13.4. Conclusion
If Mark is ancient biography and Luke is a sort of biographic volume in a popular two-volume history, what is John? The Fourth Gospel’s apparent purpose statement (20:31) is consistent with the purpose of some ancient biographies, especially those of sages.1 But is John the same kind of biography as the Synoptics? Like Matthew, John is influenced more by Judean/Galilean ways of thinking. But whereas Matthew seems ever the collector and arranger of Jesus’s teachings, fitted (in its current form) around Mark’s narrative, John develops a somewhat different side of Jesus the sage. The Jesus who often offers parables without public interpretations in Mark speaks in other sorts of riddles in John.2
In my Historical Jesus of the Gospels, I mostly ignored the Fourth Gospel because of the special questions surrounding it. Convicted by some pro-Johannine reviewers concerning my lapse, I have resolved to at least take John into account briefly here. Nevertheless, because I have written a 1,600-page commentary that treats John’s material in much greater detail, I will survey the question of this Fourth Gospel only briefly here. Readers not persuaded by this chapter will have to settle for this book’s arguments regarding the historically useful, biographic character of Mark and Luke.
If the Fourth Gospel is a biography from the late first century, how can it be so eccentric and we still suppose that biographies of recent characters are mostly reliable? As one careful scholar warns, if both Mark and John are factual, “the notion of historical fact is in mortal danger from the death of a thousand qualifications.”3 First, any possible adaptation of the biographic genre by John need not affect the argument for Mark’s biographic approach, since John writes an estimated quarter century after Mark (slightly more on my own minority dating of Mark). Second, I have argued for what is probable for the Synoptics based on most comparable biographies, not that there were no exceptions. Again, mixing elements of genres was common, and John seems less constrained by the usual Greco-Roman biographic tradition of the early empire.4
But third, and the focus of this chapter: John’s Gospel may be less eccentric than we first suppose. Insofar as ancient biographies were not bound to chronology, John is not required to follow the outline of Mark that is followed by Matthew and Luke. Indeed, intrinsic claims predicate this Gospel on eyewitness tradition more explicitly than they do Mark. As we shall note in a subsequent chapter, even eyewitnesses differ on details. This Gospel could therefore deliberately correct a tradition less interested in chronology than John was—though I prefer more theological, symbolic explanations for John’s major narrative divergences.5 Beyond chronologically, it is particularly the speeches that appear idiosyncratic in John (differing from often less cohesive collections of sayings or shorter interchanges in the Synoptics).
Suffice it to say that if Luke falls on the more historiographic end of biography, John seems to embrace the genre’s flexibility more fully, perhaps more encomiastically.6 (For the flexible end of biographic and historical writing, we may think of the different twist that Josephus places on the nature of his own Galilean mission in two of his works.)7 John’s messianic secret is far less subtle than in Mark, though the disciples are relatively equally clueless. Everything is expressed in Johannine idiom, even sayings paralleled in the Synoptics; almost all Johannine scholars, including the more conservative ones, recognize that John has framed everything in his own way.8 We might speak of John’s interpretive, homiletic development of his material.9 Like a certain kind of ancient biography, John’s focus highlights Jesus’s character and mission.10
Yet the Fourth Gospel’s discourses differ more starkly from the Synoptics than its narratives. Many of John’s narratives are more Synoptic-like, that is, more episodic. D. Moody Smith, my dissertation mentor and a noted specialist in the relationship of John and the Synoptics,11 has argued that where John’s narrative departs from the Synoptics, such as in some details of Jesus’s arrest and trial, John sometimes has an even better claim to what we should regard as reliable tradition than the Synoptics.12
Others note that Mark too may have imposed a grid on Jesus’s story, so it should not a priori be used to exclude the reliability of John’s approach.13 Although they appear in different contexts, John includes some sayings that also appear in the Synoptics (e.g., 12:25, 48; 13:16, 20),14 and if we broaden the discussion to coherence with Synoptic sayings, the net becomes still wider.15 Even John’s Christology in the discourses has earlier precedent.16
Philo’s Life of Moses not only adapts and expands some speeches from the Pentateuch,17 it adds four new ones, including three full ones for Moses, drawing inferences from the Pentateuch.18 Even historians often used speeches to provide perspectives and interpretation on their material,19 including in Josephus’s Hellenistic Jewish historiography.20 Xenophon’s memoirs of Socrates offer John the potential precedent of even a firsthand witness who frames the master’s teaching “not only in isolated sallies, but in colloquies with a single interlocutor, whose questions guide his tongue.”21 Although not a biography and reflecting an earlier literary milieu, Plato developed Socrates’s teaching in a way he believed to accord with that teaching.22
But whereas good historians ideally were supposed to try to provide speeches that sounded like the speakers, everyone in this Gospel speaks in Johannine idiom.23 (Still, Philo and Josephus can make Moses sound like a Greek orator appropriate for their audiences.) Elite biographers and historians paraphrased their sources much more than do the Synoptics;24 at least John cannot be accused of cribbing material verbatim from his sources. That is, putting material in one’s own words can be viewed as a literary virtue.25
When forced to choose between John’s and Mark’s narratives on matters of detail, I have typically favored Mark (including in my John commentary) because of John’s apparent interpretive freedom and later date of composition. Some prefer Johannine chronology to that of the Synoptics and the Johannine date of the Last Supper over that of Mark; they could be correct (some arguments are now stronger than I anticipated),26 but I have normally tended more toward the Markan camp (along with Matthew and Luke).27
In my own exploration of the Fourth Gospel, I unexpectedly concluded that, mostly in the passion narrative, John deliberately tweaks, often in symbolically pregnant ways,28 the more widely circulated passion narrative known to us from Mark (Mark 14–15) and, probably in very condensed form, in Paul (cf. 1 Cor 11:23–26; 15:3).29 John is not the only Gospel (cf. Matt 27:34 with Mark 15:23; Luke 23:47 with Mark 15:39)30 or ancient biography to tweak his sources, but the consistency of his tweaking in the passion narrative seems too conspicuous to be missed.31 Like a bard surprising and engaging his audience by varying some expected features of a familiar story, John engages his audience by recounting a familiar story in a different way.
Jesus seems in greater control of the events, and the symbolism of particular acts (e.g., the Last Supper as a Passover meal) appears imported directly into the narrative. Thus, for example:
Not all these points are incompatible with the Markan line of tradition; writers can choose to emphasize different features of the same events, provided enough is remembered. The most basic understanding of communication recognizes that no one mentions every detail and that omitting some details is necessary for efficient and relevant communication. Moreover, some of these details likely do reflect authentic memories; prisoners, for example, typically carried their own crosses, and archaeology suggests gardens near the tomb.36
But John is conspicuously telling his own story, not following Mark’s.37 While this a simple matter of observation, scholars will differ as to the explanation proposed, but among the following possibilities I offer what I think the likeliest solution. On the one hand, different disciples probably remembered elements of the story differently, so John could either polemically challenge or simply supplement the earlier accounts. Though supplementation is a possible motive and is at least sometimes probably the case, if he merely supplements, one might expect him to show more frequently how his narrative fits with the others in cases where it appears most in tension, for example, where Jesus carries his cross. Signs of polemic are missing, but John could intend historical correction, though again one wonders why he does not more explicitly contrast the story lines of his predecessors (as biographers and historians sometimes did).38
On the other hand, the consistent direction of many of the above changes probably suggests that the differences are neither accidental nor corrections of mere historical detail. Rather, they appear to be deliberately rhetorical and especially theological. Good storytellers sometimes maintain audience suspense by slight variations in how they retell a familiar story.39
More important here, John highlights some theological points by these surprising variations (although, again, these features need not be incompatible with historical detail as well). That is, we find here not random accidents or mistakes but a consistent and therefore probably deliberate pattern of adaptation.40 Such adaptation might continue in the resurrection narrative. As we have seen, ancient hearers would not consider such variations problematic, though (as most subsequent patristic comments illustrate) they would often seek to harmonize them.
Indeed, if some have summarized Mark’s Gospel as “a passion narrative with an extended introduction,”41 John may frame Jesus’s ministry with the passion even more clearly by moving the temple cleansing, which Mark reports toward the beginning of the passion week (Mark 11:15–17), to the beginning of Jesus’s public ministry (John 2:13–22). As we have noted, ancient biographies did not require chronological order, nor can episodic memory (as opposed to archives) usually provide such order. Nevertheless, John’s rearrangement immediately cues any reader already familiar with Mark that John is going to tell the story his own way.
Critics in antiquity recognized that different historians would report events according to their respective emphases,42 but they insisted, at least when criticizing others’ work, that true works should not contradict one another.43 Still, they would understand that disciples often developed different aspects of their teachers’ teachings.44 Furthermore, when subjective individual or cultural memories diverge, we can often learn most by reading them in dialectical tension with one another, finding especially their shared core.45 Different biographers also often highlighted different aspects of a teacher’s teaching; thus Lucian emphasizes a side of Demonax largely missing in other traditions.46
Nevertheless, focus on these adaptations, which I believe John intends to be fairly conspicuous, should not lead us to neglect the other side of the coin. John differs from the Markan outline of the Synoptics, but when compared with other ancient literature, even later Christian narratives about Jesus, John’s kinship with the Synoptics becomes more obvious.
I agree with the significant strand of Johannine scholarship that finds in this Gospel the testimony of the beloved disciple (cf. John 19:35; 21:24; 1 John 1:1–3).47 Papias depends on sayings of “John,”48 or, on Eusebius’s interpretation of Papias, two Johns;49 the John whom Papias believed authored 1 John50 is presumably closely connected with the Gospel’s author.51 (Again, I am not treating this question in greater depth here because I have treated it extensively elsewhere, where I include various views, objections, and more detailed arguments.)52
Moody Smith notes again that John, while distinctive among the Gospels, is more like the Synoptics than like any other documents.53 John tells Jesus’s story in a significantly different way from the Synoptics, yet recent studies of historical tradition in John54 also show that this Gospel is a far cry from second- and third-century stories about Jesus that are typically far from Judean/Galilean roots. (Some genuine Jesus tradition does exist in the Gospel of Thomas, although it lacks the narrative form that characterizes biographies such as the first-century Gospels, and its current form clearly postdates living memory of Jesus.)55
John’s topography reflects accurate knowledge of pre-70 greater Judea, often in narratives that do not appear in the Synoptics (e.g., 5:2; 9:7).56 In keeping with ancient mnemonic practice,57 this topography might also serve as memory prompts for the stories associated with it.58 Some pre-70 Judean customs also appear, despite their possible unfamiliarity to John’s Diaspora audience in the 90s.59 Literary analyses also show that John appears to presuppose his audience’s knowledge of some of his information, including some information that does not appear in the Synoptics.60
Moreover, no one would deny the significant overlap with incidents in the Synoptics, even though John arranges and words them in his own way. These appear especially in the passion narrative, since that narrative is material that all four narrative Gospels had to cover,61 whereas a partly or fully independent tradition or witness might choose from a range of material to treat in the rest of the Gospel. For example:62
•Jesus comes from Nazareth in Galilee (Mark 1:9; John 1:45–46).
•Jesus is known as the son of Joseph (Matt 1:16; Luke 1:27; John 1:45), though Joseph, unlike Jesus’s mother, appears nowhere during the narratives of Jesus’s ministry.
•John’s proclamation:63
•John shows that he is not the Messiah (Luke 3:15–16; John 1:20).
•John prepares the way for the Lord in the wilderness, in the language of Isaiah (Mark 1:3; John 1:23).64
•John proclaims the one coming after him, the thong of whose sandals John is not worthy to release (Mark 1:7; John 1:26–27).
•John baptizes merely in water, but that one will baptize in the Holy Spirit (Mark 1:8; John 1:26, 33; cf. Matt 3:11//Luke 3:16).
•John recognizes that the Spirit descends on Jesus like a dove (Mark 1:10; John 1:32–33).
•In different settings, a heavenly voice attests Jesus (Mark 1:11; John 12:28).
•Jesus is thus shown to be God’s Son (Mark 1:11; John 1:34).
•Key disciples taken for granted include Simon and Andrew (Mark 1:16; John 1:40),65 Philip (Mark 3:18; John 1:43), Thomas (Mark 3:18; John 11:16), Judas Iscariot (Mark 3:19; John 6:71) and another Judas (Luke 6:16; Acts 1:13; John 14:22).
•Jesus names Simon, “Peter” (Mark 3:16; John 1:42).
•Jesus overturns tables in the temple and drives out money changers and sellers of doves (Mark 11:15–17; John 2:14–15).
•Jesus is reported as speaking of raising up the temple in three days after it is destroyed, albeit in ways interpreted quite differently by friend and foe (Mark 14:58; John 2:19).
•Jesus feeds the five thousand in the countryside.
•There are just five loaves and two fish (Mark 6:38; John 6:9).
•Jesus has the people sit down (Mark 6:39; John 6:10).
•There are about five thousand people (Mark 6:44; John 6:10).
•Jesus gives thanks, then distributes the food for all (Mark 6:41; John 6:11).
•After the miracles they gathered twelve baskets of leftovers (Mark 6:43; John 6:13).
•Jesus comes to the disciples on the lake of Galilee.66
•The disciples are crossing the lake to the west (to Bethsaida, Mark 6:45; to Capernaum, John 6:17).
•The wind is stirring the lake and slowing their crossing (Mark 6:48; John 6:18).
•Jesus comes to them, walking on the lake (Mark 6:48; John 6:19).
•They are afraid (Mark 6:49–50; John 6:19).
•Jesus assures them, “It is I,” and tells them not to fear (Mark 6:50; John 6:20).
•Jesus joins them in the boat (Mark 6:51; John 6:21).
•Peter confesses Jesus’s identity as the Messiah (Mark 8:29) or the holy one of God (John 6:69).
•Annas and Caiaphas are among the high priests (Matt 26:3; Luke 3:2; John 18:13; and more precisely than in even Acts 4:6, Caiaphas is the current highest priest, hence perhaps John’s “high priest that year,” John 18:13).
•Some leading aristocratic priests and others plot to arrest and kill Jesus, with a concern for public order (Mark 14:1–2; John 11:50, 53).67
•Jesus’s final time in Jerusalem is for Passover (Mark 14:1; John 12:1).
•In the vicinity of Jerusalem, Jesus lodges at Bethany (Mark 11:11–12; John 12:1).
•Friends of Jesus include the sisters Martha and Mary (Luke 10:38–39; John 11:1).
•An anointing of Jesus early in the passion narrative:68
•Jesus is dining in Bethany (Mark 14:3; John 12:2).
•A woman anoints him with aromatic nard (Mark 14:3; John 12:3).
•One or more bystanders complain that this ointment could have been sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor (Mark 14:5; John 12:5).
•Jesus defends her: “Let her alone . . . you always have the poor with you . . . but you do not always have me” (Mark 14:7; John 12:7–8).69
•He associates the anointing with his burial (Mark 14:8; John 12:7).
•The triumphal entry:
•Jesus obtains a colt (Mark 11:1–7; John 12:14).
•Many throw branches on the road where Jesus is coming (Mark 11:8; John 12:13).
•They shout a line from Ps 118 in the Passover Hallel: “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the Lord’s name!” (Mark 11:9; John 12:13).
•Jesus teaches about servanthood in the Last Supper context, with himself as the chief example (Luke 22:26–27;70 John 13:4–5, 14).
•Jesus predicts the betrayal and also Peter’s denials.
•Jesus predicts the betrayal (Mark 14:18; John 13:21).
•The disciples wonder whom he means (Mark 14:19; John 13:22).
•Jesus predicts that his followers will abandon him and be scattered (Mark 14:27; John 16:32).
•Peter insists that he will follow no matter what (Mark 14:29, 31; John 13:37).
•Jesus predicts Peter’s denials (Mark 14:30; John 13:38).
•Jesus and his disciples leave the place where they have dined for the countryside (Mark 14:26; John 18:1).
•Satan enters Judas Iscariot (Luke 22:3; John 13:27), who has pecuniary motives (Mark 14:11; John 12:6).
•Judas betrays Jesus (Mark 14:43; John 18:2–3).
•One disciple strikes off the ear of the high priest’s slave with a sword (Mark 14:47; John 18:10).
•This action earns Jesus’s reproof (Luke 22:51), even specifically, “Put your sword back in its place!” (Matt 26:52; John 18:11).
•Jesus must drink the Father’s cup (Mark 14:36; John 18:11).
•Jesus before the high priest and his colleagues:
•The high priest questions Jesus (Mark 14:60–61; John 18:19).
•Jesus keeps silent or gives an evasive answer (Mark 14:61; John 18:20–21).
•One way or the other, though, they know his claim to be God’s Son (Matt 26:63//Luke 22:70; John 19:7; cf. 10:36).71
•At least one Judean officer or servant strikes Jesus, apparently in the high priest’s presence (Mark 14:65; John 18:22).
•Peter denies Jesus.
•Peter follows Jesus from afar (Mark 14:54; John 18:15).
•He enters the high priest’s courtyard (Mark 14:54; John 18:15–16).72
•Peter is warming himself in the high priest’s courtyard (Mark 14:54, 67a; John 18:25).
•Peter, confronted by a servant woman, denies Jesus (Mark 14:67–68; John 18:17).
•Confronted by others, Peter denies Jesus a total of three times (Mark 14:69–71; John 18:25–27).
•The rooster crows during Peter’s final denial (Mark 14:72; John 18:27; cf. Mark 14:30; John 13:38).73
•Members of the elite priesthood hand Jesus over to Pilate, apparently on the charge of sedition (“King of the Jews”; Mark 15:1; John 18:31, 33–35).
•Pilate, the governor, is not persuaded that Jesus is a threat (Mark 15:14; John 18:38).74
•Jesus answers Pilate somewhat ambivalently and then refuses to answer further (Mark 15:2, 5; John 18:36; 19:9).75
•Pilate offers to release Jesus, but the crowds choose Barabbas.
•There is a local paschal amnesty practice (Mark 15:6, 8; John 18:39).
•Pilate offers to release Jesus (Mark 15:9; John 18:39).
•The elite priests request, or urge the crowd to request, Barabbas (Mark 15:7–15, esp. 11; John 18:40).
•Pilate has Jesus scourged (Mark 15:15; John 19:1).
•Gentile soldiers mock Jesus.
•They place a crown of thorns on his head (Mark 15:17; John 19:2).
•They drape a purple robe on him (Mark 15:17; John 19:2).
•They offer a mock acclamation: “Hail, King of the Jews!” (Mark 15:18; John 19:3).
•The crucifixion:
•Jesus is marched to Golgotha, “place of a skull” (Mark 15:22; John 19:17).
•Jesus is crucified between two others (Mark 15:24, 27; John 19:18).
•The titulus on Jesus’s cross reads, “King of the Jews” (John 19:19; Mark 15:26).
•The execution squad divides Jesus’s garments (Mark 15:24; John 19:23).
•A soldier raises a sponge of sour wine to Jesus’s mouth (Mark 15:36; John 19:29).
•Mary Magdalene, another Mary, and other women were at the cross (Mark 15:40, 47; John 19:25).
•Jesus dies (Mark 15:37; John 19:30).
•Jesus dies more quickly than was typical (Mark 15:44–45; John 19:33).
•Joseph of Arimathea:
•Joseph requests Jesus’s body from Pilate (Mark 15:43; John 19:38).
•Joseph then lays Jesus’s body in a tomb (Mark 15:46; John 19:41–42).
•The anointing could not be completed because it was the preparation day before the Sabbath (Mark 15:42; 16:1; John 19:31, 42).76
•Followers experience the empty tomb and the risen Christ.
•Mary Magdalene and others come to this tomb, in the vicinity of Jerusalem, early on/soon after the sabbath (Mark 16:1; Luke 24:1, 22; John 20:1–2).
•At some point they see angels (Matt 28:5; Luke 24:4, 23; John 20:12), and they (Matt 28:9–10), or at least Mary (John 20:16), sees Jesus.
•Mary or the women are sent with a message (Mark 16:7; Matt 28:7, 10; John 20:17) and/or report their experience (Luke 24:10, 23).
•Peter runs and finds the tomb empty but does not yet see Jesus (Luke 24:12, 24; John 20:3–5).
•Jesus suddenly stands among the disciples and greets them with the peace blessing (Luke 24:36, most early MSS; John 20:19).
•Some do not believe (Matt 28:17; Luke 24:11, 37, 41; John 20:25, 27), but some (or the unbeliever, after seeing him) worship Jesus (Matt 28:17; Luke 24:52; John 20:28–29).
•Jesus invites the disciples to touch him, recognizing his hands (Luke 24:39; John 20:27).
•The disciples rejoice (Luke 24:41; John 20:20).
•Jesus’s resurrection fulfills the Scriptures (Luke 24:44–46; 1 Cor 15:4; John 20:9).
•Jesus commissions disciples (Matt 28:18–20; Luke 24:48; John 20:22; cf. 15:27) in connection with the promise of the Spirit (Luke 24:49; Acts 1:8; John 15:26–27; 20:22; cf. Mark 13:11; Matt 28:20).
•Jesus will ultimately ascend (Luke 24:51; Rom 8:34; Heb 1:3; John 20:17).
In the same narratives we could catalog differences, probably no less extensively. Many of the variations in these accounts (such as sequencing, e.g., in the tomb encounters) fit the range of variation that appears in other ancient biographies.77 For example, if John (or for that matter, Mark) has chronologically displaced Passover to make a point, this fits a practice observed in other ancient biographies, such as Plutarch shifting one story seven years to make a connection obvious.78 John might develop some scenes from a core of information available to him (or depend on different memories), but in antiquity historians could develop scenes and dialogues in constructing cohesive narratives.79
A larger number of differences simply reflect omissions (common fare when witnesses, tradents, or authors select or condense material), sometimes (esp. in the final narratives) taking for granted that the audience already knew part of the story (e.g., John 11:1–2).80 Oral tradition and storytelling tend to simplify narrative accounts, often omitting extraneous details,81 and the same is true in ancient biography82 and in memory itself.83 John recognizes that he is offering only a sample of accounts about Jesus (20:30); he is not limited to the stories that the Synoptics chose.
Various other narrative incidents cohere in some respects with Synoptic incidents, such as:
Many of the stories that John tells that are missing in the Synoptics also involve visits to Jerusalem for festivals and match details of Judean life known to us but not likely known to most of John’s Diaspora audience in the 90s.84
One could argue that John’s parallels with the Synoptics reflect his dependence on the Synoptics. This is a much-debated issue,85 but let us for the present discussion grant such dependence, whether directly or simply (I think far more likely) from having heard them on some occasions. If this Gospel depends on or overlaps significantly with sources where we can test it, is it not reasonable to suppose that it might also depend on prior information elsewhere, not least the recollections of the beloved disciple (John 21:24)? John reworks information where we can test him, and he had no way to know what sources would survive to be tested, since there were apparently many available (Luke 1:1; John 21:25).86 If John depends on historical tradition to such an extent, presumably he sees his work as bound somehow to information, rather than an opportunity for free invention.87
Comparison with Synoptic narratives suggests that such memories are imbued in this Gospel with fresh theological insights, but also that this Gospel tends to interpret memories and not mere fantasies.88 John tells his story differently, but he is not writing a novel. He remains dependent on substantial information, much of it paralleled in the Synoptics and much of it probably in sources that we cannot now check. Indeed, due to what evidence remains extant, most material in most biographies written by those who knew a figure is singly attested, from Xenophon’s Agesilaus to Nepos’s Atticus and Tacitus’s Agricola.89
John is a “maverick gospel”;90 he seems less interested in traditional biographic conventions than are his predecessors. Scholars are currently exploring the mysteries of John in fruitful ways that will likely produce greater understanding; for the purposes of this book, however, it seems sufficient to conclude this chapter with some brief comments.
If any extant first-century Gospel stretches the range of imperial-period biography beyond the contours traced in earlier chapters, it would be John. Some might even compare his flexibility with some earlier biographic models, such as that of Xenophon (though Xenophon may have gone further: we have less ground for certainty there).
At the same time, John is no Ps.-Callisthenes or author of the apocryphal gospels. By any standard that we have surveyed, his work remains much closer to biography than to a novel. Few if any novels would exhibit all the sorts of correspondences with other biographies noted above. Even if John falls in a different range of historical biography than, say, Luke, there is good reason to believe that this Gospel is no exception to the first-century Gospels falling in that wider category.
1. See Burridge, Gospels, 229. Burridge treats John as ancient biography (Burridge, Gospels, 213–32).
2. Witherington, Sage, 336–38, calls this the esoteric side of the wisdom tradition. On Jesus as riddler in history and the Gospels, see esp. Thatcher, Riddler; on riddles in communication, see also Thatcher, “Riddles.”
3. Eve, Behind Gospels, 149; although the contrasts on which he focuses are mainly omissions (esp. the kingdom and exorcisms in John), they certainly emphasize different aspects of Jesus’s ministry. Ehrman, Interrupted, 21–28, notes differences; I also note these, though sometimes explaining them differently, in my John commentary. Some in antiquity viewed John as deliberately supplementing the Synoptics (Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 3.24.7–13; Smith, John among Gospels, 8).
4. Attridge, “Genre Bending,” further developed in Attridge, “Genre Matters?”; I owe these references to Sean Adams, from his forthcoming work tentatively titled Negotiating Genre.
5. Some would compare the range of treatments in the Diaspora Jewish writer Philo: although the first volume of Philo’s Life of Moses resembles Greco-Roman biography more generally, his lives of Abraham and Joseph revert to his penchant for allegorizing as edifying commentary in the Alexandrian philosophic tradition. For John and Philo, cf., e.g., Dodd, Interpretation, 54–73; Borgen, John; Attridge, “Philo and John”; Attridge, “Creation”; Attridge, “Name.” Still, John’s audience is far from the elite Hellenistic readership presupposed by Philo.
6. Cf. also Dunn, Tradition, 163, 195. Some compare John’s Gospel to grand rhetoric; such rhetoric, however, tended to be far more lavish and pleonastic than John’s simple prose, which was more suitable for normal historical discourse.
7. See Henderson, “Comparison,” 270, 273–74. As Henderson notes, Josephus gives us a sense of how far some work could go in variations and still remain acceptable in a first-century context (275).
8. See, e.g., Lindars, John, 25; Bruce, John, 6, 16; Thompson, “Historical Jesus”; Dunn, “John and Tradition” (see esp. the essential conclusion on 377).
9. See again Bruce, John, 16.
10. Licona, Differences, 115, suggesting that John might focus on a “higher-level view” than on “the ground level of precise reporting.”
11. See, e.g., Smith, “John and Synoptics”; Smith, John among Gospels.
12. Smith, “Historical Issues,” 263–67.
13. Moloney, “Jesus of History.”
14. Cf. Matt 10:24, 39; Mark 9:41; Luke 10:16; 17:33; perhaps John 14:13–14 with Matt 7:7//Luke 11:9; John 16:2 with Mark 13:9; John 15:26–27 (in the context of persecution) with Mark 13:11; John 16:24 with Matt 7:7//Luke 11:9; John 17:2 with Matt 11:27//Luke 10:22; see many further examples in Aland’s synopsis. Cf. the much more extensive list of parallels in Howard, Gospel, 267–78; Anderson, Quest, 131–32. For aphorisms in John, see Anderson, Quest, 60–61.
15. Cf., e.g., Ensor, “John 4.35.” Although I occasionally pointed these out in the commentary, I usually did not, since historical setting, rather than historicity of genre, was the commentary’s primary focus.
16. See fuller discussion in Keener, John, 297–310. How much precedent is of course a matter of debate; in support of considerable precedent, see, e.g., Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ; Hays, Reading Backwards; Gathercole, Son; Tilling, Christology; Loke, Origins; Bauckham, “Christology”; Capes, Texts; Capes, Christ; against it, see, e.g., Ehrman, How Jesus Became God; Kirk, Man Attested by God.
17. Expanded discourses include Philo, Moses 1.50.278–79, expanding Num 23:1–10; Moses 1.31.171–72, expanding Exod 14:11–12; Moses 1.31.173–75, expanding Exod 14:13–14; and esp. Moses 1.40.222–26, expanding Num 13:18–21; see Hidalgo, “Study,” 293–97.
18. Hidalgo, “Study,” 300, 291–300, esp. the four added discourses on 297–300 (Philo, Moses 1.16.92, developing Exod 7:11; Moses 1.10.54–56, developing Exod 2:17; Moses 1.44.244–46, developing Num 20:21; Moses 1.53.295–99, developing Num 25:1–3); cf. also Petitfils, “Tale,” 163, on Moses 1.54–57.
19. Cadbury, Making, 185; Lindner, “Geschichtsauffassung”; Attridge, “Historiography,” 326; Satterthwaite, “Acts,” 355–56; Marincola, “Speeches,” 119; with reference to John, Bauckham, “Historiographical Characteristics”; for adaptation, see also particularly helpfully Parsenios, “Rhetoric.”
20. Josephus even composes speeches for the same occasion differently in his different works (Jewish Antiquities 15.127–46 vs. Jewish War 1.373–79; Talbert, Mediterranean Milieu, 211)! On Josephus and speeches, see sources in Keener, Acts, 1:301–4. Some Judean haggadic works also supplied interpretive speeches (cf. Endres, Interpretation, 198–99).
21. Edwards, “Genre,” 55–56, here 55.
22. Kennedy, “Source Criticism,” 129–30, 133 (noting W. K. C. Guthrie), comparing John as opposed to the Synoptics here, and noted appreciatively in Black, “Kennedy,” 64–65. Cf. also Votaw, “Biographies,” 249; Dodd, Tradition, 17; Keener, John, 50; esp. Parsenios, “Rhetoric.” Questions from Socrates’s sometimes-confused interlocutors help shape Plato’s dialogues.
23. See, e.g., Burridge, “Gospels and Acts,” 527.
24. E.g., for Philo’s resistance to verbatim copying, see Hidalgo, “Study,” 300.
25. Some people viewed use of preexisting lines as plagiarism (cf. Seneca the Elder, Controversiae 1.pref.19; Suasoriae 2.19; McGill, “Seneca on Plagiarizing”), others (when the incorporation was obvious) as flattering the source (Suasoriae 3.7); no consensus on the boundary existed (Knoppers, “Problem,” 28–29, 33).
26. See Anderson, Quest, 158–66; briefly, Bernier, Quest, 82; earlier, e.g., Oesterley, Liturgy, 158–67; Grappe, “Essai”; Meier, Marginal Jew, 1:395–401; Brown, Death, 1351–73. But see now Pitre, Last Supper, 251–373.
27. Though it is not three against one, since Matthew and Luke may simply be following Mark; note Smith, “Criticism,” 628–29.
28. Partly from apologetic concerns, church fathers often harmonized John with the Synoptics (something John conspicuously does not do); some, however, observed that John sometimes diverged to make a spiritual point (Origen, Commentary on John 10.2, 13–15; an approach, however, that I believe Origen often took too far). See Wiles, Gospel, 14–24.
29. Cf. here Allison, Constructing Jesus, 392–403; Eve, Behind Gospels, 163–67. Theissen, Gospels, 166–99, argues for a very early, continuous passion narrative; Soards, “Passion Narrative,” contends both that Mark uses a source and that we probably cannot separate the tradition from the redaction (at least except where the agreement of other Gospels against Mark might suggest pre-Markan tradition, e.g., Mark 14:72; Dewey, “Curse,” 102–3; cf., somewhat more daringly, Dunn, Tradition, 109–19; cf. further Soards, “Tradition”).
30. Matthew may feel that he has already included the myrrh sufficiently in Matt 2:11; his use of “gall” recalls Ps 69:21. Jesus’s “innocence,” though an obvious corollary of being God’s Son, fits Luke’s apologetic.
31. For patterns of changes including redaction in ancient rhetoric, see Pelling, Texts, 65.
32. This conclusion results in an at least apparent changing of the day, though perhaps for more deliberate reasons than, e.g., the changing of the day in Mark 11:20 to Matt 21:19. Recounting here the range of scholarly explanations for the difference would digress at too great a length, but virtually everyone recognizes the difference between the accounts.
33. Admittedly, with Jesus being in a reclining position, Mary of Bethany could have easily anointed his feet with what remained from his head, with the better-known tradition focusing on the more prominent part. But whatever we suppose regarding this detail of the event itself, John has reason to emphasize the aspect that he emphasizes.
34. I speak here of a different emphasis, not claiming that John transmutes one saying into the other; if John’s Gospel answers Mark 15:34, it is likelier in John 16:32 than in 19:30.
35. Cf. Keener, John, 1133–34; Keener, “Genre,” 323. Note even the lack of stated mediation in John 6:11 (contrast Mark 6:41); while John is not denying such mediation, he certainly spotlights Jesus.
36. See Artemidorus, Interpretation of Dreams 2.56; Plutarch, Delays of Divine Vengeance 9, Moralia 554AB; Chariton, Chaereas and Callirhoe 4.2.7; 4.3.10; also Brown, Death, 913; Smith, “Historical Issues,” 263–65. The nails of John 20:25 may be assumed in Col 2:14.
37. Cf. the conception of countermemory (in, e.g., Esler, “Memory,” 156–57; Odor, “Countermemory,” citing particularly relevantly Foucault, Language), though storytelling can also use variation for a purpose as mundane as surprise. I see the Fourth Gospel as independent in the sense that John was not following Mark; but I do believe that John must have known of Mark, and probably of other Gospels as well, given how widely networked the early church was (cf. Willis, “Networking”; Keener, Acts, 187–88).
38. E.g., Polybius, Histories 3.32.4–5; Josephus, Jewish War 1.1–2, 7.
39. Cf. Ong, Orality, 41; further comments are in sections 14.4a and 16.6 below. Keeping hearers alert, the Johannine Jesus even “contradicts” himself with deliberate paradoxes (Williams, Trust, 123–27).
40. Cf. a similar observation in Gundry, “Memories.”
41. A phrase offered by Kähler (Historical Jesus, 80n11) but regularly repeated since then; see, e.g., Marxsen, Mark, 30; Best, Mark, 44; Bruce, “Date of Mark,” 83. The label is, of course, hyperbolic: according to Burridge’s estimate, Mark’s passion narrative constitutes just 19.1 percent of his Gospel (Aletti, Birth, 26–27). Applying the title to John, see Collins, Written, 87–93. Hägg, Biography, 293, applies the title tongue-in-cheek to Lucian’s passion-heavy Passing of Peregrinus.
42. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities 5.56.1.
43. Josephus, Against Apion 1.15, 37–38. But as we have noted, Josephus sometimes contradicts himself.
44. Consider, e.g., Plato and Xenophon with respect to Socrates, albeit in an earlier period (cf. Votaw, “Biographies,” 249; Dodd, Tradition, 17; Keener, John, 50; esp. Parsenios, “Rhetoric”), or the differing depictions of Musonius Rufus in the collections of Lucius and Pollio (Lutz, “Musonius,” 12–13). John might also seek to play Deuteronomy to the Synoptics’ Exodus (Keener, John, 51).
45. Bockmuehl, Seeing, 172.
46. Beck, “Demonax,” 89–90.
47. E.g., varying solutions in Braun, Jean, 301–30; Ridderbos, John, 3, 680–82; Kysar, John, 12; O’Day, “John,” 500; Hengel, Question; Dunn, “John,” 299; Smith, John (1999), 400; Painter, John, 4; Bauckham, Eyewitnesses, 550–51; Wright, “Reliability,” 206–21.
48. Though Papias, frag. 3.1 and 5.1 (Holmes) might mean indirect dependence; see frag. 3.4–5; 7.3.
49. Papias, frag. 3.5–6, attributing the Gospel to the apostle.
50. So Papias, frag. 3.17.
51. For second-century reception of the Johannine corpus, see esp. Hill, Corpus.
52. Keener, John, 1:81–115. Not addressed there, contrast Litwa, “Eyewitnesses” (somewhat too dismissive of the erudition of some with opposing perspectives). Despite Litwa’s careful scholarship, I would not see Philostratus as quite so “contemporary”; possibly not even Antonius Diogenes (not necessarily before Lucian, cf. Morgan, “Histories and Wonders,” but contrast Ní-Mheallaigh, Fiction, 71, 144, 150, 181; still, certainly before the third century: Sandy, “Introduction,” 775). More important, although fictitious works sometimes parodied historical ones in using eyewitness claims, these were rarer than the form they parodied and often appear tongue-in-cheek, in contrast to the earnestness of John 21:24 (cf. 19:26–27; 20:2–4; 21:20–23).
53. See Smith, John (1999), 21–22; Schnelle, Christology, 229. Cf. Wright, People, 410–11.
54. See, e.g., Anderson, Quest; Anderson, “Project”; Anderson, Just, and Thatcher, John, Jesus, and History (3 vols.); Charlesworth, “Shift”; Charlesworth, Mirrored in John (esp. ch. 1); Charlesworth, Symposium. Earlier, see, e.g., Robinson, Historical Character; Hunter, “Trends”; Higgins, Historicity; Albright, “Discoveries,” 170–71; Dodd, “Portrait”; Brown, Essays, 187–90; Robinson, Priority; most extensively, Dodd, Tradition, although his work is not persuasive on all points (note the caution also in Carson, “Tradition”). Also, for abundant parallels to the Synoptics despite Johannine idiom, and Judean/Galilean elements in John’s Diaspora work, see Blomberg, Reliability of John’s Gospel.
55. See discussion in Tuckett, “Thomas and Synoptics”; Tuckett, “Thomas: Evidence”; Tuckett, “Sources and Methods,” 130; Charlesworth and Evans, “Agrapha,” 498–502; Stanton, Gospel Truth?, 87; Wright, People, 437–43; Meier, Marginal Jew, 1:123–39; Perrin, Thomas and Tatian, 185–88; Gathercole, Composition; for putative, more apocalyptic earlier stages, DeConick, Recovering, 15–24; DeConick, “Reading.” Puig i Tàrrech, Jesus, 31–32, finds just seven extracanonical authentic sayings of Jesus in Thomas.
56. See, e.g., Charlesworth and Aviam, “Galilee,” esp. 122, 132–36; Burge, “Siloam”; Bauckham, “Historiographical Characteristics,” 19–24; esp. and thoroughly, Wahlde, “Archaeology.”
57. See Small, Wax Tablets, 95–101, 109–11; for other images, 111–16; Rubin, Memory, 46–47. Personal memory recalls locations better than chronology (some even used artificial locations as mnemonic devices; cf., e.g., Vatri, “Writing,” 752).
58. Thatcher, “Shape,” esp. 233–34. Geographic settings also appear in some 76.7 percent of Synoptic episodes (Ellis, “Making,” 329).
59. See, e.g., Keener, John, 509–13, for John 2:6; Keener, John, 721–30, esp. 722–24, for 7:37–39.
60. See John 11:2; Culpepper, Anatomy, 222–23; Davies, Rhetoric, 255–59.
61. See, e.g., Smith, “Criticism,” 626.
62. See more extensively Anderson, Quest, 128–45.
63. See in further detail Keener, “Baptizer.”
64. The same text also used by a Judean wilderness sect to describe their identity; see 1QS 8.13–14; cf. 4Q176 frag. 1–2, 2i.7; 4Q259 3.4–5; cf. also Brownlee, “Comparison,” 71; Brown, “Scrolls,” 4.
65. They were also experienced in fishing (John 21:3), apparently along with the sons of Zebedee (21:2), though many critics still consider this chapter a post-Johannine appendix.
66. What outsiders called a “lake” retains its Galilean title as a “sea” in gospel tradition, which reflects the early perspective of that tradition (Theissen, Gospels, 105–8), just as do mentions of Bethsaida, Capernaum, and other villages not readily known to Diaspora audiences.
67. For which John provides a plausible motive (along with a scene and theological irony; John 11:45–53); cf., e.g., Vermes, Jesus the Jew, 50; Vermes, Jesus and Judaism, 12; Keener, “Truth,” 81; Keener, John, 851–52; cf. even Winter, Trial, 37.
68. John probably conflates with this anointing some details that appear in another anointing in the gospel tradition, including the hair and feet (Luke 7:38; John 12:3), thereby providing a model for Jesus washing his disciples’ feet in John 13:4–5. Developing oral tradition can also conflate stories (Vansina, Oral Tradition, 153).
69. Although John does not include all of Mark’s words and changes the wording about anointing with respect to burial, the words here are identical in both versions apart from one slight change in word order.
70. Parallels between Luke and John in the passion narrative might indicate John’s knowledge of Luke’s stories, but they could also indicate Luke’s knowledge of stories from the tradition of the beloved disciple (cf. Luke 1:1–4; Anderson, Quest, 112–16; Matson, Dialogue, goes even further).
71. John does not report Jesus’s response about his identity to the high priest (Mark 14:62), but Mark’s “I am” might appear (or be paralleled?) instead in Jesus’s “I am” response to those who came to arrest him in John 18:5–6.
72. Mark, who, like Josephus, often uses “high priest” in the plural, does not differentiate among high priestly figures; this is also a feature that storytelling might well condense, whereas the disciple in John 18:15 would know more (though whether this disciple is the beloved disciple is a matter of debate).
73. None of the other Gospels follow Mark’s double crowing (Mark 14:30, 72); developing stories often progressively omit extraneous details.
74. I have argued that John’s interpretation of Pilate’s ambivalence offers a plausible approach to an enigma in Mark; see Keener, “Truth”; cf. Licona, Differences, 116. For Pilate finding no guilt in Jesus, compare Luke 23:4, 14, with John 18:38; 19:4, 6.
75. Though John provides more dialogue; see Keener, “Truth,” cited above.
76. Though Jesus had experienced a preburial anointing in Mark 14:8; cf. John 12:7.
77. The language of “nuanced range of variation” is also relevant for narrativizing of memories; see Kirk, Memory, 220, translating Welzer et al., “Opa,” 12.
78. Licona, Differences, 163.
79. See Hadas, “Introduction,” xx–xxi. For historians’ inferences of events, including speaking, see Tacitus, Annals 14.57; 15.59; Quintus Curtius, History 3.2.11–16; 1 Macc 6:10–13; 2 Macc 3:37–39; Josephus, Jewish War 2.319; for reporting even internal thoughts, see, e.g., Tacitus, Histories 2.74; Annals 4.38–39; 12.4. These limited developments of information, however, differed starkly from novels, esp. the bulk of novels; see Fornara, Nature, 134–36; Marguerat, Histoire, 19–20, 25; Marguerat, Historian, 12–13; discussion in Keener, Acts, 72–77.
80. E.g., John leaves his audience hanging as to what if anything becomes of Judas (John 18:5), though our reports of Judas’s death vary from Matthew to Luke to Papias, and Mark also omits Judas’s fate. Similar assumptions of prior knowledge appear in other historical works, such as Xenophon’s Hellenica (Brownson, “Introduction to Hellenica,” x); cf. P.Mich. 202.3; Xenophon, Cyropaedia 7.2.15; Phaedrus, Fables 3.17; 5.10.10; Dio Chrysostom, Orations 34.3; Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 18.54; Life 412; 2 Thess 2:5.
81. Vansina, Oral Tradition, 172; Eve, Behind Gospels, 72, 97; Barber and Barber, Severed, 91.
82. Small, Wax Tablets, 194; Licona, Differences, 47–48, 77, 83, 109.
83. Kirk, “Nexus,” 146.
84. See Keener, John, on the relevant passages.
85. See esp. Smith, John among Gospels.
86. The sort of hyperbole in John 21:25 is common in ancient literature (esp. in epideictic declarations); see, e.g., Homer, Odyssey 3.113–17; Lysias, Orations 2.1, §190; Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 16.95.5; 1 Macc 9:22; Philo, Abraham 1; Special Laws 4.238; Moses 1.213; Dreams 2.63; Plutarch, Malice of Herodotus 1, Moralia 854F; Song Rab. 1:3, §1; Pesiq. Rab. 3:2.
87. His interest is especially in, to borrow the phrase from 1 John, the Jesus who “came in the flesh” (1 John 4:2; 2 John 7).
88. Cf., e.g., Keener, “Beheld,” esp. 25.
89. Multiple attestation for many accounts is below 5 percent; see Wright, “Reliability.”
90. See Kysar, Maverick Gospel.