A Story of John’s Gospel
John’s was the last of the New Testament gospels to be written, and it stands in contrast to the language and form of the first three. The story of John’s community (1) is one of alienation, separation, and acceptance, and their book represents their tale. They began as a small group of Jesus followers in the mid-50s, about the time Paul was forming his early churches. Their story spans two hundred years of irreconcilableness with the world until their gospel is selected by the nascent church for its canon. It’s a story of orthodoxy arising out of heresy as a new Judaism emerges from the rubble of God’s earthly home. After Rome’s destruction of the Temple in 70 CE, many Judeans found a new covenant in Jesus Christ. Christianity was born, and the long maligned Johannine gospel was accepted as one of its leading authorities.
The Books of the Christian New Testament
The New Testament begins with the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, which are followed by Luke’s Acts of the Apostles. These five books lead to letters written by the apostle Paul to his various churches and cohorts. Next is a collection of letters attributed to James (Jesus’ brother), the apostle Peter, John (a writer of John’s gospel), and Jude (whose identity is arguable). The New Testament ends with The Revelation of John, which according to scholars was not written by the author(s) of John’s gospel and letters. Research also indicates that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were names added to each gospel many years after they were written by unknown authors. Giving credit to apostles and other church leaders was commonly done to give gospels authority within the larger church community.
While Paul was writing early letters to the Thessalonians, Corinthians, Philippians, Galatians, and Romans (ca 50-60), others were writing down sayings of Jesus from the oral traditions revolving around Jesus’ life and death. Later, after Rome’s destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple (ca 70), Mark used these sayings to write the first of what would become the New Testament gospels. Matthew and Luke followed, using Mark as their primary source. These three gospels are similar because their sources, stories, and chronologies of Jesus’ life overlap. John’s gospel stands separately from them because of its dissimilar content and chronology. It reads differently because it uses stories that are not in the others; omits stories that the others use; represents Jesus’ ministry as having been three years instead of one; and arranges the common events of all four gospels differently from the first three. John presents a story of Jesus that stands apart from Mark, Luke, and Matthew, just like the Johannine community stood apart from Judean society and fellow Christian communities.
The Community that Produced John’s Gospel
Members of the Johannine community were Israelites who accepted Jesus as one who came from God. They joined together (ca 50) twenty years after his death believing Jesus to be the fulfillment of the prophecy that a leader would arise from the house of David (their beloved, ancient king) to be anointed by Yahweh (their god) as the savior of his people. In Jesus, Yahweh would establish a new heavenly kingdom on earth. John’s early community believed this kingdom was coming soon; that there would be a day of judgment in their lifetime when Jesus would return in glory from heaven to rule over God’s new earthly kingdom.
There was nothing unusual about John’s group when it began. They lived like others, worshiped liked others, and like many Jews kept Jesus alive as one who would come again. During the twenty-some years since Jesus’ death, his growing gathering of followers had formed various communities within Judaism to share their faith in Jesus as the Messiah. Like the Johannine community, they accepted him as the one from God who had come to redeem them. Many communities, including Paul’s, believed that Yahweh would act soon to reestablish his earthly kingdom. They were shaping Jesus as the one who would return to fulfill God’s promise of freedom and redemption.
As time passed and nothing happened, belief in how Yahweh would again set his people free changed. John’s community began to see things differently. They no longer saw Jesus in Davidic terms: the return of a king who would conquer their enemies with his sword. Another view developed, especially among the Johannine Galileans who lived north of Judea and the Temple in Jerusalem. Jesus became a new Moses rather than a new David. Jesus, like Moses, was said to have seen God and brought God’s word into the world. He would redeem not with a sword but with the word of God. The new Johannine community believed that Jesus was God’s living word; that Jesus had come as God’s word in the flesh.
Rome’s destruction of Jerusalem in 70 threw Judaism into turmoil. Yahweh’s earthly home, the Temple, was lying in rubble. Without a central place for religious festivals and blood sacrifice, rabbis turned to village synagogues as centers of Judaism. These local houses of worship had been in place for several generations, but now they were essential in saving the identity of Judaism sans Temple. Like all Jews, those who followed Jesus found solace in these communal centers of worship as Judaism sought survival.
By ca 80 the Johannine community was a group of mostly Galileans who accepted Jesus as a Mosaic savior. They believed in Jesus as God’s living word through whom they could gain redemption from sin and freedom from tyranny. In keeping with the promise of this good news, the Johannine group produced the first written version of its gospel. Their story of Jesus had grown as an oral tradition spoken in Aramaic, but they copied it down in Greek, the common language of their time—much like English is commonly used in the world today. This change in language is recognized in the use of such Aramaic phrases as and he answered and said to them and verily, verily I say unto you showing up in the Greek text. This first version of John was a collection of Jesus sayings and stories written in Greek using Aramaic phrasing from oral accounts of Jesus’ life.
By ca 90 a schism had developed over theology between the general Judean population and John’s group. Johannine belief in Jesus put them at odds with the older priestly authority of Judaism. Although Johannine members lived and worshiped within Jewish law, they looked outside the Law to Jesus for salvation. This was common among Jesus followers, but Judeans who ran the synagogues feared that Jesus had become a god in the eyes of John’s community, and in Judean theology there was room for only one God, Yahweh. In response to this heightened divinity of Jesus, the Judean population exerted its rabbinic control of the synagogues and expelled the Johannine members. As a result, the Johannine community became bitter and deeply antagonistic toward their fellow Judeans, calling them children of the devil (8:44).
Hostility grew as John’s group deemed the Judeans blind to Jesus as the one from God. Alienation drove a permanent wedge between them and Judean society. They became a marginalized, frightened group. Shunned and ostracized, they moved out of Palestine north toward Syria. Their plight is illustrated in their gospel in an exchange between Jesus and Judeans (8:44, 8:48, 8:59). He calls their father the devil; they call him a Samaritan (meant to be an insult); they say he is out of his mind; and when the argument really gets heated the Judeans start to throw rocks at Jesus. Further, in a long prayer attributed to Jesus, he reflects (17:13-19) on the alienation of the Johannine community from the world they once knew.
Now living outside of Palestine, the Johannine group started converting gentiles to their community much as Paul had done some forty years earlier. Convinced the world opposes them because of their views toward Jesus, they reached out to non-Judeans with their word of God. The world they felt they were up against was not the world as we know it. It was the small arena that Palestinian peasants knew within a day’s journey of their villages; the fifteen or so miles outside their home in which they spent their lives. That’s all they knew. That was their world. It is the world spoken of in John. It means society: the society of Galilean peasants into which Jesus was born and lived. It’s from this world that the Johannine Jews separated when they left Palestine. The world opposed Jesus, so they took his message of redemption to the gentiles.
During the 90s a second generation of Johannine believers came of age which had even greater faith in Jesus as divine. Whoever wrote the first version of John’s gospel produced a second version which cast Jesus as the only son of God. This led to greater isolation because even fellow Christians now rebuked them, since many followers of Jesus did not accept him as God. Beleaguered by the loss of Jewish Christian friends, this alienated group drew ever closer to the gentiles. They saw themselves as the only ones who knew the truth that Jesus was the living word of God, and they hoped to fulfill God’s purpose among those who were open to Jesus as God in the flesh. The mission represented in their revised gospel was to unify all true believers so the world would know that Jesus Christ was truly God’s only son.
Higher Christology created greater complexity in the community’s sacramental life. By ca 100 Jesus was Lord, raised from the dead. His words and acts were used to sanctify the living. Rituals such as baptism became sacraments of confirmation that Jesus was Lord and the Light of the World. A different author than the one who penned the first two versions of John wrote a third to highlight the sacramental implications of salvation through Jesus in the Johannine stories. He also added a final chapter, Chapter 21, which did not appear until ca 120. It’s this last edition with its final chapter that speaks to us from the pages of the New Testament as The Gospel According to John.
The Theology of John
John’s gospel reveals layers of theological constructs developed by the community over a period of fifty to sixty years. Throughout the last half of the first century, they introduced new tenets into their gospel story that developed from their reflections on Jesus. These insertions occurred until they produced the final version of their gospel during the years 100 to120.
Early on the community shared oral stories from the traditions growing around the memory of Jesus. Memorizing and reciting were skills needed for learning. Writing and reading were not required like they are today. But like today, people remembered what was relevant to them. Stories that listeners could apply to their lives were told and retold. Local ways of life and selective memory helped shape the traditions around each gospel. Because the Johannine group was isolated, there is much in John that is not in other gospels and vice versa. It is evident that the Johannine story of Jesus developed without the group knowing the traditions that grew around Mark, Matthew, and Luke.
The different gospel traditions produced separate patterns of belief in Jesus for a hundred years after his death. They developed their own stories, reflected on their own theologies, and explored their own deeper meanings in Jesus’ sayings, actions, and relationship with God. Theological motifs developed that were relevant to each group. Each community wove traditions about Jesus that suited their circumstances. When they told their stories of Jesus, they were expressing their theology. They did not write gospels to be biography or history as we know these subjects. Gospels were not written to tell Jesus’ true story. Writers, especially John, put Jesus in certain places and times and gave him carefully crafted dialogue to make theological points. They were not concerned with history as we like it: linear, factual, and accurate. They wrote their gospels to persuade followers that Jesus was a man-God; that he was an amazing guy who could redeem them in God’s eyes.
John 9:1-41 exemplifies how new theological themes were inserted into old stories as Johannine belief gradually changed. This passage develops around a simple story of Jesus healing a blind man. The original story would have come from the oldest of the oral traditions and may be grounded in an actual event. It shows the compassion of Jesus and his power to heal. The story prior to the year 60 would have been told like this:
As Jesus passed by, he saw a man blind from his birth. Jesus spat on the ground and made clay of the spittle and anointed the man’s eyes with the clay, saying to him, Go, wash in the pool of Silo’am. So he went and washed and came back seeing.
Johannine theology developed as the group reflected on their Judean heritage, biblical prophecy, the divinity of Jesus, and their exile. When 9:2-3 was inserted in ca 60, the story of healing the blind man changed from being a simple tale about an event in Jesus’ life into a medium for theological argument. In Judean society, all misfortune was thought to be deserved because the calamity was the result of sin. The question, going back to ancient Judaism, was whether those born with such misfortunes as blindness caused it themselves or inherited it from parental sins. The thinking that the sins of the parent were placed upon the children was often used to explain why a child was born blind. Thus, some circumstance in Johannine life resulted in adding this layer to the older story:
And Jesus’ disciples asked him, Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind? Jesus answered, It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be made manifest in him.
As Jesus became more divine to the community, another layer was added to the story ca 80, about the time the Johannine oral stories were first being inscribed:
We must work the works of him who sent me, while it is day; night comes, when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world (9:4-5).
Jesus as Light of the World is one of the great Johannine theological themes. In their eyes, Jesus came into the world to bring light through God’s word and remove the darkness of evil. This theme resonates in 9:1-41 through the striking contrast of dark and light, blindness and vision. It is Jesus who brings light into a world that is gripped by evil—the glory of God’s word is illuminated in him.
By the 90s the Johannine community was so at odds with Judean religious society over the divinity of Jesus that they were tossed from the synagogues. Pharisees were then inserted into the story for contrast between Judean blindness and Johannine vision. The Pharisees are blind to Jesus in their hearts. They can see him only with their eyes, whereas the blind man, like the Johannine community, grows in his vision of Jesus. He sees not only with his eyes but also with his heart. Like John’s group the blind man’s vision increases until he comes to see Jesus fully. He says to the Pharisees:
If this man were not from God, he could do nothing. The Pharisees answered him: You were born in utter sin, and would you teach us? And they cast him out. Jesus heard that they had cast him out, and having found him he said: Do you believe in the Son of man? And he answered: And who is he, sir, that I may believe in him? Jesus said to him: You have seen him, and it is he who speaks to you. He said: Lord, I believe; and he worshiped him (9:33-38).
The passage contrasts the Johannine vision of Jesus as messiah (as the Christ) and the blindness of those who cling to the old ways of salvation. Religious tenets were layered into a simple story to make a case for Jesus’ divinity and the guilt of those who deny him. As the Pharisees remain blind to Jesus while the young man gains his sight, they question him over and over—becoming abusive like Jewish authorities in the 70s had been with those who accepted Jesus as divine. Finally, the young man grows tired of the abuse and answers sarcastically:
I have told you already and you would not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you too want to become his disciples? And they reviled him, saying: You are his disciple, but we are disciples of Moses. We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man (Jesus), we do not know where he comes from. The young man answered: Why, this is a marvel! You do not know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes….If this man were not from God, he could do nothing (9:27-33).
Another layer added ca 90 to the second version of John reflects more directly on the Johannine history of being tossed from the synagogues. The Judeans (9:18) do not believe that the young man was born blind, so they ask (9:19) his parents who say (9:20-21) their son was born blind but they do not know how he now sees. Then the parents say:
…nor do we know who opened his eyes. Ask him; he is of age, he will speak for himself. His parents said this because they feared the Judeans, for the Judeans had already agreed that if anyone should confess Jesus to be the Christ, he was to be put out of the synagogue (9:21-22).
John’s community produced a final edition of its gospel at the beginning of the second century. A new layer of theology was inserted reflecting the community’s sacramental use of the story. In previous versions verses 9:8-10 have the neighbors asking:
Is not this the man who use to sit and beg? Some said: It is he; others said, No, but he is like him. He said: I am the man.
The young man has changed in the eyes of some and does not appear to be himself. Implications of the change are made in an embellishment added ca 110:
They said to him: Then how were your eyes opened? He answered: The man called Jesus made clay and anointed my eyes and said to me, ‘Go to Silo’am and wash.’; so I went and washed and received my sight (9:10-11).
The instructions to go and wash are repeated from the original story in order to highlight the act of washing then compare it with a twist in wording: received my sight has replaced came back seeing (9:7). The new wording creates a stronger association between the act of washing and gaining vision. The young man’s eyes have been opened to Jesus as the Light of the World. He has received illumination by washing in the pool of the one who was sent from God (Silo’am means emissary or one who is sent). The Johannine community reworked this part of the story to give it sacramental meaning in their revised rite of baptism.
A few generations later, John’s metaphor for baptism was used by the early church. Drawings of the young man who received his sight are found in catacombs under Rome, showing him as a symbol of baptism. Early Christians baptized once a year on Maundy Thursday. 9:10-11 became instructions for all Christians to wash and be illuminated. These verses from John were read just prior to converts being immersed in the baptismal pool. After a hundred years, layers of theology added by a rejected community to an old story of Jesus had become orthodoxy.
The Language of John
Scholars estimate that about 6000 followers of Jesus were living in the early part of the second century. It’s hard to know how many for certain, but it is known that they worshipped in groups of 10-40 depending on the size of the home in which they met. These home churches were scattered throughout the eastern-Mediterranean region. Communities such as Paul’s and those centering on Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John were comprised of multiple home churches, yet each community had its own stories and theology to unify them. Each community’s common language helped in defining who they were as it does in societal subgroups now. In other words, whether then or now: We talk this way to show that we belong to the group and that you do not.
The Johannine community was much smaller than most of the other Judean sects of Jesus followers. Having been rejected by the world (Judean society), they were close-knit, frightened, and suspicious of outsiders. If you weren’t one of them, you would be against them. They saw themselves as the one-and-only true believers. There were no shades of gray about that. If you did not show total commitment to the community, then you were not firm in believing Jesus to be the Christ.
The Johannine community no longer regarded itself as part of Judean society. They felt they were on their own. Their gospel epitomizes this in 17:14-16 when John has Jesus say within a long prayer to God:
I have given them (John’s group) your word, and this society (the world) has hated them because they do not belong to this society, just as I do not belong to this society. I am not asking you to take them out of the society, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one. They do not belong to this society, just as I do not belong to this society.(2)
One way John’s group isolated itself from the world was by giving their own meanings to common words. In this way, they marked the boundaries of their group. They wanted no question about who was in their community and who was out. If you understood the message behind their words, then you were in. If not, then you were not a true believer. Like the blind man who came to see the light in Jesus, converts saw the subtle meaning John’s group gave words such as light, world, born, door, water, life, way, see, vine, and so forth; meanings that only true believers could comprehend. The cunning use of common language kept distance between John’s community and those who rejected them.
An example of Johannine separation language lies within the story of Nicodemus (3:1-21), a Judean leader who comes to Jesus by night, already showing that Nicodemus as a Pharisee is in the dark. As an outsider he is confused right off in his conversation with Jesus. And John’s author keeps him confused. When Nicodemus says that Jesus must be from God because of the signs, Jesus responds in part by saying: …unless one is born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God. To which Nicodemus replies: How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born? (3:3-4). Jesus then repeats Johannine themes of water and spirit and born of the spirit, to which Nicodemus remains ignorant reinforcing the separation between Judeans and the Johannine group. Jesus now gives a long speech chastising Nicodemus for not understanding—even though Nicodemus is a leading teacher of Israel. The speech reinforces the conflict between John’s community of believers and the Judeans who cannot see that Jesus is the one who has come from God. It upholds the Johannine belief that Judeans are in the dark because they will not open their eyes to the light: the Light that is Jesus who is the Son of God. In the end, the message that light came into the world but the Judeans love darkness more is given by John using double meanings that function to separate Judean outsiders from Johannine insiders.
Nicodemus never gets it, but in the story of the woman by the well (4:1-42) the Samaritan does. At first the woman does not understand the double meaning of the common words spoken by Jesus; but in the end, unlike Nicodemus, she knows them well enough to tell others. She does not understand when Jesus says he is the living water. When he explains further, she asks for some of this water that I may not thirst. Then they discuss the ancient rift between Samaritans and Judeans. This breach over God’s law widened greatly when Judeans started returning from Babylon in 538 bce. They brought a reformed Judaism that the Samaritans never bought into. Samaritans continued worshiping Yahweh in the manner of the original Israelites at Mt. Gerizim while Judeans declared Yahweh’s home to be in Jerusalem as they set about rebuilding the Temple. The conflict over where one worships is raised by the Samaritan. Jesus responds:
Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we (Judeans) worship what we know for salvation is from the Jews (Judeans). But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for such the Father seeks to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship him in spirit and truth. The woman said to him, I know that Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ); when he comes, he will show us all things. Jesus said to her, I who speak to you am he (4:21-26).
The story ends with the woman believing Jesus to be the Christ. She tells those in the town. They come out to the well to hear Jesus, and all the Samaritans who heard believed.
Samaritans were Israelites living in central Palestine between Galilee in the north and Judea in the south. Because they maintained Jewish practices from before the Babylonian exile and believed Yahweh’s home to be on sacred Mt. Gerizim instead of in Jerusalem, they were unacceptable to Judeans just like the Johannine community. Their own temple was near the town of Sychar, which is the locale of the story of the woman at the well. John’s group accepted Samaritans when other Jews would not because Samaritans, like gentiles, could see that Jesus was the Christ while Judeans remained blind to his divinity. The language in the stories of the blind young man, Nicodemus, and the Samaritan woman help tell the tale of Johannine theology and the community’s sense of rejection by the world. It is language meant to separate true believers from children of the devil.
The Split
Sometime in the early part of the second century, the Johannine community split over the divinity of Jesus. The group that seceded held Jesus so divine that he was not considered truly human. The remaining group thought otherwise and continued calling themselves true believers. They saw Jesus as God who came in human flesh. If he were walking beside them, he would leave footprints in the sand. The secessionists held Jesus as spirit. He would not leave footprints in the sand. Neither would he have suffered on the cross. As spirit he would have hovered above his crucifixion without agony. True believers held that Jesus did suffer in body on the cross and died an agonizing human death.
The split is reflected in the letters of John, which were written by a true believer who might have been the one who penned the first two versions of John’s gospel. They are letters for Johannine eyes only, not meant to be read by outsiders. Letters were a way of communicating, as Paul did, with fellow believers who were in different places. They were written (often by dictating to a scribe) to home churches as a way for leaders to speak to members of their community when they could not be present.
John’s three epistles help in knowing that a schism overcame the Johannine community:
They went out from us, but they did not belong to us; for if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us. But by going out, they made it plain that none of them belongs to us (1 John 2:19).
Scholars speculate that the true believers remained in or near Syria and that the larger group of secessionists migrated eventually to Egypt. The secessionists seem to have taken most of the Johannine wealth, leaving the true believers poorer:
How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help? (1 John 3:17).
But the loss of resources was only a small irritation among the true believers in their greater resentment and bitterness at having once again been rejected. John’s letters reflect the ill feelings they held toward the secessionists. True believers considered the secessionists wrong in believing that Jesus was not human, wrong in not following the commandments, and wrong in turning their backs on those they left behind. These were serious points of theology which the once united community never resolved. This rancor reveals itself in John’s epistles:
Issue one: Was Jesus a real, flesh and blood human being? 1 John 4:2 implies that (true believers) know God by confessing that Jesus came in the flesh. 1 John 5:5-6 says to know Jesus as the Son of God is to witness that he came, in part, by blood; implying that (secessionists) do not know Jesus because they see him only as spirit. 2 John 1:7 describes those (secessionists) who do not believe Jesus came in the flesh as deceivers and the antichrist.
Issue two: Are we required to keep the commandments? 1 John 1:7-8 relates the need to believe in Jesus as the blood of salvation. (Secessionists) deceive themselves when they say they have no sin. 1 John 2:4 says (secessionists) are liars when they say they know him but do not follow his commandments. 1 John 3:6-10) says (secessionists) are children of the devil because they are sinners, whereas (true believers) are righteous as Jesus is righteous because they do what is right (implying secessionists do not).
Issue three: Do the secessionists love their Christian brothers and sisters? (True believers) live in the light (1 John 2:9-11) because they love their brothers and sisters, but (secessionists) live in darkness because they are without love, even though they claim to be in the light. They are blind now because they hate (true believers). (Secessionists) are so hateful (1 John 3:15-18) they are murderers who no longer have eternal life in them. They say they love, but their deeds show they do not. In 1 John 4:7-8, (true believers) love (their) brothers and sisters and know God; (secessionists) do not know God because they do not know love. (Secessionists) are liars (1 John 4:20-21) because they hate (true believers) and still say they love God.
The larger, wealthier group of secessionists became better known than the true believers because they remained intact. It’s likely they were welcomed in Egypt by Docetists, who believed that Jesus only seemed to be human, and Gnostics, who believed that only spirit was real. The secessionists and the gospel they brought with them were popular with both groups for generations. Because of these associations, secessionists became widely known as radical Christians; heretics to church leaders in Rome. They survived as an alternative to orthodoxy until Muslims conquered Egypt in the seventh century.
The smaller group of true believers probably ended up in Syria near some of Paul’s converts. Over time their theology became more commonplace, and they were absorbed into the nascent Christian church along with their gospel. After 200 years, the true believers had finally been accepted.
The Church’s Acceptance of John
Mainstream Christians viewed the Johannine gospel suspiciously because followers of Jesus who readily took to it did not follow the faith of the growing majority. Yet, by the middle of the second century, some orthodox were attributing the Johannine gospel and letters to the apostle John, opening the door to its acceptance in the developing church. John’s gospel now fit the early doctrine of apostolic authority and his letters supported the doctrine of Jesus coming in the flesh. As attribution to the apostle spread, Christianity’s acceptance of the once maligned Johannine gospel was underway.
John’s acceptance took off in the second half of the second century. It was one of some twenty-eight gospels circulating among Jesus followers as their communities became more aware of each other. They were recited to groups of followers, not read alone in the comfort of an easy chair as we are prone to do now. Almost all people in and around peasant society were illiterate because the populace had no need for reading. Literacy rested in memorizing and reciting. Folks trusted oral communication as honest and relevant. Even a leading bishop of the time is quoted as saying: I did not think that what was to be gotten from books would profit me as much as what came from the living and abiding voice.(3) The norm was to listen to recitations of Hebrew scripture in the synagogues, Paul’s letters in his churches, and the many gospels in their various Jewish Christian communities.(4)
Until the late second century, each gospel had been used exclusively in its own community. None was written to complement or supplement others. Each Christian community had considered its gospel to be the only one. It’s likely that gospel communities were unaware of each other for years, but as they bumped into each other on the path to becoming an organized orthodox faith the need arose for a single gospel as the voice of their growing Christian movement. Some powerful leaders advocated for their choice to be the one adopted. Others attempted to write several gospels into a single, inclusive story. These opposing efforts promoted a confusing diversity of theologies that led nowhere in helping to unify the emerging church.
John’s gospel had its supporters and detractors. Some supporters wanted its three-year chronology to be the framework for a comprehensive gospel incorporating Mark, Mathew, Luke, and John into a single sweeping story. One of these harmonies called the Diatessaron was widely popular ca 170. By ca 180 the term scripture was used in conjunction with John for the first time. (5) Later, John became even more widely attributed to the apostle, giving it increased authority. The idea of attributing gospels to apostles developed during the many years they were being produced. John’s attribution came late, but once it was deemed apostolic and quoted as scripture it found broader acceptance in the nascent church. Orthodox Christians in Rome, however, continued to challenge John because its timeline, content, and word usage were different from Mark, Matthew, and Luke. They also suspected it of containing heresies because it was popular with the Gnostics and Docetists. Despite such naysaying, the church accepted John’s last edition in ca 200 as originally penned. Even then, disputes about John raged into the fourth century. Some church leaders never got over its use by heretics and its late adoption as an apostolic gospel.
When the third century opened, John emerged as the fourth component of The Gospel in church canon. Those who made the case for John’s inclusion were helped by the argument that four gospels were needed to represent the four universal winds of the earth: four pillars supporting the foundation of the church. The canon would hold up the church in unity under one gospel: The Gospel—one fourfold breath of the living word breathing immortality into those who accepted God’s new covenant in the personage of Jesus Christ. The books forming the one gospel were called: The Gospel according to Matthew, The Gospel according to Mark, The Gospel according to Luke, and The Gospel according to John. The good news of Jesus Christ had become a singularity on which the church could build.
By ca 250, with precedence given to their apostolic order, the four canonical gospels of Matthew, John, Luke, and Mark were firmly established in the church. As Christendom expanded, churches adopted longer lists of authoritative writings to support the new covenant until the current list of twenty-seven books was established for. The first formal acceptance of the New Testament by an official church body of the whole was in 393 by the Synod of Hippo and in 397 by the Synod of Carthage, both in North Africa—ironically the home of Docestists, Gnostics, and Johannine secessionists whom the new orthodox church still deemed heretical.
The Gospel of John in Modernity
John presents a Galilean Jesus, a Jesus favored by a group which is anti-Judean. English Bibles use Jew instead of Judean, so we need to use the original Judean to see that John’s gospel is not anti-Semitic, as it so often is tragically viewed. To say that Johannine Christians were anti-Semitic is like saying a group of North Dakotans is anti-American because of religious differences with a group of South Dakotans. Groups of Dakotans are American no matter their differences. Galilee and Judea were Judean states. Any Jewish group of Galileans was still Jewish even if they disagreed with some of their southern Jewish neighbors over the divinity of Jesus.
When, as a Western modern people, we read John in English, we must remember we are reading an ancient, middle Eastern artifact through modern, western eyes. We do not see things as Johannine Christians saw them. They certainly did not see things as we do now. They could never have imagined our modern world, so we need to read John through the lens of its own culture, not ours, to understand fully what is being said.
Since the producers of John had no experience with anything remotely like us, we cannot expect them to be using modern literary techniques. John is neither biography nor history as we know them. It was written to advance the theology of the Johannine community which developed around the person and divinity of Jesus Christ. It is oral tradition written down. It is a device to separate the Johannine Christians from other Judean Christian groups. It is a message from the Johannine community to those they wish to convert that their Jesus is an amazing guy. It does not give us a historical, factual biography of Jesus like we might expect from modern authors.
For us, here and now, the more we know about the source of John’s text the more we can give it integrity in our modern lives. Knowing what lies behind the Johannine story can make Jesus more relevant to faith in our modern world.
Final Note
John’s gospel has literally offered up a piece of history. The oldest existing fragment of the New Testament is the Rylands Papyrus discovered in Egypt and housed in the John Rylands Library of Manchester. It contains a two-sided fragment displaying John 18:31-33 and John 18:37-38 from the first half of the second century. For a view of the fragment and further information go to:
www.kchanson.com/ANCDOCS/greek/johnpap.html
References
(1) I recently attended a lecture by Professor Richard L. Rohrbaugh on the Gospel of John and the history of the community that composed it. Dr. Rohrbaugh is Professor of Religious Studies (Emeritus) at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon. He is a member of the Society of Biblical Literature, the Catholic Biblical Association, and the American Schools of Oriental Research, under whose auspices he was an area supervisor in archaeological excavations at Tel Aroer (1980) and Tel Dan (1986). His scholarship, his notes, and his lecture underlie what I have written in this paper. It is my summary of his lecture and notes. Any errors found here are my misinterpretations and misunderstandings of Professor Rohrbaugh’s presentation.
(2) Paraphrasing these anti-society verses has been used to highlight the rejection felt by John’s group.
(3) Papias, Bishop of Hieropolis (ca 140): If I met with a disciple of the elders, I questioned him about the words of the elders—what Andrew or Peter said, or what was said by Philip or Thomas or James, or John, or Matthew, or by any other of the disciples of the Lord, and what things Aristion and elder John, the disciples of the Lord, say. For I did not think that what was to be gotten from books would profit me as much as what came from the living and abiding voice. (Eusebius History III.39.4)
(4) Gospels held more authority than Paul’s letters, but only the ancient Hebrew writings were scripture. The earliest known quotation of a gospel as scripture is from ca 150 within a quote of Matthew 9:13 by Clement of Alexandria, a leading teacher in early Christianity.
(5) Theophilus of Antioch, a leading thinker in the early Christian church, quotes Matthew and John ca 180, calling John one of the Spirit-bearers. He is the first to call John scripture.