Gospel of John

• 1. Introduction

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  The Gospel of John ends its account of the risen Jesus with a doubter on his knees. Thomas says three words in English: "My Lord and my God." That exact title, dominus et deus in Latin, was also claimed by the Roman Emperor Domitian, and scholars read the overlap as a clue to when the book was written. The Gospel of John is the fourth of the canonical gospels in the New Testament, and it sounds unlike the three before it. Jesus speaks in long discourses instead of short sayings. He tells no parables in the usual sense. He openly says who he is. The book does not name its own author. It points instead to an unnamed "disciple whom Jesus loved." Who was that person? Did the gospel's writer know the other three gospels? Where did its soaring language about the Word come from? And how much of it can a historian trust? Scholars have argued over each question for generations, and their answers have shifted sharply in the last few decades.

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• 2. The Disciple Nobody Names

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  Around the year 130, a writer named Irenaeus became the first to attribute the gospel to John the Apostle. Many modern scholars still affirm that attribution, but most reject it, because the text itself is anonymous. The clearest hints sit in chapter 21. Verse 24 declares: "This is the disciple who is testifying to these things and has written them, and we know that his testimony is true." Most scholars read this as a claim that the beloved disciple wrote the book. Others think the author is someone recording that disciple's testimony. Nobody agrees on who the beloved disciple was. Most treat him as a real person, though a growing number now suggest a literary creation. Tom Thatcher offers a middle path in the Oxford Handbook of Johannine Studies. He argues that the final author was a companion of the beloved disciple, who either took dictation or expanded his work. René Kieffer raises the possibility of a first edition and a second. The scholarly consensus dates the writing to between AD 90 and 100, most likely in Ephesus. The prologue also slips into first-person language, saying "we have seen his glory," which places the narrator among the witnesses. A related puzzle is whether chapter 21 belonged to the original at all.

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• 3. A Community That May Never Have Existed

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  For most of the 20th century, scholars pictured a specific group of believers standing behind this gospel. They called it the Johannine community. In this telling, late first-century Christians were expelled from the Jewish community for believing Jesus was the promised messiah, and the gospel recorded that break. The community was seen as a sect, outside the mainstream of early Christianity, and it eventually fell apart. In the 21st century, that picture has come under steady challenge. The gospel's social, religious and historical setting is now openly debated. A second shift has accompanied it. Earlier critics sliced the text into layers, edited by many hands. Today the leading tendency is to read it as a coherent whole by one author, with the view of a communal, multi-edition product in retreat. Even the old search for lost source documents, such as a "signs source" or a "sayings source," has lost ground. Most scholars now doubt that a single source for the miracles ever existed.

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• 4. Seven Signs and Seven Sayings

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  John is built like a piece of architecture. Verses 1 through 18 of chapter 1 form a prologue. Then comes the Book of Signs, running from 1:19 to 12:50, which covers the public ministry. The second half, from 13:1 to 20:31, is called the Book of Glory or Book of Exaltation. It opens on Jesus's final night with his disciples and carries through the passion and resurrection. Chapter 21 serves as an epilogue. Two sevens organize the whole. The first is a set of seven signs, which climax in the raising of Lazarus and foreshadow the resurrection of Jesus. The second is a set of seven "I am" declarations. They echo the name God gives himself to Moses in Exodus, "I Am that I Am." The book's stated purpose appears near the end: "that you may continue to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name." The word "continue" is itself disputed in translation. Some scholars believe chapters 15 through 17 were added later, though Attridge notes that proposing stages of composition does not require a change of author.

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• 5. A Different Jesus

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  Mark's Jesus urges his disciples to keep his divinity quiet. In John, he talks about it constantly. The Synoptic Gospels center on the Kingdom of God, a phrase John mentions only twice. John's theme is Jesus as the source of eternal life. The scenes differ as well. John leaves out the Sermon on the Mount, the Transfiguration, the exorcisms and the calling of the Twelve. He adds water turned into wine at Cana, a conversation with a Samaritan woman at a well, the washing of the disciples' feet, and several visits to Jerusalem. The Last Supper has no institution of the Eucharist. Foot washing takes its place. The ministry runs about three years, counted by three Passovers. The cleansing of the Temple comes at the start of the ministry rather than near the end. John also gives Jesus's arrest a different trigger. In the Synoptics it follows the Temple incident. In John, it follows the raising of Lazarus. Even the vocabulary shifts. What the Synoptics call miracles, John calls signs, because they reveal who Jesus is. Scholars debate whether his stories of the Good Shepherd and the True Vine are parables or allegories, since each element stands for a particular person or thing. Jesus's mother Mary appears in three passages, yet she is never named.

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• 6. The Word Before the World

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  The gospel opens by calling Jesus the Logos, the Word. In Greek philosophy, logos meant the principle of cosmic reason. It resembled the Hebrew idea of Wisdom, God's companion and helper in creation. Philo, a Hellenistic Jewish philosopher, merged the two. He described the Logos as God's agent in making the material world, and even called it "the second god." Stephen Harris argues that the author adapted Philo's picture and applied it to Jesus as the incarnation of the Logos. The Greek article ho before theos helps the author distinguish God from the Word. Another route runs through the Targums, later Aramaic translations of Jewish scripture that preserve early tradition. A third reading, from Bultmann, traces the theme to Gnostic origins. That reading has fallen away, in part because the Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran confirmed the Jewish character of these concepts. The result is the clearest identification of Jesus with God in the New Testament. Jesus is sometimes subordinate to the Father, yet the two are also somehow one. James Dunn reads this as continuity between Father and Son, while Larry Hurtado notes that the developed doctrine of the Trinity is not explicit but a triadic understanding of God is present. Yet the book insists on a body. Jesus tells Thomas: "Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe."

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• 7. Lifted Up

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  The Greek verb hypsōthēnai means "lifted up," and John uses it with a deliberate double meaning. At the crucifixion Jesus is physically raised from the earth. At the same moment, he is exalted and glorified. The Synoptic Gospels give three passion predictions. John replaces them with three statements about being lifted up. The cross here does not look like a vicarious sacrifice. It is Jesus's glorification and return to the Father. In chapter 3, Jesus compares being lifted up to the bronze serpent in the wilderness, linking belief in the crucified Christ to eternal life. Scholars read this as stressing life-giving rather than punitive aspects of his death. That personal focus runs through the whole book. Sayings are phrased in the singular, and believers "abide" in Jesus as he abides in them. Compared with the Synoptics and the communal emphasis of Paul, John is markedly individualistic. This produces what scholars call a realized eschatology for the individual believer. It is meant to complement, not replace, the traditional expectation of a future end.

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• 8. Rivals and Echoes

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  In John, the figure known elsewhere as John the Baptist is never given that title. His ministry overlaps with Jesus's, and his baptism of Jesus is not explicitly mentioned. Yet he quotes the descent of the Spirit as a dove. The evangelist subordinates him to Jesus, perhaps answering followers of the Baptist who saw Jesus as an offshoot of their movement. The Jesus Seminar rated John's account of Jesus baptizing in Judea as black, meaning it contains no historically accurate information. The Pharisees also look different here. They are sharply divided and often debate, and Nicodemus is at least partly sympathetic to Jesus. This is thought to be a more accurate historical picture of a group that made debate a tenet of its belief. Then there are the epistles. The three Johannine letters resemble the gospel in theology and style, and most scholars think they were modeled on it. The first one answers a split in which some who had left the community hesitated to identify Jesus with Christ and denied the saving importance of his death. The Book of Revelation is traditionally linked to this group, but it differs in style and even in theology.

  Since the 19th century, scholars have almost unanimously held that the Johannine discourses are less likely to be historical than the Synoptic parables. They were likely written for theological purposes. Yet John is not without historical value. Possible points include early origins for some material, topographical references to Jerusalem and Judea, and a crucifixion that falls before the Feast of Unleavened Bread. The John, Jesus, and History Seminar helped overturn the former consensus that the gospel had no historical value. Paul N. Anderson goes further, proposing an independent "bi-optic" tradition, developed alongside the Synoptics through oral stages. He also argues the relationship between Mark and John is one of mutual engagement rather than copying. Most scholars still hold that John knew and used the Synoptics, and they compare his free handling of Mark to ancient compositional practice. By the early second century the gospel was already circulating, and Papias of Hierapolis cited the First Epistle of John around the year 110. Ignatius of Antioch may have known it too. Later it was staged in Passion Plays and filmed twice, in 2003 with Christopher Plummer narrating and in 2014 with Brian Cox. Johann Sebastian Bach's St John Passion remains the best-known musical setting, though some of its verses come from Matthew.

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