John's Message
John
Authorship
Historically, few have challenged the concept of Johannine authorship of the Fourth Gospel. As early as A.D. 180, Theophilus referred to John as the author, and ten years later Irenaeus used 100 quotes from the Fourth Gospel, mentioning John. At the turn of the century in A.D. 200, Clement of Alexandria used John’s name frequently in connection with this Gospel. And Tertullian cited passages from almost every chapter, attributing them to the apostle. Opponents of this view have usually come from theological camps outside mainline orthodoxy, such as the Gnostics.
Martin Luther said that if we should lose all the books of the Bible except two—John and Romans—Christianity could be saved.
An old story suggests that an agnostic was challenged by Henry Clay Trumbell to study the Gospel of John. After emerging from his skeptical analysis, the man told Trumbell, “The one of whom this book tells is either the Savior of the world or He ought to be.”
Date
The books of Matthew, Mark, and Luke are called the Synoptic Gospels for the simple reason that they give us synopses of the life of Jesus—overviews of His ministry on this earth. It’s not as if John was not interested in giving us biographical details about the life of Jesus and samples of His teaching, but he proceeded in quite a different style. His is the most theological of the four Gospels in the New Testament, and he devoted almost two-thirds of his written account to the last week of Jesus’ life. John, as it were, wanted to put a spotlight on the critically important redemptive-historical activity that Jesus performed during His stay on earth.
DATE OF WRITING
Most conservative scholars place the development of John’s Gospel toward the end of the first century about A.D. 90. However, as in many arguments of this type, one’s view of authorship colors one’s view of date. Scholars have argued that the more highly developed theology of the Fourth Gospel suggests that it originated later, but that is hardly definitive. Other scholars, particularly those who deny Johnannine authorship, set a date somewhere in the second century.
So there are those who want to date this book earlier than the fall of Jerusalem (A.D. 70) and others who would like to see it dated well into the second century. My own inclination is to adopt the traditional view of an aged John writing some sixty or seventy years after the resurrection of Jesus.
That we are right in regarding the Gospel of John as the fourth and last of the Gospels is clear not only from the fact that in the majority of manuscripts it is found in this position, but also from patristic references. Clement of Alexandria, for example, who died in A.D. 212, stated on the authority of the elders of an earlier age that John wrote his Gospel last of the evangelists. If the work was published during the last days of the life of John the son of Zebedee, as the evidence suggests, it can be confidently dated in the last decade of the first century, probably at its close. Irenaeus stated that John survived until the reign of the Roman emperor Trajan, which began in A.D. 98.
