External Evidence
External Evidence
Although there are several earlier documents, both within the orthodox stream and within Gnosticism, that allude to the fourth gospel or quote it (see the discussion below), the first writer to quote unambiguously from the fourth gospel and to ascribe the work to John is Theophilus of Antioch (c. A.D. 181). Before this date, however, several writers, including Tatian (a student of Justin Martyr), Claudius Apollinaris (bishop of Hierapolis), and Athenagorus, unambiguously quote from the fourth gospel as from an authoritative source. This pushes us back to Polycarp and Papias, information about whom derives primarily from Ireneus (end of the second century) and Eusebius, the historian of the early church (fourth century). Polycarp was martyred in 156 at the age of eighty-six. There is no reason therefore to deny the truth of the claims that he associated with the apostles in Asia (John, Andrew, Philip) and was "entrusted with the oversight of the Church in Smyrna by those who were eye-witnesses and ministers of the Lord” (H.E. 3.36).
Ireneus knew Polycarp personally, and it is Polycarp who mediates to us the most important information about the fourth gospel. Writing to Florinus, Ireneus recalls:
I remember the events of those days more clearly than those which have happened recently, for what we learn as children grows up with the soul and becomes united to it, so I can speak even of the place in which the blessed Polycarp sat and disputed, how he came in and went out, the character of his life, the appearance of his body, the discourse which he made to the people, how he reported his converse with John and with the others who had seen the Lord, how he remembered their words, and what were the things concerning the Lord which he had heard from them, including his miracles and his teaching, 8and how Polycarp had received them from the eyewitnesses of the word of life, and reported all things in agreement with the Scriptures (H.E. 5.20.5-6).
Most scholars recognize that this "John,” certainly a reference to John the apostle, the son of Zebedee, is (so far as Ireneus is concerned) none other than the John whom he emphatically insists is the fourth evangelist. For Ireneus, that the gospel should be fourfold (in the sense already described) was as natural as that there should be four winds. As for the fourth gospel itself, he wrote, "John the disciple of the Lord, who leaned back on his breast, published the Gospel while he was resident at Ephesus in Asia” (Adv. Haer. 2.1.2). In other words, the name of the fourth evangelist is John and is to be identified with the beloved disciple of John 13:23.
The evidence of Papias similarly depends on secondary sources. Papias was a contemporary of Polycarp and may himself have been a student of John (Ireneus, Adv. Haer. 5.33.4, affirms it; Eusebius, H.E. 3.39.2, denies it). That Eusebius does not mention that Papias cited the fourth gospel is irrelevant: Eusebius’s stated purpose was to discuss the disputed parts of the New Testament, as well as some of those people who linked the first century with what follows, rather than to provide a list of citations regarding "acknowledged” books. 9 Another piece of evidence regarding Papias is harder to evaluate. About A.D. 140 an eccentric follower of the writings of Paul, Marcion by name, who had become convinced that only this apostle had truly followed the teachings of Jesus while all the others had relapsed into Judaism, went to Rome to try to convince the church there of his views.
He argued, unsuccessfully, that the proper New Testament canon comprised ten letters of Paul and one gospel, a mutilated version of Luke. Marcion was so dangerous that he succeeded in arousing responses. In particular, the so-called anti-Marcionite prologues to the Gospels have been viewed as part of these reponses (though it must be admitted that some scholars think they emerged at a later period). The anti-Marcionite prologue to John has come down to us in a rather corrupt Latin version. It tells us that the gospel of John was published while John was still alive and was written down at John’s dictation by Papias, a man from Hierapolis and one of John’s near disciples. As for Marcion, he had been expelled by John himself. This information, the prologue argues, derives from the five exegetical books of Papias himself: the reference is to his Exegesis of the Dominical Logia, which survived into the Middle Ages in some libraries in Europe but, which is regrettably no longer extant.
Some of the information provided by the anti-Marcionite prologue is clearly mistaken.
It is extremely doubtful that John excommunicated Marcion: the chronology is stretched too thin. Moreover, it has been suggested that Papias for his part may have said that the churches or certain disciples "wrote down” what John said and was subsequently misquoted as meaning "I wrote down,” since in Greek the latter may be formally indistinguishable from "they wrote down.” 10Even so, there is no doubt in this document that John himself was responsible for the fourth gospel.
Not only Ireneus but Clement of Alexandria and Tertullian provide firm, second-century evidence for the belief that the apostle John wrote this gospel. According to Eusebius (H.E. 6.14.7), Clement wrote, "But that John, last of all, conscious that the outward facts had been set forth in the Gospels, was urged on by his disciples, and, divinely moved by the Spirit, composed a spiritual Gospel.” A more enigmatic and, in its details, less believable version of the same development is preserved in the Muratorian Canon, the earliest orthodox list of New Testament books to come down to us, probably from c. A.D. 170-80. It tells us not only that John’s fellow disciples and bishops urged him to write but that by a dream or prophecy it was revealed to Andrew that John should in fact take up the task, writing in his own name, but that the others should review his work and contribute to it. Most scholars take this to be someone’s deduction from John 21:24.
Some indirect evidence is in certain respects much more impressive. Tatian, a student of Justin Martyr, composed the first harmony of the fourfold gospel: he took the books apart and wove them together into one continuous narrative known as the Diatessaron. First prepared in Greek, this harmony exerted an enormous influence in its Syriac translation. But the crucial point to observe is that it is the gospel of John that provides the framework into which the other three gospels are fitted. This could not have been the case had there been questions about the authenticity of the book.
Indeed, by the end of the second century the only people who denied Johannine authorship to the fourth gospel were the so-called Alogoi —a substantivized adjective meaning "witless ones,” used by the orthodox as a pun to refer to those who rejected the Logos (the "Word” of John 1:1) doctrine expounded in the fourth gospel, and therefore the fourth gospel itself. (Epiphanius gave them this name in Haer. 51.3; they are probably the same group mentioned by Ireneus in Adv. Haer. 3.11.9.) Even here, there were sometimes competing forces at work. For instance, Gaius, an elder in the Roman church who was one of the Alogoi, maintained orthodoxy at every point except in his rejection of John’s gospel and the Apocalypse. At least part of his motivation, however, was his virulent opposition to Montanism, an uncontrolled charismatic movement arising in the middle of the second century that claimed that its leader, Montanus, was the mouthpiece of the promised Paraclete. Since all of the Paraclete sayings that refer to the Spirit are found in John’s gospel (John 14:16, 26; 15:26; 16:7
15), Gaius did not need much persuading to side with the Alogoi on this point.
Certainly from the end of the second century on, there is virtual agreement in the church as to the authority, canonicity, and authorship of the gospel of John. An argument from silence in this case proves impressive: "It is significant that Eusebius, who had access to many works which are now lost, speaks without reserve of the fourth Gospel as the unquestioned work of St. John.” 11 The silence is most significant precisely because it was Eusebius’s concern to discuss the doubtful cases.
The external evidence that maintains the fourth evangelist was none other than the apostle John, then, is virtually unanimous, though not impressively early. But even if we must turn to Ireneus, toward the end of the second century, to find one of the first totally unambiguous witnesses, his personal connection with Polycarp, who knew John, means the distance in terms of personal memories is not very great. Even Dodd, who discounts the view that the apostle John wrote the fourth gospel, considers the external evidence formidable, adding, "Of any external evidence to the contrary that could be called cogent I am not aware.” 12
The fact remains that, despite support for Johannine authorship by a few front-rank scholars in this century and by many popular writers, a large majority of contemporary scholars reject this view. As we shall see, much of their argumentation turns on their reading of the internal evidence. Nevertheless, it requires their virtual dismissal of the external evidence. This is particularly regrettable. Most historians of antiquity, other than New Testament scholars, could not so easily set aside evidence as plentiful and as uniform.
One way of circumventing the force of the external evidence is by appealing to the words of Papias, as reported and interpreted by Eusebius, in support of the hypothesis that there were two Johns. Papias writes (according to Eusebius): "And if anyone chanced to come who had actually been a follower of the elders, I would enquire as to the discourses of the elders, what Andrew or what Peter said, or what Philip, or what Thomas or James, or what John or Matthew or any other of the Lord’s disciples; and things which Aristion and John the elder, disciples of the Lord, say.” Eusebius then comments: "Here it is worth noting that twice in his enumeration he mentions the name of John: the former of these Johns he puts in the same list with Peter and James and Matthew and the other apostles, clearly indicating the evangelist; but the latter he places with the others, in a separate clause, outside the number of the apostles, placing Aristion before him; and he clearly calls him ‘elder’” (H.E. 3.39.4-5).13 From this passage, many have inferred that it was this second John, a disciple of John the son of Zebedee, who wrote the fourth gospel. Perhaps, indeed, Ireneus and Theophilus and other early Fathers confused their Johns.
But recent study has shown that this appeal to Papias is precarious, for four reasons.
1. It is now widely recognized that whereas Eusebius makes a distinction between apostles and elders, understanding that the latter are disciples of the former and therefore second-generation Christians, Papias himself makes no such distinction. In the terms of Papias, "the discourses of the elders” means the teaching of Andrew,
Peter, and the other apostles. It is Eusebius who elsewhere writes, "Papias, of whom we are now speaking, acknowledges that he received the discourses of the apostles from those who had been their followers” (H.E. 3.39.7). Transparently, that is not what Papias said. 14
2. In the Papias quotation John is designated "the elder” precisely because he is being grouped with the elders just mentioned, that is, with the apostles. It is worth noting that "apostle” and "elder” come together with a common referent in 1 Peter 5:1. Indeed, the Greek syntax Papias employs favors the view that "Aristion and John the elder” means something like "Aristion and the aforementioned elder John.” 15 Not only here but in H.E. 3.39.14 it is John and not Aristion who is designated "the elder.” In choosing to refer to the apostles as elders, Papias may well be echoing the language of 3 John (on the assumption that Papias thought that epistle was written by the apostle John).
3. It appears that the distinction Papias is making in his two lists is not between apostles and elders of the next generation but between first-generation witnesses who have died (what they said) and first-generation witnesses who are still alive (what they say). Aristion, then, can be linked with John, not because neither is an apostle, but because both are first-generation disciples of the Lord. And this supports the witness of Ireneus, who says that Papias, not less than Polycarp, was "a hearer of John.”
4. In any case, Eusebius had his own agenda. He so disliked the apocalyptic language of Revelation that he was only too glad to find it possible to assign its authorship to a John other than the apostle, and he seizes on "John the elder” as he has retrieved him from Papias. 16
Martin Hengel has recently devoted an entire monograph to the thesis that it was John the elder, not John the apostle, who was the author of the penultimate draft of the fourth gospel (which then, after his death, was lightly edited, with John 21:24-25 also being added). 17 But Hengel’s "elder” is not the second-century disciple of the aged apostle that many modern scholars have reconstructed. Hengel argues that "John the elder” is none other than the "beloved disciple” (13:23; 19:26-27; 20:2-9; 21:24), a Palestinian Jew who was a contemporary of Jesus and an eyewitness of at least some events in Jesus’ life, but not John the son of Zebedee. Even Hengel admits his "hypothesis may sound fantastic.” 18 He is forced to concede that "the figures of John son of Zebedee and the teacher of the school [i.e. his hypothesized ‘John the elder’]...are deliberately superimposed in a veiled way” and therefore admits that "it would be conceivable that with the ‘beloved disciple’ ‘John the elder’ wanted to point more to the son of Zebedee, who for him was an ideal, even the ideal disciple, in contrast to Peter, whereas in the end the pupils impress on this enigmatic figure the face of their teacher by identifying him with the author in order to bring the Gospel as near to Jesus as possible.” 19 It is hard to imagine how one could get closer than this to affirming apostolic authorship while still denying it!
Why Hengel prefers his hypothesis of an otherwise unknown first-century Palestinian Jew by the name of John who was a contemporary of the apostle John, to the apostle himself, is far from clear. He thinks, for instance, that the Judean focus of the fourth gospel argues for an author who was not a Galilean, as John the apostle was. He judges that the verbal link between "elder” (sometimes rendered "presbyter”) in Papias and the same expression in 2 John 1 and 3 John 1 is very significant (though in fact apostles were known to refer to themselves as elders on occasion; see 1 Peter 5:1). 20 He hypothesizes that there may have been unambiguous evidence in Papias to the effect that this "John the elder” wrote the fourth gospel and holds that one must "reckon with the possibility that Eusebius sometimes concealed information which seemed disagreeable to him or omitted it through carelessness”; 21 on this view the early church simply repeated the error.
All of this is exceedingly weak. From the evidence of Eusebius, it is far from certain that there ever was an "elder John” independent of the apostle, and if there was, it is still less certain that he wrote anything. If against the evidence we accept Eusebius’s interpretation of Papias, we will assign the fourth gospel to the apostle John and the Apocalypse to the elder John—while mainstream biblical scholarship assigns neither book to the apostle. Meanwhile, Hengel’s objections to identifying the beloved disciple with the apostle John are not at all weighty. Because they turn on an evaluation of the internal evidence, to that we must turn.
Internal Evidence
The classic approach of Westcott, updated by Morris, 22 was to establish five points: the author of the fourth gospel was (1) a Jew, (2) of Palestine, (3) an eyewitness, (4) an apostle (i.e. one of the Twelve), and (5) the apostle John. The first two points are today rarely disputed and need not detain us here, except to make three observations.
1. The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls compels us to recognize that it is unnecessary to resort to a period of expansion into the Hellenistic world to account for John’s characteristic expressions. See further discussion below in the section Provenance. Moreover, the evangelist’s detailed knowledge of Palestinian topography and of features in conservative Jewish debate probably reflects personal acquaintance, not mere dependence on reliable Jewish sources.
2. To this we must add the widely accepted fact, already appealed to by Lightfoot in the last century, 23 that at least in some instances John’s quotations are closer in form to the Hebrew or Aramiac than to the Greek (esp. John 12:40; 13:18; 19:37).
3. The recent attempt of Margaret Pamment to argue that the beloved disciple is a Gentile believer turns on her argument that John 21:1ff. is concerned with the Gentile mission (in this she is partly right), and this, she says, "suggests the beloved disciple [who appears in this chapter] is a gentile.” 24 This is a classic non sequitur. Granted that all the first believers were Jews, at least some of the first witnesses to Gentiles had to be Jews!
The other three points, however, are all disputed and turn in large part on the identity of the "beloved disciple,” the now-standard way of referring to the one whom the NIV more prosaically describes as "the disciple whom Jesus loved” (e.g., John 13:23). The raw information is quickly canvassed. The beloved disciple first appears as such at the last supper, where he is reclining next to Jesus and mediating Peter’s question to the Master (13:23). He is found at the cross, where he receives a special commission having to do with Jesus’ mother (19:26-27), and at the empty tomb, where he outstrips Peter in speed but not in boldness (20:2-9). In the epilogue (ch. 21), he is said to be the one who wrote "these things.” If "wrote” means that he wrote the material himself (and did not simply cause the material to be written, as some have suggested) and "these things” refers to the entire book and not just to chapter 21, then the beloved disciple is the evangelist. If that is correct, then it is natural to identify the eyewitness who saw the blood and water flow from Jesus’ side as the beloved disciple, even though he is not so described.
But who is the beloved disciple? The traditional view, that he is John the son of Zebedee, has been advanced for reasons of quite different weight. That the beloved disciple was at the last supper is not disputed (13:23). The synoptics insist that only the apostles joined Jesus for this meal (Mark 14:17 par.), which places the beloved disciple within the band of the Twelve (and coincidentally speaks against Hengel’s hypothesis, described above). He is repeatedly distinguished from Peter (John 13:23-24; 20:2-9; 21:20), and by the same token should not be confused with any of the other apostles named in John 13-16. That he is one of the seven who go fishing in chapter 21 and, by implication, is not Peter, Thomas, or Nathanael suggests he is one of the sons of Zebedee or one of the other two unnamed disciples (21:2). Of the sons of Zebedee, he
cannot be James, since James was the first of the apostolic band to be martyred (probably toward the end of the reign of Herod Agrippa I, A.D. 41-44; see Acts 12:1-2), while the beloved disciple lived long enough to give weight to the rumor that he would not die (21:23). The fact that neither John nor James is mentioned by name in the fourth gospel, which nevertheless has place not only for prominent apostles such as Peter and Andrew but also for relatively obscure members of the apostolic band such as Philip and "Judas (not Judas Iscariot)” (14:22) is exceedingly strange, unless there is some reason for it. The traditional reason seems most plausible: the beloved disciple is none other than John, and he deliberately avoids using his personal name. This becomes more likely when we remember that the beloved disciple is constantly in the company of Peter, while the synoptics (Mark 5:37; 9:2; 14:33; par.) and Acts (Acts 3:1-4:23; 8:1525), not to mention Paul (Gal. 2:9), link Peter and John in friendship and shared experience. It has also been noted that in this gospel most of the important characters are designated with rather full expressions: Simon Peter; Thomas Didymus; Judas,son of Simon Iscariot; Caiaphas, the high priest that year. Strangely, however, John the Baptist is simply called John, even when he is first introduced (John 1:6; cf. Mark 1:4 par.). The simplest explanation is that John the son of Zebedee is the one person who would not feel it necessary to distinguish the other John from himself.
The evidence is not entirely conclusive. For instance, it is just possible that the beloved disciple is one of the unnamed pair of disciples in John 21:2. But once the logical possibility has been duly noted, it seems to be a rather desperate expedient that stands against the force of the cumulative internal evidence and the substantial external evidence.
Other identifications have been advanced. Some, for instance, have suggested Lazarus, on the grounds that "beloved disciple” would be an appropriate form of selfreference for one of whom it is said that Jesus loved him (John 11:5, 36). One or two have suggested the rich young man of Mark 10:21, on much the same ground. Still others argue for the owner of the upper room, arguing that the reason he could lay his head on Jesus’ breast was that, as the host, he was placed in a position of honor next to Jesus; perhaps he was John Mark.
None of this is convincing, and all of it notoriously speculative. According to the synoptic evidence, only the Twelve were present at the last supper: that alone rules out all three suggestions. There is nothing to be said for the first two, other than that Jesus loved them; but that is surely an insufficient ground for identifying the beloved disciple, presupposing as it does that the circle of those whom Jesus loved was extremely limited. As for the second suggestion, to appeal to the gospel of Mark to sort out the identity of the beloved disciple in John seems to be a dubious procedure. And if the owner of the upper room was present as host in any sense, why is it that all four gospels present Jesus taking the initiative at the meal, serving, in fact, as the host? Moreover, there is no patristic evidence that John the son of Zebedee and John Mark were ever confused.
In his commentary, Brown strongly argues that the beloved disciple is John the son of Zebedee (though he does not identify him with the evangelist), largely along the lines just taken. By the time of his more popular book, outlining his understanding of the history of the Johannine community, however, Brown has changed his mind, 25 without answering his own evidence. He now thinks the beloved disciple is an outsider, not one of the Twelve, but a Judean with access to the high priest’s court (John 18:15-16), possibly the unnamed disciple in 1:35-40. Others have advanced extensive lists of reasons why the beloved disciple could not be John the son of Zebedee. 26 These vary considerably in quality, but they include such entries as these: John the son of Zebedee was a Galilean, yet much of the narrative of the fourth gospel takes place in Judea;
John and Peter are elsewhere described as "unschooled, ordinary men” (Acts 4:13), so John could not be expected to write a book of subtlety and depth; John and James are elsewhere described as "Sons of Thunder” (Mark 3:17), presumably suggesting impetuosity, intemperance, and anger, yet this book is the most placid, even mystical, of the canonical gospels; John was vengeful against the Samaritans (Luke 9:54), so it is hard to imagine him writing a book that treats them so kindly (John 4).
None of these arguments seems to carry much weight against the mass on the other side.
1. Although John the son of Zebedee was a Galilean, by the time he wrote, he had not only lived for years in Judea (during the earliest period of the church) but (in any traditional view) in the great metropolitan center of Ephesus. To restrict John’s focus of interest to the place of his origin, when at the time of writing he had not lived there for decades, seems rather unrealistic.
2. It has long been pointed out that the expression in Acts 4:13 does not mean that Peter and John were illiterate or profoundly ignorant but, from the point of view of contemporary theological proficiency, "untrained laymen” (NEB), not unlike Jesus himself (John 7:15). The astonishment of the authorities was in any case occasioned by the competence of Peter and John when they should have been (relatively) ignorant, not by their ignorance when they should have been more competent. Jewish boys learned to read. Since John sprang from a family that was certainly not poor (they owned at least one boat [Luke 5:3, 10] and employed others [Mark 1:20]), he may well have enjoyed an education that was better than average. And surely it would not be surprising if some of the leaders of the church, decades after its founding, had devoted themselves to some serious study.
3. The suggestion that a "son of thunder” could not have become the apostle of love, or that a man steeped in racial bias against the Samaritans could not have written John
4, is an implicit denial of the power of the gospel and the mellowing effect of years of Christian leadership in an age when the Spirit’s transforming might was so largely displayed. The argument is as convincing as the view that Saul the persecutor of the church could not have become the apostle to the Gentiles.
4. Although the "other disciple” who arranges for Peter to be admitted to the high priest’s courtyard (John 18:15-16) is not explicitly said to be the beloved disciple and may be someone else, yet the connection with John has more to be said for it than some think. It appears that this "other disciple” was in the band of those who were with Jesus when he was arrested and therefore one of the Eleven who had emerged from the upper room and had accompanied Jesus up the slopes of the Mount of Olives. His close association with Peter supports (though it does not prove) the view that he is none other than John. That a Galilean fisherman could have access to the high priest’s court is frequently dismissed on the ground that a fishmonger could not enter unquestioned into the waiting room of the prime minister. In fact, the social model is all wrong. We have already seen that John’s family enjoyed some substance; it may have been rich, and in many societies money breaks down social barriers. The relevant social barriers of first-century Palestine may not have been that strong in any case; rabbis were expected to gain a skilled trade apart from their study (thus Paul was a leatherworker), so that the stratification that divided teacher from manual laborer in Stoic and other circles of the Hellenistic world was not a significant factor in much of Palestine. Galilee supplied the fish for all of the country except for the coast and was brought into Jerusalem through the Fish Gate (see Neh. 3:3; Zeph. 1:10). As Robinson comments, the tradition may not be entirely fanciful that says that John’s acquaintance with the girl at the gate and with the high priest’s household stemmed from familiarity with the tradesman’s entrance. 27 He may have had a place in the city (John 19:27) and served on occasion as his father’s agent (a role that crops up in the saying of 13:16). It has been pointed out that the peculiar term for cooked fish (όψάριον [opsarion, G4066]), the form in which much of the trade would be conducted, occurs five times in the fourth gospel (6:9, 11; 21:9, 10, 13) and not elsewhere in the New Testament.
5. Although in the past it has been argued that a Palestinian could not write such fluent Greek, the argument no longer stands. There is now a powerful consensus that at least in Galilee, and perhaps elsewhere in first-century Palestine, the populace was at least bilingual, and in some cases trilingual. Aramaic was used for everyday speech, at least in the villages. (Hebrew may have been used for some formal and cultic occasions, but how many people could speak it is uncertain.) And judging by the number of Greek coins and the amount of Greek inscriptional evidence uncovered, Greek was common enough as an alternative language that linked the Jews not only to the Mediterranean world in general but to the Jewish Diaspora and (in Galilee) to the Decapolis in particular. Some whose work brought them into close relationship with the army may also have attained a working knowledge of Latin. In any case, if John lived abroad for years before writing, he had ample time to practice his Greek. Moreover, although the Greek of John’s gospel is reasonably competent, it is not elegant, and it betrays a fair number of Semitizing "enhancements.” 28 It is, "with little exception, the language of the Septuagint.” 29 This sort of evidence is perfectly consonant with what little we know of the background of John the son of Zebedee.
In short, the internal evidence is very strong, though not beyond dispute, that the beloved disciple is John the apostle, the son of Zebedee. What, then, is the relationship between the beloved disciple and the fourth evangelist?
The traditional answer is that they are one and the same. Today this is commonly denied. Some think that John the son of Zebedee probably in some way stands behind the tradition in the fourth gospel but that the material went through lengthy adaptations.
It finally wound up in the hands of the evangelist (whose identity is unknown—unless he is the "elder” John), whose work was subsequently touched up by a redactor, whose hand is perhaps betrayed in John 21:24-25. Others think that the influence of John the son of Zebedee is more immediate and pervasive: he did not actually write the book but caused it to be written, perhaps through an amanuensis who enjoyed certain liberties of expression and who might appropriately be called the evangelist. Important factors to be assessed are these:
1. Perhaps the most frequently advanced reason for denying that the beloved disciple is the evangelist lies in the expression "beloved disciple” itself. It is argued that no Christian would call himself "the disciple whom Jesus loved”: the expression smacks of exclusivism and is better thought of as something someone else would say about another disciple, than as something any believer would say about himself. Similarly, it is argued, the person who wrote (lit.) that Jesus was in the bosom of the Father (els τον κόλπον του πστρός [eis ton kolpon tou patros], John 1:18) would be loath to say of himself that he reclined in the bosom of Jesus (ev τω κολπω του ’ Ιησου [en to kolpo tou lesou], 13:23). 1 1
But these arguments, often repeated, should be abandoned. When a New Testament writer thinks of himself as someone whom Jesus loves, it is never to suggest that other believers are not loved or are somehow loved less. Thus Paul, in describing the saving work of the Son of God, can suddenly make that work personal: he "loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal. 2:20). In no way does this imply that Paul thinks the Galatians are loved less. The suggestion betrays a profound ignorance of the psychological dynamics of Christian experience: those who are most profoundly aware of their own sin and need, and who in consequence most deeply feel the wonders of the grace of God that has reached out and saved them, even them, are those who are most likely to talk about themselves as the objects of God’s love in Christ Jesus. Those who do not think of themselves in such terms ought to (Eph. 3:14-21). If a "son of thunder” has become the apostle of love, small wonder he thinks of himself as the peculiar object of the love of Jesus. But that is scarcely the mark of arrogance; it is, rather, the mark of brokenness.
Thus, if we are to hear overtones of John 1:18 in the description of John lying on Jesus’ bosom (13:23), it is no more than a suggestive example of a pattern that is constantly prescribed in the fourth gospel: Jesus is the mediator of his Father’s love, his Father’s judgment, his Father’s redemption, his Father’s knowledge, his Father’s covenant.
2. The same sort of reasoning probably explains why the evangelist does not name himself. He prefers to refer to himself obliquely, the better to focus on the One whom he serves; to achieve his purposes in writing, he does not need to stand explicitly on his apostolic dignity. He is already well known by his intended readership (21:24-25) and, like Paul when he is writing without strong polemical intent, does not need to call himself an apostle (Phil. 1:1; cf. Gal. 1:1). As most scholars agree, the beloved disciple is no mere idealization but a historical figure; yet even so, in certain respects he serves as a model for his readers to follow. They too are to serve as witnesses to the truth and to make much of the love of Jesus in their lives.
Even if someone protested that this sort of reasoning does not seem to provide an adequate reason for the refusal of the beloved disciple to identify himself, it must surely be admitted that if the evangelist is someone other than John the son of Zebedee, his failure to mention the apostle John by name, when he mentions so many others, is even more difficult to explain. The point may be pressed a little further. The suggestion that the expression "the disciple whom Jesus loved” is something one is more likely to say about someone else than about oneself is not only without merit, it is self-defeating. It implies that the evangelist (someone other than the beloved disciple, on this view) thought Jesus loved certain disciples and not others. Whatever the reason that Jesus nurtured an inner three (Peter, James, and John) according to the synoptic witness, it is very doubtful that it had much to do with arbitrarily dispensed love on Jesus’ part.
3. Some think the "these things” that the beloved disciple is said to have written (John 21:24) refers only to the contents of chapter 21, not to the book as a whole. Quite apart from the fact that this view depends on a certain reading of chapter 21, it results in an anomaly: the beloved disciple, apparently the apostle John, wrote only this chapter, but someone else wrote the rest—even though "beloved disciple” occurs much earlier than chapter 21.
4. It is frequently argued that wherever John appears with Peter, the superiority of his insight is stressed. In John 13, for instance, Peter merely signals to the beloved disciple, who in turn actually asks Jesus the fateful question; in John 20, not only does the beloved disciple reach the tomb before Peter, but only he is said to believe. Would John have said such things about himself?
But more careful expositors have argued, rightly, that there is no question of inferiority or superiority in these descriptions, but of different gifts and characters. Barrett, for instance, quite convincingly argues that John 21:24 must be read with the verses that precede it: it is given to Peter to feed the flock of God and to glorify God by his death, while it is given to the beloved disciple to live a long time and to serve as the one who writes this book, serving as witness to the truth. 30 If the beloved disciple arrives at the tomb first, Peter enters first. If the beloved disciple is said to believe, it is not said that Peter fails to believe; the statement is part of the description that is moving toward his authentication as the author of this book.
5. Some think that John 21:22-23 must be taken to mean that the beloved disciple has died by the time the fourth gospel was published and that one of the reasons for publication was to alleviate the crisis that had consequently arisen. But it is as easy to suppose that the widely circulating rumor had come to the ears of the aging apostle, who consequently feared what might happen to the faith of some after he died, since their faith was resting on a false implication of something Jesus had actually said.
6. The suggestion that the beloved disciple merely caused these things to be written, apparently through a disciple who served as an amanuensis of sorts (Tertius is commonly cited; see Rom. 16:22), receives minor support from John 19:19-22. Pilate himself probably did not write the titulus on the cross but simply caused it to be written. Certainly it is far from clear just how much freedom an amanuensis in the ancient world might be permitted. 31 Nevertheless, the example of Pilate suggests that what he caused to be written was exactly what he wanted written, and the verb "testifies” in 21:24 suggests that the influence of the beloved disciple is not remote. This is not to argue that John could not have used an amanuensis; nor is it to argue that only authorship by the apostle John can be squared with the internal and external evidence. It is to say, however, that this rather traditional view squares most easily with the evidence and offers least tortuous explanations of difficulties that all of the relevant hypotheses must face.
Over against Brown, then, who (at least in his commentary) sees the beloved disciple as the apostle John but not as the evangelist, and Cullmann, 32 who sees the beloved disciple as the evangelist but not the apostle John, the evidence seems to favor Robinson, who writes, "I believe that both men are right in what they assert and wrong in what they deny.” 33
The fact remains that Kummel (p. 245) insists that Johannine authorship is "out of the question,” while Barrett insists it is a "moral certainty” that John the son of Zebedee did not write the fourth gospel. 34 One is frankly puzzled by their degree of dogmatism. Barrett writes:
Apostolic authorship has been defended at length and with learning by L. Morris...and his arguments should be carefully considered. It must be allowed to be not impossible that John the apostle wrote the gospel; this is why I use the term "moral certainty”.
The apostle may have lived to a very great age; he may have seen fit to draw on other sources in addition to his own memory; he may have learnt to write Greek correctly; he may have learnt not only the language but the thought-forms of his new environment (in Ephesus, Antioch, or Alexandria); he may have pondered the words of Jesus so long that they took shape in a new idiom; he may have become such an obscure figure that for some time orthodox Christians took little or no notice of his work. These are all possible, but the balance of probability is against their having all actually happened. 35
This is a mixed list. Apart from the acquisition of Greek language skills, already discussed, the other challenges do not seem insuperable.
1. Assessment of the "very great age” turns on one’s dating of the book. If one opts for about A.D. 80 (see discussion below in 5. John, DATE), John need only have been, say, seventy-five. Dodd published Historical Tradition in the Fourth Gospel when he was in his eighties; Goodspeed wrote his work on Matthew when he was ninety; Sir Norman Anderson is still writing books at eighty. One of the three authors of this Introduction is in his seventies. And in any case it is not impossible that the fourth gospel was written before 70.
2. Why it should be thought at all improbable that an apostle should "draw on other sources in addition to his own memory” is hard to imagine. In any case, the question of the identification of sources in John’s gospel is extremely problematic (see the following section, Stylistic Unity and the Johannine "Community").
3. As for making Jesus’ words come home in his own idiom, that is the preacher’s metier, especially if involved in cross-cultural ministry. One of the strengths of the commentary by Lindars is his suggestion that various parts of the fourth gospel are simply the skeletons of sermons polished and preached on various occasions over years of Christian ministry. 36 We need not adopt all of his detailed suggestions to appreciate the plausibility of the basic thesis.
4. The suggestion that the author of the fourth gospel was obscure or unknown is somewhat overstated. Scholars differ as to whether John is alluded to in the Epistle of Barnabas, the Didache, and the Shepherd of Hermas(all early second century).
Probably a majority find echoes of the fourth gospel in Ignatius (c. A.D. 110). Justin Martyr wrote: "Christ indeed said, ‘Unless you are born again you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.’ It is evident to all that those who have once been born cannot reenter their mothers’ wombs” (First Apology 61.4-5). This is almost certainly a reference to John 3:3-5; it seems unduly skeptical to think that Justin simply found this as an independent saying in the oral tradition, the more so in the light of the reference to the mothers’ wombs. The pattern of recognition is not too surprising if the gospel of John was published toward the end of the first century. We should not then expect to find traces of it in, say, Clement of Rome (c. 95). There is more of a problem if the fourth
gospel was published before 70 (as Morris and Robinson think). Even so, especially if the evidence of Ireneus regarding Papias and Polycarp is read sympathetically, it is hard to credit the view that "orthodox Christians took little or no notice” of this gospel.
Moreover, Christians then as now had their favorite books. Matthew was an early favorite; John was not. In John’s case, this may have had a little to do with the fact that the fourth gospel was early used (and abused) by the Gnostics. The Gnostic Basilides (c. A.D. 130) cites John 1:9 (though this information depends on Hippolytus’s Refutation of Heresies 7.22.4); the first commentary on a gospel that we know about is the the treatment of John by the Gnostic Heracleon. It takes a little while to get a counterpolemic going—arguably, the first sign of it is found in the epistles of John.
But perhaps the largest stumbling block to acceptance of Johannine authorship is the amorphous assumption that the gospel was composed by a Johannine school or circle or community; so to this we must turn.