, Life 150; 4 Macc 5,10; Diogenes Laertius 7,173; P. Berlin 13270,5; “childish babbling”: P. Cair. Zen 59300,7; PSI 434,7,9; P. Oxy 2813 (C. SPICQ, Theological Lexicon of the New Testament [Peabody, MA 1982] 466). (66) SPICQ, Lexicon, 466. (67) Cf. WATSON, “Rhetorical Analysis”, 496, who points to Quintilian, Inst.. 8,4,26-27 and Rhet. Her. 4,40,52-53. (68) Since the household was the center and model of the first Christian congregations, its structure affected the organization of the churches. It is true that 1 Tim 3,2-5; Titus 1,6-8; and Hermas, Sim IX,27,2 seem to indicate that the householder was likely to be the leader of the congregation as well. However it is also possible that Diotrephes had authority as a householder and not necessarily as spiritual leader. Since the local Christians where meeting at his house, he could extend or deny hospitality to some of them (GEHRING, House Church, 284; MALHERBE, “Inhospitality”, 228; RENSBERGER, The Epistles of John, 124-125). If