**In his Sermons, St. Anthony writes, “John is represented in the eagle, which flies higher than other birds, as he penetrated hidden things more deeply than the rest”**

All of the notes on this portion of this site pertaining to the work of NT Wright and Mike Bird are taken directly from:
The New Testament in Its World
An Introduction to the History, Literature, and Theology of the First Christians
N. T. Wright (Author) , Michael F. Bird (Author) Page Count:992
Format:Hardcover, Cloth
ISBN:9780310499305
Release:November 19, 2019

John stands out from the rest of the New Testament. With Paul we are in the seminar room: arguing things out, looking up references, taking notes, and then being pushed out into the world to preach the gospel to the nations. Matthew takes us into the synagogue, where the people of God are learning to recognize Jesus as their king, their Emmanuel. Mark writes a short tract, challenging his readers with the very idea of a crucified king and turning it into a handbook on discipleship for followers of the servant-king. Luke addresses the educated Greek world of his day and paints a big picture of God’s purposes through Israel’s Messiah for the whole world.

John, by contrast, takes us up the mountain, and says quietly: ‘Look—from here, on a clear day, you can see for ever.’ We beheld his glory, glory as of the father’s only son. John does not include the story of Jesus’ transfiguration, as the other evangelists do. But there is a sense in which John’s whole story is about the transfiguration. He invites us to be still and know; to look again into the human face of Jesus of Nazareth, until the awesome knowledge comes over us, wave upon terrifying wave, that we are looking into the human face of the living God.

John’s gospel is in some ways remarkably like the three synoptic gospels, yet in other ways it is very unlike them. Why? What account can we give of this?

But then there are the stark differences. How long was Jesus’ public career, and where was it located? John has his dramatic Temple-action near the beginning; the synoptics put it near the end. But then John has Jesus going to Jerusalem frequently; for Mark there is only the one visit. Was the Last Supper a Passover meal, as in the synoptics, or held on the night before, as John seems to suggest? There are also theological differences: the Johannine Jesus appears more forthright and explicit about his divine status than the Jesus of the synoptics, and the Johannine Jesus talks more about ‘eternal life’ than the ‘kingdom of God’ (though there is overlap on both). The Johannine Jesus uses discourses rather than parables (though some may be ‘buried’—parables woven into discourses like the image of the ‘apprentice son’ in John 5.19–23). The Johannine Jesus performs no exorcisms. We do not see Jesus baptized, nor are we told about his words of institution at the Last Supper. In the synoptics, the high priests seek to kill Jesus because of jealousy, but in John’s gospel it is because he raised Lazarus from the dead. That incident, indeed, is one of many things found in John but not elsewhere. Others include the ‘I am’ sayings, the dialogues with Nicodemus and with the Samaritan woman, the turning of water into wine, Jesus’ washing of the disciples’ feet, the teaching about the holy spirit as the ‘Comforter’, and so on. John is clearly making a distinctive, unique contribution.

First, John was writing a new Genesis. His whole book, opening with the words ‘In the beginning’, which echo Genesis 1.1, is about how the world’s creator has come at last to remake his world. John 20 is about Jesus’ resurrection, but every sentence breathes the life of ‘the first day of the week’, the start of new creation. And if John hints that his prologue is heralding a new version of Genesis 1, then the equivalent of the climax of that great chapter, the creation of humans in the divine image, is precisely when the Word becomes flesh. John 1.14 corresponds to Genesis 1.26–28: the one through whom the world was made now becomes the one through whom the world is rescued and remade.

Third, as a result, John was also writing about Pentecost. John bears witness to what he remembers, but his memory of Jesus is augmented and animated by the holy spirit, the paraclete, who will ‘teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you’ (Jn. 14.26). John, it seems, sees himself as part of a Jewish movement that has experienced the fulfilment of Israel’s hopes in Israel’s Messiah, and as someone who has received the gift of YHWH’s own spirit from this Messiah. John is providing an epitome of Jesus’ life, written by one who has experienced the streams of living water promised by Jesus to his followers, with the story expounded in the co-ordinates of Israel’s scripture. This is no bland bios, with the sayings of a famous teacher strung together in a loose narrative framework. John has written a theologically creative and spiritually rich fusion of personal memory and Pentecostal faith . . . . The Johannine Jesus is what Jesus looks like viewed through the lens of the spirit, the paraclete.

The gospel of John sets out several vital biblical themes. There is rich teaching about God as father and his love for his world. There are clear warnings about the evil and darkness that have invaded God’s world, and about the tragic unbelief of so many Judeans in the face of divine witnesses. John has more to say about the spirit than all the other gospels put together, generating a strong theme about discipleship, which stems from faith in God and issues in love for others, and about the God-breathed mission to the wider world. John’s Jesus regularly refers to salvation in terms of ‘eternal life’—presumably, as elsewhere in the New Testament, ‘the life of the age to come’, not a Platonic dream beyond space, time, and matter.

CONTEXTUAL AND CRITICAL MATTERS
Origins of John

He is portrayed as being, literally and metaphorically, one step ahead of Peter, almost as if there might have been a friendly rivalry between them. Although the beloved disciple is not explicitly mentioned prior to Jesus’ final meal with his disciples in Jerusalem, this does not mean that he had no part in Jesus’ ministry before that point. It might well be that he was the unnamed one of the two disciples of John the Baptist—the named one being Andrew—to whom the Baptist spoke about Jesus and who both then began to follow Jesus.

The beloved disciple is more likely a historical figure, a Judean follower of Jesus, a community founder, whose eye-witness testimony and personal authority undergird and vouch for the fourth gospel’s veracity.18 But this only presses the question once more: who was he?

According to tradition, the beloved disciple was John the son of Zebedee, brother of James, one of the senior apostles among the Twelve. Many early Christians believed that he wrote the gospel of John and the three letters of John, and that he received the revelation of Jesus Christ on the island of Patmos, where he composed the book of Revelation.

In the late second century, the Muratorian canon states that ‘The fourth of the Gospels is that of John, one of the disciples.’ Around the same time, Irenaeus wrote that ‘John, the disciple of the Lord, who also had leaned upon his breast, did himself publish a Gospel during his residence in Ephesus in Asia.’ Irenaeus traces this view back to a group of Asian elders, probably including Papias of Hierapolis (d. c. AD 130) and Polycarp of Smyrna (d. c. AD 155), who had conversed with John before his death after a long old age, probably during the reign of Trajan (AD 98–117). According to Irenaeus, Papias had been a ‘hearer of John’;24 according to Philip of Side, Papias was a ‘disciple of John the theologian’.

A more compelling alternative to John the son of Zebedee is another John, ‘John the elder’.

This hypothesis rests on Papias’s statement about preferring oral testimony over written records when accessing Jesus’ teachings. He mentions two distinct Johns:

I will not hesitate to set down for you, along with my interpretations, everything I have carefully learned then from the elders and carefully remembered, guaranteeing their truth. For unlike most people I did not enjoy those who have a great deal to say, but those who teach the truth. Nor did I enjoy those who recall someone else’s commandments, but those who remember the commandments given by the Lord to the faith and proceeding from the truth itself. And if by chance someone who had been a follower of the elders should come my way, I inquired about the words of the elders—what Andrew or Peter said, or Philip or Thomas or James or John or Matthew or any other of the Lord’s disciples, and whatever Aristion and the elder John, the Lord’s disciples, were saying. For I did not think that information from books would profit me as much as information from a living and abiding voice.

Papias’s identification of the ‘elder John’ can also be correlated with the self-designation of the author in the second and third Johannine letters. Assuming a close connection between the gospel of John and the letters of John, the clearest self-identification of the author is not as an ‘apostle’, but as an ‘elder’, and a ‘witness’ to the events of Jesus’ life.

Date

If, as many suppose, John was dependent on the synoptic tradition, that might push us to a later date, but only if we could be more certain than we are about the dating of the synoptics themselves. There is no strong evidence against the traditional date near the end of the century, either towards the end of Domitian’s reign (AD 81–96) or at the beginning of Trajan’s (AD 98–117). But that double negative indicates the continuing uncertainty on the topic. Some have continued to argue that a much earlier date is possible and even preferable.

Place of writing

So where was the gospel written? Early and unanimous tradition suggests Ephesus.

Purpose

Nor are the stories of Jesus in this book simply ‘illustrations’ of an abstract point; the ‘faith’ to be elicited is that the Word became flesh, specifically the human flesh of this unique human being, doing these unique things.

Prologue (1.1–18)
The prologue functions like an overture to an opera. It tells the story from creation to new creation; from covenant to new covenant. It introduces the main motifs in the drama that are about to unfold: Jesus is God’s light and life, the supreme manifestation of divine glory, grace, and truth, evoking also the divine Word and its human witnesses. John draws together the story of creation (‘In the beginning’) and Israel’s election (‘he came to his own’), with Israel’s Temple as the location of the divine presence (‘glory’ and ‘dwelling among us’), and Israel’s covenant charter (‘law given through Moses’). The back story is that God called Israel to be the means of rescuing the world, so that he might one day rescue the world by becoming Israel in the person of its representative Messiah. Thus, in the prologue, God’s promise to dwell with his people and to rescue them from the darkness takes place through the sending of the divine Word into the world, into the human flesh of the true Image; and when the Word is received, it begets new children. The tragedy is that the Word has been resisted by Israel (‘he came to his own, and his own did not receive him’). But God’s new Temple has been built in the person of Jesus and through the work of the spirit. As in Revelation’s picture of the new Jerusalem (21.3), the dwelling of God is with humans. John has often been misread as though it was telling humans how to leave the present world and get to heaven. In reality, it is explaining how heaven itself, in the person of its Lord, came to dwell among us; how the one through whom all things were made came to rescue and renew that created world.

So John describes the coming of the Word into the world, bringing with it life and light (1.1–4). John the Baptist witnessed to the light (1.6–8), the light which evoked the twofold response of either unbelief or belief (1.9–13). Finally, the Word entered human existence as the ‘only begotten son’ of God the father (1.14–18). This gives the reader the signal that the ‘son of God’ in the rest of the narrative, while being a recognizable designation for the Messiah, was now also to be understood in terms of the eternal Word through whom all things were made.

The climax, then, is obviously verse 14: ‘the Word became flesh’. Much like Wisdom in traditions associated with that concept (see ‘Portals and parallels: Wisdom dwells on earth’), the pre-existent Word ‘tabernacled’ or ‘pitched his tent’ in the very creation that he helped bring into existence. The startling implication is that all prior forms of divine presence were either transitory or preparatory: the Word-made-flesh is a unique mode of divine disclosure, the climactic manifestation of God’s covenant favour (grace) and of divine testimony (truth).91 The story the prologue tells is thus the story of the whole gospel in miniature. This is the story of Jesus told as the true and redeeming story of Israel, told as the true and redeeming story of the creator and the cosmos.

PORTALS AND PARALLELS: WISDOM DWELLS ON EARTH
Jewish authors could picture Wisdom, the personified word of YHWH, looking to dwell among the people but struggling to find a place, until she took up residence in Israel (see Prov. 8.22–31; Wis. 8.4; 9.9). According to Sirach, the figure of Wisdom comes to dwell permanently among humans, specifically in the Temple at Jerusalem, depositing the divine word and divine glory in Israel’s midst. However, in 1 Enoch, the picture is darker: Wisdom had been trying to find somewhere to live, but finding none, she went back home. In her absence Iniquity went out and found somewhere to dwell, and turned what should have been Wisdom’s home into a den of iniquity. Consequently, there is now no hope for the world, or Israel, or individual humans. John’s development of this same theme is of a different order altogether. He agrees with Sirach that the divine Wisdom does indeed find a home. He recognizes, and takes on board, the tragedy that lies behind 1 Enoch 42: the world did not know the logos, its creator, and even ‘his own people did not receive him’. But this did not make him return home, having abandoned the world to ‘iniquity’. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. The logos has come, as mainstream Judaism fully expected, not to judge the world but to redeem it. But instead of Shekinah and Torah, the Jerusalem Temple and the covenant code, as the places where Wisdom/logos dwells and reveals the divine glory, John says that the logos became flesh, became a human being, became Jesus of Nazareth.

Sirach 24.1–12
Wisdom praises herself, and tells of her glory in the midst of her people. In the assembly of the Most High she opens her mouth, and in the presence of his hosts she tells of her glory: ‘I came forth from the mouth of the Most High, and covered the earth like a mist. I dwelt in the highest heavens, and my throne was in a pillar of cloud. Alone I compassed the vault of heaven and traversed the depths of the abyss. Over waves of the sea, over all the earth, and over every people and nation I have held sway. Among all these I sought a resting-place; in whose territory should I abide? Then the Creator of all things gave me a command, and my Creator chose the place for my tent. He said, “Make your dwelling in Jacob, and in Israel receive your inheritance.” Before the ages, in the beginning, he created me, and for all the ages I shall not cease to be. In the holy tent I ministered before him, and so I was established in Zion. Thus in the beloved city he gave me a resting-place, and in Jerusalem was my domain. I took root in an honored people, in the portion of the Lord, his heritage.’ (NRSV)

1 Enoch 42.1–3
Wisdom could not find a place in which she could dwell; but a place was found (for her) in the heavens. Then Wisdom went out to dwell with the children of the people, but she found no dwelling place. (So) Wisdom returned to her place and she settled permanently among the angels. Then Iniquity went out of her rooms, and found whom she did not expect. And she dwelt with them, like rain in a desert, like dew on a thirsty land. (OTP)

The book of signs (1.19—12.50)
The first main section of the gospel is sometimes referred to as ‘the book of signs’ because of the sequence of ‘signs’ which John himself flags up as he introduces the first two (2.11; 4.54). John seems, with these, to be hinting at a longer sequence, which most assume will mean seven, but opinions differ as to which incidents in the subsequent narrative should be seen as the remaining five. There is a lot to be said for seeing the raising of Lazarus (11.1–45) as the seventh, which might suggest that the third is the healing of the crippled man (5.2–16), the fourth the feeding of the five thousand (6.1–15), the fifth the walking on water (6.16–21), and the sixth the healing of the man born blind (9.1–7). On balance, however, we prefer the perhaps bolder move of seeing Jesus’ crucifixion itself as the seventh sign, with the raising of Lazarus as the sixth, omitting the walking on water which, though obviously significant in various ways, does not stand out in the same way in John’s narrative. The point of the ‘signs’, as John says at 2.11, is that they reveal Jesus’ glory and elicit faith. For John, this is supremely true of the crucifixion. The ‘signs’, however, are thereby doing the job which John assigns first and foremost to John the Baptist, namely, pointing to Jesus and starting to explain his significance.

John declares that Jesus is the ‘Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world’, combining the images of the Passover lamb and Isaiah’s ‘suffering servant’. John, having seen the spirit descend on Jesus, testifies that he is the ‘son of God’, signifying both Jesus’ messianic identity and his unique filial relationship with Israel’s God—and perhaps that these two things were always designed to merge into one (1.29–34). This leads two of John’s disciples (Andrew and Simon) to follow Jesus, with Jesus renaming Simon as ‘Cephas’, the Aramaic word for ‘rock’, corresponding to the Greek petros.

At a wedding in Cana, Jesus performs his first ‘sign’ (sēmeion), turning water into wine at his mother’s request. The story resonates with the promises of divine generosity and plenty in the messianic age. Other overtones abound: the six jars used for Jewish ceremonial washing are transformed into wine-flagons, and the master of ceremonies comments that the best wine has only now appeared.

The personal challenge to Nicodemus, framing so many theological themes, is echoed in the very different personal challenge to the Samaritan woman. Despite centuries of deep mutual suspicion between Jews and Samaritans, and despite the alarm-bells that would ring at a man being alone with an unattended woman, Jesus asks the woman for a drink from Jacob’s well (4.1–42). Another Johannine theme is thereby introduced: water, the water of life promised here and in 7.37–38. In a teasing dialogue, Jesus questions her about her husband, then revealing that he knows about her sad and chequered past. She changes the subject—right into what we now know to be a central Johannine theme: Jews worship in Jerusalem, Samaritans on Mount Gerizim, but Jesus is doing something new that will upstage both.

If chapter 3 emphasized the new birth (over against ordinary Abrahamic descent), and chapter 4 the new worship (over against the Jerusalem Temple), chapter 5 emphasizes the new age itself, the reality towards which the weekly sabbaths had long pointed. (Many Jewish teachers then and now have seen the sabbath as the anticipation of the age to come.) Jesus heals a paralyzed man, instructing him to pick up his mat and walk; but the Judeans object, because it is the sabbath. Jesus’ response, developed in another extended discourse, implies that the age to come is already here, the age to which Moses pointed but which he could not deliver, the age which would issue in resurrection itself (5.25–26).

The longest discourse so far accompanies the next ‘sign’: the feeding of the five thousand, echoing the wilderness feeding of Israel after the exodus. This stirs up the possibility that the crowd might try to make Jesus king in the wrong way (6.15), and he retreats up the mountain while the disciples set sail across the lake. The storm that follows sets the scene for Jesus’ YHWH-like powers, striding over the sea and bringing them safe to shore. The crowds are confused, but Jesus insists that they should look beyond his provision of ordinary bread to the reality which he embodies in himself. The language is stark: they must eat Jesus’ flesh and drink his blood! This would sound preposterous, even to those who might hear the echo of 2 Samuel 23.17. Most would now say that John intends us to hear echoes of the eucharist (6.32–59). It is indeed a ‘hard saying’ but, as Peter insists, Jesus has the words of ‘eternal life’, the life of the age to come which is already breaking in.

John has now firmly linked Jesus’ work with Passover; he now has Jesus also fulfilling the Feast of Tabernacles. This agricultural festival involved the lighting of lamps and processions, ending with the pouring out of water and wine in the Temple, commemorating the divine provision of water in the wilderness. Jesus’ presence and teaching confuse the crowds and the authorities, but he declares (echoing Isa. 55.1) that thirsty people should come and drink—from him. As before (4.10–15), he is offering living water, like the water flowing from the Temple in Ezekiel’s vision (47.1–12; also Zech. 14.8). John interprets this in a stark phrase: the spirit wasn’t available yet (literally ‘there was not yet spirit’) because Jesus was not yet ‘glorified’.

At this point the narrative flow is sharply broken by the story of ‘the woman caught in adultery’—or, better perhaps, the men caught in hypocrisy (Jn. 7.53—8.11). The earliest manuscripts omit the passage, and some later ones place it at different points in John and even in Luke. This doesn’t mean it didn’t happen; it might be that the story was thought so radical that some early scribes left it out. Its present placing has the effect that John 8 starts with Jesus protecting a woman from being stoned and ends with Jesus himself having to escape stoning. It focuses on the powerful mercy which triumphs over the negative judgment of the law, as resurrection-life triumphs over death—without slackening the moral demand (‘from now on don’t sin again’, 8.11 NTE/KNT), while highlighting Jesus’ condemnation of those who presumed to judge but were themselves just as sinful (8.9).

We should then read John 8.12–59 as a continuation of the previous conflict between Jesus and the Judean leaders at the Feast of Tabernacles. This section is bracketed by two great ‘I am’ statements (‘I am the light of the world’ and ‘before Abraham was born, I am’) (see Table 27.1). This section contains further disclosures by Jesus of his sent-ness from the father; the polemic both ways ratchets up in intensity.

I am the bread of life 6.35, 41, 48
I am the light of the world 8.12; 9.5
I am the sheep gate 10.7, 9
I am the good shepherd 10.11, 14
I am the resurrection and the life 11.25
I am the way, the truth, and the life 14.6
I am the true vine 15.1
Absolute ‘I am’ statements 4.26; 6.20; 8.24, 28, 58; 13.19; 18.5–8

The Pharisees, dismissing and condemning Jesus, are in fact accusing the father who sent him, proving despite themselves that they are indeed walking in darkness. This is one of the sharpest depictions in the gospel of the fact that ‘he came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him’ (1.11 NTE/KNT). God the father is seeking Jesus’ honour, and will vindicate him, proving that he is in fact the fulfilment of the divine promise to Abraham himself.

Having already claimed to be ‘the light of the world’, Jesus then puts this into dramatic effect by healing a man born blind (9.1–41). Again this happened on the sabbath, generating further controversy between the Pharisees and the newly sighted man, and also his parents, who were drawn into the discussion. The man sticks to his story, and is thrown out of the synagogue for his pains. But this, like so much in John, is ironic: if Jesus is the light of the world (see 8.12; 9.5), then it is his opponents who are outside in the dark.

John’s account of Jesus’ public career reaches its dramatic climax in the raising of Lazarus from the dead (11.1–55). Jesus sees Lazarus’s serious sickness as the opportunity for God to be glorified, and appears deliberately to delay going to help until it is, in human terms, too late. Lazarus has been dead for four days; his grieving sisters Martha and Mary meet Jesus with a mixture of lament and complaint. Martha recognizes that Lazarus will rise again in the final resurrection, but the point of John’s whole story is that Jesus is bringing the promised future into the present: ‘I am the resurrection and the life.’ This leads Martha to confess that Jesus himself is ‘the Messiah, the Son of God’,101 which is what the evangelist regards as the true faith (20.31).

Clement of Alexandria (c. AD 150–215) was a well-educated convert to Christianity, thoroughly steeped in Greek philosophy, who eventually became a leading theologian in the catechetical school of Alexandria. Commenting on John 10, he said:

In our sickness we need a Saviour, in our wanderings a guide, in our blindness someone to show us the light, in our thirst the fountain of living water that quenches forever the thirst of those who drink from it. We dead people need life, we sheep need a shepherd, we children need a teacher, the whole world needs Jesus! (Clem. Paed. 1.9.83)

The Jewish leaders then worry that Jesus’ deeds will create a tumult which will force the Romans to eradicate their local leadership and perhaps even the nation itself. Caiaphas, the high priest, utters a statement dripping with Johannine irony: it is better for one man to die than for the whole nation to perish. Yes, says John: as high priest, he prophesied that Jesus would die for God’s people and also for the dispersed children of God—Diaspora Jews, certainly, but, in John’s terms, the whole of humanity. This two-level scene—the politicians anxiously plotting a judicial murder, and John interpreting it as a divine prophecy—brings John’s slow build-up on the meaning of Jesus’ death towards its climax. From the very beginning he has told us that Jesus is the lamb of God (1.29, 36). Jesus has spoken of his own death and resurrection in terms of the destruction and rebuilding of the Temple (2.19–21). He has declared that the son of man is to be ‘lifted up’, so that anyone who believes in him can have eternal life (3.14–15). He has spoken of giving his own flesh for the life of the world (6.51), and of the shepherd giving his life for the sheep (10.15–18). At the same time, we have seen the build-up of hostility towards Jesus, especially among the Judean leaders. Several times they have wanted to arrest him; sometimes, even, to stone him. Now the whole picture comes together. Jesus’ sense of vocation, on the one hand, meets the leaders’ political calculation on the other.

Jesus enters Jerusalem with pilgrims celebrating his apparently royal arrival. But time is short: the ‘hour’ is at hand (another Johannine theme reaching its climax), and at last the ‘son of man’ is to be glorified. Only through this will the dark powers that have ruled the world be overthrown; only so, then, will the Greeks who come looking for Jesus be drawn to him (12.20–34). Jesus describes his forthcoming death as a kernel of wheat falling to the ground and dying, but reaping a great harvest. As Carson comments: ‘Like the seed whose death is the germination of life for a great crop, so Jesus’ death generates a plentiful harvest. The seed is thereby vindicated; the Son is thereby glorified.’

The book of glory (13.1—20.31)
The second half of the book opens with a solemn statement: having loved his own in the world, Jesus now loved them ‘right through to the end’ (13.1 NTE/ KNT). There was nothing that love could do for them that he did not do. The most immediate outworking of this is that, after supper (John, unlike the synoptics, does not describe the meal itself), Jesus does the slave’s job of washing the disciples’ feet.

Jesus would ‘cleanse’ his followers by his coming death, thereby bequeathing them the sign of recognition for all his followers: humble, suffering love. The scene is the more poignant in that Judas is heading off into the night to betray Jesus (13.30), and Peter, though he does not realize it, is about to deny him (13.18–38). The power of darkness is closing in, but Jesus is meeting it with love, and even joy.

‘God is the Father who is the source of life. Jesus, the Son of the Father, confers God’s life but, even more, is God’s life-giving Word embodied in the flesh for the life of the world. The Spirit of God is the power of life and the agency through which life is received. To a large extent, then, John sketches the identity of God through what God does and, even more specifically, primarily through the various ways in which God gives life through the Son and the Spirit.’

Marianne Meye Thompson, The God of the Gospel of John, 229.

John 14—16 is, in fact, Jesus’s farewell address to his disciples, similar in genre and function to other ‘testament’ speeches in Jewish literature. The whole thing, as we would expect from John, has the flavour of the Temple, where the one God comes to dwell with his people: the discourse is all about (1) the way in which the father is acting in Jesus and (2) the way in which the spirit (the paraclete or ‘advocate’) will indwell the disciples to bind them into that same divine-human fellowship. Jesus is to ‘go away’ and ‘return’, but they are the branches in the vine (an obvious Israel-image).

This then sets the scene for Jesus’ so-called ‘high-priestly’ prayer in chapter 17. With ‘the world’ (creation organizing itself in rebellion against its creator) closing in and threatening, Jesus comes to the father with his people on his heart, praying for their protection, their sanctification, and above all for their unity (17.1–26)

As Lincoln states: The ultimate powerlessness of the massed representatives of this world’s powers—the Roman forces, the Jewish guards and the disciple turned betrayer—is revealed, as they have to retreat and prostrate themselves in the presence of the unique divine agent who is one with God.

Thanks to ‘another disciple’ (regularly supposed to be ‘the beloved disciple’), Peter is able to gain entrance to the high priest’s courtyard, though he is soon recognized as one of Jesus’ disciples. John skips briefly over the proceedings before the Jewish authorities, and brings Jesus face to face with the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate. He and Jesus then argue about kingdom, truth, and power, where Jesus, acknowledging that he is claiming some kind of kingship, insists that his kingdom is not the sort that grows in this world. His kingdom is certainly for this world, but it isn’t from it. It comes from somewhere else—in other words, from above, from heaven, from God (18.36). The crowd, shouting down Pilate’s protestations, demands that Barabbas be released and Jesus crucified (18.28–40); Barabbas, says John laconically, was a brigand (18.40). The Judeans have opted for the normal kind of kingship. Jesus, going to his death, will embody the true version.

John’s crucifixion scene is noticeably different from the accounts in the synoptics. No Simon of Cyrene; no mockery from bystanders; no cry of abandonment; no midday darkness; no tearing of the Temple curtain; no centurion’s acclamation. Many details, however, remain: the crucifixion itself, soldiers casting lots for Jesus’ clothes, Jesus offered wine vinegar. John adds further points: the dispute between Pilate and the Judean leaders over the trilingual title on the cross; the scriptural citations (Pss. 22.18; 69.21; Ex. 12.46/Num. 9.12; Zech. 12.10); the presence of Mary wife of Clopas; the exchange between Jesus and his mother; the breaking of the legs of the brigands on either side; the Roman soldier’s spear-thrust into Jesus’ torso, and the resultant outflowing of water and blood, showing that Jesus was already thoroughly dead. Jesus’ final word in John, tetelestai, ‘it’s all done’ or ‘it’s finished’, echoes the creation story itself: God ‘finished’ his work on the sixth day, and rested on the seventh.

The true Passover has taken place, and the lamb of God has borne the sins of the world (19.16b–37). Jesus is buried by Joseph of Arimathea, a secret disciple, and Nicodemus, who had earlier visited Jesus by night (19.38–42).

For John, Jesus’ resurrection is the start of God’s new creation, now that the anti-creation powers of darkness have done their worst and been overthrown. Jesus then commissions the disciples for their global mission, rooted in his own and energized by his spirit. The disciples become new-Temple people, those in whom the living God comes to dwell. That is why they will now pronounce God’s forgiveness—and also, worryingly, God’s ‘retaining’ of impenitent sins. They must warn the world that sin is a serious, deadly disease, and that to remain in it will bring death.

Thomas was the dour, dogged disciple, who suggested they might as well go with Jesus, if only to die with him (11.16), who complained that Jesus hadn’t made things anything like clear enough (14.5), and who just happened to be somewhere else on the first Easter day. He sees the others excited, elated, unable to contain their joy. But he’s not convinced. Finally, though, he sees Jesus for himself, making the memorable confession, ‘My Lord and my God!’

John is working towards his conclusion. Jesus, he says, did many other signs which are not written here; but these are written to enable you to believe (or perhaps to continue to believe—there is uncertainty whether this is ‘first-time faith’ or not) that ‘the Messiah, the son of God, is Jesus’. Most translations put that the other way round; but this follows the Greek syntax, and corresponds closely to the end of chapter 1 where Philip tells Nathanael that ‘we have found the one Moses and the prophets wrote about—and it’s Jesus of Nazareth’. It isn’t so much that they are starting with Jesus and finding something to say about him. They are starting with the hope of Israel (see 4.22) and seeing that hope fulfilled and radically transformed through him and his death and resurrection.

4. Epilogue (21.1–25)

It looks as if the book should finish at 20.31, but it does not. Someone, whether the original author or a close friend, has added a final powerful, poignant scene. Some of Jesus’ followers are fishing in the Sea of Galilee. A stranger on the shore enquires as to their progress, and tells them to cast their net on the right side of the vessel. They do so, and take in a huge haul of fish—a scene reminding them of their original calling (see Lk. 5). They come to shore; Jesus is cooking breakfast. ‘None of the disciples dared ask him, “Who are you?” ’, says John, since they knew it was Jesus himself. That sentence remains profoundly strange: you don’t ask someone ‘Who are you?’ when you’ve been with them for three years. The risen Jesus was somehow different—which is well explained by Paul in Romans 6: Jesus had gone through death and out the other side. He was no longer ‘mortal’. Still human, still bodily; but with a body that belonged to the new creation, even though it was standing there, confusingly, in the midst of the old.

Jesus then confronts Peter—it seems that they walked away from the others—by asking him three times, ‘Simon son of John, do you truly love me?’ Jesus uses the word agapaō, the word he reserves for the ultimate depth of self-giving love. Peter responds with phileō, the word of friendship: it looks as though Peter can’t bring himself (after what had happened) to affirm the full, dangerous love which Jesus himself had embodied. But on the third time Jesus switches, and uses Peter’s word: Simon, son of John, are you my friend? Peter is upset at this, John says, but to each answer Jesus responds with fresh commissioning: feed my lambs, look after my sheep, feed my sheep. Somehow, it seems, the fresh word of commission carries within itself the assurance of forgiveness that Peter so craved.

27

The Gospel according to John

The deeds and words of Jesus are the deeds and words of God; if this be not true the book is blasphemous.¹

CHAPTER AT A GLANCE

This chapter explains the story, themes, and theology of John’s gospel.

By the end of this chapter you should be able to:

• understand the origins of John’s gospel in the context of early Christianity;

• describe the basic features of John’s story of Jesus;

• grasp the general themes in John’s gospel.

INTRODUCTION

John, by contrast, takes us up the mountain, and says quietly: ‘Look—from here, on a clear day, you can see for ever.’ We beheld his glory, glory as of the father’s only son. John does not include the story of Jesus’ transfiguration, as the other evangelists do. But there is a sense in which John’s whole story is about the transfiguration. He invites us to be still and know; to look again into the human face of Jesus of Nazareth, until the awesome knowledge comes over us, wave upon terrifying wave, that we are looking into the human face of the living God.

John the Evangelist was often symbolized by an eagle.

Public Domain

Part of the point, then, is that John is teaching us to discern the presence of God in the mess and muddle of historical reality. No apologies, then, for plunging into the questions the book inevitably raises. John’s gospel is in some ways remarkably like the three synoptic gospels, yet in other ways it is very unlike them. Why? What account can we give of this?²

The similarities are clear. John and the synoptics share a comparable genre; they rely on a common intertext, the scriptures of Israel, as they narrate the same story: a Jewish prophet sent by God to Israel, one who teaches throughout Galilee and Judea, who performs miraculous deeds, attracts many followers and calls them to trust him, is referred to as ‘son of God’, ‘son of man’, and ‘Messiah’, engages in polemics against the Pharisees, incurs the rage of the Judean priestly leadership, is crucified by the Roman authorities, and then is raised by God from the dead and seen alive by his disciples. It is, of course, substantially the same story.

But then there are the stark differences. How long was Jesus’ public career, and where was it located? John has his dramatic Temple-action near the beginning; the synoptics put it near the end.³ But then John has Jesus going to Jerusalem frequently; for Mark there is only the one visit. Was the Last Supper a Passover meal, as in the synoptics, or held on the night before, as John seems to suggest? There are also theological differences: the Johannine Jesus appears more forthright and explicit about his divine status than the Jesus of the synoptics, and the Johannine Jesus talks more about ‘eternal life’ than the ‘kingdom of God’ (though there is overlap on both).⁴The Johannine Jesus uses discourses rather than parables (though some may be ‘buried’—parables woven into discourses like the image of the ‘apprentice son’ in John 5.19–23). The Johannine Jesus performs no exorcisms. We do not see Jesus baptized, nor are we told about his words of institution at the Last Supper. In the synoptics, the high priests seek to kill Jesus because of jealousy, but in John’s gospel it is because he raised Lazarus from the dead. That incident, indeed, is one of many things found in John but not elsewhere. Others include the ‘I am’ sayings, the dialogues with Nicodemus and with the Samaritan woman, the turning of water into wine, Jesus’ washing of the disciples’ feet, the teaching about the holy spirit as the ‘Comforter’, and so on. John is clearly making a distinctive, unique contribution.

Why should this be so? What did John think he was doing?

Second, John was also writing a new Exodus. Moses led the people out of Egypt and gave them the Torah, to prepare them for God coming in person to dwell with them (in the tabernacle) and to lead them to their inheritance. Now ‘the Word became flesh and [literally translated] “tabernacled in our midst” ’ (Jn. 1.14). Jesus is the place where the one God has come to dwell among us and to reveal his true glory. The whole gospel resonates with this temple-theme, reaching a climax in the ‘Farewell Discourses’ (Jn. 13—17) when Jesus’ followers, too, become temple-people by the promise that God’s own spirit will come to dwell in them.

Southern steps into the Temple

Third, as a result, John was also writing about Pentecost. John bears witness to what he remembers, but his memory of Jesus is augmented and animated by the holy spirit, the paraclete, who will ‘teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you’ (Jn. 14.26). John, it seems, sees himself as part of a Jewish movement that has experienced the fulfilment of Israel’s hopes in Israel’s Messiah, and as someone who has received the gift of yhwh’s own spirit from this Messiah. John is providing an epitome of Jesus’ life, written by one who has experienced the streams of living water promised by Jesus to his followers, with the story expounded in the co-ordinates of Israel’s scripture. This is no bland bios, with the sayings of a famous teacher strung together in a loose narrative framework. John has written a theologically creative and spiritually rich fusion of personal memory and Pentecostal faith, suffused with scriptural motifs that together make the point: this is the fulfilment of Israel’s hope, which means that this is therefore the way creation itself is renewed, and, crowning it all, this is what it looked like when Israel’s God, the creator, came in person to do what only he could do. John thus artistically blends together the life of Jesus with the love of God revealed in Jesus. He offers historical testimony married to the spirit of truth, allowing the scriptural voice to serve as the background harmony to the living voice of the spirit. The Johannine gospel yields a creative blend of memory, mystery, and midrash.⁵ The Johannine Jesus is what Jesus looks like viewed through the lens of the spirit, the paraclete. While John 20.22 has been nicknamed the ‘Johannine Pentecost’, in a sense the entire book is a Johannine Pentecost. The spirit uses Israel’s scriptures and John’s testimony to reveal who Jesus was and is—and who he is calling his followers to be, and what he is commissioning them to do.

But the heart of John’s thematic world is christology. John constructs a christological cascade, presenting Jesus as the father’s supreme agent, the heaven-sent son, the pre-existent Word who is enfleshed with full humanity. Jesus feels human fatigue; he weeps human tears; he really was and is a Galilean rabbi, a prophet—and Israel’s Messiah. As the son of man, Jesus is the nexus between heaven and earth, the object of divine worship. His crucifixion radiates God’s glory, the glory of utter self-giving love.⁶ At climactic moments Jesus is said to be ‘equal with God’, the ‘I am’ associated with the divine name, and even confessed as ‘my Lord and my God’.⁷ He is differentiated from the father, and yet is one with the father, even though he is neither the father in a human mode, nor a second god in addition to the father. Ernst Käsemann famously believed that John’s figure of Jesus was ‘God striding across the earth’, but this is a radical misunderstanding. John well understands the dialectic tension between Jesus as vere homo et vere deus (truly man and truly God).⁸ In John’s account, the one true God of Israel is revealed in the fully and genuinely human Jesus of Nazareth. What is more, that is part of the theological point, not a mere concession within an otherwise ‘divine-only’ view of Jesus. Humans were made in God’s image. When Pilate says ‘Behold the man’, he is voicing what John wants to say every bit as much as when he writes ‘King of the Jews’ above Jesus’ head—or as when John’s Caiaphas declares that it is expedient for one man to die for the people.⁹

CONTEXTUAL AND CRITICAL MATTERS

Origins of John

As with the other canonical gospels, John’s gospel makes no mention of its own author. However, a central character in the second half of the gospel is the ‘disciple whom Jesus loved’, usually referred to in modern times as the ‘beloved disciple’. This figure was reclining beside Jesus in the upper room; he was, it seems, with Peter in the high priest’s hall; he was with Jesus’ mother at the foot of the cross; he runs with Peter to investigate the empty tomb; he was among those to whom the risen Jesus appeared by the Sea of Galilee.¹⁰ He is portrayed as being, literally and metaphorically, one step ahead of Peter, almost as if there might have been a friendly rivalry between them.¹¹ Although the beloved disciple is not explicitly mentioned prior to Jesus’ final meal with his disciples in Jerusalem, this does not mean that he had no part in Jesus’ ministry before that point. It might well be that he was the unnamed one of the two disciples of John the Baptist—the named one being Andrew—to whom the Baptist spoke about Jesus and who both then began to follow Jesus.¹² It is, after all, very unlikely that someone could be called ‘the disciple Jesus loved’ if he had not already been intimately involved with Jesus.¹³ (Thomas is introduced into the story only at Jn. 11.16, yet it is clear that he was an associate long before that.¹⁴) So the beloved disciple comes to special prominence towards the end; and, in the epilogue in chapter 21, we hear of a rumour that he would not die before the Lord returned. This rumour is quashed. The last lines of the book seem to be written by someone else, an editor who insists that the beloved disciple was the real author, and to be trusted as such.¹⁵ But who was the beloved disciple himself?

Some scholars regard the ‘beloved disciple’ as a purely literary invention, an ideal disciple, a symbolic character.¹⁶ That seems unlikely, granted the controversy about his forthcoming death and Jesus’ reported remark that whether he lives or dies is none of Peter’s business.¹⁷ The beloved disciple is more likely a historical figure, a Judean follower of Jesus, a community founder, whose eye-witness testimony and personal authority undergird and vouch for the fourth gospel’s veracity.¹⁸ But this only presses the question once more: who was he?

According to tradition, the beloved disciple was John the son of Zebedee, brother of James, one of the senior apostles among the Twelve.¹⁹ Many early Christians believed that he wrote the gospel of John and the three letters of John, and that he received the revelation of Jesus Christ on the island of Patmos, where he composed the book of Revelation.²⁰ Thus the title ‘According to John’ was attached to the gospel at least from the end of the second century, if not earlier. It is found in the manuscripts ⁶⁶ and ⁷⁵, which are usually dated around ad 200. In the late second century, the Muratorian canon states that ‘The fourth of the Gospels is that of John, one of the disciples.’²¹ Around the same time, Irenaeus wrote that ‘John, the disciple of the Lord, who also had leaned upon his breast, did himself publish a Gospel during his residence in Ephesus in Asia.’²²Irenaeus traces this view back to a group of Asian elders, probably including Papias of Hierapolis (d. c. ad 130) and Polycarp of Smyrna (d. c. ad 155), who had conversed with John before his death after a long old age, probably during the reign of Trajan (ad 98–117).²³ According to Irenaeus, Papias had been a ‘hearer of John’;²⁴according to Philip of Side, Papias was a ‘disciple of John the theologian’.²⁵ Irenaeus says that Polycarp ‘was not only instructed by apostles, and conversed with many who had seen Christ, but was also taught by apostles in Asia, [and was] appointed bishop of the church in Smyrna’.²⁶ Thus, the testimony of Irenaeus, written quite possibly well within a century of the publication of the fourth gospel, is linked directly through Polycarp and Papias to John, ‘the disciple of the Lord’, as the author of this gospel.²⁷

Within the New Testament, there is a consistent and distinctive Johannine ring to certain materials attributed to the apostle John. In Acts, Peter and John, replying to the Sanhedrin, say that they ‘cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard’.²⁸ The wording here is characteristically Johannine, not Lukan. The first letter of John declares, ‘We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us.’ The John of Revelation announces, ‘I, John, am the one who heard and saw these things.’²⁹ We are not then surprised to find the Muratorian canon combining a hagiographic tale about John writing his gospel with a citation of 1 John 1.1, 4, concluding, ‘Thus he professes himself not only an eyewitness and hearer but also a writer of all the miracles of our Lord in order.’³⁰ All this points in the same direction: to the apostle John, the son of Zebedee.³¹

Evidence within the gospel itself points the same way. The beloved disciple is normally paired with Peter,³²perhaps reflecting their later collegiality.³³ In the epilogue to the gospel, five disciples are named as meeting the risen Jesus by the Sea of Galilee: ‘Simon Peter, Thomas (also known as Didymus), Nathanael from Cana in Galilee, the sons of Zebedee, and two other disciples’.³⁴ If the beloved disciple was one of these disciples, as John 21.20–23 indicates, then he was either one of the sons of Zebedee or one of the two other unnamed members of the party.

James Dunn draws this conclusion:

[T]he internal testimony of the Gospel itself, the implication of the inscription, and the claim of Irenaeus to be [part of] a reliable chain of witness, together make a strong case for the tradition that the Gospel of John should be attributed to John, son of Zebedee, who is probably referred to in the Gospel itself as the beloved disciple.³⁵

The case, however, is not quite as clear-cut as this would make it seem. First, we should not automatically assume that the same ‘John’ wrote the gospel, the letters, and Revelation. Despite sharing some features, they have notable differences in genre, vocabulary, and even theological framing. They may after all go back to two if not three different authors. The name ‘John’ was common, and there may have been more than one in the early church. We might be faced with several different people: John the son of Zebedee, John the evangelist (author/redactor of the gospel), John the elder (author of the letters), and John of Patmos (author of Revelation).

Second, nobody (except in gnostic circles) identified John the son of Zebedee as the author of the fourth gospel prior to the end of the second century. Earlier authors (including Ignatius, Papias, Polycarp, and Justin in their surviving works) are all silent on the question.³⁶ Papias in particular complicates the picture by referring to two Johns among the ‘Lord’s disciples’: ‘John’ the son of Zebedee and the ‘elder John’.³⁷ The evidence from the Muratorian canon and Irenaeus add yet more complexity, as we will presently see.

Emperor Trajan

Third, the refrain about what ‘we have seen and heard’ is not necessarily the literary signature of the apostle John.³⁸ Similar things are said in pseudo-apostolic works like the Epistula Apostolorum.³⁹ This language is an authorizing device, not an authorial sign.

Fourth, while John the son of Zebedee was among the seven disciples to whom Jesus appeared in John 21, there were two other anonymous disciples there as well. The beloved disciple could just as easily have been one of them.

Fifth, if the beloved disciple was John the son of Zebedee, it is strange that the fourth gospel gives so little information about Jesus’ Galilean ministry (including no reference to the calling of the sons of Zebedee),⁴⁰ and so little focus on the Twelve. It isn’t clear how a Galilean fisherman like John the son of Zebedee could gain access to the high priest’s courtyard when Peter, by himself, could not.⁴¹ Perhaps the beloved disciple was a Judean disciple, quite well connected socially, who was not around during the Galilean phase of Jesus’ ministry. This would imply that, like Nathanael, Nicodemus, and the family at Bethany, he was not one of the Twelve. (One of the points to note is that, despite the medieval paintings, there may well have been considerably more than twelve disciples at the Last Supper: the ‘beloved disciple’ could be a younger, Jerusalem-based follower who had become close to Jesus while not one of the Twelve.)

Other options have been suggested. James Charlesworth has advanced a creative argument that Thomas was the beloved disciple.⁴² Others have flirted with the suggestion of Lazarus.⁴³ (Lazarus is described as ‘the one you love’; this might account for why some people thought that the beloved disciple would remain alive until Jesus returned, because the lord had raised him from the dead.)⁴⁴ None of these suggestions has gained much support.

A more compelling alternative to John the son of Zebedee is another John, ‘John the elder’.⁴⁵

This hypothesis rests on Papias’s statement about preferring oral testimony over written records when accessing Jesus’ teachings. He mentions two distinct Johns:

I will not hesitate to set down for you, along with my interpretations, everything I have carefully learned then from the elders and carefully remembered, guaranteeing their truth. For unlike most people I did not enjoy those who have a great deal to say, but those who teach the truth. Nor did I enjoy those who recall someone else’s commandments, but those who remember the commandments given by the Lord to the faith and proceeding from the truth itself. And if by chance someone who had been a follower of the elders should come my way, I inquired about the words of the elders—what Andrew or Peter said, or Philip or Thomas or James or John or Matthew or any other of the Lord’s disciples, and whatever Aristion and the elder John, the Lord’s disciples, were saying. For I did not think that information from books would profit me as much as information from a living and abiding voice.⁴⁶

Papias here distinguishes ‘James [and] John’, the sons of Zebedee, from the ‘elder John’. He (Papias) designates all the persons he mentions as ‘elders’ and the ‘Lord’s disciples’, but he separates members of the Twelve (Andrew, Peter, Philip, Thomas, James, John, and Matthew) from two others (Aristion and the elder John). The difference Papias highlighted was between what the former (members of the Twelve) had said in the past (eipen—aorist tense form) and what the duo ‘were saying’ (legousin—present tense form). The aorist tense did not automatically refer to a past event. The ‘historical present’ could also refer to the past; so this distinction is not a strong base for a theory. However, the impression from the context is that Papias was remembering a time when he could have heard about Jesus’ words from followers of the lord’s disciples, so that, after the deaths of the Twelve who had originally ‘said’ things, others (namely Aristion and the elder John) were still saying them. Thus there seems to have been another ‘John’ in play: a disciple, though not one of the Twelve, someone who could have written, and perhaps did write, a gospel. The list of disciples named by Papias looks similar, in other respects, to the lists in John 1.35–51 and John 21.2. It is a tantalizing prospect—and perhaps a bridge too far for any certain argument—that the elder John and Aristion might have been the two anonymous disciples referred to in John 21.2.

Papias’s identification of the ‘elder John’ can also be correlated with the self-designation of the author in the second and third Johannine letters.⁴⁷ Assuming a close connection between the gospel of John and the letters of John, the clearest self-identification of the author is not as an ‘apostle’, but as an ‘elder’, and a ‘witness’ to the events of Jesus’ life. While Papias and Eusebius both designate the ‘elder John’ to distinguish him from John the son of Zebedee,⁴⁸ the title may well have emerged as an honorific reference to his venerable age and longevity. He himself might have adopted it as a self-designation when writing his letters.⁴⁹

Mosaic with Polycarp, second-century bishop of Smyrna

Public Domain

Furthermore, when Irenaeus (and Polycarp upon whom Irenaeus appears to rely) refers to ‘John’, one of the ‘Lord’s disciples’, as the author of the gospel, we do not necessarily need to assume that this would be John the son of Zebedee. John the son of Zebedee could indeed be called a ‘disciple’ and an ‘apostle’ interchangeably, and the author of John’s gospel was frequently reckoned to be one of the twelve disciples. However, while Irenaeus calls John both ‘the Lord’s disciple’ and an ‘apostle’,⁵⁰ he may mean by ‘apostle’ not ‘one of the Twelve’, but ‘one of those who wrote down apostolic teaching’ (similar to his reference to the apostles Peter, John, Matthew, and Paul in Adv. Haer. 3.21.3). Irenaeus’s ‘John’ is distinguished as a prominent custodian of the apostolic tradition, whom Polycarp knew well. Nothing Irenaeus says about John as an ‘apostle’ compels us to think of John the son of Zebedee; nothing rules out the possibility that he is referring to a different John, perhaps indeed someone like John the elder.⁵¹

It is interesting (as with Sherlock Holmes’s dog that didn’t bark in the night) that sometimes John the evangelist is compared with the apostles but is not himself called an apostle. The Muratorian canon attributes the fourth gospel to John, ‘one of the disciples’, who is co-ordinated with his ‘fellow disciples and bishops’, and distinguished from Andrew, ‘one of the apostles’ who urged him to write.⁵² This John would therefore have been a disciple of Jesus, but not a member of the Twelve. Bauckham considers this account to be an embroidered version dependent upon Papias, who distinguished John from the Twelve and claimed that his gospel was certified by local elders.⁵³ In addition, when Bishop Polycrates of Ephesus wrote to Bishop Victor of Rome in the late second century, he referred to ‘Philip, one of the twelve apostles’, who died in Hierapolis, and ‘John, who was a witness and a teacher, who reclined at the side of the Lord’, and died in Ephesus.⁵⁴ This John, regarded by Polycrates as the most significant teacher in Asia, was identified as the beloved disciple. But he was not labelled an apostle.⁵⁵

To identify John the elder with the beloved disciple makes sense of a lot of evidence. The gospel points us to someone who, though not one of the Twelve, claimed nonetheless to have been an eye-witness during Jesus’ public career,⁵⁶ having formerly perhaps been a follower of John the Baptist,⁵⁷ perhaps even (like the Baptist himself) part of a priestly family, familiar with the high priest,⁵⁸ and being closely involved with Jesus’ final days in Jerusalem.⁵⁹ Jesus requested that he look after his mother,⁶⁰ and together with Peter he discovered the empty tomb.⁶¹ The author of the gospel is clearly familiar with the topography of Judea and Jerusalem,⁶² and he has an intimate knowledge of Jewish customs and festivals.⁶³ The external and internal evidence dovetail nicely: the ‘John’ behind the gospel, we cautiously conclude, was probably John the elder, a Judean disciple of Jesus, not one of the Twelve.⁶⁴

Most scholars have supposed that the fourth gospel reached its present form through several stages of composition and editing.⁶⁵ Chapter 21 looks very much like a secondary epilogue after an original ‘conclusion’ (Jn. 20.31), with a final editorial comment (Jn. 21.24–25).⁶⁶ But there may have been much more editing and rearranging, too, though the frequently observed signs of awkward connections and dislocations could equally well be the result of an untidy original being left as it was. The best guess is that, while the ‘beloved disciple’, probably John the elder, is identified as the author and authority behind the gospel, the text as we have it comes through the work of one or more others. Some see the final editor as the ‘evangelist’, the one who selected, arranged, and supplemented the oral and written testimony of the beloved disciple himself.⁶⁷

Date

The most decisive evidence for dating John’s gospel is the John Rylands Papyrus 457, otherwise known as ⁵². This is an Egyptian papyrus fragment containing the text of John 18.33–36, which is datable somewhere between ad 125 and 175. The gospel seems to have been used occasionally by Justin Martyr and the author of the Epistle to Diognetus, both writing in around ad 150–60.⁶⁸ Gnostic authors cited the gospel, and alluded to it, perhaps as early as ad 135.⁶⁹ Polycarp and Papias both quote from 1 John, indicating familiarity with Johannine writings in the early second century.⁷⁰ Ignatius of Antioch may have alluded to John’s gospel in the second decade of the second century.⁷¹ At the lower limit, many have put the gospel around or after ad 70, since John 21.18–19 appears to allude to Peter’s martyrdom, which probably took place under Nero in the mid-60s. It used to be suggested that the book reflected sectarian debates between Jews and Christians in the post-Temple era, though it is now recognized that we know a lot less about the ‘Synod of Jamnia’ than used to be thought, and in fact the strongest evidence for sharp controversy between Jesus’ followers and unbelieving Jews is from Paul’s day.⁷² If, as many suppose, John was dependent on the synoptic tradition, that might push us to a later date, but only if we could be more certain than we are about the dating of the

synoptics themselves. There is no strong evidence against the traditional date near the end of the century, either towards the end of Domitian’s reign (ad 81–96) or at the beginning of Trajan’s (ad 98–117).⁷³ But that double negative indicates the continuing uncertainty on the topic. Some have continued to argue that a much earlier

date is possible and even preferable.⁷⁴

⁵², otherwise known as the John Rylands Papyrus, with the words of John 18.33–36; normally dated to ad125–75

Reproduced by courtesy of the University librarian and director, The John Rylands University Library, The University of Manchester

Place of writing

So where was the gospel written? Early and unanimous tradition suggests Ephesus.⁷⁵ This might look more plausible if the references to being ‘put out of the synagogue’ were thought to reflect the abrasive experience that Christians sometimes had with the Jews of western Asia, though our evidence for first-century Christian–Jewish relations in most places is so thin that such judgments can never be very strong.⁷⁶ Belief in Jesus as the Messiah is treated as contentious in both the Johannine gospel and letters, but again the same could be said of Paul’s work.⁷⁷ The letters of Ignatius may help, in that they, addressed to churches in western Asia, face the problem of Docetism (the belief that Jesus was not truly human, but only ‘seemed’ to be), and the Johannine letters face similar challenges—though again Docetism was popular in other places too.⁷⁸ If not Ephesus, then Egypt would be the next best option, since the gospel of John became very popular there among gnostic and proto-orthodox authors. All this simply shows how elusive the answer remains. Scholarship has swung wildly from hypotheses about a gnostic or Manichean context for the gospel (based upon John’s supposed ‘dualism’ of light and darkness, and so on) to equally speculative suggestions about a possible Jewish context evidenced in the Qumran scrolls.

But the contrasts of light and darkness, of flesh and spirit, and above all of life and death are not things that most people learn from books and recondite traditions. They are part of being human. The fourth gospel is obviously deeply familiar with a Judean environment and with Israel’s scriptures. But it is written in the language and idiom of Diaspora Jews who knew their way around the intellectual currents of the hellenistic world. It has distant affinities with the Jewish worlds both of Qumran and of Philo of Alexandria.⁷⁹ But saying that is merely to say that it is a fairly typical product of the complex Jewish world of its time. Judgments about John’s date, place, and cultural context must be made in the light of exegesis, not the other way round.

Purpose

Several purposes have been proposed for John’s gospel. These include supplementing or superseding the synoptic gospels, arguing for the superiority of Jesus over John the Baptist, confronting the heresies of Docetism and Gnosticism, reinforcing group identity after the Johannine community was expelled from Jewish synagogues, and trying to evangelize Diaspora Jews. All these have some plausibility, but the book as we have it seems to far transcend such specific intentions. It is an altogether bigger thing.

On the surface, John’s gospel gives us a clear purpose-statement at the end of the resurrection narrative: ‘But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.’⁸⁰ The words ‘that you may believe’ should perhaps say: ‘that you may come to believe’; there is a difference of one letter in the Greek, and both readings are strongly attested in the manuscripts. So is the gospel designed to evoke faith or to confirm faith? The obvious answer is, both.⁸¹ This is such a wide statement of purpose that all kinds of contexts might be suitable. John’s story seeks to prove that Jesus has legitimate messianic credentials, while also staking the claim that he is the unique divine agent with an unprecedented unity with the father; making him both a fitting object of faith and a worthy recipient of worship. Nor are the stories of Jesus in this book simply ‘illustrations’ of an abstract point; the ‘faith’ to be elicited is that the Word became flesh, specifically the human flesh of this unique human being, doing these unique things.

This christology generates an ecclesiology, as John seeks to reinforce a particular form of group identity that construes Messiah-believers as God’s children, the true worshippers, those of the light, his sheep, who have vexatiously been labelled as schismatics or apostates by their fellow-Jews. This explains why, in the course of the narrative, Jesus’ messianic identity is so disputed, and why, the more clearly Jesus is identified with God, the more ferocious the opposition against him becomes. Consequently, for John’s implied audience, the more hostile their rejection by the synagogue or ‘the world’, the surer they can be of their election, of their chosen-ness by God. Again, we note that much of this could be said about Paul’s work; or about the context of 1 Peter; or about Matthew. All we are really saying is that all these works, and John’s gospel among them, are central to and typical of the turbulent world of the first-century church.

John’s gospel, then, is a masterpiece of evangelistic proclamation and intra-Jewish apologetics, deeply rooted in Israel’s scriptures, witnessing to Jesus’ identity as the divine Messiah and claiming that his followers, gentile as well as Jewish, were the legitimate heirs of Israel’s heritage and promises. This accounts for the evangelist’s emphasis on showing that Jesus is Israel’s Messiah,⁸² in whom God’s presence is enfleshed and who bridges the heaven–earth divide,⁸³ who embodies God’s grace, glory, and truth,⁸⁴ whose actions fulfil the words of scripture,⁸⁵ and who brings the fullness of God’s gift of life to those who believe.⁸⁶ Along the way, the author clarifies Jesus’ relationship to Israel’s patriarchs,⁸⁷ to its various rituals, institutions, and festivals,⁸⁸and to the Mosaic law.⁸⁹ M. M. Thompson infers from all this that the ‘consistency and intensity of this line of argument may suggest that the Gospel serves to exhort, encourage, and persuade readers for whom the symbols and reality of Scripture and Judaism exerted a powerful pull’.⁹⁰ Perhaps we should add that if there were any readers for whom Israel’s scriptures did not exert such a pull, the fourth gospel was designed to put them straight. John, no less than Paul, insists that the gospel of Jesus is to be understood ‘according to the scriptures’.

OUTLINE OF JOHN

1. Prologue (1.1–18)

2. The book of signs (1.19—12.50)

3. The book of glory (13.1—20.31)

4. Epilogue (21.1–25)

JOHN’S STORY OF JESUS

(See box: ‘Outline of John’.)

1. Prologue (1.1–18)

The prologue functions like an overture to an opera. It tells the story from creation to new creation; from covenant to new covenant. It introduces the main motifs in the drama that are about to unfold: Jesus is God’s light and life, the supreme manifestation of divine glory, grace, and truth, evoking also the divine Word and its human witnesses. John draws together the story of creation (‘In the beginning’) and Israel’s election (‘he came to his own’), with Israel’s Temple as the location of the divine presence (‘glory’ and ‘dwelling among us’), and Israel’s covenant charter (‘law given through Moses’). The back story is that God called Israel to be the means of rescuing the world, so that he might one day rescue the world by becoming Israel in the person of its representative Messiah. Thus, in the prologue, God’s promise to dwell with his people and to rescue them from the darkness takes place through the sending of the divine Word into the world, into the human flesh of the true Image; and when the Word is received, it begets new children. The tragedy is that the Word has been resisted by Israel (‘he came to his own, and his own did not receive him’). But God’s new Temple has been built in the person of Jesus and through the work of the spirit. As in Revelation’s picture of the new Jerusalem (21.3), the dwelling of God is with humans. John has often been misread as though it was telling humans how to leave the present world and get to heaven. In reality, it is explaining how heaven itself, in the person of its Lord, came to dwell among us; how the one through whom all things were made came to rescue and renew that created world.

PORTALS AND PARALLELS: WISDOM DWELLS ON EARTH

Jewish authors could picture Wisdom, the personified word of yhwh, looking to dwell among the people but struggling to find a place, until she took up residence in Israel (see Prov. 8.22–31; Wis. 8.4; 9.9). According to Sirach, the figure of Wisdom comes to dwell permanently among humans, specifically in the Temple at Jerusalem, depositing the divine word and divine glory in Israel’s midst. However, in 1 Enoch, the picture is darker: Wisdom had been trying to find somewhere to live, but finding none, she went back home. In her absence Iniquity went out and found somewhere to dwell, and turned what should have been Wisdom’s home into a den of iniquity. Consequently, there is now no hope for the world, or Israel, or individual humans. John’s development of this same theme is of a different order altogether. He agrees with Sirach that the divine Wisdom does indeed find a home. He recognizes, and takes on board, the tragedy that lies behind 1 Enoch 42: the world did not know the logos, its creator, and even ‘his own people did not receive him’. But this did not make him return home, having abandoned the world to ‘iniquity’. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. The logos has come, as mainstream Judaism fully expected, not to judge the world but to redeem it. But instead of Shekinah and Torah, the Jerusalem Temple and the covenant code, as the places where Wisdom/logos dwells and reveals the divine glory, John says that the logos became flesh, became a human being, became Jesus of Nazareth.

Sirach 24.1–12

Wisdom praises herself, and tells of her glory in the midst of her people. In the assembly of the Most High she opens her mouth, and in the presence of his hosts she tells of her glory: ‘I came forth from the mouth of the Most High, and covered the earth like a mist. I dwelt in the highest heavens, and my throne was in a pillar of cloud. Alone I compassed the vault of heaven and traversed the depths of the abyss. Over waves of the sea, over all the earth, and over every people and nation I have held sway. Among all these I sought a resting-place; in whose territory should I abide? Then the Creator of all things gave me a command, and my Creator chose the place for my tent. He said, “Make your dwelling in Jacob, and in Israel receive your inheritance.” Before the ages, in the beginning, he created me, and for all the ages I shall not cease to be. In the holy tent I ministered before him, and so I was established in Zion. Thus in the beloved city he gave me a resting-place, and in Jerusalem was my domain. I took root in an honored people, in the portion of the Lord, his heritage.’ (NRSV)

1 Enoch 42.1–3

Wisdom could not find a place in which she could dwell; but a place was found (for her) in the heavens. Then Wisdom went out to dwell with the children of the people, but she found no dwelling place. (So) Wisdom returned to her place and she settled permanently among the angels. Then Iniquity went out of her rooms, and found whom she did not expect. And she dwelt with them, like rain in a desert, like dew on a thirsty land. (OTP)

The climax, then, is obviously verse 14: ‘the Word became flesh’. Much like Wisdom in traditions associated with that concept (see ‘Portals and parallels: Wisdom dwells on earth’), the pre-existent Word ‘tabernacled’ or ‘pitched his tent’ in the very creation that he helped bring into existence. The startling implication is that all prior forms of divine presence were either transitory or preparatory: the Word-made-flesh is a unique mode of divine disclosure, the climactic manifestation of God’s covenant favour (grace) and of divine testimony (truth).⁹¹ The story the prologue tells is thus the story of the whole gospel in miniature. This is the story of Jesus told as the true and redeeming story of Israel, told as the true and redeeming story of the creator and the cosmos.

2. The book of signs (1.19—12.50)

The first main section of the gospel is sometimes referred to as ‘the book of signs’ because of the sequence of ‘signs’ which John himself flags up as he introduces the first two (2.11; 4.54). John seems, with these, to be hinting at a longer sequence, which most assume will mean seven, but opinions differ as to which incidents in the subsequent narrative should be seen as the remaining five. There is a lot to be said for seeing the raising of Lazarus (11.1–45) as the seventh, which might suggest that the third is the healing of the crippled man (5.2–16), the fourth the feeding of the five thousand (6.1–15), the fifth the walking on water (6.16–21), and the sixth the healing of the man born blind (9.1–7). On balance, however, we prefer the perhaps bolder move of seeing Jesus’ crucifixion itself as the seventh sign, with the raising of Lazarus as the sixth, omitting the walking on water which, though obviously significant in various ways, does not stand out in the same way in John’s narrative. The point of the ‘signs’, as John says at 2.11, is that they reveal Jesus’ glory and elicit faith. For John, this is supremely true of the crucifixion.

The ‘signs’, however, are thereby doing the job which John assigns first and foremost to John the Baptist, namely, pointing to Jesus and starting to explain his significance. John, already mentioned in the prologue, is brought on stage at once in 1.19, claiming to be neither the Messiah nor the new Elijah (Mal. 4.6), nor yet the coming ‘prophet’ (Dt. 18.15), but simply the ‘voice’ of Isaiah 40.1–8; in other words, the one who prepares the way for God himself to return in glory (1.19–28).

John declares that Jesus is the ‘Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world’,⁹² combining the images of the Passover lamb and Isaiah’s ‘suffering servant’.⁹³ John, having seen the spirit descend on Jesus, testifies that he is the ‘son of God’, signifying both Jesus’ messianic identity and his unique filial relationship with Israel’s God—and perhaps that these two things were always designed to merge into one (1.29–34). This leads two of John’s disciples (Andrew and Simon) to follow Jesus, with Jesus renaming Simon as ‘Cephas’, the Aramaic word for ‘rock’, corresponding to the Greek petros. When Jesus then calls more disciples, including Philip and Nathanael, he promises the latter that he will see heaven opened, and ‘the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man’.⁹⁴ This heaven- and-earth commerce, echoing Jacob’s ladder in Genesis 28.10–17, is a Temple-idea, picking up from 1.14 and looking ahead to 2.21 and beyond: where Jesus is, there the living God is ‘tabernacling’ with his people (1.35–51).

The Jews used stone jars because they were believed to be unable to contract impurities, and the water was used for ceremonial washing of hands and utensils.

At a wedding in Cana, Jesus performs his first ‘sign’ (sēmeion), turning water into wine at his mother’s request. The story resonates with the promises of divine generosity and plenty in the messianic age.⁹⁵ Other overtones abound: the six jars used for Jewish ceremonial washing are transformed into wine-flagons, and the master of ceremonies comments that the best wine has only now appeared. All this points to Jesus’ renewal and transformation of the Jewish world, revealing Jesus’ glory and evoking the disciples’ faith (2.1–11).

The next scene reaches the same conclusion by a startlingly different route. In Jerusalem for Passover (the first of three Passovers in this gospel), Jesus drives out money-changers, traders, and animals from the Temple courtyards—the famous scene which in the synoptic gospels comes towards the end of the story. Jesus’ explanation is stark: the Temple is to be destroyed and rebuilt (2.19). This saying reappears in various forms in Jesus’ trial in the synoptics;⁹⁶ John insists that it refers primarily to Jesus’ own death and resurrection, the ‘Temple’ being his own body (as we were already learning from 1.14 and elsewhere). Herod the Great had begun to rebuild the Temple, as a way of claiming royal status. Now, forty-six years later, one of his sons was completing it. Jesus, however, is the royal reality to which the Temple itself points. His death and resurrection will be the ultimate Passover.

John’s story then broadens out into three extended scenes in which, in contrast again to the synoptics, Jesus engages in complex conversations: in chapter 3, with Nicodemus; in chapter 4, with a Samaritan woman; and, in chapter 5, with a crippled man, and then with bystanders who observe his healing.

Nicodemus, coming at night, is told about the new birth that Jesus is offering. The Jewish world knew the importance of being born into Abraham’s family; Jesus is claiming that a new kind of ‘birth’ is now both necessary and, by the spirit, possible. It will be achieved through the ‘lifting up’ of the ‘son of man’ (3.14)—combining the echo of 1.51 with an allusion to the ‘exaltation’ of ‘one like a son of man’ in Daniel 7.13, and pointing thereby to a major theme of the gospel. This will unveil the greatest Johannine theme of all, the breathtaking scope of God’s love (3.16). There is no break in the text to indicate that John, rather than Jesus, is speaking in 3.13–21; this is typical of the gospel as a whole, and many interpretations are possible. The same is true of the meditation (3.31–36) that follows the little scene about John the Baptist and his disciples (3.22–30), emphasizing again that John must not be mistaken for the Messiah himself. Only in Jesus is there found the ‘life’ of God’s new age (3.36).

If chapter 3 emphasized the new birth (over against ordinary Abrahamic descent), and chapter 4 the new worship (over against the Jerusalem Temple), chapter 5 emphasizes the new age itself, the reality towards which the weekly sabbaths had long pointed. (Many Jewish teachers then and now have seen the sabbath as the anticipation of the age to come.) Jesus heals a paralysed man, instructing him to pick up his mat and walk; but the Judeans object, because it is the sabbath. Jesus’ response, developed in another extended discourse, implies that the age to come is already here, the age to which Moses pointed but which he could not deliver, the age which would issue in resurrection itself (5.25–26).

The longest discourse so far accompanies the next ‘sign’: the feeding of the five thousand, echoing the wilderness feeding of Israel after the exodus. This stirs up the possibility that the crowd might try to make Jesus king in the wrong way (6.15), and he retreats up the mountain while the disciples set sail across the lake. The storm that follows sets the scene for Jesus’ yhwh-like powers, striding over the sea and bringing them safe to shore. The crowds are confused, but Jesus insists that they should look beyond his provision of ordinary bread to the reality which he embodies in himself. The language is stark: they must eat Jesus’ flesh and drink his blood!⁹⁸ This would sound preposterous, even to those who might hear the echo of 2 Samuel 23.17. Most would now say that John intends us to hear echoes of the eucharist (6.32–59). It is indeed a ‘hard saying’ but, as Peter insists, Jesus has the words of ‘eternal life’, the life of the age to come which is already breaking in.⁹⁹

At this point the narrative flow is sharply broken by the story of ‘the woman caught in adultery’—or, better perhaps, the men caught in hypocrisy (Jn. 7.53—8.11). The earliest manuscripts omit the passage, and some later ones place it at different points in John and even in Luke. This doesn’t mean it didn’t happen; it might be that the story was thought so radical that some early scribes left it out. Its present placing has the effect that John 8 starts with Jesus protecting a woman from being stoned and ends with Jesus himself having to escape stoning. It focuses on the powerful mercy which triumphs over the negative judgment of the law, as resurrection-life triumphs over death—without slackening the moral demand (‘from now on don’t sin again’, 8.11 NTE/KNT), while highlighting Jesus’ condemnation of those who presumed to judge but were themselves just as sinful (8.9).

TABLE 27.1: THE ‘I AM’ SAYINGS IN JOHN’S GOSPEL

I am the bread of life	6.35, 41, 48
I am the light of the world	8.12; 9.5
I am the sheep gate	10.7, 9
I am the good shepherd	10.11, 14
I am the resurrection and the life	11.25
I am the way, the truth, and the life	14.6
I am the true vine	15.1
Absolute ‘I am’ statements	4.26; 6.20; 8.24, 28, 58; 13.19; 18.5–8

Steps down to the Pool of Siloam

Public Domain

The Pharisees, dismissing and condemning Jesus, are in fact accusing the father who sent him, proving despite themselves that they are indeed walking in darkness. This is one of the sharpest depictions in the gospel of the fact that ‘he came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him’ (1.11 NTE/KNT). God the father is seeking Jesus’ honour, and will vindicate him, proving that he is in fact the fulfilment of the divine promise to Abraham himself.

People often think of what follows, with Jesus’ claim to be the ‘good shepherd’, as almost a pastoral interlude: a placid scene with Jesus surrounded by calm sheep. In fact the statement was as dangerous a claim as Jesus could have made. ‘Shepherd’ was a regular image for ‘king’, and when Jesus declares that all his predecessors were thieves and robbers he presumably indicates at least the Hasmonean dynasty (alluded to from the fact that this takes place at Hanukkah, commemorating the rededication of the Temple in 184 bc) and, more specifically, the House of Herod. Jesus’ kingship will be radically different, characterized by his self-giving death. That is how he will not only rescue Israel but also ‘other sheep’ from further afield—a hint of the coming gentile mission (see ‘Blast from the past: Clement of Alexandria on Jesus as the good shepherd’).¹⁰⁰

As the claim to kingship and a worldwide rescuing rule becomes more explicit, so too does Jesus’ statement about his own identity: ‘I and the Father are one’ (10.30). He is the true Temple, the place where God and his people meet as one. Perhaps we should put it the other way: in the light of John’s gospel, we ought to say that the Temple itself gained its meaning, in advance as it were, from God’s intention to come in person as the heaven-and-earth person, the incarnate son.

John’s account of Jesus’ public career reaches its dramatic climax in the raising of Lazarus from the dead (11.1–55). Jesus sees Lazarus’s serious sickness as the opportunity for God to be glorified, and appears deliberately to delay going to help until it is, in human terms, too late. Lazarus has been dead for four days; his grieving sisters Martha and Mary meet Jesus with a mixture of lament and complaint. Martha recognizes that Lazarus will rise again in the final resurrection, but the point of John’s whole story is that Jesus is bringing the promised future into the present: ‘I am the resurrection and the life.’ This leads Martha to confess that Jesus himself is ‘the Messiah, the Son of God’,¹⁰¹ which is what the evangelist regards as the true faith (20.31). Jesus’ strange delay is then explained: he has prayed that God would bring Lazarus back to life, and when the tomb is opened—despite Martha’s protests that the flesh would already be rotting—he knows his prayer has been heard. John is looking forward, and is suggesting that Jesus too is looking forward, to Easter itself.

BLAST FROM THE PAST: CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA ON JESUS AS THE GOOD SHEPHERD

Clement of Alexandria (c. ad 150–215) was a well-educated convert to Christianity, thoroughly steeped in Greek philosophy, who eventually became a leading theologian in the catechetical school of Alexandria. Commenting on John 10, he said:

In our sickness we need a Saviour, in our wanderings a guide, in our blindness someone to show us the light, in our thirst the fountain of living water that quenches forever the thirst of those who drink from it. We dead people need life, we sheep need a shepherd, we children need a teacher, the whole world needs Jesus! (Clem. Paed. 1.9.83)

Clement of Alexandria

Ford Madox Brown’s painting of Jesus Washing Peter’s Feet, 1893, Tate Gallery, London

Public Domain

Jesus returns to Bethany, and then to Jerusalem, for his ultimate Passover. Mary anoints him with expensive perfume, revealing (at least in John’s mind) her own perception of his coming fate. Judas objects; this, too, anticipates what is to come (12.1–11, looking ahead to Judas’s betrayal in chs. 13, 18). Jesus enters Jerusalem with pilgrims celebrating his apparently royal arrival. But time is short: the ‘hour’ is at hand (another Johannine theme reaching its climax), and at last the ‘son of man’ is to be glorified. Only through this will the dark powers that have ruled the world be overthrown; only so, then, will the Greeks who come looking for Jesus be drawn to him (12.20–34). Jesus describes his forthcoming death as a kernel of wheat falling to the ground and dying, but reaping a great harvest. As Carson comments: ‘Like the seed whose death is the germination of life for a great crop, so Jesus’ death generates a plentiful harvest. The seed is thereby vindicated; the Son is thereby glorified.’¹⁰² For the moment, though, the battle between darkness and light continues, with Jesus’ hearers challenged to embrace the latter and spurn the former (12.35–50).

3. The book of glory (13.1—20.31)

The second half of the book opens with a solemn statement: having loved his own in the world, Jesus now loved them ‘right through to the end’ (13.1 NTE/ KNT). There was nothing that love could do for them that he did not do. The most immediate outworking of this is that, after supper (John, unlike the synoptics, does not describe the meal itself), Jesus does the slave’s job of washing the disciples’ feet. Like so much in the gospel, this action carries its own meaning—the example of humble service—and also resonates with the larger theme. John’s description of the scene in verses 3–5 is almost as theologically explicit as Philippians 2.6–8:

Jesus knew that the father had given everything into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God. So he got up from the supper-table, took off his clothes, and wrapped a towel around himself. Then he poured water into a bowl and began to wash the disciples’ feet . . .¹⁰³

Marianne Meye Thompson, The God of the Gospel of John, 229.

John 14—16 is, in fact, Jesus’s farewell address to his disciples, similar in genre and function to other ‘testament’ speeches in Jewish literature.¹⁰⁴ The whole thing, as we would expect from John, has the flavour of the Temple, where the one God comes to dwell with his people: the discourse is all about (1) the way in which the father is acting in Jesus and (2) the way in which the spirit (the paraclete or ‘advocate’) will indwell the disciples to bind them into that same divine-human fellowship. Jesus is to ‘go away’ and ‘return’, but they are the branches in the vine (an obvious Israel-image). That is the framework for the disciples’ own joyful new life, including the life of prayer. They eventually understand enough to say: ‘we believe that you came from God.’¹⁰⁵

Antonio Ciseri, Ecce Homo, 1871, Gallery of Modern Art, Florence, Italy

Public Domain

The mood changes as Jesus and the disciples depart for the Kidron valley, where Jesus knows Judas will lead the soldiers to arrest him. John’s Jesus retains the initiative throughout, telling them ‘I am’—apparently, the divine name!—when the troops say who it is they are looking for. As Lincoln states:

The ultimate powerlessness of the massed representatives of this world’s powers—the Roman forces, the Jewish guards and the disciple turned betrayer—is revealed, as they have to retreat and prostrate themselves in the presence of the unique divine agent who is one with God.¹⁰⁶

Jesus is taken to Annas, the former high priest and father-in-law of the current high priest. In case we don’t see the point, John reminds us what Caiaphas had said back in 11.49–50: it is good for one man to die for the people (18.1–14).

Thanks to ‘another disciple’ (regularly supposed to be ‘the beloved disciple’), Peter is able to gain entrance to the high priest’s courtyard, though he is soon recognized as one of Jesus’ disciples. John skips briefly over the proceedings before the Jewish authorities, and brings Jesus face to face with the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate. He and Jesus then argue about kingdom, truth, and power, where Jesus, acknowledging that he is claiming some kind of kingship, insists that his kingdom is not the sort that grows in this world. His kingdom is certainly for this world, but it isn’t from it. It comes from somewhere else—in other words, from above, from heaven, from God (18.36). The crowd, shouting down Pilate’s protestations, demands that Barabbas be released and Jesus crucified (18.28–40); Barabbas, says John laconically, was a brigand (18.40). The Judeans have opted for the normal kind of kingship. Jesus, going to his death, will embody the true version.

Pilate has Jesus flogged and mocked, presenting him to the crowd with the pregnant words ‘Here’s the man’—with John, looking back to the prologue, seeing Jesus as the truly human one, the ultimate image of the creator (19.5). The people continue to push Pilate into a corner: if he lets Jesus go, he is no friend of Caesar.¹⁰⁷Pilate hands Jesus over to be crucified (19.1–16a).

John’s crucifixion scene is noticeably different from the accounts in the synoptics. No Simon of Cyrene; no mockery from bystanders; no cry of abandonment; no midday darkness; no tearing of the Temple curtain; no centurion’s acclamation. Many details, however, remain: the crucifixion itself, soldiers casting lots for Jesus’ clothes, Jesus offered wine vinegar. John adds further points: the dispute between Pilate and the Judean leaders over the trilingual title on the cross; the scriptural citations (Pss. 22.18; 69.21; Ex. 12.46/Num. 9.12; Zech. 12.10); the presence of Mary wife of Clopas; the exchange between Jesus and his mother; the breaking of the legs of the brigands on either side; the Roman soldier’s spear-thrust into Jesus’ torso, and the resultant outflowing of water and blood, showing that Jesus was already thoroughly dead. Jesus’ final word in John, tetelestai, ‘it’s all done’ or ‘it’s finished’, echoes the creation story itself: God ‘finished’ his work on the sixth day, and rested on the seventh. The incarnate son of God does the same.

The beloved disciple adds his own testimony: ‘The man who saw it has given testimony, and his testimony is true. He knows that he tells the truth, and he testifies so that you also may believe.’¹⁰⁸ Scripture has been fulfilled. Jesus has completed the father’s plan. The true Passover has taken place, and the lamb of God has borne the sins of the world (19.16b–37). Jesus is buried by Joseph of Arimathea, a secret disciple, and Nicodemus, who had earlier visited Jesus by night (19.38–42).

Mary Magdalene is not mentioned in John’s gospel until she appears, with the other Marys, at the foot of the cross. Early on the first day of the week she discovers the empty tomb and runs to tell Simon Peter and the beloved disciple, who themselves run to see what has happened. The latter ‘saw and believed’, but neither fully understood what it meant. Mary was then the first to see the risen Jesus, and became ‘the apostle to the apostles’, the first to be instructed to tell others that he had risen and was going to the father (20.1–18).

John begins the resurrection story with ‘On the first day of the week’, and he repeats that now in verse 19, his account of what happened that evening. For John, Jesus’ resurrection is the start of God’s new creation, now that the anti-creation powers of darkness have done their worst and been overthrown. Jesus then commis-

sions the disciples for their global mission, rooted in his own and energized by his spirit. The disciples become new-Temple people, those in whom the living God comes to dwell.¹⁰⁹ That is why they will now pronounce God’s forgiveness—and also, worryingly, God’s ‘retaining’ of impenitent sins. They must warn the world that sin is a serious, deadly disease, and that to remain in it will bring death.

‘The model and ground of the church’s mission is what Jesus did and spoke in the world. The purpose of Jesus’ appearance to his disciples is not only to show himself alive, but to send them into the world to continue the work of building up his community by witnessing to the truth (18:37), by delivering the world from eternal destruction (3:16–17), and by giving divine life in abundance (10:10). Jesus’ community is sent to bring “other sheep” into his sheep-fold (10:16) so that unity and love may be communicated to the world (13:34–35; 17:21). There is no difference between God sending his Son and the Son sending his newly founded community into the world.’

Jey Kanagaraj, John, 199.

All this comes into special focus in the story of Thomas. Thomas was the dour, dogged disciple, who suggested they might as well go with Jesus, if only to die with him (11.16), who complained that Jesus hadn’t made things anything like clear enough (14.5), and who just happened to be somewhere else on the first Easter day. He sees the others excited, elated, unable to contain their joy. But he’s not convinced. Finally, though, he sees Jesus for himself, making the memorable confession, ‘My Lord and my God!’¹¹⁰ Thomas’s personal story illustrates the true faith that embraces the gospel testimony to Jesus (20.24–29).

John is working towards his conclusion. Jesus, he says, did many other signs which are not written here; but these are written to enable you to believe (or perhaps to continue to believe—there is uncertainty whether this is ‘first-time faith’ or not) that ‘the Messiah, the son of God, is Jesus’. Most translations put that the other way round; but this follows the Greek syntax, and corresponds closely to the end of chapter 1 where Philip tells Nathanael that ‘we have found the one Moses and the prophets wrote about—and it’s Jesus of Nazareth’. It isn’t so much that they are starting with Jesus and finding something to say about him. They are starting with the hope of Israel (see 4.22) and seeing that hope fulfilled and radically transformed through him and his death and resurrection. Bringing these things together—Israel’s Messiahship as the embodiment of Israel’s returning God, and all this predicated of Jesus himself—constitutes the faith which is the sure sign that the believer already possesses ‘life’ (20.31).

4. Epilogue (21.1–25)

In particular—and this is most likely why this final chapter was added—he is not to worry about the ‘beloved disciple’ himself. It may well be that the chapter was drafted after the beloved disciple himself had died, when some in the church, having misunderstood Jesus’ words (‘If it’s my intention that he should remain here until I come, what’s that got to do with you?’), worried that Jesus should have returned by now. That was never the point (21.20–23). The final editor adds a note verifying that the beloved disciple was the real author, and ‘we know that his evidence is true’. He also adds, touchingly, that Jesus did many other things, and that the world itself would be incapable of containing the books that would be written if they were all set down. The claim is not simply about shelf-space in the great libraries. The accomplishments of Jesus were, and remain, so explosive, bringing to birth the age to come within the present age, that the world in its present state would not be able to contain the vast revelation that would result.

JOHN AND THE BIG PICTURE

We could spend a day, a night, or a lifetime plumbing the theological insights, historical details, and spiritual depth of John’s gospel. For those who are already committed to living within the story John is telling, a few things present themselves for consideration.

The gospel of John is the big book of faith. It is about believing, not just because of remarkable signs, but because one accepts the verdict of the witnesses: God sent Jesus, Jesus is God’s son, the son has returned to the father, and the father sends the spirit of the son. This gospel calls us to faith: a rich, deep faith, an energetic faith, a faith that abides in Jesus the Messiah, a faith that can survive denials and doubts, a faith that can overcome the world because Jesus has already overcome it for us. This believing constitutes a special kind of knowledge: a spiritual knowing, knowing the truth, knowing a person who is the embodiment of truth, and enjoying the freedom that this truth brings.

One cannot ignore the clear christological core of the gospel of John. This is not a book about a generalized spirituality or religious outlook on life. It is about Jesus himself from first to last. The book is written by a disciple whose passion for Jesus is intoxicating. The Jesus of the fourth gospel is to be believed, trusted, obeyed, and worshipped. Why? Because he has the words of eternal life. He laid down his life for his friends. He is the good shepherd, the lamb of God, the true vine. He is the door between our world and the new creation. Jesus is not merely one option on a religious smorgasbord. He is unique, unprecedented, cosmically singular. He is not a way up the mountain; he made the mountain in the first place! He is the way, the truth, and the life. The way for all people, Jews, Samaritans, Greeks, and whosoever will believe in him. John bids us believe the exclusive claims of the all-inclusive saviour.

To that we must add that, like all the New Testament stories, this story isn’t only about Jesus. It’s about us as well. Jesus is lifted up to draw us all to himself, and to enable us to be for the world what he was for Israel. The prologue says that ‘To all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become the children of God’ (Jn. 1.12). Or, again: in John 7.38 Jesus says, ‘Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.’ There is the creation-image once again (Gen. 2.10–14), and also the Temple-image (Ezek. 47.1–12); only now, the rivers of living water that flow out of the new-creation Temple of God come, not just from Jesus, but from all those who believe in him, who follow him, who become in their turn the channels through which his healing love can flow to the world. Therefore the risen Jesus says, in John 20.21, ‘As the Father has sent me, so I send you’ (NRSV). And he breathes on the disciples, as God breathed upon Adam and Eve in the beginning, and gives them his own spirit, his own breath of life.

The whole amazing story of Jesus, with all its multiple levels, is thus given to be our story as we follow him. This is John’s ultimate vision of the nature of Christian discipleship. At the end of John 21, after Jesus’ strange and beautiful conversation with Peter, he issues that haunting summons: don’t think about the person standing next to you; your call is simply to follow me (21.22). Because of the cross, Jesus offers us, here and now, his own sonship; his own spirit; his own mission to the world. The love which he incarnated, by which we are saved, is to become the love which fills us beyond capacity and flows out to heal the world; so that the Word may become flesh once more, and dwell (not just among us, but) within us. Having beheld his glory, we must then reveal his glory, glory as of the beloved children of the father, full of grace and truth.

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO JOHN – Wright and Bird – The New Testament In It’s World

4. Epilogue (21.1–25)

27

The Gospel according to John

CHAPTER AT A GLANCE

INTRODUCTION

CONTEXTUAL AND CRITICAL MATTERS

Origins of John

Date

Place of writing

Purpose

OUTLINE OF JOHN

JOHN’S STORY OF JESUS

1. Prologue (1.1–18)

PORTALS AND PARALLELS: WISDOM DWELLS ON EARTH

Sirach 24.1–12

1 Enoch 42.1–3

2. The book of signs (1.19—12.50)

BLAST FROM THE PAST: CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA ON JESUS AS THE GOOD SHEPHERD

3. The book of glory (13.1—20.31)

4. Epilogue (21.1–25)

JOHN AND THE BIG PICTURE

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CHAPTER AT A GLANCE

Origins of John

Date

Place of writing

Purpose

Sirach 24.1–12

1 Enoch 42.1–3

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