Studies in the Gospels (Part Twelve)
Welcome to my 12th post on the canonical gospels. I am wrapping up my study on the Gospel of John with some concluding observations.
Elements in John that are Historical:
For much of the 19th and 20th centuries the gospel of John was considered by most scholars to be completely unhistorical. It was so different theologically from the Synoptics that scholars dismissed it as mostly a work of fiction – not based on anything Jesus really said or did except in those few cases where the content overlapped the Synoptics. In the past 50 years that has been changing. Scholars now recognize that there are important historical elements in this gospel.
New Testament scholar C.H. Dodd points out these elements in John that are most likely historical (C.H. Dodd, Historical Tradition and the Fourth Gospel, Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1963):
1. The beginnings of Jesus’ ministry as an offshoot of the ministry of John the Baptist. Only the Gospel of John records that Andrew, the brother of Simon Peter was a disciple of John the Baptist before being called by Jesus to follow him. The “beloved disciple” may have been the other disciple who also left John the Baptist to follow Jesus as recorded in John 2:35-42 (see Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2006, p.390-92).
2. Numerous geographical details provided by the author, particularly about Jerusalem. These have been recently verified through archaeological discoveries.
3. The length of Jesus’ ministry being three years, not one year like in the Synoptics. The Gospel of John records that Jesus made many visits to Jerusalem over that three-year period and each time he ran into trouble with the religious authorities there. That building tension between Jesus and the religious leaders in Jerusalem over three years culminated in his execution. It makes more sense that the tension built over three years rather than a single visit to Jerusalem being the cause of Jesus’ death (as in the Synoptics).
4. Jesus numerous visits to Jerusalem during his ministry.
5. The chronology of the last week of Jesus’ life (see the details in part ten of this series).
The consensus opinion among scholars now is that John’s Gospel represents an independent tradition based on an eyewitness account of one of Jesus’ disciples who was based in Jerusalem. This disciple was not one of the 12 apostles from Galilee. The community which nurtured the teachings of this disciple may have been a branch of Jesus-followers who had very little contact with the faith communities that developed the oral tradition which later became the Synoptic Gospels.
New Testament scholar Percival Gardner-Smith wrote, “If in the Fourth Gospel we have a survival of the type of first century Christianity which owed nothing to synoptic developments, and which originated in quite a different intellectual atmosphere, its historical value may be very great indeed” (as quoted in Kostenberger, 2009, 554).
The Seven Signs in John
In the Gospel of John, we have a pattern of Jesus performing a miraculous sign followed by Jesus giving a long discourse explaining the significance of the sign. Here are the seven signs selected by the author for inclusion in the Fourth Gospel. Unless otherwise noted, these miracles only appear in the Fourth Gospel:
1. Jesus changes water into wine at a wedding in Cana in Galilee (2:1-12).
2. Jesus heals a government official’s son from a deadly disease in Capernaum in Galilee (4:46-54).
3. Jesus heals a paralyzed man on the Sabbath day in Jerusalem during a Jewish feast (5:1-17).
4. Jesus feeds a crowd of 5,000 men (not counting women and children) by multiplying a boy’s lunch of five barley loaves and two fish. This was done in Galilee near the time of the Passover. (6:1-15). Note: this miracle is the only one recorded in all four gospels (Mark 6:31-44, Luke 9:12-17, Matthew 14:13-21).
5. Jesus walks on the water of the Lake of Galilee near Capernaum (6:1-21). This miracle also appears in two of the Synoptics: Mark 6:45-53, Matthew 14:22-34.
6. Jesus heals a man born blind in Jerusalem on the Sabbath Day (9:1-41).
7. Jesus raises his friend Lazarus from the dead at Bethany, just outside Jerusalem (11:1-27).
Personally, I believe that all seven of these signs (and the later resurrection of Jesus recorded in chapter 20) really did happen, just as the author of John’s gospel relates them. These signs are consistent with the types of miracles that Jesus performs in the Synoptic gospels (healings, miraculous feedings, resurrections).
The original ending of the Gospel mentions the purpose of the specific signs that are included by the author:
“Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name” (John 20:30-31).
In other words, the author knew about many other miracles that Jesus did, but he narrowed the list down to these seven for the specific purpose of his gospel. John’s Gospel is well crafted. It is a literary masterpiece in its use of irony and the “cosmic trial” motif, but I don’t have room to go into those themes here.The Major Discourses in John
Here is a list of the major discourses in the Gospel of John:
1. Jesus’ unique relationship with the Father (5:19-47)
2. Jesus’ Bread of Life Discourse (6:32-58)
3. Jesus’ Good Shepherd Discourse (10:1-18)
4. Jesus Farewell Discourse and final prayer (13:31-17:25)
Some scholars think that the discourses are developments of some of the shorter sayings and parables of Jesus found in the Synoptic gospels. They suggest that the author of John was aware of the Synoptic Gospels and wanted to build on what was already communicated through them. For example, Kostenberger writes that “John wrote to interpret, develop, and supplement the Synoptic treatment and he did so in a most strategic and deliberate manner” (Kostenberger, 2009, 555).
Many scholars point out that the long discourses are in the style of personified wisdom that we find in the wisdom writings of the Hebrew Bible and the Jewish wisdom writings of the 1st century BCE. For example, in Proverbs 8 there is a long discourse given by personified wisdom that covers verses 8 through 36. In Proverbs 8:22-23 we read of personified wisdom’s pre-existence in the beginning, before there was a material creation:
“The Lord created me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of old. Ages ago I was set up, at the first, before the beginning of the earth.”
This parallels the concept of “the Word” in the first chapter of John’s gospel, as pre-existent with God at the very beginning and then involved in the creation. The deuterocanonical books of Wisdom of Solomon and Sirach (also called Ecclesiasticus) contain many references to wisdom as a divine person. (Note: the deuterocanonical books are books and passages considered by the Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Oriental Orthodox Churches, and the Assyrian Church of the East to be canonical books of the Old Testament, but that Protestant denominations do not regard as part of the biblical canon). These Jewish books were probably written in the 1st century BCE and their ideas were part of the religious and cultural context in which the author of the Fourth Gospel wrote.
Johannine scholar Raymond E. Brown observes,
“Lady Wisdom existed with God from the beginning even before there was an earth (Proverbs 8:22-23; Sirach 24:9; Wisdom of Solomon 6:22) – so also the Johannine Jesus is the Word who was in the beginning (John 1:1) and was with the Father before the world existed (John 17:5). Wisdom is said to be a pure emanation of the glory of the Almighty (Wisdom of Solomon 7:25) – so also Jesus has the Father’s glory and he makes that manifest to men (John 1:4, 8:50, 11:4, 17:5,22,24). Wisdom is said to be a reflection of the everlasting light of God (Wisdom of Solomon 7:26); and in lighting up the path of men (Sirach 1:29), she is to be preferred to any natural light (Wisdom of Solomon 7:10, 29) - in Johannine thought God is light (1 John 1:5); and Jesus who comes forth from God is the light of the world and of men (John 1:4-5, 8:12, 9:5) ultimately destined to replace all natural light (Revelation 21:23)” (Brown, The Gospel According to John I-XII, Vol. 29, Anchor Bible, New York: Doubleday, 1966, cxxiii).
Brown continues:
“Wisdom speaks in the first person in long discourses addressed to her hearers (Proverbs 8:3-36, Sirach 24) – so also Jesus takes his stand and addresses men with his discourses, often beginning with “I am…” (Ibid, cxxiii).
The author of the Gospel of John seems to be continuing in this vein of wisdom writing and applying the attributes of divine wisdom to Jesus.
Ben Witherington offers this explanation for the long discourses in John:
“…the Fourth Gospel is written in a way that attempts to present the Jesus tradition in the light of the Jewish sapiential [wisdom] material. Jesus is presented in this Gospel as God’s Wisdom come in the flesh, serving up discourses like those of personified Wisdom in earlier Jewish wisdom literature, rather than offering aphorisms and parables as in the Synoptics. I have suggested that this reflects Jesus’ in-house modus operandi for his private teaching of his own inner circle of disciples. We need not choose between the public form of wisdom discourse found in the Synoptics (i.e., parables and aphorisms) and the private form of wisdom discourse in John (e.g., John 14-17) when trying to decide which went back to the historical Jesus: both did, but they had different Sitzen im Leben and different functions” (Ben Witherington in John, Jesus and History, Volume 2: Aspects of Historicity in the Fourth Gospel, edited by Paul N. Anderson, Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2009, p. 211). Note: “Sitzen im Leben” is a German phrase which roughly translates to “setting in life.” It has the idea of the social, ethnic, and cultural context in which a story about Jesus takes place.
Now let's revisit our chart with the Gospel of John data included:
|
Name
of Gospel
|
Date of Publication |
Sources |
% Of Marks Content |
View of Jesus |
Birth Stories |
Resurrection Appearances |
General Emphasis |
|
Mark |
65 CE |
Oral and possibly some written traditions |
- |
Human King of Israel, designated at baptism |
No birth stories |
No resurrection appearances |
Action, Miracles |
|
Luke |
80 CE |
Mark, Q and L |
50 |
Human King of Israel, designated at birth |
Birth stories centered around Mary |
Several resurrection appearances in Jerusalem on Resurrection Sunday |
Prayer, Female Disciples |
|
Matthew |
85 CE |
Mark, Q and M |
90 |
Human King and Savior of Israel, designated at birth |
Birth stories centered around Joseph |
One resurrection appearance in Jerusalem to two women on Resurrection Sunday and one in Galilee a few days later to the eleven disciples. |
Jesus as the New Moses – the Interpreter of Torah. |
|
John |
90-100 CE |
Independent Eyewitness Testimony |
0 |
God the Creator come to earth in human form. |
No birth story, but instead a story of his pre-existence as God in the beginning of creation |
Several resurrection appearances in Jerusalem on Resurrection Sunday, another appearance to the disciples in Jerusalem eight days later, and one appearance at least a few days later to his disciples in Galilee who were fishing. |
Jesus as the Exclusive Revealer of God and as the exclusive mediator between humanity and God. |
We can see in this chart that beliefs in Jesus developed over time in the early Christian movement. Notice how the belief about when Jesus was designated as son of God moves earlier in his life from baptism (Mark, 65 CE) to birth (Luke and Matthew, 80-85 CE) and then finally before his human life to pre-existence with God (John, 90-100 CE).
As I mentioned earlier, the miracles recorded in John are consistent with the types of miracles recorded in the synoptic gospels (healings, miraculous feedings, resurrections). The striking differences theologically come in the discourses where Jesus points people to himself as the source of eternal life and claims to be a pre-existent being who is the exclusive revealer of God.
This concludes my study of the gospels. Here are some great resources for further study on the Gospel of John:
Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, Second Edition, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2017.
Raymond Brown, The Gospel According to John I-XII, Vol. 29, Anchor Bible, New York: Doubleday, 1966
C.H. Dodd, Historical Tradition and
the Fourth Gospel, Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1963
James D.G. Dunn, Christology in the Making, Second Edition, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1989.
James D. G. Dunn, Jesus Remembered, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2003.
Andreas Kostenberger, A Theology of John’s Gospel and Letters, Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2009.
Ben Witherington, “What’s in A Name? Rethinking the Historical Figure of the Beloved Disciple in the Fourth Gospel” in John, Jesus and History, Volume 2: Aspects of Historicity in the Fourth Gospel, edited by Paul N. Anderson, Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2009.
Ben Witherington, What Have They Done with Jesus?, New York: Harper Collins, 2006.
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