The Gospel of John: Introduction

 The Gospel of John is poetic, poignant, dramatic – and vivid. we never get tired of reading this gospel.

 This first lesson is an introduction to the Gospel of John. We will look first at the relationship of the Gospel of John to the Synoptics and then the question of who the author is and when the Gospel was written.

 The relationship of the the Gospel of John with the Synoptics.

 Three of the Gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke, are called the synoptics because their cameras are almost in the same position.

 The reason isn’t hard to work out. Mark, relying on Peter, was almost certainly written first, and then we have about 90% of Mark in Matthew, and about 50% of Mark in Luke. Matthew and Luke have their own sources but they tell the story from the same position as Mark.

 Because there is so much the that is similar in these Gospels it is possible to read say the parable of the sower and not be sure whether you are reading Matthew, Mark or Luke.

 You always know you are reading John, right from its opening words.

  ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God’

 The whole Gospel is different.

Jesus’ way of teaching is very different. In the Synoptics, it’s all about parables. In John’s Gospel there are no parables. Instead we have discourses long sections of teaching that usually happens after a miracle, as in John 6.

 The actual teaching is sometimes different. In the Synoptics we are told to repent because the kingdom of God is at hand, this kingdom is coming, with the Son of Man on the clouds. And there is much specific teaching about what we should be like to enter this kingdom.  Apart from the conversation with Nicodemus in chapter 3 there is nothing about the kingdom of God in John, and nothing about Christ’s return on the clouds. Rather the emphasis in John’s Gospel is that while there is a future judgement, eternal life is in Jesus and starts now. There are other teaching differences which we will see.

 Jesus’ travelling in John is different. In the Synoptics after the temptations the action is in Galilee, the north, and then there is a journey to Jerusalem, the south, where the story ends. In John we start in the south with John the Baptist, then we go north for the wedding in Cana, then south for Jesus in the temple and Nicodemus, then we go north through Samaria, chapter four, but in chapter five we are back in Jerusalem again, in chapter six we are in the north for the feeding of the 5,000, and then from 7 onwards the story moves south, and stays there till the end.

 Something else. There is a lot in the Synoptics that is not in John. There are no birth stories, no temptation story,  casting out demons no Sermon on the Mount or Olivet discourse.

 But there is a lot put in that is not in the Synoptics – the prologue, the way the first disciples follow Christ, the wedding in Cana, Nicodemus, the woman by the well, the healing of the cripple, the healing of the man born blind, the raising of Lazarus, the washing of the disciples’ feet.

 Both John and the Synoptics tell the story of the feeding of the five thousand, and the suffering of Jesus from the entry of Jerusalem through to the resurrection. But even in these passages you can see a lot of differences. For the feeding of the five thousand John tells us that it is Passover time, and the crowd want to make Jesus king. We don’t have that in the Synoptics. Likewise there are many differences when you come to the trials and death and resurrection of Christ.

 There are all these differences, but still this is the same story. There is the same beginning, all start with John the Baptist, and there is the same ending, all end with the resurrection. And centre stage in both Synoptics and John is Jesus of Nazareth, son of Joseph the carpenter and Mary. In all four Gospels he gathers disciples, he teaches and performs miracles. This arouses the fury of the religious rulers and they decide to kill him. All four Gospels have Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem, his arrest, trials, execution, and resurrection.

 It is the same story with the same characters

 So what is the relationship of the Gospel of John with the synoptics?

 An old answer is that John was a later ‘spiritual’ version (of the Synoptics. Very few believe this answer for two reasons:

 To say John is theological is to imply that the Synoptics are not to theological. That is entirely wrong. The synoptics are very theological.

 Most important of all, John’s Gospel is not a version or an interpretation of the Synoptics. It is not a re-write of the Synoptics with a more spiritual emphasis. Absolutely not. There are some times when John and the Synoptics overlap but, as seen, even when they do the story is told differently.

 Unlike Matthew and Luke, John is not dependent on Mark or any of the sources the Synoptics use. The writer is almost certainly aware of what is written in the Synoptics – this is probably why he leaves out of his account the things that are already in them – but he is not dependent) on what they say.

 This means that John’s Gospel is completely independent. It is its own eye-witness account, and its own interpretation of the life of Jesus of Nazareth. Where the cameras of the synoptics all stand in one place, fairly near each other, the camera of John’s Gospel very rarely comes to that place, most of the time it is somewhere else.

 It is different because it is completely independent. It has no direct relationship with the synoptics.

 The author

 This then brings us to the question of who the author was.

 Many believe the author is the Apostle John, the son of Zebedee. John’s Gospel claims to be an eye-witness report and the son of Zebedee was an eye witness, and he was in the group very near Jesus. John’s Gospel is very Jewish, and Zebedee was a Jew. Moreover John’s Gospel had details about Galilee, and Zebedee was from there.

 Many others are not so sure about Zebedee and they have very good reasons.

 They point out that the author has a literary rule never to mention his own name, instead we read about ‘another disciple’, or a ‘beloved disciple’ (1, 13, 18, 19, 20, 21). But in 21:2 the sons of Zebedee are mentioned. Why would the writer break his rule?

 Another reason is that in 18:15 we are told that ‘the other disciple’ was ‘known to the high priest’,

 It is hard to see why the son of a fisherman from the north would be known to the high priest. It is unlikely.

 Another reason.

 We are told that the author was near to the cross. Given that Peter had used his sword during the arrest, it is unlikely the Romans would have allowed any of Jesus’ official followers to be near the cross. But our writer was very near. He insists that he saw ‘the blood and the water’ (19:34-35)

 Another reason:

 Perhaps most difficult of all for those who think Zebedee wrote the Gospel is the fact that nearly everyone agrees that the author of the letters is the same man who wrote the Gospel -the style and the teaching is so similar. But unlike Paul or Peter, John here does not call himself an apostle. He calls himself an ‘elder’. For those who think the Apostle John was the author of the Gospel and the letters, this is problematic.

 Those who think the writer is John Zebedee say he had to be a part of the inner circle because John 1:14 says ‘we saw his glory’ They say this refers to when Jesus, in the Synoptics, went up the mountain and his clothes became very white. Only Peter, James – and John were with Jesus. They saw Jesus’ glory, so one of them must be the writer. However in the Gospel of John the word glory always means Jesus’ suffering on the cross, so, in chapter two we have ‘my hour has not come’, through to John 17 ‘the hour has come’. Which hour, the hour of suffering, and Jesus prays, glorify thy son’. Our author saw this suffering close up. He saw the glory according to how this gospel defines glory.

 A final plea that John Zebedee is the author is that only the twelve were there for the last supper. But that is not what the Bible says. It says the twelve were there, it does not say only the twelve were there. Mark 14 makes it very likely that more than the twelve were there because when talking about his betrayer Jesus says, ‘One of the twelve…’ If only the twelve were there this is not necessary. Jesus says it is one of the twelve, to make sure that other disciples who were there, were not suspected.

 If the author is not the son of Zebedee, who was he, what do we know about him?

 The most important thing to say is that he is an eye witness. This is why we have ‘the other disciple’ in chapter one. He is wanting to say, I was there from the beginning. And he wants to say that he was a follower. He is following Jesus in chapter one; he is following him in chapter 21.

 He is certainly Jewish, but he has been well educated and knows all about the Greek culture and their philosophers and so uses the word ‘Logos’ in his introduction. More on that later. He has excellent knowledge of Jerusalem (see chapters five and eighteen), and, as said, he is so well known to the High Priest, so much that when the maid at the door sees him she immediately lets him in, and Peter. And, unless Jesus told the disciples about his conversation with Pilate after his resurrection, it would seem he was there with Pilate and Jesus at that time. And he was able to be near the cross. Both the Roman soldiers and the Jewish authorities gave him permission. This all points to a man who was very senior in the Jewish establishment. It is very likely he lived in Jerusalem. And so when we think of the last supper, it is very possible that the house Jesus used belonged to this John. He was the host and in the Jewish culture, the host would sit next to the most important guest So, John, the owner of the house, was the beloved disciple sitting next to Jesus and was told who the traitor was.

 So he is a very important, well-educated man based in Jerusalem. That is what we learn from the text.

 And there is a final fact that we learn from the text. The author was a genius His writing is simple enough for the least educated to understand, but so deep that it engages the finest scholars.

 He is a writer who deals with concrete specifics– no wine at a wedding, a charcoal fire on a beach, but through those specifics, he opens up other layers of meaning. These are like secret doors. This writer is a master of irony and double meanings He is also a master of dramatic structure.

 There has been a lot of care taken with the structure , there is an introduction and an epilogue and then we have outside and inside. From 1:19 – 12:50 we have Jesus talking to the whole world; but from 13:1 to the end we have Jesus talking only to those who are inside. And throughout the book we have a trial structure. The officials come from Jerusalem to question John the Baptist (1); Jesus is questioned about his actions in the temple (2); his healing of the cripple on the sabbath (5); his preaching during the feast of tabernacles (7-8); his attitude to the woman caught in adultery (8); the healing of the blind man; and it is his raising of Lazarus that cause the High Priest to say, this man must die. It is like a fatwa. And so we move to Jesus actual trial – before the High Priest and Pilate.

 This trial structure does at least two things. The most important person in a trial is the witness. This is what settles things. The author insists he is a faithful witness. The story is true. And so the trial in the Gospel becomes our trial. Where will we be in the court room? On the side of those who say that Jesus is a liar, a false Messiah, or will we believe in Jesus. Will we stay outside, or go inside?

 Yet another part of the writer’s genius is the way he paints characters so well, often by contrasting them, so in chapter three we have the learned establishment man Nicodemus, in chapter four we have the uneducated, outcast woman, who has no name. It’s the woman who believes first, long before Nicodemus. Or we have faithful Mary, waiting at the tomb, weeping. She sees Jesus first, and then Thomas. We know from chapter 11 he is a bit negative as when Jesus says he wants them to go to Bethany near Jerusalem he says, ‘let’s go so we can go and die with him’. And that gets a lot worse in chapter 20 when he wasn’t with the twelve when Jesus appeared and then he called them liars.

 Yes, we have a genius writer here. But can we give him a name, if it is not John the son of Zebedee? Well, many books have been written on this subject, but a strong candidate is John the Elder. Two very early sources from the mid-2^nd C, The Muratorian Canon and writings of Irenaeus, the bishop of Lyons, tell us that this John was a disciple of Jesus and his name is mentioned in connection with the authorship of the Gospel. Another early source, Polycrates, tells that this John became the bishop of Ephesus, and that he had lain on Jesus’ breast during the last supper.

 Whether it is John the son of Zebedee, or John the Elder makes no difference. This is still the Gospel of John. It is still a vivid and reliable eye witness account of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection. And it is still one of the most beautiful pieces of writing in the world.

 A few words on when the Gospel was written. Because the writer has such good knowledge of Jerusalem which was destroyed in AD70 some of the material was written down very early on. However it was probably published towards the end of the 1^st C. We know it cannot be later than 120 or 140 because we have a fragment of the Gospel in the John Rylands museum in Manchester, England. This comes from Egypt and is dated 150AD. So it had to be around at least ten to twenty years before then.

 How should we end this first lesson? May I suggest in three ways.

 First of all can we thank God for this precious Gospel, and thank God for the author. Thank God that he saw that another Gospel was needed, that the Synoptics did not tell the whole story, and so he sat down and wrote this superb Gospel

 The writer was a faithful eye-witness. And so we have the stories of the woman at the well, the raising of Lazarus. Can we pray that we will be faithful witnesses in our lives?

 And the writer understood that a simple event, like seeing a blind beggar of a woman coming to get her water at the well can have much more significance. Can we pray that we will look beyond the story on the surface to see the deeper story?

 In our next lesson we will look at the prologue. Click on the link below.

https://sternfieldthoughts.blogspot.com/2025/01/the-gospel-of-john-prologue-john-11-18.html