Week 9 - Chapter 9 - The Gospel According to John

John was probably the last of the Gospels to be composed – closer to 100 A.D. than 70 A.D. or earlier, as is likely with the Synoptics. John’s Gospel may reflect the experiences/viewpoint of the unnamed Beloved Disciple (only identified as such in this Gospel), preserved in communities of Jewish Christian followers located in Palestine, who re-located to other parts of the mid-east (perhaps to Ephesus or elsewhere in Asia Minor) when the Temple was destroyed. Stylistic evidence indicates that, like the Synoptics, there appear to have been stages in the development of the Gospel, a gradual evolution of the material from the original witness to Jesus until it was recorded in finished form by the final writer/editor.

It appears that part of the purpose of the Gospel was to present a different viewpoint and different material than was presented in the Synoptics. Another purpose is clearly to provide an ethos for the Christian communities, marked by “love, mutual help and service, and unity.” (pg. 403) The basic “plot” is the same but there are more differences of style and subject matter than there are similarities with the Synoptics. It is especially noteworthy that you don’t have to read very far into the Gospel of John to find people acknowledging that Jesus is the Son of God (by John the Baptist at Jesus’ baptism in John 1:29-34) and the Messiah (Andrew, one of Jesus’ first disciples announces to his brother Simon (Peter) that he has found the Messiah (John 1:41)). No messianic secret here!! In fact, de Silva notes that Jesus’ miracles in John are done more to give signs as to who and what Jesus is than to announce the Kingdom of God or to show God’s power to bring benefits to His people.

This highly-developed Christology is usually cited as a factor in favour of a late date of composition for this Gospel, though that is not proof positive of course. I would interpret this as meaning that the Gospel provides a more “other-worldly” view of the story of Jesus – as the “Word made flesh,” rather than a man who was Son of God.

(As an aside, at pg. 411 de Silva writes that it appears that Luke may well have used John (or the traditions of John’s community) as a resource, since there are some 36 points of agreement of Luke with John over Mark – but the reverse does not appear, that John used Luke (or either of the other Synoptics).)

Where the Gospel of Matthew was the most widely read and accepted Gospel of ancient times, de Silva writes that today it is the Gospel of John that is most widely disseminated, largely due to its highly symbolic nature, which gives its text a timeless quality. I am surprised to read that – because of the interest in recent years on the “historical Jesus,” which perforce relies more on the Synoptics than John. I know that for myself, I usually turn first to Matthew to read the sayings and teachings of Jesus, secondarily to Mark and Luke, and only occasionally do I turn to John. The eternal 3:16 (“For God so loved the world . . .”) and the story of the woman taken in adultery (which appears to have been added to John’s Gospel by later scribes!) are two of my favourite readings. But there is nothing like the Beatitudes, those eternal gifts to nourish the spirit.

De Silva notes that Greco-Roman (Hellenistic) influence can be seen at the outset in John 1:1 where Jesus is announced as the pre-existing Logos, also a concept known to the Stoic philosophers. Many of these concepts were more common in Jewish thought of the time than modern scholars have generally recognized. De Silva notes that many of the concepts evident in John (like Jesus as light, or fountain, or shepherd) can be seen in manuscripts of the Qumran community, which followed a “teacher of righteousness” and used similar metaphors to those in John, and that similar concepts were expounded by Philo of Alexandria, the thoroughly Hellenized Jewish philosopher. But most scholars of the last hundred years or so have emphasized the Gnostic elements in John.

My recollection is that the Christian Gnostics believed that the god who created the world was not the benevolent creator God but an evil being (Satan?) who trapped divine sparks (our souls) in earthly flesh. So the Gnostics believed that the earth and our bodies were evil and that Jesus was sent by the *real* God (not the one who created the earth) to help our spirits reach salvation. Gnosticism reached its greatest height of popularity (I believe) in the second century A.D., when it was condemned as heresy by the forces of orthodoxy in the Christian church and gradually died out. Gnosticism had an element of “secret knowledge” which was at odds with the mainstream of Christianity. There is some sense of that otherworldliness and sharing secret knowledge among members of the community in John. But in light of the probable dates of composition of John, it appears that, as de Silva notes, the Gospel reflects a sort of “proto-Gnosticism.” I agree that, from what I recall of Gnostic writings, John does not go as “far” in its symbolic language as the Gnostics generally did. But from at least one point of view, one might view some of the tendencies in John to be somewhat “dangerous,” considering the path that led down the road from that Gospel. I wonder if there was any movement to quash John’s Gospel before it became unequivocally accepted as part of the canon – or even afterward?