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Gospel of John

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Revelation

The Gospel of John is a gospel document in the canon of the New Testament. Like the three synoptic gospels, it contains an account of some of the actions and sayings of Jesus, but differs from them in ethos and theological emphases.

Contents

Major events covered

Some of the major events covered by the Gospel of John, in order:

Authorship

The text itself states only that the Gospel was written by a follower of Jesus referred to as the Beloved Disciple, traditionally identified with John the Apostle, believed to have lived at the end of his life at Ephesus. The dating is important since John is agreed to be the last of the canonical Gospels to have been written down and thus marks the end-date of their composition.

Scholarly research starting in the 19th century has questioned the apostle John's authorship, arguing that the work was written decades after the events it describes. The differences in the composition of the Greek within the Gospel, such as breaks and inconsistencies in sequence, repetitions in the discourse, as well as passages that clearly do not belong to their context, suggest redaction.

Like the other gospels, John was probably based on previous texts now lost. Raymond E. Brown, a scholar of the Johannine community, identifies three layers of text in the Fourth Gospel (a situation that is paralleled by the synoptic gospels): 1) an initial version Brown considers based on personal experience of Jesus; 2) a structured literary creation by the evangelist which draws upon additional sources; and 3) the edited version that readers know today (Brown 1979).

There are other theories of authorship. One of the most dramatic is the claim by Ramon K. Jusino that John was written by Mary Magdalene. ["Mary Magdalene, author of the Fourth Gospel?'], 1998, available on-line.

The Austrian philosopher, Goethean scholar and founder of anthroposophy Rudolph Steiner argues that John, the author of the fourth gospel, and the resurrected Lazarus are one and the same person. See Rudolph Steiner's book [The Gospel of John]. Arguing for authorship by Lazarus from a more orthodox perspective was the late Mennonite scholar Vernard Eller, in ["The Beloved Disciple"], available online.

Date

Though some conservative scholars date the gospel somewhere between 65 and 85, other critical scholars place it later, between 90 and 120.

Traditional views of the date

Conservative scholars consider internal evidences, such as the lack of the mention of the destruction of the temple and a number of passages that they consider characteristic of an eye-witness (John 13:23ff, 18:10, 18:15, 19:26-27, 19:34, 20:8, 20:24-29), sufficient evidence that the gospel was composed before 100 and perhaps as early as 50-70. Barrett suggests an earliest date of 90, based on familiarity with Mark’s gospel, and the late date of a synagogue expulsion of Christians (which is a theme in John) Barrett, C. K. The Gospel According to St. John., p.108-109. Morris suggests 70, given Qumran parallels and John’s turn of phrases, such as "his disciples" vs. "the disciples" Morris, L. The Gospel According to John p.59. John A.T. Robinson proposes an initial edition by 50-55 and then a final edition by 65 due to narrative similarities with Paul Robinson, J. A. T. Redating the Gospels, pp. 284, 307.

Critical views of the date

Most critical scholars are of the opinion that John was composed in stages (probably two or three), beginning at an unknown time (50-70?) and culminating in a final text around 95-100. This date is assumed in large part because John 21, the so-called "appendix" to John, is largely concerned with explaining the death of the "beloved disciple," probably the leader of the Johannine community that produced the text. If this leader had been a follower of Jesus, or a disciple of one of Jesus' followers, then a death around 90-100 is reasonable.

P52: earliest manuscript

One of the earliest known manuscripts of the New Testament is a fragment from John. A scrap of papyrus discovered in Egypt in 1920, now at the John Rylands Library, Manchester, accession number P52 (see link below), bears parts of [John 18:31-33] on one side and [John 18:37-38] on the other. If it has been correctly dated to the first half of the second century (by C. F. Roberts), it ranks as the earliest known fragment of the New Testament in any language. Other scholars are skeptical of such an early date. Either way, it would merely prove the existence of the passages it contains, and only hint at the possibility that the remainder of John was also present as it stands today.

Sources

A hypothesis elaborated by the noted German theologian and biblical scholar Rudolf Bultmann in Das Evangelium des Johannes, 1941 (translated as The Gospel of John: A Commentary, 1971), suggested that the author of John depended in part on an oral miracles tradition or a manuscript of Christ's miracles that was independent of the synoptic gospels, whose authors did not use it. This has been labelled a "Signs Gospel" and alleged to have been circulating before 70; evidently it is lost. Even readers who doubt that such a document can be precisely identified have noticed the remnants of a numbering associated with some of the miracles that appear in the canonical Gospel of John. Textual critics have noted that, of the miracles that are mentioned only by John, all of them occur in the presence of [John 12:37]; that these signs are unusually dramatic; and that these "signs" (semeia is uniquely John's expression) are accomplished in order to call forth faith. These miracles are different, not only from the rest of the "signs" in John, but also from all of the miracles in the synoptic gospels, which, according to this interpretation, occur as a result of faith.

These characteristics may be independently assessed by a reader who returns to the text. One conclusion is that John was reinterpreting an early Hellenistic tradition of Jesus as a wonder-worker, a "magician" that would fit within the Hellenistic world-view. These ideas were so hotly denied that heresy proceedings were instituted against Bultmann and his writings. (See more detailed discussions linked below.)

Further arguments that Jesus was also known as a "Divine Man, Wonder-worker (One who is favored by the Gods), or even a Sorcerer" in the late 3rd and 4th centuries have also been given as an explanation of artistic representations of Jesus with a magic wand. Since these representations exist only in the Western part of the Roman Empire, it has been suggested that this has a relation with Arianism. Peter is the only apostle portrayed in early Christian art who also carries a wand. These wands or staffs are thought to be symbols of power. This art, since its discovery, has not been kept secret.

The mysterious Egerton Gospel appears to represent a parallel but independent tradition to the Gospel of John, and may provide part of an explanation of its origin.

Handling of source material

It is notable that the Gospel's opening prologue in [John 1:1-18] consciously echoes the opening motif of Genesis (Hebrew Bible)., "In the beginning". Beyond this, there has been much debate over the centuries on the theological background of the prologue: is it a formula of Hellenistic rhetoric, traditional Jewish wisdom, or some type of Qumran-like Dead Sea scrolls metaphysic?

By the beginning of the 21st century, the pendulum of scholarly opinion has swung back to a traditional Jewish background. While [Genesis 1] focuses on God's creation, [John 1] focuses on the Word (or Logos in the Greek) and the significance of the Word coming into the already created world.

The Johannine gospel identifies the Logos with Jesus. Compare this with the Second Adam as described by Paul in [1 Corinthians 15:45] where he states that the First Adam (of Genesis) was a body who became "a living being", while the Second Adam (Jesus) is "a lifegiving spirit." Perhaps with Paul's previously distributed epistle in mind, John aims not only to show Jesus as the Word of God Incarnate, as many believe, but also to confound "the Jews" by superseding the incipit of their earliest historical book.

Structure

After the prologue (1:1-5), the narrative of this gospel begins with verse 6, and consists of two parts. The first part, called "The Book of Signs" (1:6-ch. 12) contains the story of Jesus' public ministry from the time of his baptismal initiation by John the Baptist to its close. In this first part, John chooses seven of Jesus' miracles, always calling them "signs." The second part, called "the Book of Glory" (ch. 13-21) presents Jesus in the retirement of private life and in his dialog with his immediate followers (13-17), and gives an account of his sufferings and crucifixion and of his appearances to the disciples after his resurrection (18-20). Chapter [21] the "appendix" recounting the death of the "beloved disciple", follows.

The Gospel of John is easily distinguished from the three Synoptic Gospels, which share a more considerable amount of text and describe much more of Jesus' life. By contrast, the specific peculiarities of John are notable, especially in their effect on modern Christianity.

John gives far more focus in his work to the mystical relation of the Son to the Father. As a Gospel writer, many believe he essentially developed the concept of the Trinity while the Synoptic Gospels had focused less directly on Jesus as the Son of God. John includes far more direct claims of Jesus being the only Son of God in favour of Jesus as the Son of Man. The gospel also focuses on the relation of the Redeemer to believers, the announcement of the Holy Spirit as the Comforter (Greek Paraclete), and the prominence of love as an element in the Christian character.

Popular Passages in the Gospel

[3:16] is one of the most widely known passages in the New Testament: For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.  According to the professional men's and Bible distribution society Gideons International, John 3:16 has been translated into more than 1,100 languages.
Another popular passage from John is [John 4:13-14]. Jesus said to her, 'Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.' Jesus had said this to a Samaritan woman whom he met at a well, and he told her about the living water that he offered. This saying was based partially on [Isaiah 55:1-2].

Differences from the Synoptic Gospels

John is significantly different from the Synoptic Gospels in many ways. Some of the differences are:

Characteristics of the Gospel of John

The Greek of this gospel is elegant, and its theology subtle and sophisticated, with many parallels in Hellenistic thought.

Some of the passages in this book are alleged to be anti-Semitic, mainly due to the emphasis placed on the responsibility of the Jews (especially the Jewish leaders in Judea) for the Crucifixion. The Gospel uses the term "the Jews" to categorize some of Jesus' detractors. Most likely the author was Jewish himself, speaking to a largely Jewish community, and therefore one must be careful applying a 21st century language lens on a 1st century expression. Nonetheless, these passages were appropriated and used in negative ways by some Christian groups in certain periods of history to persecute Jewish people, being quoted to justify odium theologicum. Other critics read this shift of emphasis to the Jewish public enemies of the Roman imperium and away from the Roman authorities, who actually carried out the execution, as a technique of rendering a developing Christianity more palatable in official circles. It is because of this that some politically-correct English translations (such as the controversial Today's New International Version) remove the term "Jews" and replace them with non-offensive terms so as to remove alleged anti-Semitism. Critics of these translations state that when John uses "Jews," he is not referring to all Jews (as John, Jesus and his disciples were all Jews) but to the Jewish leaders (the Sanhedrin) in Judea who openly opposed Jesus. These same critics argued that those people who believe that the Gospel of John is "anti-Semitic" failed to understand how the term "Jews" is actually used.

Unlike the Synoptic Gospels, elements of Gnosticism have been recognized by some readers in the Gospel of John though it is not generally regarded as a "Gnostic gospel". In order to find passages that refute Gnosticism—by stating that Christ is approachable even as Spirit—readers must turn instead to the First Epistle of John, in passages such as 1 Jn [2:1-2]; [3:8], [3:16] and [4:2-3]. The earliest copies of the Gospel of John are also from sources that include overtly Gnostic writings, implying that John was read by Gnostic groups. One school of interpretation distinguishes between "Johannine Christianity" and "Pauline Christianity". The gnosis in Gnosticism is secret information that is available only to initiates. In the Gnostic view, salvation comes through "knowledge" that Jesus is the Christ -- those who understand his true nature are saved, those who don't "stand condemned already."

Though John is not a "secret" gospel—as other surviving apocryphal ("secret") gospels and fragments claim to be—the narrative is interrupted at an important turn of events just before the Crucifixion, for nearly five chapters (John [13], [18]) of private discourse and teachings that Jesus shares only with the disciples, the "farewell discourses", which are without parallel in the synoptic gospels, in their present version (but compare the Secret Gospel of Mark).

Other characteristics unique to John

See also

References

Further reading

  • Raymond E. Brown, The Gospel According to John Anchor Bible, 1966, 1970
  • Raymond E. Brown, The Community of the Beloved Disciple Paulist Press, 1979
  • Robin M. Jensen, The Two Faces of Jesus, Bible Review Oct 2002, p42
  • J.H. Bernard & A.H. McNeile, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary On The Gospel According To St. John. Edinburgh, T. & T. Clark, 1953.

External links

Wikibooks has a manual, textbook or guide to this subject:
Online translations of the Gospel of John: Related articles:

Books of the Bible
Preceded by:
Gospel of Luke
Gospel of John Followed by:
Acts

 

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