quicko: one john

One John, Two John, Red John, Blue John.

You think I'm going Dr. Suess with this, but I'm not. Far from it, I'm going biblical. It's confusing here, you see: they call the books "One John" and "Two John" instead of "First John" and "Second John."

One John, what's that? I've gone to church all my life and suddenly a new book pops in? And goodness knows there were already plenty of Johns in the Bible. One John, is that John John, as in the Gospel of John, between Luke and Acts? It is number one in order of the Johns. Or have Australians suddenly started using "one" as an article, making it not the standard three "a, an and the" but now "a, an, the and one"? They do do odd linguistic things here, maybe this is another.

And it is, but in a different way. In a very non-ordinal sort of way. Why they do it, or don't do it, rather, is academically intriguing, but practically annoying. It's First Peter for Pete's sake!