St. John Artist Unknown
The Gospel of John
"As with the synoptics, the real name of the author of John is unknown. Certain similarities between the gospel, letters and Apocalypse that now bear that name led the early Christians to imagine that they had been the work of a single author; and since the redactor of Apocalypse had called himself Ioannes, that name was attached to the unsigned works also. In fact, while the author of Apocalypse had been a Jew whose Greek (Koine) left a lot to be desired, the author of John was a native Greek whose handling of that language was skilled and erudite."
"His Jesus speaks, travels and acts in ways which both differ from the Jesus of the other three Gospels and conflicts directly with their framework."
"...The various styles of the New Testament texts ascribed to John - the Gospel, the Letters, and the Book of Revelations - are each so different in their style that it is extremely unlikely that they had been written by one person. Modern theory inclines to the opinion that these writings of 'John' are the work of a group of scholars in Asia Minor who followed an Apostle John, perhaps John the son of Zebedee, Jesus' cousin. One tradition tells that John wrote his Gospel in Ephesus in Asia Minor; at Ephesus there is a 'Tomb of John' that has been revered since the second century as the tomb of John the Apostle, and this is a very early date for such a shrine, reaching back almost into the generations of the successors of the Apostles."
"Being a great center of pagan learning, Ephesus has been the locale for many early Christian myths. The assertion has been made that it was the last domicile of the Virgin Mary..."
"Ephesus "was a focus of the universal 'secret' doctrines; the weird laboratory whence, fashioned in elegant Grecian phraseology, sprang the quintessence of Buddhistic, Zoroastrian, and Chaldean philosophy. Artemis, the gigantic concrete symbol of theosophico-pantheistic abstractions, the great mother Multimamma, androgyne and patroness of the 'Ephesian writings', was conquered by Paul; but although the zealous converts of the apostles pretended to burn all their books on 'curious arts', enough of these remained for them to study when their first zeal had cooled off."
"After the calamities of Jerusalem in AD 70 and the growing hostility of the Jews to the Christians, early church tradition tells that many of its founders moved to Asia Minor - one of Antioch's first bishops is said to have heard 'John' preach when he had been a boy. But then, John's Gospel also bears strong traces of Egyptian Alexandria; it holds many of the abstractions and expressions invented and used by the religious philosophers of that most learned city....Recent linguistic analysis of all four Gospels, however, has tied them not to these grand cities of the Empire but to the verbal culture of Palestine itself. The construction of their Greek texts, the shading and coloring of the writing strongly suggest that much of them has been translated from Palestinian Aramaic, Jesus's own language."
"The Fourth Gospel was opposed as heretical in the early church, and it knows none of the stories associated with John, son of Zebedee. In the judgment of many scholars, it was produced by a 'school' of disciples, probably in Syria."
"...It has been thought for years that John's gospel was written after the other three based on a conjecture by Irenaeus which is quoted in Eusebius' church history. If, then, one dates Luke to c.85...John must be c.95 but not much later. If one disregards Irenaeus' speculations, there is no reason to suppose that it was not John which was written earlier."
 (2) The Beloved Disciple
"A second edition of the Gospel of John is indicated most clearly by the appended John 21, which underlines not only Synoptic but Petrine ascendancy. Many other additions, such as 1:1-18; 6:51b-58; 15-17 and the Beloved Disciple passages, may also have been added at this late stage."
"What we have here, then, is a Gospel which knows exact details of Jewish life and piety before 70 but which looks back from outside on the Jews as a separate, hostile group (although salvation is 'of them' at 4:22, in the sense of their truly offered worship to God). Its Greek style, language and allusions are consistent with a Greek-speaking Jew; it also assumes an audience outside Judaea. These facts are consistent (but not exclusively so) with a beloved disciple who has left Judaea for the Gentiles, even with one of the Johns (writing, possibly, at Ephesus or in Asia Minor): they reinforce the belief of the author of the postscript, the apparent belief of the author of the epilogue (chapter 21), and the odd, oblique references to the disciple in the Gospel itself."
John claimed "that he wrote some of his gospel from a document written by the Beloved Disciple..."
"That the gospel's author incorporated accounts provided by close eyewitnesses to the events described is further indicated by detailed and accurate references to geographical features of Jerusalem and its environs before the city and its Temple were destroyed in 70 C.E., after Roman suppression of the Jewish revolt which had broken out four years earlier."
"'In Jerusalem, by the Sheep [Gate]': Jesus has now come into the city's center, perhaps to one of the very gates of the temple precinct."
In Jerusalem "inside the Sheep Gate, or Lions Gate, are two pools, having a total of five porticoes. Archaeologists have unearthed massive and extensive Roman ruins, numerous columns from an original reservoirs that had porticoes on each side, including the center area that divided the twin pools. The Eleventh column of the Copper Scroll , found in Qumran Cave 3, mentions a pool in Jerusalem. The text is uncertain; but the name of the pool seems to be Beth Eshdathayin, the dual ending for the well-known 'Bethesda'.
"The present text here suggests that the source, but not the completed John, was written before the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 70 C.E." This hypothetical source was a rudimentary text known as the Signs Gospel (below).
(3) A Different Portrait of Jesus
Reconstruction of the Signs Gospel John's way of accounting for the paucity of his miracle stories is to declare that he has written only a selection of a much larger number available to him:
The Gospel of John, incorporating the hypothetical Signs Gospel, probably appeared about 90 C.E. and the third edition (insertions and additions) 100-150 C.E..
"The Signs Gospel is reconstructed chiefly by looking for points in John where obvious literary seams appear; such seams often indicate inconsistencies and even contradictions in the text of the completed gospel. These rough spots are infrequence in the synoptic gospels, even where Matthew or Luke reproduces material from Mark or Q. But they are common in John and seem to suggest that when using the hypothetical 'source', the author of John quoted it practically verbatim; the author simply allowed the rough connections and inconsistencies to stand." "The model for reshaping these miracle stories (about Jesus) as messianic proofs was the series of 'signs' that Moses had worked in Exodus. Over the centuries it had been expected that the future Messiah would be the Prophet that Moses had promised, who would be, like himself, the representative of Israel's God."
"Elijah also had performed miracles, and his reappearance was another way of imagining the Messiah. So a Signs Gospel would have been, for a time at least, a most effective way of presenting the Christian message to fellow Jews, both as announcement and as claim."
"Several scholars have noted the possibility that collections of miracle stories antedated the creation of the New Testament gospels. Such collections did not survive as separate written texts, to be sure, yet certain features of both the Gospel of Mark and the Gospel of John hint that such collections may have once existed."
 Stories which also appear in Mark
Miracles from proposed Gospel of Miracles in blue.
1. In John, Andrew and Simon are recruited by Jesus in Bethany on the other side of the Jordan. In Mark (1:16-18) the setting is Galilee and no mention is made that the two are John the Baptist's disciples
"The first edition of the Gospel of John was composed, very early in the second century C.E. and under the pressure of Synoptic ascendance, as a combination of the Johannine Signs Gospel and the Synoptic traditions about the passion and resurrection. It is dependent, but very creatively so, on the Cross Gospel and the Synoptic Gospels for its passion and resurrection account. The earliest extant fragment of John is dated to about 125 C.E. [the Rylands fragment - John 18:31-4 - found in Egypt]."
The Fourth Gospel was written after the expulsion of Jewish Christians from synagogue life in the late 80s. "...Its blatant negativity toward orthodox Jews (John 8:44) and its descriptions of being put out of the synagogues reflect that final fracture in the relationship between Jews and Jewish Christians (John 9:22, 12:42)."
A Loftier Vision
"Such speeches as Jesus makes in Matthew, Mark, and Luke are composed of aphorisms and parables strung together like beads on a string. In John, these speeches form coherent lectures on a specific theme, such as 'light'. Jesus as the way, the truth, the life, and the vine and the canes. The parables, which are so characteristic of Jesus in the synoptic tradition, do not appear in John at all.
"In the synoptic gospels Jesus' proclamation of God's kingdom lies at the heart of his teaching. but in John the word 'kingdom' is found in only two passages, 3:3, 5 and 18:36, 38. The word 'power' (dunamis) is used ten times in Mark, thirteen in Matthew, fifteen in Luke, but never in John. 'Tax collector' occurs twenty one times in all the synoptic gospels, but not at all in John."
"...The birth narrative of Jesus is missing, we are told in the prologue only that 'in the beginning' Jesus coexisted with God and that he is "full of grace and truth." John feels that to inform us of the particularly human trait of birth, even if virginal and thus not actuated by lust, would not be fitting of a God who is the Word. Human characteristics that Mark informs us of, such as the need for cleansing through baptism (1:9) or the Temptation (1:13), are conspicuously absent from John. To John's author, Jesus has no need for cleansing, he is already without sin. Likewise it would be foolish to narrate the temptation in the wilderness, for Satan is obviously no match against God and John's intended reader would be confused over such an idea."
"On the fourth Gospel it is enough to say that it has little material in common with the others and also that there is a different background to the action it describes. When the writer has spoken of the beginnings of Jesus' preaching in Judaea, he passes rapidly over what his predecessors have said about the apostolate in Galilee, and then dwells at length on the journeys to Jerusalem and in the regions of the south. Moreover in the whole work there is a loftiness of thought very different from the 'aphoristic' form of the other Gospels; and whereas in them the character of Jesus as the Messiah is only adumbrated, in John it is explicitly asserted and defended in a profound piece of thinking."
"The words attributed to Jesus in the Fourth Gospel are the creation of the evangelist for the most part, and reflect the developed language of John's Christian community." I Am Sayings
"In antiquity claims about the virtues and the powers of a god or goddess were often presented in the form of self-predications, or 'I am' statements, which are lists of the deity's might deeds (in Greek, 'aretalogies')."
"In John's gospel Jesus frequently speaks of himself in the first person using the emphatic phrase I AM (Greek: ego eimi). This expression was widely used in the Greco-Roman world, and would have been recognized by John's readers as an established formula in speech attributed to one of the gods." "The better know I AM sayings in John's gospel:
- Graham N. Stanton, The Gospels and Jesus, The Oxford Bible Series (1989), paperback, p. 106
"The Greek version of this phrase, recorded in the Septuagint or LXX reads: 'I am the one who is', rather than 'I am who I am'. In John 8:24, 28, the fourth evangelist appears to employ the Exodus formula, which the Scholars Version translates, 'I am (what I say I am)'...I AM may be understood to predicate the existence of God (I AM means 'I exist'), or it may be simply the name of God (my name is I AM). "
"No wonder, then, that when Jesus says 'Before Abraham was, I am', this claim was considered to be blasphemous, an offense worth of death by stoning (8:58-59)." I AM was also the name of the goddess in the Gnostic The Thunder, Perfect Mind.
"Jesus taught that the last will be first and the first will be last. He admonished his followers to be servants of everyone. He urged humility as the cardinal virtue by both word and example. Given these terms, it is difficult to imagine Jesus making claims for himself - I am the son of God, I am the expected One, the Anointed - unless, of course, he thought that nothing he said applied to himself."
(4) A Deeper Insight
"In Galilee, the first sign is the miracle of wine and water; the second is one of life; the third is bread; and the last (in the postscript) a miracle of the Christian symbol, the fish. No narrative in Hebrew scripture, let alone in the pagan Greek world, had been so densely woven around a web of coherent themes. Light and Darkness, Wine and Water, Truth, Bread, Eternal Life return again and again in what is said and one. Either we see or (like 'sons of darkness') we do not: these themes have special meaning for the Gospel's individual hearers because they live in a new Christian context. With hindsight, they have deeper insight: it is this gap which the author so strikingly exploits to bring home Truth."
"John's attitude to the sacraments is, at best, ambivalent. And his primary emphasis is on judgment and eternal life as present realities."
"In John's Gospel one of the distinctive themes is light. Jesus is 'the light of the world', who offers light to mankind, although most reject him, preferring darkness [John 8:12; 3:19-21). The Dead Sea Scrolls speak of 'the children of righteousness' who 'are ruled by the Prince of Light and walk in the ways of light.' The 'children of deceit', on the other hand, 'walk in the ways of darkness', and they are contrasted with those who 'do the truth', another term applied to Jesus' followers in John's Gospel (3:21)." The dualism between light and darkness can be traced back to Zoroastrian influences on Judaism during the Babylonian Exile.
"Along with the specific title 'Sons of Light', the general dualism of 'light and darkness' appears both in several of the scrolls and in some of the News Testament books, especially the 'Johannine' literature (i.e., the Gospel and Epistle of John). (This imagery is also found extensively in the biblical Book of Isaiah, and was widely employed in antiquity.)"
"The dualistic, apocalyptic, and eschatological framework marks John as the most Jewish of the four Gospels. In John's Gospel the spirit of truth is called the Paraclete or Advocate. He is the Holy Spirit, but as at Qumran he is not precisely identical with God's own spirit, which explains why he does not speak on his own authority (John 16:13). The emphasis on light and darkness, unity, community, and love is reiterated and expanded. The theme of religious knowing in an eschatological sense is comparable to statements in the epistles of Paul and the Gospel of Matthew."
"John's Jesus relieves the tension that filled the early Christians; the long overdue wait and the tardiness of the apocalypse which never came has been explained at last. By the beginning of the second century, when it was realized that Jesus was not coming as promised, John comforts his fellow Christians and allows them the luxury to carry on in life as normal. John's Jesus is preparing their proper place and it is on his timetable, not theirs, and in due course he will let them know when it is ready."
"Everything happens in John because it must, and every event is found to fulfill a prophecy. It is only a question of discerning by the Spirit the relevant Old Testament text."
"One ingenious researcher, Dr. Aileen Guilding, has shown in The Fourth Gospel and Jewish Worship that the gospel's whole construction is based on the Jewish cycle of feasts, and the practice of completing the reading of the Law, or Torah, in a three-year cycle."
(5) The Logos
The Wisdom of God
"...Wisdom is associated closely with God in creation and almost seems to be an independent entity.....This theme is taken further in several later Jewish writings which are related to Proverbs. In Wisdom of Solomon 7:22, for example, Wisdom is spoken of as 'the architect of all things'. In I Enoch 42 Wisdom is sent forth by God to find a dwelling place among the children of men. Many of the phrases of John's Prologue are strikingly similar to passages in these writings."
The Greek Philosophy of Divine Rational Power
"In Stoicism, as it developed after the 4th century BC, the Logos is conceived as a rational divine power that orders and directs the universe; it is identified with God, nature, and fate. The Logos is 'present everywhere' and seems to be understood as both a divine mind and at least a semiphysical force, acting through space and time. "
As a Mediator for God
"The writer fell into a deep and heavy trance, in which there appeared to him a being who introduced himself as Poimandres (Shepherd of Men), 'the Mind of Authority'. Poimandres then shows the mystic a vision, in which he sees a great light and a great darkness, respectively reality and matter. From the light comes 'a Holy Logos',...the 'shining Son of God,' who proceeds from Mind itself..."
"Philo believed that humans interact with God by experiencing the energy of where he had been; God's shadow could come into a mortal's life even if only briefly. The Logos was a mediator for God; making it possible to realize the energy of God, and thus, by extension, the impossible ousia [singular essence] of God Himself."
"But he [Jesus] also insists, paradoxically, that his relationship with the Father is one of dependence. He refers to himself repeatedly as the one sent by the Father, and, as if to rebut any suggestion that he is a 'second god', he states, 'the Father is greater than I' (14:28)."
The Word of God
"In numerous Old Testament passages 'the word of God' refers to God's communication with men, especially through the prophets. Gods word is effective; it is full of life and power. In some passages God's word almost has an independent existence of its own."
The concept of the world coming into existence by the utterance of the mouth can be traced back to the theology of Memphis, Egypt, which influenced later Alexandrian philosphers.
"The Word is dependent on God, and is not simply to be equated with God..."
The verses are similar to a passage in the Dead Sea Scrolls (which refers to God, not Jesus as the Logos.)
"John has promulgated the Logos in a radically new way. Suddenly, man is not only capable, but deserved from the beginning of time, to accept the Logos, the Word, the Christ, as a gnosis, an available knowledge of the Elect. This gnosis tills man's evil nature and produces fertile ground so that the perfect God and the flawed Man can meet and establish a fellowship. Like other Greek philosophical constructs: beauty, wisdom, and truth, Jesus, as the Logos, becomes God."
"The idea that a man could be the Logos, the incarnation of the First Cause, originated in Persia where identical terminology was applied to Zarathustra [Zend Avesta, Mihir Yast 32:137). It meant essentially that Zarathustra (or Jesus) spoke for Ahura Mazda (or Yahweh) as his True Priest."
(6) The Word Became Flesh
"In the Son of God, the Word, was life (zoë, God's own life) from all eternity, through the incarnation that eternal, divine life has entered into human history and has become available right now to all who believe in the Son (John 1:4, 12-14). This eternal life is therefore not just some future good: 'He who believes has eternal life' (5:24) - now, in the moment of believing. Here we touch on the center of John's theology: high christology produces realized eschatology. Because the Word has become flesh, the last day has become the present moment."
"...The Gospel of John is the official response to Gnostics. It starts out Platonic and Mystical enough: 'In the Beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with Theos, and the Logos was Theos.' But then it proceeds to debunk the Gnostic, Docetic theology, saying, Jesus was a real man of flesh and blood and at the same time a spirit being."
"In a sense, the whole of John's Gospel is the story of an epiphany, the epiphany of the Word in the flesh, with Jesus' glory being ever more fully revealed until the climax of the death-resurrection, his ultimate glorification."
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