What astounds me is that conservative readers feel they have to defend apostolic authorship. What do you really loose if the author is not the apostle John but another person? The book nowhere states that it is written by the apostle so all you are defending is a tradition that grew up long after the book was authored. And this is not a modern theory. A number of early church fathers doubted that the book was written by John the brother of James. So why is it suddently a "little dumb liberal idea"?