The Johannine Literature

The Johannine Literature

John: Gospel

Author:

Strictly speaking, as you are aware by now, all of the Gospels are anonymous. The titles attached to them were not original to the texts, and the title on this work is suggested to have been added when the four Gospels began to be circulated together. However, we should not view this as a note leading us against the authenticity of the works. In fact, the opposite is the case. Bruce points out: “ It is noteworthy that, while the four canonical gospels could afford to be published anonymously, the apocryphal gospels which began to appear from the mid-second century onwards claimed (falsely) to be written by apostles or other persons associated with the Lord” (Quoted from Carson and Moo 229).

Church tradition identifies the author of the Gospel of John as the apostle John, the son of Zebedee who was one of the twelve. Irenaeus states that John, the disciple of the Lord, published a Gospel during his residence at Ephesus in Asia. Irenaeus states that he received this information from Polycarp who himself was a disciple of John the apostle. Carson and Moo write: “Polycarp was martyred in 156 at the age of eighty-six. There is no reason therefore to deny the truth of the claims that he associated with the apostles in Asia (John, Andrew, Philip) and was ‘entrusted with the oversight of the Church in Smyrna by those who were eyewitness and ministers of the Lord’ (H.E. 3.36).

Irenaeus knew Polycarp personally, and it is Polycarp who mediates to us the most important information about the fourth gospel” (229–230). Irenaeus gives us a picture of the close association between the apostle John and Polycarp. He writes: “I am able to describe the very place in which the blessed Polycarp sat as he discoursed, and his goings out and his comings in, and the manner of his life, and his physical appearance, and his discourses to the people, and the accounts which he gave of his intercourse with John and with the others who had seen the Lord. And as he remembered their words, and what he heard from them concerning the Lord, and concerning his miracles and his teaching, having received them from eyewitnesses of the ‘Word of life,’1 Polycarp related all things in harmony with the Scriptures (H.E. 5.20.5-6 Eusebius Church History).

Here is the quote from Irenaeus (who was himself in a position to know these things): “Luke also, the companion of Paul, recorded in a book the Gospel preached by him. Afterwards, John, the disciple of the Lord, who also had leaned upon His breast, did himself publish a Gospel during his residence at Ephesus in Asia” (Adv. Haer. 3.1.1).

We can say confidently that John the Apostle wrote this Gospel that now bears his name.

Recipients:

As stated by Irenaeus, church tradition held that John the apostle ministered in Ephesus in the latter part of the first century, and that it was in this location that he wrote this Gospel. Eusebius also confirms that John was in this region during the outbreak of the Jewish war (A.D. 66-70). He states: “Such was the condition of the Jews. Meanwhile the holy apostles and disciples of our Savior were dispersed throughout the world. Parthia, according to tradition, was allotted to Thomas as his field of labor, Scythia to Andrew, and Asia to John, who after he had lived some time there, died at Ephesus.” (H.E. 3.1.1).

The general inference from this is that John wrote to those whom he lived near, namely, those living in Ephesus (in Asia Minor). Carson writes: “The traditional view is that John wrote it in Ephesus, and no other location has the support of the church fathers. If John wrote it while residing in Ephesus, then perhaps he prepared it for readers in this general part of the empire while still hoping for the widest possible circulation” (ZSB 2140). So, John’s audience would have been written to churches in Asia minor that were steeped in a Hellenistic worldview.

Date and Provenance:

The Gospel of John present the largest range for a possible date out of the Gospels. Pretty much anytime between AD 55- AD 95 is possible. The discovery of the John Rylands manuscript, a fragment from a codex-style manuscript that is dated around AD 135 that contains a part of John 18:31-33 on one side and John 18:37-38 on the other, confirm that John must have been written prior to the second century. Conservative scholars tend to place it around AD 80-85 with the understanding that the other letters of John that were written in the early 90’s were written to combat “an incipient form of Gnosticism and respond in part to a Gnostic misunderstanding of the Fourth Gospel” (Carson NIV Zondervan Study Bible 2140).

Purpose:

When trying to determine why someone wrote, it is often best to start with their own statements concerning why they wrote. This is not always possible, as we have seen throughout this class, because authors do not always say: “I have written this because…” However, in John, he has given us a clear purpose statement for his writing in John 20:30-31: “Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.”

The question becomes, is this an evangelistic statement or is it an edificatory statement. In other words, does this statement mean that John wrote to evangelize non-Christians, or to build up people who are already Christians in their faith. There are a couple routes that we can take to try and determine this. First, we can compare it with a similar statement John makes in 1 John: “I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life.” Comparing the two, the quote from 1 John very clearly speaks of a Christian audience while the quote from the Gospel is more ambiguous and may thus point to a non-Christian audience.

Second, if we look at the purpose statement in the Gospel the issue is not so much “what kind of Messiah was Jesus,” which would be a question Christians could presumably need some clarification on, but “Who is the Messiah, the Christ, the Son of God” as Carson and Moo point out. As these authors point out: “Christians would not ask that kind of question, because they already knew the answer. The most likely people to ask that sort of question would be Jews and Jewish proselytes who know what ‘the Christ’ means, have some sort of messianic expectation, and are perhaps in dialogue with Christians and want to know more. In short, John’s gospel not only is evangelistic in its purpose (a dominant view until this century, when relatively few have defended it) but aims in particular to evangelize Diaspora Jews and Jewish proselytes” (271).

Theme:

The fourth Gospel states its purpose very clearly in 20:30-31. “Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.” The Gospel of John has what has been referred to as the “highest Christology” in the NT. From the very outset John describes Jesus as God’s word, his self-revelation (Strauss 328). In 14:9 Jesus makes the statement: “…Whoever has seen me has see the Father…” Strauss points out that although Jesus is described as distinct from the Father (in 1:1 he is “with God), “he is fully God (“was God,” 1:1; 20:28), the “I AM” who existed before Abraham (8:24, 28, 58)” (328).

Jesus is equal with God; however, as concerns Jesus’s function the Gospel also demonstrates Christ to be in submission to God. He lives in complete dependency upon the Father. He does what the Father tells him to do. This helps reveal that central theme of the Gospel: “The role of the Son is to reveal the Father and bring others into relationship with him” (328).