opinions and musings

  Welcome to my 11 th post on the canonical gospels.   In this post I’m looking at the claims to Jesus’ divinity that we find in the Gospel of John. Jesus is directly called God twice in the gospel of John.   First in the prologue, where we are told that the Logos (Word) is God, and that the Logos took flesh and lived among us as Jesus (1:14), and again in Thomas’ confession after the resurrection, where he proclaims that Jesus is “my Lord and my God!” (20:28).   Jesus does not reject this worship, but simply replies to Thomas, “Have you believed because you have seen me?   Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” In addition, there are several indirect references to Jesus’ divinity throughout the gospel.   The first part of the gospel (following the prologue of chapter 1) can be called the “Book of Signs” because it is a collection of seven signs or miracles done by Jesus and the teachings that are related to them.   The book...

  Welcome to my 10 th post on the canonical gospels.   Last time we started looking at the gospel of John and went over some basic information about it.   Now let’s look deeper. When compared to the three Synoptic gospels, what is different about the gospel of John?     Unique characteristics of the Gospel of John: 1.       - Covers a three-year ministry period vs. 1 year period found in the Synoptics. 2.       - Focuses on Jesus’ ministry in Jerusalem rather than his ministry in Galilee. 3.       - Puts the cleansing of the temple in Jerusalem at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry instead of during the final week. 4.       - Very little overlap with the content of the Synoptics.   In fact, while 93% of Mark is found in Matthew and Luke, only 8% of John parallels the Synoptics (Kostenberger, 2009, 553). 5.      -   Gives ...