I. The Nature of John’s Gospel
God, according to Emily Dickinson, is “a distant—stately Lover” who woos us “by His Son.” A “Vicarious Courtship,” she calls it—like Miles Standish sending John Alden to court “fair Priscilla” on his behalf in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s famous poem. “But lest the soul—like fair Priscilla,” she adds, mischievously, “choose the Envoy—and spurn the groom,” He “vouches with hyperbolic archness, ‘Miles’ and ‘John Alden’ were Synonym—.”1 The avid reader of the Gospel of John may detect here an echo of John 13:20 (“the person who receives me receives the One who sent me”). Jesus is indeed God’s Envoy in this Gospel, as in the others (see Mt 10:40; Lk 10:16), but in no other Gospel is he so unmistakably “One” with the Father who sent him (10:30), the “I Am” who existed before Abraham (8:59), and the “Word” who was with God in the beginning, and was himself “God the One and Only” (1:1, 18). Jesus in the Gospel of John is an unforgettable figure, so much so that God the Father becomes, in the eyes of some, the “neglected factor” in New Testament theology, particularly in this Gospel.2 It is in fact tempting to “choose the Envoy and spurn the groom,” but it is a temptation to be resisted, and it is resisted, resolutely, on virtually every page of the Gospel. Over and over again, Jesus reminds his hearers that the Son does nothing on his own, that his words are words the Father has given him to speak, and his works only what the Father has given him to do. His authority rests not in himself but in his total obedience to the Father’s will. Perhaps because of this intriguing mix of self-assertion and humility, equality with God and submission to the Father, Christian readers through the centuries have fallen in love with the Jesus of the Gospel of John, and consequently with the Gospel itself.
Not all readers of the Gospel have felt the same way. It is not everyone’s favorite Gospel. As to its style, the translators of the NAB complain that
The Gospel according to John comprises a special case. Absolute fidelity to his technique of reiterated phrasing would result in an assault on the English ear, yet the softening of the vocal effect by the substitution of other words and phrases would destroy the effectiveness of his poetry. Again, resort is had to compromise. This is not an easy matter when the very repetitiousness which the author deliberately employed is at the same time regarded by those who read and speak English to be a serious stylistic defect. Only those familiar with the Greek originals can know what a relentless tattoo Johannine poetry can produce.3
To which David Daniell, no stranger to good English style, replies, “Any stick, it seems, will do to beat the Gospel of Love.”4 No consensus here.
As to content, some hear only Jesus’ self-assertion in the Gospel, and none of his humility. In the face of its programmatic assertion that “the Word came in flesh and encamped among us” (1:14), there are those who have asked,
In what sense is he flesh who walks on the water and through closed doors, who cannot be captured by his enemies, who at the well of Samaria is tired and desires a drink, yet has no need of drink and has food different from that which his disciples seek? He cannot be deceived by men, because he knows their innermost thoughts even before they speak. He debates with them from the vantage point of the infinite difference between heaven and earth. He has need neither of the witness of Moses nor of the Baptist. He dissociates himself from the Jews, as if they were not his own people, and he meets his mother as the one who is her Lord. He permits Lazarus to lie in the grave for four days in order that the miracle of his resurrection may be more impressive. And in the end the Johannine Christ goes victoriously to his death of his own accord. Almost superfluously the Evangelist notes that this Jesus at all times lies on the bosom of the Father and that to him who one with the Father the angels descend and from him they again ascend. He who has eyes to see and ears to hear can see and hear his glory. Not merely from the prologue and from the mouth of Thomas, but from the whole Gospel he perceives the confession, “My Lord and my God.” How does all this agree with the understanding of a realistic incarnation?5
Likewise, in the face of the Gospel’s classic declaration that “God so loved the world that he gave the One and Only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not be lost but have eternal life” (3:16), Adele Reinhartz, a Jewish New Testament scholar, comments that the gift offered here
is the promise of eternal life through faith in Jesus as the Christ and Son of God. From the implied author’s perspective, this gift is not a casual offering that I as a reader may feel free to take up or not, as I please. Rather, it is for him vitally important—for my own sake—that I accept the gift by believing in Jesus as the Christ and Son of God. Accepting the gift leads to eternal life; rejecting it leads to death.… The Beloved Disciple’s strong interest in my response is conveyed also in the continuation of the passage in 3:19–21, which reframes the gift in ethical terms.… Thus the Beloved Disciple judges me as “evil” if I reject his gift, that is, if I refuse to believe in Jesus as the Christ and Son of God. Conversely, he judges me as “good” if I accept his gift through faith in Jesus as savior. The universalizing language of this passage, which views the coming of the Son of God into the world as a whole, stresses that this gift is offered to me and all readers who have ever lived or ever will live. At the same time, I and all other readers are to be judged according to our response to the gift, and are subject to the consequences of our choice.
The Beloved Disciple, as the implied author of the Gospel of John, therefore takes his offer with utmost gravity and urges his readers to do the same. It is a matter of life and death, good and evil.… The Gospel, and therefore also its implied author, recognizes two types of people, those who come to the light and those who do not, those who do evil and those who do not, those who believe and those who do not, those who will have life and those who will not. The Beloved Disciple as implied author exercises ethical judgment with respect to his readers by separating those who do good—who believe—from those who are evil. In doing so, he also aligns one group with himself, as the one whose witness is conveyed through the medium of the Gospel itself, and consigns all others to the role of “Other.”6
Coming from one who gladly embraces for herself the role of “Other,”7 this is a remarkably perceptive account of what the Gospel of John is all about, reminding us that understanding and acceptance are not necessarily the same thing. But sometimes they do go together, as in this comment by Robert Gundry, a Christian New Testament scholar who views John’s Gospel as the word of God and yet understands it, in much the same way as Reinhartz, as “countercultural and sectarian”:
John not only leaves the world outside the scope of Jesus’ praying and loving and of believers’ loving. He also describes the world as full of sin; as ignorant of God, God’s Son, and God’s children; as opposed to and hateful of God’s Son and God’s children; as rejoicing over Jesus’ death; as dominated by Satan; and as subject to God’s wrath, so that God’s loving the world does not make for a partly positive view of it. Rather, God loved it and Christ died for it in spite of its evil character. What comes out is the magnitude of God’s love, not a partly positive view of the world.8
While this Gospel was without question “countercultural,” even “sectarian,” in its own time, not all would agree that it is any more so than the other three Gospels, or any Christian community in the first century.9 Yet in our day and age it is, as Gundry recognizes, both countercultural and sectarian.10 It cuts against the grain of both liberal and conservative versions of Christianity. Against those who value “inclusion” above all else, and watch their churches grow smaller even as they become more “inclusive,” it offers a rather “exclusivist” vision of a community of true believers, “born from above” and at odds with the world. And even though one of its legacies is the expression “born-again Christian”—a phrase that has become in some quarters a code word for a certain kind of political activist—it offers little encouragement to such activism. In sharp contrast to Jesus and his disciples in this Gospel, most “born-again Christians” (though not all) are very much at home in the world. Though aware of some of its shortcomings, they value it enough to want to change it in ways that would never have occurred to the writer of this Gospel. The point is not that they are wrong to do this; the point is that their activism has little to do with being “born from above” in the Johannine sense. Most of them express—quite sincerely—a deep appreciation, even love, for John’s Gospel, yet in too many cases it is fair to say that their appreciation exceeds their understanding.
In light of all this, the task of writing a commentary is a very specific one. The commentator’s job is not to “sell” or market the Gospel of John—that is, persuade people to like it. Many Christian believers are already quick to identify it as their favorite Gospel, and those who are not committed believers will not necessarily like it better the more they understand it. Quite the contrary in some cases. It is not a matter of liking or disliking. Believers and unbelievers alike need to be confronted with John’s Gospel in all its clarity, so that they can make up their minds about the stark alternatives it presents—light or darkness, truth or falsehood, life or death—and its extraordinary claims on behalf of Jesus of Nazareth. Quite simply, Is it true? The short answer, the Gospel of John’s own answer, is “Yes, it is true!” At the end of it we read, “This is the disciple who testifies about these things and who wrote these things, and we know that his testimony is true” (21:24). The claim echoes Jesus’ own claims within the narrative: “There is another who testifies about me, and I know that the testimony he testifies about me is true” (5:32), “Even if I testify about myself, my testimony is true” (8:14), and “I was born for this, and for this I have come into the world, that I might testify to the truth” (18:37). The Gospel writer—and those who vouch for him—is no less confident than Jesus himself of the “truth” to which he testifies. But who is he, and what reason is there to accept his truth claim?
II. The Authorship of the Gospel
It is commonly assumed by biblical scholars, though not by most readers of the Bible, that all four Gospels are anonymous—even while continuing to call them “Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John”! “John” in fact is often viewed as somehow more anonymous than the other three, by those who prefer to speak of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and “the Fourth Gospel.” But are any of them in fact anonymous? Yes and no. Yes, in the sense that none of their authors reveal their names anywhere in the written text, as Paul does so conspicuously at the beginning of each of his letters, or like Peter, James, and Jude in their letters, or John in the book of Revelation. No, in the sense that the author of “Luke” speaks of himself in the first person as if known to his readers, and even names the person to whom he is writing (Lk 1:3), while the author of “John” is identified at the end of the Gospel, not by name but as “the disciple whom Jesus loved” (see 21:20–24). And no, in that every known Gospel manuscript has a heading or superscription: “According to Matthew,” “According to Mark,” “According to Luke,” and “According to John” respectively.11 While it is generally acknowledged that these headings were not part of the Gospels as they came from the pen of their authors, they are without question part of the Gospels in their “published” form as a fourfold collection, probably as early as the middle of the second century. The presumption was that there was one “gospel,” or good news of Jesus Christ, preserved in four versions “according to” (kata) the testimonies of four named individuals. For this reason it was assumed (almost unanimously) in the ancient church that “the disciple whom Jesus loved,” who was said to have written the Gospel we are discussing, was named “John.”
A. “John” in Ancient Traditions
The cumulative testimony of the church fathers to “John” and his Gospel is impressive. Theophilus of Antioch in the late second century, in agreement with the superscription to the Gospel, attributes at least its opening lines to “John,” whom he names as one of the “spirit-bearing men” whose authority ranks with that of “the holy writings.”12 He does not, however, further identify “John” either as “son of Zebedee,” or “apostle,” or “disciple of the Lord.” His testimony could have been simply taken from the superscription, “According to John.”
Irenaeus, near the end of the century, after recounting the traditions about the other three Gospels, concluded, “Afterwards, John, the disciple of the Lord, who also leaned upon His breast, did himself publish a Gospel during his residence at Ephesus in Asia.”13 The mention of “Ephesus in Asia” is consistent with the book of Revelation, where someone named “John” writes to seven churches in Asia which he obviously knows well, beginning with an oracle directed to the church at Ephesus (see Rev 1:4; 2:1). Irenaeus’s phrase, “the disciple of the Lord,” is further explained by the words “who also leaned upon His breast,” echoing the account in the Gospel itself in which “the disciple whom Jesus loved” was first introduced (see 13:23). Irenaeus is telling us that this “disciple of the Lord” was in fact named “John.” It is natural to assume that he was referring to John the son of Zebedee, the only one of the twelve apostles named John (see Mt 10:2//Mk 3:17//Lk 6:14). This John, with his brother James, was one of the first four disciples to be called, according to Matthew, Mark, and Luke (see Mt 4:21//Mk 1:19//Lk 5:10), along with two other brothers, Peter and Andrew. Almost always, James and John (in contrast to Peter and Andrew) are seen together in the Gospel tradition. In the Gospel of John itself they are mentioned only once, and not by name but simply as “the sons of Zebedee” (21:2). In Mark, Jesus even gives the two of them one name in common, “Boanerges,” interpreted as “sons of thunder” (Mk 3:17). They even speak in unison, as when they ask permission to send fire from heaven on a Samaritan village (Lk 9:54), or ask to sit one on Jesus’ right and one on his left in his glory (Mk 10:37). They are both present (never only one!) with Peter (and, sometimes, Andrew) at the raising of Jairus’s daughter (Mk 5:37//Lk 8:51), at the transfiguration (Mt 17:1//Mk 9:2//Lk 9:28), on the Mount of Olives (Mk 13:3), and in the garden of Gethsemane (Mt 26:37//Mk 14:33). Only once in the entire Gospel tradition does John son of Zebedee speak or act alone—when he tells Jesus, “Master, we saw someone driving out demons in your name, and we prevented him because he was not following with us” (Lk 9:49; see also Mk 9:38), and is told, “Do not prevent [him], for whoever is not against us is for us” (Lk 9:50; see also Mk 9:40). Even here, the verb “we saw” (eidomen) seems to include his brother James as well. In the book of Acts we do see him without his brother, but still not by himself but with Peter, who speaks for both of them (see Acts 3:4–6, 12–26; 4:8–12, 19–20; 8:20–23; compare Lk 22:8).
While Irenaeus does not designate “John” either as “son of Zebedee” or “apostle,” it seems clear that this is who he means by “John, the disciple of the Lord.” Elsewhere he is very explicit about this person. Writing to a Roman presbyter named Florinus to warn him against Valentinian Gnosticism, he recalls how
while I was still a boy I knew you in lower Asia in Polycarp’s house when you were a man of rank in the royal hall and endeavouring to stand well with him. I remember the events of those days more clearly than those which happened recently … so that I can speak even of the place in which the blessed Polycarp sat and disputed, how he came and went out, the character of his life, the appearance of his body, the discourses which he made to the people, how he reported his intercourse with John and with the others who had seen the Lord, how he remembered their words, and what were the things concerning the Lord which he had heard from them, and about their miracle, and about their teaching, and how Polycarp had received them from the eyewitnesses of the word of life, and reported all things in agreement with the Scriptures.14
Irenaeus also passes on a tradition from this same Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna in the early second century, that “John, the disciple of the Lord, going to bathe at Ephesus, and perceiving Cerinthus within, rushed out of the bath-house without bathing, exclaiming, ‘Let us fly, lest even the bath-house fall down, because Cerinthus, the enemy of the truth, is within,” adding that “the Church in Ephesus, founded by Paul, and having John remaining among them permanently until the time of Trajan, is a true witness of the tradition of the apostles.”15 Here, by implication at least, is a testimony that “John,” no less than “Paul,” is indeed an apostle. Later, Irenaeus again cites “John, the disciple of the Lord,” in refutation of Cerinthus and other heretics by attributing to him the opening words of the Gospel of John as we know it (“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”).16
Surprisingly, Irenaeus also quotes Ptolemy, one of the Valentinian Gnostic writers against whom his Against Heresies was directed, as attributing to this same “John, the disciple of the Lord,” the opening words of the Gospel as we know it (Jn 1:1–5, 10–11, 14).17 Whatever their differences in interpretation, Irenaeus and his opponents seem to have valued equally the testimony of “John, the disciple of the Lord.” Ptolemy is also quoted by a later church father as attributing to “the apostle” the statement, “All things came into being through him, and apart from him not one thing that has come into being was made” (Jn 1:3),18 suggesting that he uses “apostle” and “disciple of the Lord” interchangeably. Thus “John” is identified as “the disciple of the Lord” both by Ptolemy and his enemy Irenaeus, and as “the apostle,” explicitly by Ptolemy and implicitly at least by Irenaeus. If the designation “apostle” is strictly limited to Paul and to the Twelve so identified in the synoptic Gospels, then “John” can only be the son of Zebedee and brother of James.
This conclusion has been challenged occasionally on the basis of the testimony of Polycrates, bishop of Ephesus at the end of the second century. Writing to Victor, bishop of Rome, in defense of a fixed date for Easter, Polycrates cited the “great luminaries” buried in Ephesus who held this view, among them “John, who lay on the Lord’s breast, who was a priest wearing the breastplate, and a martyr, and teacher. He sleeps at Ephesus.”19 The identification of “John” with “the disciple whom Jesus loved” mentioned in the Gospel is unmistakable (see Jn 13:25), yet this “John” is not explicitly called either “apostle” or “disciple of the Lord,” only “martyr” and “teacher,” and, most remarkably, “a priest wearing the breastplate.” Only the Jewish high priest wore “the breastplate,” or “mitre,”20 and it is incredible to think of John the son of Zebedee, or for that matter any disciple of Jesus, as having ever served as the Jewish high priest. Possibly Polycrates jumped to a rash conclusion from a notice in the Gospel that one of Jesus’ disciples (according to some interpretations “the disciple whom Jesus loved”) was “known to the Chief Priest” (Jn 18:15, 17). Or possibly he has confused “John” the Christian “martyr and teacher” with “John” the Jewish priest mentioned alongside “Annas the high priest” and “Caiaphas … and Alexander, and all who were of the high-priestly family” (Acts 4:6) as interrogators of Peter and John the son of Zebedee after they had healed a lame beggar at the gate of the temple. According to Richard Bauckham, Polycrates could not have confused those two Johns because they are both part of the same narrative, and Polycrates must have therefore had in mind another “John” who had lived in Ephesus and was buried there.21 But the argument is tenuous, for once such a capacity for confusion is admitted it is hard to set limits to it. Polycrates in almost the same breath confuses Philip the apostle with Philip, one of the seven appointed to serve tables in the apostles’ place (Acts 6:5). His gift for muddying the waters seems to know no bounds.
More often, the notion that “John” must necessarily be the son of Zebedee is challenged on the basis of the even earlier testimony of Papias, bishop of Hierapolis in Asia Minor, a contemporary of both Polycarp and Ptolemy. While Papias says nothing about the authorship of the Gospel that we call the Gospel of John,22 he does (like Ptolemy and Irenaeus) clearly refer to “John” as a “disciple of the Lord.” His testimony (preserved for us by Eusebius in the fourth century) has been the subject of considerable debate:
And I shall not hesitate to append to the interpretations all that I ever learnt well from the presbyters and remember well, for of their truth I am confident. For unlike most I did not rejoice in them who say much, but in them who teach the truth, nor in them who recount the commandments of others, but in them who repeated those given to the faith by the Lord and derived from the truth itself; but if ever anyone came who had followed the presbyters,23 I inquired into the words of the presbyters, what Andrew or Peter or Philip or Thomas or James or John or Matthew, or any other of the Lord’s disciples,24 had said, and what Aristion and the presbyter John,25 the Lord’s disciples,26 were saying. For I did not suppose that information from books would help me so much as the word of a living and surviving voice.27
Eusebius himself finds that Papias
twice counts the name of John, and reckons the first John with Peter and James and Matthew and the other Apostles, clearly meaning the evangelist, but by changing his statement places the second with the others outside the number of the Apostles, putting Aristion before him and clearly calling him a presbyter. This confirms the truth of the story of those who have said that there were two of the same name in Asia, and that there are two tombs at Ephesus both still called John’s. This calls for attention: for it is probable that the second (unless anyone prefer the former) saw the revelation which passes under the name of John. The Papias whom we are now treating confesses that he had received the words of the Apostles from their followers, but says that he had actually heard Aristion and the presbyter John. He often quotes them by name and gives their traditions in his writings.28
Has Eusebius read Papias correctly? The debate, which continues to the present day, hinges on the identification of Papias’s “presbyters,” whose “words” he values so highly. Are they simply his way of referring to the twelve apostles, seven of whom (Andrew, Peter, Philip, Thomas, James, John, and Matthew) he promptly names? Or are they the next generation of church leaders, particularly in Asia, who had followed the apostles and handed down their teaching? If it is the former, then Papias is twice removed from the seven apostles whom he names, for he looks to those who had “followed”29 them. If it is the latter, he is three times removed from the apostles, for he looks to those who had “followed” the presbyters, so as to learn secondhand what they were saying about those whom they in turn had followed, the original disciples of Jesus.
Eusebius contradicts himself. On the one hand he presupposes the first alternative, that “the presbyters” are in fact “the apostles.” This is clear in his paraphrase of what he has just quoted Papias as saying, for in the quotation Papias says, “If ever anyone came who had followed the presbyters, I inquired into the words of the presbyters,” and in Eusebius’s paraphrase he claims that Papias “confesses that he had received the words of the Apostles from their followers” (literally “from those who had followed them”).30 Nothing could be clearer than that Eusebius identifies Papias’s “presbyters” with the “apostles” Andrew, Peter, Philip, Thomas, James, John, and Matthew. Yet this identification pulls the rug from under his insistence that two Johns are in play. Both Johns in the Papias citation are called “presbyters” (that is, apostles, according to Eusebius), and both are counted among “the Lord’s disciples.” All that distinguishes them is the tense of a verb. Papias inquired about what the one had “said”31 and what the other (along with Aristion, who is not called “presbyter”) was “saying.”32 Nothing in the citation requires that two individuals are in view. Rather, Papias seems to be saying that one of the seven “presbyters” who used to speak in the past (John) still speaks, together with Aristion, who was a “disciple of the Lord” but not one of the twelve.33
Nor do “two tombs at Ephesus both still called John’s,” necessarily point to two Johns. There are to this day two tombs in Jerusalem, each revered as the tomb of Jesus, but no one has proposed a second Jesus. Eusebius has a reason of his own (which he does not try to hide) for wanting to distinguish John the Apostle from John the Presbyter—it enables him to attribute “the revelation which passes under the name of John” to someone other than an apostle. He does not try to make the case here (candidly acknowledging that some “prefer the former,” that is, the apostle as author of the Revelation), but elsewhere he is quite explicit:
that this book is by one John, I will not gainsay; for I fully allow that it is the work of some holy and inspired person. But I should not readily agree that he was the apostle, the son of Zebedee, the brother of James, whose are the Gospel of John and the Catholic Epistle.34
Eusebius makes his case, then, in order to assign a different author to the book of Revelation, not the Gospel of John. While he acknowledges that the Revelation is “the work of some holy and inspired person” (evidently the elusive “presbyter John”), it is important to him (because of its differences from the Gospel) that it not be the work of the apostle. It is necessary to cherry-pick his testimony in order to use it in support of a different author for the Gospel. Yet while this “presbyter” distinct from the apostle remains something of a phantom in real history,35 he has taken on a life of his own in modern “Johannine” scholarship. In D. A. Carson’s words, “having an extra ‘John’ around is far too convenient to pass up.”36 It allows us to take seriously the unanimous tradition of the church that the author of the Gospel was “John,” while avoiding the difficulties now frequently associated with the traditional ascription to John the son of Zebedee.
What are the difficulties? How well does John the son of Zebedee fit the picture that emerges from the Gospel itself of the person it claims as its author, “the disciple whom Jesus loved”? The case in favor of the identification is simple and appealing: “the disciple whom Jesus loved” must have been one of the Twelve whom Jesus had chosen (6:70) because he was present at the last supper (13:23). Of the Twelve, he was the one sitting closest to Jesus, so close that he “leaned on Jesus’ breast” (13:25), making it very likely that he was one of the “inner circle” of three (or sometimes four) apostles whom Jesus takes aside (in the other three Gospels) to share in certain crucial moments in his ministry such as the raising of Jairus’s daughter, the transfiguration, the last discourse on the Mount of Olives, and the prayer in Gethsemane. These were Peter, the brothers James and John, and sometimes Peter’s brother, Andrew—the first four disciples called, according to Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Of these four, the beloved disciple cannot be Peter, for the Gospel narrative clearly distinguishes him from Peter (13:23–25; 20:2–10; 21:7, 20–23). He can hardly be Andrew, for Andrew is frequently named in the Gospel, and there is no conceivable reason why the disciple would sometimes be named and sometimes not. That leaves the twosome, James and John, the sons of Zebedee. They are a particularly attractive pair because their bold request to sit immediately on Jesus’ right and left in his coming glory (Mk 10:37) could imply that those were already their customary seats when Jesus and the disciples ate together.37 But James is eliminated because of his early martyrdom at the hands of Herod Agrippa I (see Acts 12:2), leaving him scant time to write a Gospel, much less become the subject of a rumor that he would live until Jesus returned (see Jn 21:23)! So we are left with half of the twosome, John the son of Zebedee.38 It is worth noting as well that John is seen in the book of Acts only in association with Peter (Acts 1:13; 3:1–4:22; 8:14–25), even as four of the five appearances of “the disciple whom Jesus loved” in John’s Gospel are with Peter (19:26–27 being the only exception).
So again, what are the difficulties? The flaws in the classic argument center on its assumption that the twelve apostles (that is, the twelve listed in the synoptic Gospels) were present at the last supper, and were the only ones present. But “the Twelve” are never listed in this Gospel, nor are they called “apostles.” Only once do they come into the narrative (quite abruptly), when Jesus, after many of his disciples deserted, “said to the Twelve, ‘Do you want to go away too?’ ” (6:67), prompting Peter’s confession, and Jesus’ reply, “Did I not choose you as the Twelve? And one of you is ‘the devil’ ” (6:70). In contrast to the other three Gospels (Lk 6:13 in particular), the earlier moment of “choosing” is seen only in retrospect. Obviously Peter is one of “the Twelve,” for it is to him that Jesus is speaking, but only “the devil” Judas Iscariot (6:71) and Thomas (20:24) are explicitly identified as being “one of the Twelve.” Who were the other nine? Disciples named in the Gospel are Andrew, Philip, Nathanael (see 1:40–45), another Judas, “not Iscariot” (14:22), and “the sons of Zebedee” (21:2). The latter are presumably James and John, as in the other Gospels, bringing the total to nine. Of these, all but Nathanael are on at least one of the synoptic lists of twelve apostles—assuming that the other Judas can be identified with Luke’s “Judas of James” (Lk 6:16; Acts 1:13). Lazarus, Martha, and Mary of Bethany are also named, as well as Mary Magdalene, but they are not called disciples, and they seem not to have traveled with Jesus. Other disciples besides “the disciple whom Jesus loved” are mentioned but not named (see 1:40; 18:15–16; 21:2). Consequently there is no way to determine which disciples (beyond Peter, Thomas, and Judas Iscariot) actually belonged to “the Twelve,” nor is it ever explicitly stated that the Twelve, and only the Twelve, were present at the last meal and the farewell discourses. Obviously, some of them were present (Peter, Thomas, and Judas Iscariot all being mentioned by name in chapters 13 and 14), but what of the others who are mentioned, Philip, the other Judas, and “the disciple whom Jesus loved”? Did they belong to “the Twelve” so far as this Gospel is concerned?
Perhaps the strongest argument in favor of the Twelve being present at the last meal is the use of the verb “I chose” in 13:18 (“I know which ones I chose”), 15:16 (“You did not choose me, but I chose you”) and 15:19 (“I chose you out of the world”), echoing 6:70, “Did I not choose you as the Twelve?” (italics added). While all of Jesus’ disciples are “elect” in the sense of having been given him and drawn to him by the Father (see 6:37, 39, 44), only the Twelve are selected, or “chosen.” If this is the case, then even though nothing is made of the designation, they are the disciples primarily in view in the farewell discourses, their calling as “the Twelve” being defined by the words, “I chose you, and appointed you that you might go and bear fruit, and that your fruit might last” (15:16). It is fair to assume that (with the obvious exception of Judas Iscariot), they are also in view in 20:19–31, where the designation of Thomas as “one of the Twelve” (20:24) seems to imply that even though Thomas, as “one of the Twelve,” would have been expected to be present when Jesus first appeared (vv. 19–23), he was not. This is consistent with certain correspondences between what was promised to the disciples in chapters 14–16 and what happens in these verses after Jesus’ resurrection.
To that extent the traditional argument for John the son of Zebedee is sustainable. But does the Gospel of John’s “Twelve” match the twelve listed in the other three Gospels and Acts—lists which do not entirely agree even with one another?39 We have no guarantee that they do, and in that sense the logic of the traditional argument is less than airtight. As for an “inner circle” consisting of Peter, James, John, and sometimes Andrew, there is no such inner circle in this Gospel. While Peter and “the disciple whom Jesus loved” stand out and are left standing at the end, each of the disciples—Andrew, Philip, Nathanael, Thomas, and Judas-not-Iscariot—has his moment in the sun, or opportunity to ask a question, with “the sons of Zebedee,” two-thirds of the synoptic inner circle, making a belated cameo appearance (21:2). Of all the disciples, they alone say nothing and do nothing. Yet their mere presence at the fishing scene in chapter 21 makes the identification of “the disciple whom Jesus loved” as one of them problematic.40
It has become almost axiomatic in attempting to identify the beloved disciple that he is not likely to have been sometimes named and sometimes anonymous. While some have ignored that principle, notably those few who identify him as Lazarus, or Thomas, it has for the most part been assumed that the beloved disciple’s anonymity is maintained consistently throughout. Defenders of the traditional view that he is John of Zebedee have been content to make an exception on the ground that “the sons of Zebedee” are not actually named, but this is surely a technicality. In calling them “the sons of Zebedee,” the writer has in effect named them, for there is little doubt that their names would have been known to most of the Gospel’s readers.41 And like the synoptic writers, he views them as a pair, not as individuals. This undercuts the notion that he is himself one of them. In fact, as we will see in the commentary, if the whole scene is understood to be viewed solely through the eyes of “the disciple whom Jesus loved,” then he is distinguishing himself from all seven of the disciples said to be gathered for fishing at the lake of Tiberias, not only from the five who are named (Peter, Thomas, Nathanael, and the sons of Zebedee) but from the two who are unnamed, making eight in all. While this is by no means certain, it is consistent with two other scenes in the Gospel. In one, Jesus says to Judas, “What you are doing, do quickly!” and the disciple (as author) adds that “none of those reclining found out for what reason he said this to him” (13:28), obviously excluding himself, for he did know the reason. In the other, he enumerates four individuals (all women) “standing by the cross of Jesus” (19:25), again excluding himself because he is the one “taking the picture,” as it were. Then suddenly he “comes out of hiding” as we see him through Jesus’ eyes (vv. 26–27), correcting the reader’s impression that only women were present at the crucifixion. In the fishing scene, a case can be made that he similarly excludes himself in listing the (other) disciples who were present, until he again comes out of hiding to exclaim, “It is the Lord!” (21:7). If so, he is clearly not one of “the sons of Zebedee.”
Yet if the author is not John the Apostle (and if John the Presbyter remains a ghost), how did the name come to be attached so persistently to the Gospel, beginning with the superscription, “According to John”? It is a fair question. The Gospel as it comes to us sends distinctly mixed messages, with a clear identification by name (as do the other Gospels) at the beginning and at least the pretense of anonymity at the end. Why would this Gospel (alone among the four) identify its author as “the disciple whom Jesus loved,” yet without providing an actual name? Does it do this in order deliberately to conceal the name, or because its readers were expected to know the name? The effort to correct a rumor “that that disciple would not die” (v. 23) seems to imply the latter, yet why the secrecy about something already well known? If John of Zebedee is the author, why the concealment? John was an acknowledged apostle, and there would have been every reason to claim his apostolic authority. The book of Revelation shows no such hesitation in claiming “John” (quite possibly the son of Zebedee) as its author, naming him as if he needs no introduction (Rev 1:1, 4). In the so-called “Gospel of John,” however, the “John” who needs no introduction is a different John, the one known in the other Gospels as “the Baptist” or “the Baptizer.” In this Gospel, he is the first person mentioned by name (1:6), and he is always simply “John” (never “John the Baptist,” or “Baptizer”)—as if there is no need to distinguish him from anyone else with the same name?42 This is odd if “John” is the author’s name as well.43 To anyone looking at the Gospel for the first time, the juxtaposition of “According to John” as a heading, and “A man came, sent from God. John was his name” (1:6)44 is striking. The impression given is that the two Johns are the same, and that he is either the author or the hero of the story, or both.
It is of course a misleading impression, for the “John” of 1:6–8, 15–18, 19–34 and 3:23–36 is neither the author nor the hero. And yet he is a major (if not the major) “voice” (1:23) in the Gospel’s first three chapters. If the Gospel is viewed as “testimony,” his is the first testimony we hear (see 1:7–8, 15, 19, 34; 3:26), and his pronouncement, “The One coming after me has gotten ahead of me, because he was before me” (1:15), seems to have been what prompted the author to begin as he did, with a reminder of Who it was who came “before” John (1:1–5). While this John is obviously not the author, the actual author is quite willing to blend his own voice with John’s in testifying to the “glory” and the “grace and truth” of the Word made flesh (see 1:14, 16–17), and implicitly to make John’s words his own (see 3:27–36) in exactly the same way that he makes the words of Jesus his own (see 3:13–21). As we will see, it is John, not Jesus, who speaks with the emphatic “I” in the opening chapter (for example, “I am not the Christ,” 1:20; “I am a voice of one crying in the desert,” 1:23; “I baptize in water,” 1:26; “This is he of whom I said,” 1:30; “And I did not know him,” 1:31, 33; “And I have seen, and have testified,” 1:34), and again when he reappears in chapter 3 (“I said I am not the Christ,” 3:28; “So this, my joy, is fulfilled. He must grow, but I must diminish”). By contrast, Jesus in these three chapters (even though he will “grow” as John “diminishes,” 3:29–30), says surprisingly little in the first person, and nothing at all with the emphatic “I” until at last he reveals himself to the Samaritan woman at the well (4:26).45 It is at least possible that this Gospel is “According to John” not because someone named John is the actual author but because of the early mention of “John” in 1:6 and the prominence of John’s testimony in the Gospel’s first three chapters.
What then of the Gospel itself, aside from its superscription and the traditions of the fathers? What does it say about “the disciple who testifies about these things and who wrote these things,” and whose “testimony is true” (21:24)? In this commentary I have taken a “minimalist” approach, focusing on passages where “the disciple whom Jesus loved” is explicitly called that (13:23–25; 19:26–27; 20:2–10; 21:7, 20–24), and excluding the three passages where some have found him lurking but where he is not so designated (1:40; 18:15–16; 19:35). As a result, certain conclusions that have become almost conventional wisdom to some are not drawn. It would, for example, be convenient to argue that this disciple was first of all a disciple of John (1:40), helping to explain why John’s name came to be attached to the Gospel. But there is no evidence for this. His anonymity does not mean that he can be identified with any or all unnamed disciples. It is at least as likely that the unnamed disciple with Andrew who heard John say, “Look, the Lamb of God!” was Philip (see 1:43) as that it was “the disciple whom Jesus loved.” Nor can he necessarily be identified with the unnamed disciple accompanying Peter after Jesus’ arrest who was “known to the Chief Priest” (18:15), and therefore (so the argument goes) more than likely a Judean, and probably not one of the Twelve. That hypothesis, in fact, stands somewhat in tension with the preceding one, for all the named disciples who heard John east of the Jordan (Andrew, Peter, and Philip, not to mention Nathanael) were Galileans, and if the beloved disciple were one of them, he too would likely have been a Galilean.
The most persistent identification, perhaps, is with the anonymous eyewitness to Jesus’ crucifixion who “has seen” and “testified,” and whose “testimony is true, and that one knows that he tells the truth, so that you too might believe” (19:35). If “the disciple whom Jesus loved” is the witness who “testifies about these things” (21:24), what could be more appealing than an explicit claim that he was an eyewitness to Jesus’ crucifixion, and to the blood and water from Jesus’ side? Yet if there is such a claim, it is anything but explicit. While “the disciple whom Jesus loved” was indeed present, along with four women, as witness to the crucifixion (19:26–27), nothing in the text links him to the anonymous figure whose eyewitness testimony is noted and confirmed several verses later. He is in the text for a different reason—to accept Jesus’ mother as his mother and care for her; if taken literally, the notice that “from that hour the disciple took her to his own home” (v. 27) removes him from the scene well before the spear is thrust into Jesus’ side. While he is obviously an eyewitness to much that transpires in the Gospel, in that certain scenes are viewed through his eyes and narrated from his standpoint, no great emphasis is placed on his role as eyewitness. That is left rather to John (that is, the Baptizer, 1:34) and to the anonymous witness at the cross (19:35). Only once does the disciple call attention to what he “saw” (20:8), and even there it is sandwiched between what Peter had just seen in the tomb of Jesus and what Mary Magdalene would see, to the point that we are left wondering which vision was actually his, the scattered graveclothes (vv. 6–7), or the two angels in white (v. 12).
In short, “the disciple whom Jesus loved,” is a very elusive figure in the Gospel, and not just because he is unnamed. He is first introduced—or introduces himself—as “one of his disciples” (13:23), but in the narratives that follow he is characteristically in, but not of, the apostolic company commonly designated the Twelve. Peter asks him to find out from Jesus which of them will hand Jesus over to the authorities, and he does so (13:25–26), only to leave Peter and the others in the dark as to who it is (vv. 28–29). When Jesus is crucified, he is not with the other male disciples (wherever they might be!), but with four female disciples, “standing by the cross of Jesus” (19:25). When Jesus gives his mother and the disciple into each other’s care (19:26–27), the disciple holds his peace and obeys. When he looks into the tomb of Jesus and “believes” (20:8), he does not pause to share his insight with Mary Magdalene, who is left crying outside the tomb (v. 11); if he and Peter compare notes on the way home (v. 10), we hear nothing of it. If he is present on either of the two occasions when Jesus appeared to the disciples behind locked doors (20:19–23 and 26–29), we hear nothing of that either. Only at the final fishing scene near the lake of Tiberias does he make an appearance and break his silence, to tell Peter, “It is the Lord!” (21:7). Those are his only words to a fellow disciple anywhere in the Gospel, and his only words to anyone after the question at the table, “Lord, who is it?” (13:25).46 When at the end Peter earns a rebuke for his curiosity about the disciple’s fate (21:21), the disciple is again characteristically silent (vv. 22–23)—even as he is solemnly identified as the one who “testifies” (v. 24)!
Some commentators attach great significance to the disciple’s association with Peter in four of his five appearances in the Gospel, usually suggesting a rivalry of some kind between the two, and usually to Peter’s disadvantage. He and Peter are thought to represent competing segments of the Christian community (Jew and Gentile, institutional and charismatic, or whatever), or perhaps different spheres of responsibility within the Christian movement (such as pastoral and evangelistic, or administrative and prophetic). There is little evidence of such rivalry in the text, except perhaps at the very end (21:20–23). Long before “the disciple whom Jesus loved” even comes into the story, it is Peter who confesses, “Lord, to whom shall we turn? You have words of life eternal, and we believe and we know that you are the Holy One of God” (6:68–69). And Peter’s request to the disciple at the table is a perfectly natural one, given the seating arrangement and the perplexity of all the disciples (see 13:22), not a sign of Peter’s ignorance or inferiority. If anyone deserves blame, it is the disciple himself for not fully carrying out Peter’s request. Nor does the disciple deserve any particular merit for winning the footrace to the tomb of Jesus (20:4). When we are told that he “saw and believed” (20:8), we are hardly allowed to infer (despite Lk 24:12) that Peter saw and did not believe. Later, at the lake of Tiberias when he recognizes that “It is the Lord!” (21:7), his words are probably said to be addressed to Peter simply because Peter is the first to act on this information. Obviously the other disciples hear him as well (see v. 12). Only the gentle rebuke to Peter at the end (21:22) puts Peter at any kind of disadvantage, and its purpose is only to remind Peter (and, more importantly, the reader) that different disciples have different callings.
Where, then, are we left? With an unnamed “disciple whom Jesus loved” who may or may not be one of the Twelve, but is not (in order of appearance) Andrew, Peter, Philip, Nathanael, Judas Iscariot, Thomas, Lazarus, Mary, Martha, Judas-not-Iscariot, Mary Magdalene, or a son of Zebedee. That he is male is evident from Jesus’ words to his mother, “Look, your son!” (19:26), but beyond that his anonymity remains intact. While his identity is clearly known to those who vouch that “his testimony is true” (21:24), and probably to the Gospel’s original readers, the modern reader can only guess as to who he was.
Two clues are worth exploring, both centering on what happened after the events recorded in the Gospel. The first is the rumor that the disciple would not die before the Lord’s return (21:23). This does not help very much because the saying of Jesus that might have given rise to such a rumor mentioned “some” (tines) who “would not taste death” before the coming of the kingdom of God, not just one (see Mt 16:28//Mk 9:1//Lk 9:27). Some have proposed that the rumor would have had particular relevance to Lazarus, who had already died once and was expected not to die again, but if we stay with the principle that the disciple would not have been sometimes named and sometimes anonymous, Lazarus is ruled out.47 The most we can infer is that the disciple lived at least into the last decade or so of the first century, and it is not unlikely that this was true of quite a number of Jesus’ followers. Papias, after all, attests the “living and surviving voice” of at least two (Aristion and John) well into the second century.48 The rumor that he would not die, therefore, only eliminates disciples known to have died earlier, and these—James of Zebedee and probably Peter—are eliminated already on other grounds.
The other possible clue, the one instance in which Peter is not in the picture, is more promising. It is that moment at the cross when Jesus says to his mother, “Look, your son!” and to the disciple, “Look, your mother!” (19:26–27). Taken literally, the pronouncement implies that “the disciple whom Jesus loved” is in fact one of Mary’s own sons and brother of Jesus, now appointed to care for his mother after Jesus’ death. Certainly the expression, “the disciple whom Jesus loved” is consistent with the disciple’s being Jesus’ own brother. If he is not, Jesus’ living brothers are, at the very least, being conspicuously overlooked. Moreover, among the women present near the cross in Mark (15:40) and in Matthew (27:61), the woman designated as “Mary the mother of James and Joses [or Joseph]” could, as some have suggested, actually have been the Mary mother of Jesus, given that two of Jesus’ brothers (in addition to “Simon” and “Judas”) were named “James” and “Joses” (or “Joseph”; see Mk 6:3 and Mt 13:55, respectively). Quite possibly Mark has deliberately avoided referring to Mary as Jesus’ mother (in keeping with Mk 3:31–35), and Matthew has followed in his footsteps. In Mark, Jesus is called “the son of Mary” and “brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon” not by Mark himself, but by the people of Jesus’ hometown—unreliable narrative voices at best (see Mk 6:3, and compare Mt 13:55). The reader already knows who Jesus’ true “brother” and “sister” and “mother” are—those who “do the will of God” (Mk 3:35). Luke appears to have negotiated this tricky terrain by explicitly characterizing Jesus’ mother and brothers themselves as “those who hear and do the word of God” (Lk 8:21)—that is, as “model disciples” and “prime examples of those who listen to the word of God ‘with a noble and generous mind’ ” (see Lk 8:15).49 In John’s Gospel, Jesus himself takes the initiative to assign his mother to someone else—as it happens, to a kind of “model disciple” identified only as “the disciple whom he loved.” If the disciple is one of Jesus’ own brothers, this initiative can be viewed as yet another way of negotiating the same terrain. What is crucial for Jesus’ mother and brothers is not their blood relationship to Jesus, but rather (as with any disciple) being objects of his love (see 13:1) who “hear and do the word of God.” As we were told from the start, the birth that matters is “not of blood lines, nor of fleshly desire, nor a husband’s desire, but of God” (1:13).
The obvious barrier to any identification of “the disciple whom Jesus loved” with a brother of Jesus is the flat statement that “his brothers did not believe in him” (7:5). Yet at least two of his brothers, James (Gal 1:19; Jas 1:1) and Jude (Jude 1), are known to have eventually come to faith, and there is no evidence that any of them did not. Within fifty days of Jesus’ resurrection his mother is seen in the company of “his brothers,” along with the eleven disciples (named one by one) and the women who had traveled with them (see Acts 1:13–14). We are not told anywhere in the New Testament the circumstances by which any of them came to believe in him—except that he “appeared to James” after his resurrection (1 Cor 15:7).50 There is, moreover, a certain reticence about identifying Jesus’ brothers among those who believed. While Paul refers once to James as “the brother of the Lord” (Gal 1:19),51 James himself (or someone writing in his name) conspicuously does not, calling himself instead “servant of God and the Lord Jesus Christ” (Jas 1:1). Jude too identifies himself as “servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James” (Jude 1).
Quite possibly a similar reticence underlies the phrase “the disciple whom Jesus loved” in the Gospel of John. If one of Jesus’ brothers did in fact become a disciple during the course of his ministry, this phrase might have served to distinguish him from his fellow disciples, all of whom Jesus loved (see 13:1, 34), but not as brothers—at least not to begin with. In the course of the narrative, they too (20:17), and finally all believers (21:23), come to be known as Jesus’ “brothers,” children of the same Father (see 20:17, “my Father and your Father”). Still, on this theory, only one is a child of the same mother, and he leaves his signature to that effect in recording Jesus’ words, “Look, your son!” (19:26), and “Look, your mother!” (19:27). Early on in the Gospel, Jesus is seen briefly in Capernaum after his first miracle with “his mother and brothers and his disciples,” as if they are all one family (2:12), and even in chapter 7, where his brothers are said not to have believed in him, they are presumably still in Capernaum (see 6:59), perhaps still in the company of, or at least in touch with, his disciples.52 This should caution us that the contrast between Jesus’ brothers and his disciples is not to be overdrawn, for even the disciples are not always characterized as “believers.” Sometimes they are (16:27, 17:8), but just as often they are urged to “believe” (14:1), or told of Jesus’ intent that later they “might believe” (13:19; 14:29), or said to believe “now” (16:31), with the implication that it might not last. One of them is even urged to be “no longer faithless but faithful” (20:27). As for “the disciple whom Jesus loved,” he is explicitly said to “believe” only once, when he looks into Jesus’ tomb after the resurrection (20:8). While this is surely not his first moment of belief, it does signal that what defined him from the start was not that he “believed,” but that he was “loved.”
The identification of the disciple as a brother of Jesus is, like all other theories of his identity, pure speculation. It is not even a real identification, for it stops short of providing an actual name. Which brother of Jesus is meant? James has left too many tracks in early Christian traditions, none of them linked particularly to this Gospel, to be a likely candidate, and the brief letter attributed to Jude is strikingly different from the Gospel of John.53 Moreover, if “Jude” or “Judas” is the beloved disciple, then who is “Judas, not the Iscariot,” mentioned in 14:22? If he is the same person, why is he sometimes named and sometimes not? And if he is a different “Judas” or “Jude,” why does he go to such pains to distinguish this disciple from Judas Iscariot, but not from himself? We are left with a brother named either “Joses” (in Mark) or “Joseph” (in Matthew),54 and another named “Simon” (see Mk 6:3; Mt 13:55). Because nothing is known of either of them except that they were Jesus’ brothers, it is possible to lay at their doorstep almost any theory one wishes. “Joses” or “Joseph” is a marginally better candidate, perhaps, because of the purported mention of him (along with James) as Mary’s son in connection with her presence at the crucifixion (see Mk 15:40, 47; Mt 27:56). But nothing approaching certainty is possible. The major difficulty is moving from chapter 7, with its explicit statement that Jesus’ brothers “did not believe in him” (7:5), to chapter 13, where one of his brothers (according to this theory) is reclining at his side at the last meal.55 How was this brother transformed from someone whom “the world cannot hate” (7:7) into someone whom “the world hates” (15:18–19)? The “brothers” (7:3) are obviously distinguished from “the Twelve” (6:70), and if those present at the last meal are the Twelve, what is one of the brothers doing there even if he did become a believer? Yet “the disciple whom Jesus loved” has a place at the table, and a place of honor at that.
One solution to which some have resorted in order to make room for someone beyond the Twelve at the table is the notion that “the disciple whom Jesus loved” was the host at the meal (hence the place of honor), the “certain one”56 in the city to whom Jesus’ disciples were instructed to say, “The Teacher says, ‘My time is near; I am doing the Passover at your place57 with my disciples’ ” (Mt 26:18). “The Teacher” implies that this person too was a disciple, who recognized “the Teacher’s” authority;58 yet like “the disciple whom Jesus loved,” he conspicuously goes unnamed.59 Could he be that disciple? If so, could he also be a brother of Jesus? The possibilities multiply, and with them the uncertainties, confirming that this identification, like all the others, is speculative. At the end of the day “the disciple whom Jesus loved” remains anonymous. After nineteen hundred years all we know of him is that Jesus loved him and confided in him at least once (13:26), that Jesus’ mother became—or was—his mother (19:27), that he “believed” (at least once, 20:8), that he recognized Jesus when no one else did (21:7), and that he lived long enough to spawn a rumor that he would go on living until Jesus returned (21:23). The church for nineteen centuries has identified him with the Apostle John, son of Zebedee, and that long tradition deserves the utmost respect. Yet at that point, ecclesiastical tradition and critical traditions have largely parted company, and among the latter there is nothing approaching consensus as to his identity or even his authorship of the Gospel. His claim to authorship is unmistakable, yet his anonymity (whatever the original readers of the Gospel might have known) is both conspicuous and deliberate. In a way it need not surprise us, for several key characters in the story he tells—the Samaritan woman, the royal official at Cana, the sick man at the pool, the man born blind, even Jesus’ mother—are just as nameless. Unlike Jesus’ mother, who, according to Luke, “treasured these things and pondered them in her heart” (Lk 2:19; also 2:51),60 he tells his story freely, yet like her (and evidently with her) he retains his privacy, a privacy that even the most inquisitive commentator will do well to respect.
The anonymity of this Gospel’s author implies that in the eyes of the “we” who published it, its truth did not depend merely on the identity of the person who “testified” and who “wrote” it (21:24). Name dropping was unnecessary. What mattered was not the author’s name or whether he was an “apostle” or one of “the Twelve,” only that he was present at certain points in the narrative and was very close to Jesus, so close that he reclined “at Jesus’ side” (13:23) at the last supper, and “leaned on his breast” (21:20), even as Jesus was now “right beside the Father” (1:18). As we have seen, his testimony does not stand alone, but belongs to a whole series of testimonies, starting with John’s, who “came for a testimony, to testify about the light” (1:7). John’s testimony, based on what he has “seen” (1:32–34) and “heard” (3:29), resounds through the first three chapters of the Gospel, and in retrospect Jesus himself acknowledged that John “testified to the truth” (5:33).
Jesus, too, “testifies” to what he has seen and heard (3:11, 32), and from chapter 4 on his testimony takes center stage. The voice testifying as “I” is now consistently his voice, and he calls witnesses to back up his testimony: “If I testify about myself, my testimony is not true,” he begins; “There is another who testifies about me, and I know that the testimony he testifies about me is true” (5:31–32). That this “other” is the Father is clear from what follows (see 5:37; also 8:18). This, he claims, is evident in “the works that the Father has given me that I might complete them” (5:36), for “The works that I do in my Father’s name, these testify about me” (10:25).61 Like John, he speaks as an eyewitness, testifying now in the first person to that which he has seen and heard: “The things I have seen in the Father’s presence I speak” (8:38), and “the things I heard from him are the things I say to the world” (8:26). Consequently he tells those Jews who professed to believe, “If you dwell on my word, … you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (8:31–32). He calls himself “a man who has spoken to you the truth which I heard from God” (8:40), but in frustration he concludes, “If I speak truth, why do you not believe me? Whoever is from God hears the words of God. This is why you do not hear, because you are not from God” (8:45–46). And to the Gentiles his message is the same: “I was born for this,” he tells Pontius Pilate, “and for this I have come into the world, that I might testify to the truth. Everyone who is from the truth hears my voice” (18:37). Pilate’s “What is truth?” (18:38) is a redundant question, one to which the reader is expected to know the answer: “I am the Way, and the Truth and the Life” (14:6), and “Your word is the truth” (17:17).
Such truth claims are absolute, and no less so are those of the Gospel in which they are embedded. Jesus, in fact, seems to anticipate, if not a written Gospel at least a testimony to “the truth,” replacing yet continuing his own after his departure: “And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate, that he might be with you forever, the Spirit of truth” (14:16–17); “But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, which the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and remind you of all things that I said to you” (14:26); “When the Advocate comes, … the Spirit of truth that goes forth from the Father, he will testify about me, and you too must testify because you are with me from the beginning” (15:26–27); “I … am telling you the truth: it is to your advantage that I am going away, for unless I go away the Advocate will not come to you” (16:7); “But when that one comes, the Spirit of truth, he will lead you in all the truth” (16:13). Not “the disciple whom Jesus loved,” but “the Advocate,”62 or “the Spirit of truth,” is the Guarantor of the truth of the testimony, and consequently of the written Gospel—the Spirit in conjunction not with a single individual but with those whom Jesus acknowledges as being with him “from the beginning”63 (15:27). The latter notice recalls Luke 1:2, with its reference to “those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word,” and even more pointedly 1 John 1:1–2, “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, and our hands have touched, concerning the word of Life—and the Life was revealed, and we have seen, and we testify, and we announce to you the Eternal Life which was with the Father and was revealed to us.”
No distinction between theological truth and historical truth is evident. If the Advocate guarantees the former, the testimony of those who were with Jesus “from the beginning” guarantees the latter. And in the end the Advocate guarantees both. If the Advocate will finally “lead you into all the truth” (16:13), he will first of all, Jesus says, “remind you of all things that I said to you” (14:26). The Gospel begins with a series of highly theological, unverifiable assertions (1:1–5)—but moves seamlessly from there into straightforward narrative (vv. 6–8), and back again (vv. 9–18), before taking up the historical narrative in earnest (“And this is the testimony of John when the Jews sent priests and Levites to him from Jerusalem,” 1:19). To the author, the one is as “true” as the other, and in much the same sense. The modern notion that his account could be theologically “true” yet historically unreliable is as foreign to him as it is to those who in the end vouch for the truth of his testimony (21:24).
At the same time, he gives no hint that the truth of his account implies the falsity of other accounts known to him. He is quick to acknowledge that Jesus “did many, and other, signs”—whether before or after his resurrection—“in the presence of his disciples which are not written in this book” (20:30), and his Gospel carries with it the added acknowledgment of “many other things that Jesus did” (21:25). His Gospel is “true,” he claims, because the Advocate will lead the disciples into “all the truth” (16:13), yet he does not claim “all” the truth for his Gospel. Its truth claims, while absolute, are not necessarily exclusive. While it knows nothing of a canon, it is, one might say, “ready” to be part of a canon—much like Luke’s Gospel, with its acknowledgment of “many” who have preceded it (Lk 1:1). It is also “ready” for the canon in the sense that the revelation the Advocate brings will not go on indefinitely, as the ancient Montanists believed, continuing or even supplanting the revelation that Jesus brought once and for all. Rather, the testimony of Jesus and that of the Advocate are inextricably linked. The Advocate illumines and interprets only what Jesus has already revealed (see 16:14). His role, Jesus says, is to “remind you of all things that I said to you” (14:26)—that is, to “remind” or “cause to remember,” not simply in the sense of recalling facts and words, but in the sense of enabling a later generation to understand those words, perhaps for the first time (see, for example, 2:17, 22; 12:16).
IV. John and the Other Gospels
Are the Gospel’s truth claims consistent with its genre? Is it a genre that aspires to “truth”? There is no reason to distinguish the genre of John’s Gospel from that of its companions, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Each begins at a “beginning”—all but Matthew explicitly—but each at a different beginning: Matthew with Abraham and a genealogy; Mark with John the Baptizer; Luke with a nod to “those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word,” and then the Baptizer; John’s Gospel with the Genesis beginning, and then the Baptizer. Each tells the story of Jesus with occasional attention to precise chronology, and each focuses disproportionately on the last week of Jesus’ life and the events leading to his crucifixion (hence the designation “Gospel”). There is general agreement that the Gospels are not biographies in the modern sense of the word, yet with it a growing consensus that they are recognizable as ancient biographies or “lives,”64 a genre encompassing something of a spectrum from pure propaganda to rather serious historiography. Richard Bauckham has made a strong case for placing the Gospel of John close to the historiographical end of that spectrum.65 Whether or not he is correct in placing it closer than the other Gospels to serious history is open to debate, but his appeal to the Gospel’s topographical and chronological precision is impressive. Incidents are placed, for example, “not just in Galilee, but in Cana or Capernaum; not just in Jerusalem but at the pool of Bethesda near the Sheep Gate; not just in the temple but in Solomon’s Portico.”66 Events and discourses take place at named Jewish festivals such as Passover (chapters 2, 6, 11–20), the Tent festival (chapters 7–8) and Hanukkah (chapter 10).67 Whatever the interpreter’s judgment about the historicity of this or that particular incident or pronouncement, the Gospel’s genre is consistent both with its extraordinary truth claims and with the genre of the other three Gospels. There can be little doubt that it wants to be taken seriously as history.
The question of whether or not the “Advocate,” or “Spirit of truth,” is at work in other testimonies to Jesus and other written Gospels is one that “the disciple whom Jesus loved” and those who vouched for him obviously do not address. Yet it is legitimate to ask how the beloved disciple knows of Jesus’ “other” words and deeds? He speaks of them as unwritten in “this book” (20:30), but does he know of other books in which they are “written”? More specifically, does he know any or all of the other three Gospels in their final written form? For centuries the conventional wisdom was that he did know the other three, and consciously wrote to supplement them. Eusebius hands down a tradition to the effect that
The three gospels which had been written down before were distributed to all including himself [that is, John]; it is said that he welcomed them and testified to their truth but said that there was only lacking to the narrative the account of what was done by Christ at first and at the beginning of the preaching. The story is surely true. It is at least possible to see that the three evangelists related only what the Saviour did during one year after John the Baptist had been put in prison and that they stated this at the beginning of their narrative.68
As early as the third century Clement of Alexandria wrote that “John, last of all, conscious that the outward facts had been set forth in the Gospels, was urged on by his disciples, and, divinely moved by the Spirit,69 composed a spiritual Gospel.”70 While this is consistent with the explicit accent on the Advocate, or “Spirit of truth,” in John’s Gospel, it is an oversimplification. Clearly, the synoptic Gospels are also “spiritual,” and just as clearly the Gospel of John is as interested in “outward facts” as they are. The similarity of genre bears this out. Still, Clement’s assertion that John was written last, with full knowledge of the other three, seemed to be confirmed by its placement in the canon. After all, anyone reading the Gospels in their canonical order would know by the time he reached the Gospel of John what the other three had said, and it seemed only reasonable that the Gospel writer had this knowledge as well. With the dominance of Markan priority from the mid-nineteenth century on, even those who had their doubts as to whether John’s Gospel knew all three synoptics still routinely assumed that he knew at least the Gospel of Mark in its final written form.
This changed in the twentieth century, particularly after the work of Percival Gardner-Smith71 and C. H. Dodd.72 While there are exceptions, most interpreters today view the Gospel of John as independent of the other written Gospels (even Mark), yet familiar with many of the unwritten traditions behind them.73 In the places where John and the synoptic Gospels overlap—the ministry of John the Baptizer (Jn 1:19–34), the cleansing of the temple (2:13–22), the healing of the royal official’s son (4:43–54), the feeding of the five thousand and walking on the water (6:1–21), the decision of the Jewish council or Sanhedrin (11:45–53), the anointing at Bethany (12:1–8), the triumphal entry (12:12–29), and the entire passion narrative—the pattern of similarities and dissimilarities remains an enigma. As the commentary will show, parallels can be found between John’s Gospel and every stratum of synoptic tradition: Mark, the so-called “Q” source, and material distinctive to Matthew and to Luke.74 Sometimes the wording and/or placement of the synoptic material appears to be more nearly original, while at others John’s wording and/or placement seems more primitive. Often it is difficult or impossible to decide. The respective traditions are perhaps best described as intertwined.
In general it is fair to say that John’s Gospel differs from the other three in style and in structure. As to style—which turns out finally to be inseparable from content—Jesus speaks with a very different voice in this Gospel. In Matthew, Mark, and Luke the theme of his proclamation is the kingdom of God; here it is himself and his mission. As Rudolf Bultmann famously insisted, the revelation turns in upon itself. What Jesus reveals from the Father is simply that he is the Revealer, sent from the Father!75 Yet in this way he reveals the Father, which is not so different from saying that he reveals God, or the kingdom of God. What he says is what God has given him to say, and in his “works” or miracles he reveals the God of Israel at work (see 5:17). One way of summing up the difference is to say that much of what is implicit in the other three Gospels becomes explicit in John. The emphatic “I” of the Sermon on the Mount (“You have heard, … but now I tell you”) and other pronouncements (“If I by the Spirit of God drive out demons …”) becomes the magisterial “I am” of the Gospel of John (see 8:24, 28, 58; 13:19; 18:5–6). In the synoptics, Jesus proclaims “the gospel of God” (Mk 1:15), and in so doing reveals himself as God’s messenger. In John’s Gospel he reveals himself, and in so doing reveals the Father who sent him (see 12:45, “the person who sees me sees the One who sent me”; 14:9, “The person who has seen me has seen the Father”). Yet it is doubtful that this amounts to a simple reinterpretation of the other three Gospels. More likely the competing traditions took shape independently, with the Gospel of John deriving its own unique character from the interplay of inspiration and tradition (the “vertical” and “horizontal” if you will)—that is, on the one hand the testimony of the Advocate, or “Spirit of truth” (“he will testify about me,” 15:26), and on the other the testimony of the eyewitnesses (those “with me from the beginning,” 15:27), represented by “the disciple whom Jesus loved.”
V. The Structure of John’s Gospel
As to structure, if John’s Gospel is familiar with the so-called Markan outline, common to Matthew, Mark, and Luke, then it has distanced itself from that outline in conspicuous ways. Eusebius acknowledged already in the fourth century that
John in the course of his gospel relates what Christ did before the Baptist had been thrown into prison, but the other three evangelists narrate the events after the imprisonment of the Baptist. If this be understood, the gospels no longer appear to disagree, because that according to John contains the first of the acts of Christ and the others the narrative of what he did at the end of the period.76
As we have seen in our discussion of the prominence of “John” (that is, the Baptizer) in the first three chapters,77 there is something to be said for Eusebius’s interest in “what Christ did before the Baptist had been thrown into prison.” First, the importance of the Baptizer in the so-called “Prologue” should not be overlooked. Scholarly readings, even among those resolved to look at the finished text as a literary entity (that is, synchronically), sometimes tend to follow the “tracks” left by various source theories.78 For example, the long-held theory that the first eighteen verses of the Gospel either were or contained a distinct pre-Johannine “hymn” of some kind has tended to lock in the notion that those verses were a unit set apart from the rest of the Gospel, to be given separate and special treatment as “the Prologue.” The Gospel as a whole is rightly viewed as narrative, much like the other Gospels, but “the Prologue” is often seen differently—almost as another genre. Consequently, the explicit narrative beginning within the Prologue (1:6) has to be viewed as no narrative beginning at all, but simply as an “interpolation” embedded in what some scholars have already decided is a pre-Johannine, possibly pre-Christian, hymn. But if what looks like a narrative beginning is in fact just that—a reasonable assumption—then the real “prologue”—or “preamble,” or “introduction”—is not John 1:1–18 but John 1:1–5.79 These five verses, unlike most (but not all) of the Gospel, have no narrative context. Whatever their background—for example, in Jewish Wisdom tradition—their present function is to set the stage for introducing “A man … sent from God. John was his name” (1:6), and to explain John’s repeated claim that “The One coming after me has gotten ahead of me, because he was before me” (1:15; also v. 30). Indeed, “the Word” who is Jesus does precede John, and therefore takes precedence over him. This is evident at once in the insistence that John “was not the light, but [he came] to testify about the light” (1:8), and in the accompanying excursus on the coming and presence of Jesus in the world (1:9–18). It is as if the Gospel writer cannot resist pouring out in advance the whole story he has to tell in ten memorable verses. If the narrative of John’s testimony has already begun (vv. 6–8), then the real “interpolation” is this magnificent excursus, with the narrative of John and his testimony resuming in 1:19–34.80
It is John, accordingly, whose eyewitness first-person testimony dominates the first chapter—and frames the first three chapters. Although he disappears as soon as Jesus takes the initiative to find Philip and Nathanael and to set out for Galilee (1:43–51), John the Baptizer is not gone for good. After the wedding at Cana, which confirms several of John’s disciples as disciples of Jesus (even with Jesus still within the family circle, 2:11–12), and after Jesus’ eventful ministry at the first Passover in Jerusalem (2:13–3:21), we find him in Judea doing just what John had been doing. He who will “baptize in Holy Spirit” (1:33) is baptizing in water (3:22, 26), the same as John.81 Even though Jesus has much to say of significance in the first three chapters, it is undeniable that he shares the spotlight with John. They speak, as it were, in stereo. Jesus speaks to Nicodemus, yet his words abruptly spring out of their narrative context (see 3:13–21) to become a kind of sequel to the “introduction” or “preamble” of 1:1–5 and the excursus of 1:9–18. John then comes front and center to give his farewell speech (3:27–36). He speaks to his own disciples (vv. 27–30), yet his words, too, spring from their narrative context to become yet another sequel to the Gospel’s opening verses (see 3:31–36). Together, the “preamble” of 1:1–5 and the joint testimonies of John and Jesus frame the Gospel’s first three chapters. Within these chapters, as we have seen, the dominant voice in the emphatic first person is John’s voice, not (as yet) the voice of Jesus (see 1:20, 23, 26, 31, 33, 34; 3:28–30). It is arguable that not just chapter 1 but the Gospel’s first three chapters should be designated “the testimony of John.” Yet as soon as John says, “He must grow, but I must diminish” (3:30), Jesus’ role in the story grows exponentially. John, with his very last words (3:31–36), announces that “the Word” (1:1) is about to speak: “What he has seen and what he heard, to this he testifies” (3:32), and “the one God sent speaks the words of God” (v. 34). At the same time, John reinforces the alternatives of faith and unbelief already set forth in 1:11–12 and 3:13–21: “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever disobeys the Son will never see life, but the wrath of God remains on him” (v. 36).
At this point the narrative resumes, the story line corresponding to that of the synoptics except that instead of John’s imprisonment (as in Mk 1:14 and Mt 4:12) it is John’s sovereign farewell speech that triggers Jesus’ journey to Galilee (see 4:1–3). Whether or not Jesus continued baptizing as John had done, we are not told. As is the case with John, the Gospel is more interested in Jesus’ testimony than in any baptizing activity he may have carried on. From here on, as we have seen, the “I” who testifies is Jesus. So far, apart from the “Amen, amen, I say to you” formula (1:51; 3:3, 5, 11), he has had little to say in the first person (“my Father’s house,” 2:16; “I will raise it up,” 2:19), and nothing with the emphatic “I,” but this changes in chapter 4 when he reveals himself to the Samaritan woman with the words, “It is I—I who am speaking to you” (4:26; see also 6:20; 8:24, 28, 58). Moreover, in contrast to John (see 10:41), his testimony is punctuated by a series of miraculous signs. His self-revelation (whether in the emphatic first person, or as “the Son” or “Son of man”) extends through chapter 12, at the end of which comes yet another brief monologue without narrative context (12:44–50), this time introduced with the words, “But Jesus cried out and said” (12:44), punctuated with the emphatic “I” (vv. 46, 47, 49) and, like John’s farewell speech at the end of chapter 3, terminating a major section of the Gospel.
To this extent, Eusebius’ testimony is helpful in structuring the Gospel of John in comparison to the synoptics. Our reading of the Gospel so far yields an outline consisting of a short preamble (1:1–5), the testimony of John (1:6–3:36), and the public testimony of Jesus (4:1–12:50). But Eusebius does not warn us that when we move beyond the first three chapters, the differences between John and the synoptics do not diminish. After John’s imprisonment, Matthew, Mark, and Luke recount Jesus’ ministry in Galilee at some length, concluding with one—and only one—extended journey to Jerusalem and an account of Jesus’ arrest, trial, death, and resurrection there. Our Gospel, by contrast, places Jesus in Jerusalem already in chapter 2, and even after John’s imprisonment Jesus is there again in chapter 5, again in chapters 7, 8, 9, and 10, and again in chapters 12 through 20, always in connection with one or another of the Jewish festivals. He is in Galilee only for one miracle in chapter 2 and another in chapter 4—both in the same town, a town not even mentioned in the other Gospels—and once more for a miracle and an extended discourse at Capernaum in chapter 6. He returns to Galilee after the resurrection (chapter 21), as he does in Matthew and (implicitly) in Mark, but the Galilean ministry which dominates the other three Gospels virtually disappears. Moreover, in the Synoptics everything is public except for the interpretations of certain parables (see Mk 4:34) and a final discourse on things to come (Mk 13 and parallels),82 while the Gospel of John seems to divide Jesus’ ministry into two parts, a “public ministry” to the crowds and the religious authorities in Jerusalem and Galilee (chapters 2–12) and a “private ministry” to his disciples in the setting of the last supper (chapters 13–17). Most noticeably of all, the two events introducing passion week in Mark—the triumphal entry and the cleansing of the temple—are separated (and reversed) in John’s Gospel in such a way as to frame the entire public ministry of Jesus (see 2:13–22; 12:12–19).
In view of all this, it is difficult to tell whether John’s Gospel knows the outline common to Matthew, Mark, and Luke (an outline remarkably well summarized by Peter in Acts 10:37–41) and deliberately opts for an alternative, or whether it knows only isolated incidents and pronouncements of Jesus from synoptic tradition, and puts these together with what the Gospel writer knows as an eyewitness, independently of the other Gospels. In any event, its structure deserves close attention in its own right, apart from all theories of literary dependence, and apart from all source theories as well. To begin with, the effect of placing the temple cleansing almost at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry rather than near the end is far reaching. Any reader familiar with the other Gospels will assume, on reading that “the Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem” (2:13), that Jesus’ Galilean ministry has been extremely brief (see 2:1–12), and that the passion is about to begin.83 In one sense the reader has been misled, but in another sense not, because all that happens from here on happens with the passion in view. The Scripture remembered in connection with the cleansing of the temple is “Zeal for your house will consume [that is, destroy] me” (2:17), and the only “sign” Jesus gave was “Destroy this sanctuary [that is, his body], and in three days I will raise it up” (2:19). Conspicuous in the synoptic passion narrative is a trial (of sorts) before the Sanhedrin and the Chief Priest, but in John’s Gospel the whole public ministry of Jesus (at least from chapter 5 on) is his trial at the hands of the Jewish religious authorities, one in which he is both accused and accuser, and one peppered with such terms such as “testify” and “testimony” (see 3:11, 32; 5:31–34, 36–37, 39; 7:7; 8:13–14, 17, 18; 10:25), “judge” and “judgment” (see 3:18–19; 5:22, 27, 30; 7:24, 51; 8:15–16, 26, 50; 12:31), “true” and “truth” (see 5:31–33; 7:18; 8:13–14, 16, 17, 40, 45–46; 10:41). In a general way chapters 2 through 12 can be regarded as a book of judgment. In one sense, Jesus is on trial, but in another “the world,” represented by the Jewish religious authorities, is being tried—and condemned. Ever since chapter 5 the religious authorities had been seeking Jesus’ life, “because he was not only abolishing the Sabbath but was claiming God as his own Father, making himself equal to God” (5:18; see also 7:1, 19, 25, 30; 8:37, 40), but the verdict comes down only after this extended “trial,” as the Jewish ruling council formally “resolved that they would kill him” (11:53). Consequently, there is no real trial after Jesus is actually arrested, only a brief hearing before the Chief Priest in which Jesus simply refers back to what he had “always taught in synagogue and in the temple, where all the Jews come together” (18:20). Throughout the public ministry there looms the prospect of Jesus’ “hour,” which the reader understands as the hour of his death, a death viewed in this Gospel not as defeat but as victory, not as tragedy but as “glorification” (7:39; 12:23, 28). Suspense builds as the reader is told more than once that Jesus escaped arrest “because his hour had not yet come” (7:30; 8:20; see also 8:59; 10:39). Finally, “The hour has come that the Son of man might be glorified” (12:23), not in an arrest but simply by Jesus’ sovereign decree (the arrest will take place six chapters later!).
As passion week begins (see 12:1), the book of judgment gives way to a book of glory. Strictly speaking, perhaps, the book of judgment consists of 2:13–11:54 (with the handing down of the verdict in 11:45–54), and the book of glory begins already with the notice of the last Passover (11:55), yet there is also (as we have seen) a definite break at the end of chapter 12, with the Gospel writer’s own verdict on an unbelieving world (12:37–43) and a final soliloquy from the lips of Jesus (12:44–50). There is no urgent need to choose between the two options, for in either case 11:55–12:50 is transitional, marking both the end of the public ministry with its emphasis on judgment (see, for example, 12:31, “Now is the judgment of this world. Now the ruler of this world will be driven out”) and the beginning of the passion with its decisive revelation of Jesus’ glory (see 12:23, 28). At the end of this longer transition is a shorter one (12:44–50) consisting not so much of Jesus’ verdict on the world’s unbelief (vv. 47–48) as his promise of light and life to those who do believe (vv. 44–46, 49–50), with just a hint that he will have more to say (v. 50)—which in fact he does. If chapters 2 through 12 lead up to the certainty that Jesus must be glorified in death, chapters 13 through 17 prepare the readers of the Gospel—in the persons of their surrogates, the disciples—for that death and its implications. To them, Jesus’ “glorification” is not experienced as glorification but as departure or absence, and the thrust of the farewell discourses in 13:36–14:31 and in chapters 15 and 16 is to overcome the scandal of Jesus’ absence with the promise of his return, whether in his resurrection (chapter 20) or in the person of the Advocate, or “Spirit of truth,” and with a new command to “love each other, just as I loved you” (13:34; 15:12).
In chapter 17 Jesus turns around, as it were, to the Father in prayer, reporting to the Father what his ministry has accomplished and interceding for his soon-to-be-scattered disciples (see 16:32). Like 1:1–5, 3:13–21, 3:31–36, and 12:44–50, this, too, is a passage without a real narrative context. Jesus is no longer “with” his disciples, but rather looks back to a time when “I was with them” (17:12). His “private” ministry to the disciples has become even more private, as even they are shut out, and like the Jewish High Priest the Good Shepherd moves into the “Holy of Holies” to speak to his Father alone, on behalf of his sheep. Yet as soon as he is finished, he is “with” them again, as they cross the Kidron valley together, to a familiar gathering place where he will be arrested (see 18:1–2). With his arrest, the passion narrative proper begins, and whatever else it may be, in this Gospel it brings the verification of promises made earlier—that the sheep, though scattered, would not be “lost” (18:9), that Jesus would be “lifted up” (18:32) and “glorified” at a definite “hour” (19:13–14, 17–18), that he would go away to the Father (20:6–8) and come again to the disciples (20:19, 26), that he would bring with him the Holy Spirit (20:22), and that they would know joy (20:20) and peace (20:19, 21, 26) when they saw him again. The ending of the Gospel (chapter 21) is curiously like a new beginning, an acknowledgment, perhaps, of how the gospel story began in other traditions, with a fishing scene at the lake of Galilee (see Mk 1:16–20; Lk 5:1–11). Christian discipleship begins where the Gospel ends.
At the end of the day there is no one right way to outline the Gospel of John. The preceding observations yield the following:
THE TESTIMONY OF JOHN (1:6–3:30), with a transition on the lips of John (3:31–36) corresponding to the preamble.
JESUS’ SELF-REVELATION TO THE WORLD (4:1–12:43), with a transition this time on the lips of Jesus (12:44–50).
JESUS’ SELF-REVELATION TO THE DISCIPLES (13:1–16:33), with a much longer transition in the form of Jesus’ prayer to the Father (17:1–26)
VERIFICATION OF JESUS’ SELF-REVELATION IN HIS ARREST, CRUCIFIXION, AND RESURRECTION (18:1–21:25).
This outline, like all the others, is far from perfect. It does justice to some but by no means all of the evidence. It does not, for example, do justice to the importance of the seven signs Jesus performs, the first sandwiched between the testimonies of John (2:1–11) and the other six displayed in connection with Jesus’ self-revelatory discourses to the world. Its chief distinguishing features are that it does not begin with an eighteen-verse “prologue” but with a five-verse “preamble,” and that it takes note of certain passages which, like the preamble, have no proper narrative context and can serve as markers dividing one section from another. Yet there are other such passages (for example, 3:13–21 and 5:19–47) which do not similarly serve as division markers. Structure in John’s Gospel, as in most great literature, is largely in the eye of the beholder.
Where was the Gospel of John written, and when? Those questions are not easily answered. Traditions connecting it with Ephesus in Asia Minor are mostly linked to the assumption that the author was John the son of Zebedee, or (in the view of some modern scholars) the shadowy John the Presbyter. But once we are left with an author who is either anonymous or someone other than “John,” the evidence begins to look rather thin. Ephesus, or at least Asia Minor, is still a reasonable guess, given certain similarities between the Gospel of John and such writings as Paul’s letters to Colossians (for example, 1:15–20) and Ephesians, and the book of Revelation, and given the role assigned to “the Advocate” by the Montanists in Asia Minor in the second and third centuries.84 Yet nothing approaching certainty is possible. The earliest textual witnesses to the Gospel of John are papyri from Egypt, above all the so-called Rylands fragment, or P52, consisting of John 18:31–33, 37–38 (the earliest known fragment of any New Testament book), from the first half of the second century,85 and the Bodmer papyri (P66 and P75), from the early third century. This obviously does not mean that the Gospel was written there. Virtually all New Testament papyri come from Egypt, whose climate lends itself to their preservation. Yet Egypt cannot be ruled out, nor can Palestine. Syria is perhaps more likely than either, for Ignatius of Antioch shows signs of familiarity with the theology of the Gospel, even though he never quotes it,86 and so too do the Odes of Solomon.87 Moreover, the Jewishness of this Gospel, and the intertwining of its traditions with those behind each of the synoptic Gospels, is consistent with Syrian origin. But there is no way to be certain. If there is such a thing as a distinctively “Johannine” community, we do not yet know enough about it to be able to locate it geographically. When we speak of the author’s “community,” all we mean is whatever Christian communities the author may be familiar with, wherever he, or they, may be. It is clear that these communities—like most Christian communities at that time—were “sectarian” with respect to the Graeco-Roman world around them, but by no means clear that they were sectarian with respect to other Christian groups.
As to date, we are similarly at a loss. The Gospel obviously predates the Rylands fragment, and if the author was, as he claims, an eyewitness, it was almost certainly written within the first century. Yet if it is in fact independent of the other three Gospels, drawing on traditions intertwined with theirs, but not on Matthew, Mark, or Luke themselves as literary sources, then there is virtually no limit on how soon after the death and resurrection of Jesus it could have been written. While there is nothing to shatter the conventional wisdom that it is the latest of the four Gospels, there is no way to prove it either. This Gospel could have originated any time within the latter half of the first century, and only the rumor that “the disciple whom Jesus loved” would not die (21:23) places it nearer the end of that period than the beginning. If, as seems likely, it was written after the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple by the Romans in AD 70, this would lend special poignancy and irony to the fear of the Jewish leaders that “If we let him go on like this, … the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation” (11:48). In fact, even though they arrested Jesus and put him to death, the Romans eventually came and did exactly that!
VII. Theological Contributions
It is difficult to say much about the theology or christology of John’s Gospel that has not been said many times before, nor is the introduction to a commentary necessarily the best place to try. Better to let the reader draw his or her own conclusions from discussions of particular texts as the commentary unfolds. But two things stand out for me, the first because it is so pervasive throughout the Gospel, the second because it is rarely noticed or appreciated by interpreters.
The first contribution of John’s Gospel to the theology of the New Testament takes us back to where we began. It is the notion of Jesus as God’s unique Envoy or messenger, simultaneously claiming for himself both Deity and obedient submission to Deity. The strangeness is evident to anyone who places the two pronouncements, “I and the Father are one” (10:30) and “the Father is greater than I” (14:28), side by side. Jesus can say, “My Father is working even until now, and I am working,” provoking the accusation that he is “making himself equal to God” (5:17–18), yet immediately insist that he does nothing “on his own,” but only what the Father has sent him and commanded him to do (see 5:19, 30). He can warn that “unless you believe that I am, you will die in your sins” (8:24) and “When you lift up the Son of man, then you will come to know that I am,” yet immediately add that “on my own I do nothing, but just as the Father taught me, these things I speak” (8:28). He never acts “on his own” in relation to the Father, but always “on his own” in relation to the world. As far as his death on the cross is concerned, no one takes his life from him, he insists, “but I lay it down on my own. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to receive it back,” yet he quickly adds, “This command I received from my Father” (10:18). His “authority,” whether to exercise judgment (5:27) or to lay down his own life, belongs to him only because it belongs first to the Father. His mission is to reveal the Father, but in so doing he reveals himself—first publicly, as we have seen, to the world at large on the stage of contemporary Judaism, and then privately to his own disciples.88 The obvious objection to all this is that the Judaism of Jesus’ day, in contrast to the Gentile world, did not need Jesus to reveal to it its own God—or so it would seem. What was needed rather was someone to reveal the God of Israel to the Gentiles, a Messiah who would make Israel a light to the nations. This the coming of Jesus will do as well, but it is largely outside the horizons of the Gospel narrative (see 10:16; 11:52; 12:32). Rather, Jesus in this Gospel “came to what was his own,” even though “his own did not receive him” (1:11). He came to reveal the God of Israel to Israel in one very specific way—as Father, and in particular as his Father, not simply telling the people of God things about God they did not already know, but showing them the face of God in his own face (see 12:45; 14:9) and his own life.
The Gospel of John, then, is not just about Jesus but about God, as is evident not only in its christology but in its message of salvation. This, to my mind, is the Gospel’s second major contribution to New Testament theology, and it is rather more controversial than the first. From the start, the Gospel speaks of those who “receive” Jesus as the Light and “believe in his name,” those who are given “authority to become children of God” by virtue of having been “born … of God” (1:12–13). Two chapters later Jesus tells Nicodemus, “unless someone is born from above [or “of water and Spirit”], he cannot see [or “enter”] the kingdom of God” (3:3, 5). But what exactly is the relationship between being “born of God,” or “born from above,” and “receiving” or “believing in” Jesus? Which comes first? Is a person reborn because he or she believes, or does a person believe as a result of being reborn? Conventional wisdom assumes the former as a matter of course, and the word order of 1:12–13 seems on the face of it to support this. Yet those verses make no explicit causal connection either way between faith and rebirth, and as Jesus’ dialogue with Nicodemus runs its course, evidence for the opposite view begins to surface. “Receiving” Jesus’ testimony is mentioned in 3:11, and “believing” is repeatedly urged in verses 12, 15, and 16. Finally, the stark alternative of “believing” or “not believing” in him is clearly set forth (v. 18), and then restated (in language reminiscent of 1:9–13) as either loving or hating the Light, either “coming to the Light” or refusing to come (vv. 19–21). The person who “hates the Light” does so because he “practices wicked things,” and refuses to come “for fear his works will be exposed” (v. 20). By contrast, the person who “does the truth comes to the Light, so that his works will be revealed as works wrought in God” (v. 21).
On this note the interview with Nicodemus—if Nicodemus is still anywhere in the picture—comes to an end. In sharp distinction from the other three Gospels, in which Jesus says, “I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners” (Mk 2:17//Mt 9:13; also Lk 5:32), he does come to call, if not explicitly “the righteous,” at least those who “do the truth”—as against those who “practice wicked things.” Those who come to him in faith (that is, “come to the Light”) demonstrate by so doing that they are already “doers of the truth,” not by their own merits to be sure, but because their works have been done “in God” (en theō, 3:21). They do not prove their faith by their works—at least not yet—but on the contrary prove their works by their faith. To this extent, John’s Gospel turns some versions of Reformation theology on their heads!89 It is not as radical as it sounds, however, for the point is simply that God is at work in a person’s life before that person “receives” Jesus, or “believes,” or “comes to the Light.” This is evident in the account of the man born blind—the Gospel’s classic case study on what it means to be “born of God”—where the point made is not that the man was a sinner who “believed” and was consequently reborn. On the contrary, Jesus insists, “Neither this man sinned nor his parents”—that is, his predicament was not the result of sin. Rather, the purpose of the healing was “that the works of God might be revealed in him” (9:3)—that is, God was already at work in his life, and his eventual confession of faith (9:38) would reveal that to be the case. He did not believe in order to be “born of God.” He believed because he was “born of God.” This interpretation is confirmed by Jesus’ repeated insistence that “All that the Father gives me will come to me” (6:37), “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draw him” (6:44), and “no one can come to me unless it is given him from the Father” (6:65). The initiative in human salvation is God the Father’s, and his alone.
Of the major interpreters of John’s Gospel, only Rudolf Bultmann wrestles significantly with this aspect of the Gospel’s view of salvation. He writes of “Johannine Determinism,” defining it as a “dualism of decision” in contrast to “the cosmological dualism of Gnosticism.”90 But in the end he seems to accent human “decision,” or free will, to the point that it trumps the divine initiative: “Man cannot act otherwise than as what he is, but in the Revealer’s call there opens up to him the possibility of being otherwise than he was. He can exchange his Whence, his origin, his essence, for another; he can be ‘born again’ (3:1ff.) and thus attain to his true being. In his decision between faith and un-faith a man’s being definitively constitutes itself, and from then on his Whence becomes clear.”91 While it is true that John’s Gospel centers on a call to decision, the hearer’s decision cannot change but only reveal what has gone on before—the working of God the Father in those who will eventually become his children. Jesus can speak of “other sheep” whom, he says, “I have,” even though they have not yet believed (10:16), and the Gospel writer can envision scattered “children of God”—“born of God,” therefore—who have yet to be “gathered into one” (11:52). Perhaps the words of old Simeon in another Gospel put it best: Jesus in the Gospel of John comes “so that the thoughts of many hearts might be revealed” (Lk 2:35). The accent is not on “conversion” (the words for “repent” and “repentance” never occur), or even the forgiveness of sins, but on revelation. The coming of Jesus into the world simply reveals who belongs—and who does not belong—to his Father, the God of Israel. If the Gospel of John reveals who the Son is and who the Father is, it also tells its readers who they are and where they stand with the Father and the Son.
If God the Father is the initiator of Christian salvation according to this Gospel, he is also its end and goal. The Son is sent from the Father and returns to the Father again. This is what the world does not understand according to chapters 2 through 12, and through much of chapters 13 through 17 the disciples do not understand either. In the end they finally grasp that he has in fact “come forth from God” (16:30), but not that he must return to God again. “If you loved me,” he tells them, “you would rejoice that I am going off to the Father, because the Father is greater than I” (14:28). Only by virtue of his prayer on their behalf (chapter 17) and of his resurrection (chapter 20) does his intention that “In that day, you will come to know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you” (14:20) come to realization. He sends them, through Mary, the message that “I am going up to my Father and your Father, and my God and your God” (20:18). If the beginning of the story is the work of God the Father in the hearts of human beings, drawing them to the Son, the end of the story is their union with the Son and consequently with the Father. Just as the Gospel’s christology is a kind of parabola, with the Son coming down from the Father into the world and going back up to the Father again, so too is its soteriology, its course of salvation, with God the Father drawing a people to God the Son, who leads them in turn back to the Father. Those who, in Emily Dickinson’s words, “choose the Envoy—and spurn the groom” have failed to understand the Gospel of John.