Special Historical Difficulties with the Gospel According to St. John (Part 15)
The early Christians were well aware that the Gospel according to St. John was in a class by itself. In the second century St. Irenaeus of Lyons, St. Clement of Alexandria, and the Muratorian canon were unanimous that this gospel was the last of the four to be written, and that it was penned by the apostle John himself (although it is also possible that the text was dictated to a scribe, who later made editorial revisions, such as adding chapter 21 as an epilogue). But the early Christians were also unanimous that John’s gospel was not quite like the other three, the “synoptic” gospels. They even referred to John’s as a “spiritual gospel,” to highlight the fact that there are depths of theological and devotional insight in this work that surpass all the others from the apostolic age. It was evidently written toward the end of the apostle’s life, after a half-century or more of reflection and contemplation on the mysteries of Christ.
On the one hand, the fact that it was written by an eyewitness of the life of Christ, and one of his inner circle of apostles (Peter, James and John), makes it an extraordinary resource — again, in a class all by itself. Moreover, in recent decades there have been a flurry of archaeological discoveries that have served to confirm that the author of this gospel knew ancient Jerusalem and Palestine very well indeed. For example, for many generations New Testament historians doubted the existence of the “Pool of Bethesda,” with its five porticoes, mentioned in John 5:1-15, the Pool of Siloam from John 9:7, Rachel’s well from John 4:12, and the Stone Pavement where Pilate sat in judgment on Jesus from John 19:13 — yet all of these subsequently were uncovered by archaeologists in the Holy Land.
On the other hand, the fact that this gospel was written toward the end of the first century, and that it evidently did not draw heavily on earlier written testimonies, naturally makes the historian somewhat hesitant to treat it as a generally reliable historical account of the teachings and deeds of Jesus. Also, we have already seen that St. John freely utilized the ancient practice of “chronological rearrangement” of the episodes of the life of Christ to tell the story in a way that he felt would be more meaningful to his audience (see article 7 in this series). John also supplemented the synoptic accounts by telling stories of miracles by Jesus that the other gospels left out (such as the miracle of the water and wine at Cana, and the raising of Lazarus from the dead) — stories that lack, therefore, the advantage of “multiple attestation.” But these are not the only things that have led to doubts about the historical reliability of this gospel.
One of the main things that has troubled historians is that the teachings of Jesus recorded in this work seem dramatically different from those found in Matthew, Mark and Luke.
First of all, the sayings of Jesus reported in John differ from those in the synoptics by their subject matter: in St. John’s gospel Jesus frequently speaks about himself (e.g. “I am the vine, you are the branches,” Jn 15:5; “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life,” Jn 14:6; and “I am the Light of the world,” Jn 8:12-13), while in Matthew, Mark and Luke, Jesus spends most of his time teaching and preaching about the Kingdom of God.
Second, the literary style of the sayings of Jesus in John’s gospel is unique. In John, Jesus usually speaks in long theological discourses, often centered upon extended metaphors (e.g. “I am the Bread of Life … I am the Good Shepherd,” Jn 6:35-58; 10:1-16), whereas in the synoptic gospels he usually speaks in parables or in patterned verses (such as the Beatitudes).
Three possible explanations have been given for these differences between the recorded words of Jesus in John compared with the other gospels.
1) The Traditional Solution
John deliberately supplemented the synoptic account with words and deeds of Jesus that the other gospels had omitted. No doubt there is some justification for this explanation. After all, a gospel is by definition a “selective biography” (again, see article 7 in this series) and as the last apostle to write a gospel, John may have felt it was important to provide a written record of words and deeds of Christ that the others had not included.
Still, this can hardly be the complete explanation. After all, why would the synoptic gospels have omitted such overwhelmingly important teachings of Jesus as those found in John, if Jesus had really said them? For example, John records that Jesus made explicit claims to his pre-existent, divine Sonship (“Before Abraham was, I am,” Jn 8:58), and that he also gave clear and extensive teachings about Baptism (Jn 3:1-13), the Eucharist (Jn 6:35-58) and the Holy Trinity (John chapters 13-17). It is very hard to understand why the other gospel writers would unanimously leave out such extraordinary sayings of Jesus, if he had really said them.
Moreover, in his manner of speaking, Jesus in John’s gospel sounds more like John does in his epistles — and more like Jesus in the book of Revelation, a book also probably written by St. John — than he does like the Jesus of the synoptics. This leads many commentators to offer another explanation for the discrepancies between John and the other three gospels ….
2) The Theological Creativity Solution
It may be that John simply puts into the mouth of Jesus his own, in-depth theological understanding of the teachings and deeds of his Master. That would explain why Jesus sounds so much like John in the latter’s epistles: because in St. John’s gospel, it is really John speaking, not Jesus, who is simply used as the mouthpiece for the Johannine interpretation of the mysteries of Christ. In fact, this was a literary device common in the ancient world. We see it on full display, for example, in Plato’s dialogues. Plato put into the mouth of Socrates his own interpretation and elaboration of the philosophy that Plato believed was authentically rooted in the words and deeds of his Master (after all, Plato was a disciple of Socrates): there was no attempt to deceive his readers here, only to explicate, to bring out all the implications of the philosophical tradition rooted in the words of his original teacher.
There can be little doubt that, to some degree at least, this is precisely what St. John was doing as well. In this sense, he was only doing more extensively what the other gospel writers sometimes felt free to do: editing, paraphrasing or elaborating on the teachings of Jesus in order to make them more fully comprehensible to the particular audiences they were addressing (and again, see article 7 in this series). On this reckoning, John would have taken the licence to “elaborate” and unfold the deepest implications of the teachings of Jesus to the maximum degree.
On the other hand, it is easy to exaggerate the distinctiveness of the style of Jesus’ teachings in St. John’s gospel. In John, for example, Jesus calls himself “the Son of Man” six times, which was his characteristic form of self-address according to the synoptics, and Jesus prefaces many of his teachings in John with “Truly, truly I say to you” (19 times in all), which was his characteristic, authoritative way of teaching, as the three other gospels clearly attest (although in them, Jesus usually says “truly” once, without repeating it). Such considerations have led to a third option for understanding the differences between the form and content of the teachings of Jesus in St. John’s Gospel, and the form and content of his teachings in Matthew, Mark, and Luke.
3) A Modification of the Traditional Solution
According to Evangelical Biblical scholar Leon Morris, the teachings of Jesus recorded in St. John’s gospel may give us Christ’s more informal and private discourses with his apostles, and his informal disputes with the Jews, outside of times of public preaching — in other words, his “table talk” with his inner circle of disciples, as well as responses to questions from Jewish scribes and Pharisees. This could account for the fact that the teachings of Jesus in St. John’s gospel are in a somewhat different style than in the synoptics, and are more in-depth — often more personal (e.g., regarding his self-consciousness of his own divine identity) — than the more simple teachings he gave to the crowds. What was stated implicitly to the crowds in parables was made more explicit by Jesus in his “table talk” with a smaller circle, and in response to questions (cf. Mk 4:34 “privately, to his own disciples, he explained everything”).
With regard to the omission of several important Johannine sayings of Jesus from the synoptics, we need to remember, yet again, that a “gospel” was never meant to be an exhaustive biography: lack of multiple attestation for a saying or deed of Jesus is not a sure sign of lack of historical authenticity. For example, only Luke records for us the parables of the Good Samaritan, the Prodigal Son, and the Pharisee and the Publican, yet few responsible scholars doubt that Jesus actually spoke these parables (since they fit several of the other criteria for historical authenticity that we discussed in article number 6 of this series, such as “dissimilarity,” “coherence,” and “Palestinian-Jewish setting”).
As a matter of fact, all three “solutions” discussed above could be combined: they are not mutually exclusive. Perhaps the teachings of Jesus in John do represent mostly the subject matter of his private and personal teachings and discussions, especially with his inner circle of disciples, while the synoptic gospels preserve for us more of Christ’s public teaching and preaching; but John also may have felt free to elaborate on Christ’s teachings to a much greater extent than the synoptic authors did in his desire bring out their true meaning, as the fruit of his long years of contemplation on the words of his Master, and in accord with the literary conventions of his day. Finally, it also may be the case that St. John deliberately sought to supplement earlier gospel accounts with other important words and deeds of Jesus that the other gospel writers had neglected to include.
In any case, we know that the source of this gospel was almost certainly John himself (Jn. 19:26, 35; 21:20-24), and again, this is the testimony of all the early Fathers of the Church who discussed the authorship of this gospel, including St. Irenaeus of Lyons (d.ca. 200) who relates in a letter to a friend how he had been taught the gospel by St. Polycarp (d. 156) in his youth, who had known the apostle John personally:
When I was still a boy I saw you in Lower Asia with Polycarp, when you had high status at the imperial court and wanted to gain favor. I remember events from those days more clearly than those that happened recently … so that I can even picture the place where blessed Polycarp sat and conversed, his comings and goings, his character and personal appearance, his discourses to the crowds, and how he reported his discussions with John and others who had seen the Lord. He recalled their very words, what they reported about the Lord and his miracles and his teaching — things that Polycarp had heard directly from eyewitnesses of the Word of life and reported in full harmony with Scripture. (cited in Habermas and Licona, The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus, p. 55)
Moreover, the Gospel according to St. John is generally written in very unpolished koine Greek, with grammatical signs that the author’s first language may have been Aramaic (the language spoken by Jesus and John); this fits with the explanation that the gospel largely comes from the apostle himself, struggling to compose it in his second language. Add to this all the signs of eyewitness reportage in John’s gospel (e.g., Jn. 2:15, 8:6, 18:15-18, 28-29, 19:13, etc., see article 11 in this series), and here we surely have a highly respectable historical source, rooted in eyewitness testimony, the testimony of a disciple who was one of Jesus’ inner circle (Peter, James, and John) — indeed, the disciple “whom Jesus loved” (Jn 13:23; 19:26), his closest compatriot, so to speak. No one was in a better position to know the human mind of Jesus Christ — his informal, in-depth teachings, and his most personal self-understanding — than the apostle St. John. And that is precisely what we find in his gospel.
Next Time: Case Studies in the ‘Hermeneutic of Suspicion’: the Early Life of Jesus
Robert Stackpole, STD
©The Mere Christian Fellowship, 2017
