IX. Background

IX. Background

I like the comparison of John's Gospel to a pool in which a child may wade and an elephant can swim. It is both simple and profound. It is for the veriest beginner in the faith and for the mature Christian. Its appeal is immediate and never failing.

It is a simple Gospel. The humblest believer can read it and understand it and profit from it. Sir Edwyn Hoskyns put his finger on something important when he wrote: "The critic may range the gospel with Philo and the Alexandrian philosophers; but, and the question is important, did the poor and the ignorant, when they lay a-dying, ever ask their Rabbis to read to them out of the voluminous writings of Philo or of those like him?"¹ The poor and the ignorant have often found in this Gospel something that matters intensely both for life and for death.

But that is not the whole story. A little later Hoskyns writes of the critical commentator who applies himself to the close study of this book, "he will not be true to the book he is studying if, at the end, the gospel does not still remain strange, restless, and unfamiliar."² There are unplumbed depths in the limpid clarity of this writing. What at first appears obvious is presently seen to pose problems. Most students would agree with Hoskyns that years of close study of this Gospel do not leave one with a feeling of having mastered it, but rather with the conviction that it is Still "strange, restless, and unfamiliar."

An Introduction to this book could accordingly be a long and complicated affair. But the book I am writing is primarily a commentary, and this introduction is not meant to be comprehensive. I propose to do little more than notice some of the important problems. There is a multitude of books on particular aspects of this Gospel for those who wish to pursue these questions further.³ But before proceeding to a commentary there are some aspects of the Gospel about which it is proper to make some remarks, and we look at them accordingly.⁴

I. AUTHORSHIP⁵

Some scholars have urged that the authorship of this Gospel does not matter greatly. We do not have the information to determine the point, they say, and in any case it is of no great importance. It is not who wrote the words that counts, but what he wrote. There is something to this. It is certainly the case that the important thing is that we heed what is said, and, further, that this is more urgent than indulging in scholarly arguments about authorship. It is also true that the Gospel as it stands is anonymous. Even the most conservative among us need not feel bound to espouse any particular view of authorship. But the subject is not unimportant, for all that. If we can feel that there are good grounds for thinking of an eyewitness, and specifically of John the Apostle, as being behind this Gospel, our view of it will be one thing. But if we see it as written by a second-century Christian who had never set eyes on Jesus, it will be quite another.⁶ While complete certainty may be unattainable, the question is one that we may discuss to our profit.

Continental scholars have for the most part long since abandoned the idea that this Gospel was written by the Apostle John, whereas in Great Britain and America scholarship has been much more hospitable to the idea. Most British and American scholars have traditionally thought either that John wrote the Gospel or that he was closely associated with it in some way — for example, he may have been the witness behind it. In recent years there has been quite a shift of opinion so that most British and American scholars, other than conservative evangelicals, would not now hold that the author was the Apostle John. A large number would still maintain that his witness is behind the Gospel, but opinion is now much more akin to that on the Continent.⁷

This impressive body of opinion must be given due weight. But we must also bear in mind that much of it appears to be due more to the prevailing climate of opinion in our day than to any new evidence. It is relevant that Westcott, who held firmly to the Johannine authorship, was well aware of the three reasons that A. M. Hunter gives for rejecting it: the use of the Synoptists by the author of this Gospel, the difference in style between this and the other three Gospels, and the improbability that the Apostle John would have called himself "the disciple whom Jesus loved." Hunter concludes: "For these and other reasons, scarcely a reputable scholar in this country nowadays is prepared to affirm that the Fourth Gospel was written by John the Apostle."⁸ Westcott long ago took notice of these (and other) arguments.⁹ But he held that other considerations outweighed them, and that the best solution to the problem on the basis of the evidence available is that John the Apostle was the author. Nobody seems to have dealt adequately with his massive argument. It is important that Westcott has not so much been confuted as bypassed. Scholars today evaluate the evidence differently. They are not necessarily wrong in this, but we should be clear that for the most part it is the same evidence. It is not the case that new discoveries have made the older view untenable. R. H. Lightfoot, indeed, reminds us that "This traditional ascription still receives support, and has never been shown to be impossible."¹⁰

The basic reason for holding that the author was John the Apostle is that this appears to be the teaching of the Gospel itself. In the concluding chapter, after a reference to "the disciple whom Jesus loved," we read: "This is the disciple who testifies to these things and wrote them down" (21:24). The following words, "we know that his testimony is true," show that the statement comes from others than the author. But their commendation is quite early, for no manuscript of the Gospel is known that lacks it. We have then a statement, probably contemporary with the publication of the Gospel, that its author was the disciple whom Jesus loved.¹¹ The Gospel itself seems to indicate that this man was John the Apostle.¹²

This disciple is never named, but the Gospel itself seems to indicate that he was John the Apostle. The title itself seems to betoken an intimacy with Jesus, and this is supported by the way it is used. Thus at the Last Supper the Beloved Disciple "was reclining next to him (lit. 'in Jesus' bosom')" and, when Jesus predicted the betrayal, in response to a suggestion from Peter it was this man of whom John says, "Leaning back against Jesus, he asked him, 'Lord, who is it?' " (13:23, 25). This sense of intimacy with Jesus is strengthened by the fact that as he hung on the cross Jesus commended his mother to this man's care (19:26-27). Since he is the only male follower of Jesus said to have been at the cross, he may well be the witness who saw the water and blood that came out of Jesus' side (19:34-35). On resurrection morning he raced Peter to the empty tomb but did not go in (20:2-5).¹³ When Peter came up and went into the tomb he followed that disciple and "he saw and believed" (20:8). He it was who recognized Jesus on the shore of the lake after the miraculous catch of fish (21:7), and finally he was the subject of Jesus' words to Peter, "If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you?" (21:20-22). It is possible that he was the unnamed disciple who, along with Andrew, went to Jesus at John the Baptist's direction (1:35-40), and again that he was the "other disciple" who was "known to the high priest" and who brought Peter into the high priest's courtyard (18:15-16). But in neither case is the evidence clear enough for us to be certain.

From the list of names given in 21:2 (Peter, Thomas, Nathanael, the sons of Zebedee, and two others) it seems that the Beloved Disciple was one of the sons of Zebedee or else one of the unnamed disciples. If the latter, he must still have been one of the Twelve, for he was present at the Last Supper and it seems that only the Twelve were present on that occasion (Matt. 26:20; Mark 14:17, 20; Luke 22:14, 30). This rules out suggestions like Lazarus¹⁴ and John Mark.¹⁵ The Beloved Disciple appears to have stood in close relationship to Peter (13:24; 20:2; 21:7). From the other Gospels we know that Peter, James, and John formed a trio (and that they were singled out as especially close to Jesus). Since James was martyred early (Acts 12:2), this leaves John.¹⁶

This conjecture may be supported by the curious fact that John is not mentioned by name anywhere in this Gospel. It is not easy to think of a reason why any early Christian, other than John himself, should have completely omitted all mention of such a prominent apostle.¹⁷ It is also the case that in this Gospel we do not read of "John the Baptist" as in the other Gospels, but simply of "John." It is difficult to understand why any informed early Christian (who must have known that there were two Johns) should thus court confusion. But it would have been quite natural for John the Apostle to speak of his namesake simply as "John." This point is all the more significant in that in this Gospel people are consistently distinguished. Thus the Judas who asked a question at the Last Supper is expressly said to be not Judas Iscariot (14:22). Thomas is usually identified by the addition of his Greek name Didymus (11:16; 20:24; 21:2), a name not used by the Synoptists. Judas Iscariot is the son of a certain Simon who is not mentioned outside this Gospel (6:71; 13:2, 26). So we might go on. In view of this care with other names some reason is needed for his speaking of the Baptist simply as John.

The strongest objection to this identification, in my opinion, is the contention that a man is unlikely to refer to himself as "the disciple whom Jesus loved." I agree. It does not seem a natural way of describing oneself.¹⁸ But then it is not a very natural way of describing someone else either. There is force in this. Why should any Christian single out one disciple as especially beloved by Jesus? While it is possible it is not very natural. And this fact means that the objection we are considering has rather less weight than at first appears. We should also bear in mind that Paul can say much the same. He writes of the Son of God "who loved me and gave himself for me" (Gal. 2:20). In fact, any devout Christian is apt to refer to the love of God for him or her in very personal terms without thereby meaning that God loves other people less. So, while we recognize the weight of the objection, it does not seem weighty enough to cancel out the arguments adduced earlier.¹⁹

These arguments are reinforced by a variety of considerations that are urged to show that the author of the Gospel knew Palestine well. For example, he clearly knew of the connection of Elijah with Jewish messianic expections (1:21), the low view held of women (4:27), the importance attaching to the religious schools (7:15), the hostility between Jews and Samaritans (4:9), and the contempt the Pharisees had for ordinary people (7:49). He knew the importance of the Sabbath, and the fact that, while it was not lawful to carry a bed on it (5:10), the need to circumcise a child overrode it (7:22-23). His topography is remarkably accurate, and he includes mention of places like Cana, which are mentioned in no earlier writing known to us.²⁰ Much more of this kind of thing could be cited.

The style is that of a Jew. C. F. Burney²¹ and C. C, Torrey²² indeed both had the idea that the Gospel was originally written in Aramaic and that our present Gospel is a translation. Few subsequent scholars have accepted this view, but most agree that Aramaic thinking lies behind our Gospel, and often Aramaic expressions.²³

This view has received strong reinforcement in more recent years through the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. These have demonstrated, by their many parallels to this Gospel both in ideas and expression, that our Fourth Gospel is essentially a Palestinian document. As A. M. Hunter says, "To put the matter in one sentence, the Scrolls have established its essential Jewishness."²⁴ This does not mean that John's position is essentially that of the Scrolls. There are fundamental differences, many of which stem from the fact that for John the Messiah has come. This is the essential truth. He sees all things in the light of Christ, whereas for the Scrolls the coming of Messiah (or Messiahs) is still future. But the parallels both in concepts and language enable us to say that John is at home against a Palestinian background. This assertion is reinforced by the parallels that may be adduced from the writings of the rabbis.²⁵

We should also notice that there are touches which many have felt indicate an eyewitness.²⁶ This is not universally agreed, but then it is difficult to know what all would agree does indicate the eyewitness. What to one is unmistakable evidence of firsthand observation is to another no more than a touch introduced to give an air of verisimilitude to the narrative. But it is difficult to think that that is an adequate explanation of all the passages adduced. Sometimes these concern the time of day at which a thing happened (1:39; 4:6, etc.), or perhaps there is a link with one of the feasts (2:13, 23, etc.). Place names are brought in very naturally, and often for no apparent reason other than that it was there that the incident happened (e.g., Cana in ch. 2). Many authors have seen the reminiscence of an eyewitness in the way the call of the disciples is described (1:35-51), or again the episode of the feetwashing (13:1-20). With this we should take information about persons not mentioned elsewhere, such as Nicodemus, Lazarus, and others. It is difficult to find a reason for introducing the name of Nicodemus into the narrative, for example other than that this was in fact the inquirer's name. And why else should we be told that the name of the high priest's servant was Malchus (18:10)? Or that he was related to one of those who accused Peter of being a follower of Jesus (18:26)? To personal knowledge again we should surely ascribe the information that Annas was father-in-law to Caiaphas (18:13). All in all the information supplied by this Gospel gives good reason for us to hold that its author knew the facts at first hand and wrote of what he knew and had seen.

It is also true that there are some claims to eyewitness testimony. The first is in 1:14: "We have seen his glory." Some scholars think this means, "we Christians," "believers generally." But in the first place this is a very unnatural way to take the words, and in the second the word "see" appears to mean "see with the outward eye."²⁷ It is much more likely that the words refer to what the writer and his friends have seen physically. A second appeal to witness appears in 19:35, "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." There is a problem as to whether the writer means that he himself has borne the witness or that someone else has done so. But there is good reason for seeing eyewitness testimony behind the statement (see the note on the passage).²⁸

With this we should consider the controversies referred to in the Gospel. These are not the kinds of questions that Christians discussed among themselves in the second century (like episcopacy, Gnostic emanations, the date of keeping Easter, etc.), nor are they the standard disputes between Christians and Jews after they had become clearly separate. There is an authentic note about them; they are the kind of question that was in dispute in first-century Palestine. Thus we get discussions of the use and abuse of the Sabbath (ch. 5), about the Messiah and his credentials and whether he would rescue the Jews from the Romans (6:15; 11:47-50), about true and false Judaism.²⁹ . P.Borgen has made a close study of the sixth chapter, and he points out that in subject matter and method this is authentic Palestinian.³⁰ From another angle Raymond E. Brown has discussed the concept of the Logos in this Gospel and has shown that it is not a Hellenistic philosophical idea that has strayed into a Jewish work, but that the form and content given it by John show it to be of Palestinian origin.³¹

The writer of this Gospel had a good knowledge of the apostolic band. He recalls words the Twelve spoke among themselves (4:33; 16:17; 20:25; 21:3, 7). He shows knowledge of their thoughts on occasion (2:11, 17, 22; 4:27; 6:19, 60-61). He knows the places they frequented (11:54; 18:2). Some-times he speaks of mistakes they made that were later corrected (2:21-22; 11:13; 12:16). If he were one of their number, all this would fall into place.

From the above it is clear that the evidence in favor of Johannine authorship is by no means negligible. Those who disagree generally concede that the evidence shows that the author was a Palestinian Jew, perhaps also that he had some unusual knowledge of what went on in the days of Jesus. But they would reject much of the preceding, regarding it as no more than an attempt at verisimilitude. Thus whereas it has been contended that the writer knew what the apostles said on certain occasions, it would be countered that he did not really know what they said. He knew only what they ought, in his opinion, to have said, and he said that they said it. I think that it may be fairly replied that it is difficult to do this kind of thing consistently without giving oneself away. But the writer of this Gospel does it often, and what he writes rings true.

Another point to tell against the traditional view is the curious fact that most of the action takes place in Judea, whereas we would have expected John the son of Zebedee to be more interested in Galilee. This is certainly a difficulty, but the theological interest of this writer must be borne in mind. He certainly knew some interesting things about Jesus' ministry in Galilee, for he tells us of incidents (like the wedding in Cana) that are mentioned nowhere else. But he regarded Jerusalem as the place where the Messiah must be accepted or rejected, so he put his emphasis on what took place there.

Some writers find it difficult to date the Gospel as early as John the Apostle on the grounds that it reflects Gnostic ideas. These ideas are also seen as evidence that the writer was probably not the apostle, for there is no reason to think that Jesus numbered a Jewish Gnostic among his followers. Every-thing here depends on the "Gnostic ideas" in John. In my opinion, they are better spoken of as "pre-Gnostic." As far as I am aware, no one has succeeded in showing that developed Gnosticism is present anywhere in John. E. F. Scott can say, "the approximations to Gnosticism in the Fourth Gospel are in many respects more apparent than real.... John was led to conclusions which bear a superficial resemblance to those of the Gnostics, but on closer analysis are radically different."³² On these grounds there is no objection either to an early date, or to an apostle as the author.³³

The omissions of this Gospel are also to be noticed. Two of the more striking are those of the Transfiguration and the Agony in Gethsemane. Some scholars go so far as to say that these omissions of incidents where John, along with Peter and James, had a special place of privilege are sufficient to show that John did not write this Gospel. This is a strong argument. But perhaps both omissions are due to the fact that our author makes the essential point otherwise. He may have found it difficult to find a place for the Transfiguration (which concentrates the manifestation of Jesus' glory into one magnificent story) in a Gospel where one of the major themes is that Jesus' glory was manifested continually in the path of lowly service, and that it was preeminently shown on the cross. Where is there a place for the Transfiguration in this scheme? The omission of the Gethsemane story is more difficult.³⁴ But it must be borne in mind that many have found a counterpart in the scene in which Jesus says, "Now my heart is troubled, and what shall I say? 'Father, save me from this hour'?" (12:27). He may have felt that this was the essential thing. It is also possible that the writer, who clearly regarded Jesus' lowliness as all-pervasive, did not wish to concentrate it into one narrative.³⁵ Any argument on omissions must further reckon with the fact that on any showing, this writer has some extraordinary omissions. No really satisfactory explanation has ever been produced, for example, for the surprising fact that, although his account of the events in the upper room is by far the fullest of the four we have, he says nothing about the institution of Holy Communion.³⁶ He must have known of this and known that it was important. Yet he omits it. We need not be too surprised if he omits other things that we consider important.

The difference in style between John and the Synoptics is often urged with great confidence as proving that John did not write this Gospel. For example, W. G. Kümmel says forthrightly: "the Gnostic language of the Johannine Jesus discourses makes impossible the composition of John by an eyewitness."³⁷ I do not think that he (or, for that matter, anyone else) has shown that the language of the discourses is Gnostic. But plainly the style is sufficient of itself to rule out for Kümmel any possibility that the author was the apostle or anyone else of his day.

But this does not follow: indeed, for many it seems simplistic. There is no reason to think that the entire apostolic band saw everything in the same way, or that they thought in the same way, or that they wrote in the same style. It is more convincing to put the objection in the form that if Jesus was as he is depicted in the Synoptic Gospels he could not be as John depicts him.³⁸ Therefore the author could not have known the real Jesus, and accordingly he could not have been a member of the apostolic band. But this is to assume that the Synoptists have caught for us all that Jesus was. We are, however, familiar with the fact that a great man will show different aspects of his greatness to different people. The assertion that the Jesus of St. John is incompatible with the Jesus of the Synoptists may fairly be disputed.³⁹ He who gave rise to the Christian movement was certainly no ordinary man. Through the years Christianity has made its appeal to people who find themselves at home in the matter-of-fact atmosphere of the Synoptic Gospels, but it has also attracted those who find the Fourth Gospel more congenial, and, for that matter, to those who are attracted by the Christ who inspired the Pauline Epistles, or by the great High Priest they find in the Epistle to the Hebrews, or by the triumphant Lamb of the Apocalypse. We must face the fact that in history Jesus has proved a gigantic figure. It is not at all impossible, accordingly, that he is the sitter behind both Gospel portraits, and that the Synoptists depict him from one aspect, John from another. The fact that we are not able to put the two together to our satisfaction may mean no more than that we are not big enough to comprehend the whole Christ.

The point was made emphatically by W. F. Albright: "One of the strangest assumptions of critical New Testament scholars and theologians is that the mind of Jesus was so limited that any apparent contrast between John and the Synoptics must be due to differences between early Christian theologians. Every great thinker and personality is going to be interpreted differently by different friends and hearers, who will select what seems most congenial or useful out of what they have seen and heard. From Socrates to the most recent men of eminence there are innumerable examples. The Christian might a fortiori suppose the same to be true of his Master."⁴⁰ Along much the same lines C. L. Mitton can say: "It is not that the Johannine portrait is right and the Synoptics wrong, but rather that in each there may be preserved a true emphasis which the other fails to do full justice to. The Fourth Gospel may therefore have its own contribution to make, not only to those who wish to grasp the eternal significance of Jesus Christ, but also to those who wish to gain a clear insight into the historical personality of Jesus of Nazareth."⁴¹ We must all think this through for ourselves. To some the undoubted difference is decisive. To others it simply indicates the gigantic stature of Jesus.

There is also an important point made by Riesenfeld and others in recent years.⁴² They point out that any teacher in antiquity had what we might call his public teaching, striking sayings that he caused his disciples to commit to memory, and as well teaching of a more informal kind. They suggest that behind the Synoptic Gospels lies the public teaching of Jesus, whereas the Fourth Gospel gives us rather the informal teaching of Jesus among his friends, and his equally informal encounters with his enemies. This may or may not be the case. I simply point out that in the judgment of this eminent scholar and those who think with him the problem is not insuperable. They regard the Jesus of the Synoptics and the Jesus of St. John as quite compatible.

When we turn to the external evidence we are confronted by the fact that John the son of Zebedee is not named as the author of the Gospel in the earliest days (there is no other name in the tradition either). The first person of whom we have record who definitely ascribes this Gospel to John appears to be Theophilus of Antioch (C. A.D. 180). Irenaeus also says that it was written by John the Apostle, and his source appears to have been Polycarp, who knew John personally.⁴³ This is considerably later than we might have expected. Those who oppose apostolic authorship insist that it is impossible to trace the tradition much if at all behind this date. They suggest that there is a significant gap and that we must regard the tradition as of little value.

But we must not overlook the fact that there is little Christian literature before this period. Westcott could point out that Christian theological literature to all intents and purposes begins with Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, and Tertullian, all of whom consider John the Apostle to be the author.⁴⁴ We should not miss the fact that this combines testimony from Asia Minor, Egypt, and Rome. And in considering the absence of earlier attestation we must bear in mind that this may be accounted for in part by the fact that heretics gave this Gospel a warm welcome, which may have deterred the orthodox. A Gospel that differed so much from the Three might well have perplexed the simple faithful. They were hesitant about it. And their hesitation was increased when they discovered that certain heretics made much use of it.

There can be no doubt about the Gnostic use of John; it appears to have been the favorite Gospel among the Gnostics. The first commentary on it was written by the Gnostic Heracleon.⁴⁵ The Chenoboskion literature shows that John was widely used and highly esteemed by the Gnostics. The importance of this find for Johannine criticism does not seem always to have been realized. But these documents show conclusively that John's Gospel was accepted as authoritative in the circles from which they came in the first half of the second century. We are speaking now about the acceptance of the Gospel as authoritative, not of the explicit use of the Apostle John's name in connection with it.⁴⁶ Our Gospel was clearly important to the writer of the "Gospel of Truth" (probably Valentinus). This writing is dated by K. Grobel "150 if not earlier,"⁴⁷. y G. Quispel "earlier than 150, say about 140,"⁴⁸ and by W. C. van Unnik "round about 140-145."⁴⁹ Its importance for our present purpose is put in a nutshell by Quispel, "the 'Gospel of Truth' has borrowed more than a little from the Gospel of St. John, as from a writing which was already old and held in high repute. "⁵⁰ Other Gnostic writings that treat John as old and authoritative include the Gospel of Philip, the Apocryphon of John, and the Gospel of Thomas. There cannot be the slightest doubt that our Fourth Gospel was regarded as authoritative from a very early time, and that in circles far removed from orthodoxy. This does not prove that John was the author but accords with it. The wide acceptance points to an author known to be authoritative.

All this adds up to a substantial body of evidence that John's Gospel was well known and regarded as authoritative in the first half of the second century. We cannot dismiss this as merely a heretical aberration, for Valentinus, most agree, wrote his Gospel of Truth at about the time of his exclusion from the church of Rome where he was so honored a member that he was seriously considered for the position of bishop. Clearly he must have acquired his essential understanding of this Gospel while a member of the Roman church in good standing. At the same time, once he and his followers came to be regarded as heretics the fact that they made such use of John may have made the orthodox suspicious of the book.

This evidence has not, of course, been known for very long. But now that it has come to light, its importance for this aspect of Johannine studies should not be overlooked. These Gnostic writings give good grounds for holding that John was known and accepted in the early part of the second century. This is all the more valuable in that some dispute the evidence of Ignatius and Justin Martyr.⁵¹

The fact that, with all these heretical associations, John still became universally accepted as canonical is surely significant. Why was it included in the canon? Not because of the pressure of opinion in the church; the opponents of Johannine authorship make very effectively the point that this writing is rarely quoted in the oldest Christian writings and was clearly not widely used. If it were known to have been written by an apostle we can understand its inclusion: how could the church reject a writing that came from an apostle? But unless this was firmly believed it is difficult to understand how or why the book should ever have been accepted in the church, in the face of its sparse use by the orthodox and its popularity among the heretics.

It is true that after a time it began to dawn on some of the faithful that, far from giving aid and comfort to the Gnostics, this Gospel was the most effective refutation of their point of view. So they, too, began to use it extensively. But in view of the hesitation of very many⁵² we can be sure that its credentials were subjected to very close scrutiny. That is what makes the fact that no other name than John has been suggested as its author so very significant. Some members of the early church would surely have been ready to have this writing rejected, and one obvious way of doing this would have been to discredit it by pointing to a heretical author. Even if a heretical origin could not be demonstrated it would have helped to have been able to draw attention to some nonapostolic Christian as the author. The fact that we have no evidence of any other name must be held to be significant.

It is also worth noting that according to a very probable reading of the evidence Marcion held the Apostle John to be the author of this Gospel. Tertullian speaks of this man as laboring "very hard to destroy the character of those Gospels which are published as genuine and under the name of apostles" by drawing attention to Paul's rebuking even of apostles (Gal. 2:13-14).⁵³ It is difficult to catch the drift of Marcion's argument unless he did in fact think that John wrote this Gospel. His point apparently was not that John did not write it, but that John did write it and was wrong!⁵⁴. Since Marcion seems to have come to Rome c. 140, this is quite early testimony.⁵⁵

Another feature of the external evidence for authorship is that quite often in the early church others were associated with John in the writing of the Gospel. Clement of Alexandria, for example, says that John "was urged on by his disciples, and, divinely moved by the Spirit, composed a spiritual Gospel."⁵⁶ The Muratorian Canon says that "it was revealed to Andrew, one of the Apostles, that John should narrate all things in his own name as they remembered them."⁵⁷ This kind of statement leads many recent writers to think of a "school" of John. For example, O. Cullmann holds that "the author had disciples who appear as redactors in the production and revision of the Gospel," and further that "even before, and during, the composition of his book he could rely on a group of like-minded people and perhaps even on their written contributions."⁵⁸ Raymond E. Brown discerns four phases in the life of the Johannine community: "the pre-Gospel era," "the life-situation of the Johannine community at the time the Gospel was written," "the life-situation in the now-divided Johannine communities at the time the Epistles were written,'' and the time of "the dissolution of the two Johannine groups after the Epistles were written."⁵⁹. But this seems to be reading quite a lot into the evidence.⁶⁰ Martin Hengel agrees that there was a Johannine school but holds that it was headed by a "towering figure" who produced the Gospel that "cannot be the work of a quarrelling collective."⁶¹

A somewhat similar view is that, while John did not actually write the Gospel, he was the "witness" behind it, the one whose recollections are embodied in this writing. This does not necessarily mean that he dictated the book, and some who hold the view think that John's reminiscences were carried on in oral tradition for quite some time before one of the Johannine "school" (who had probably not seen Jesus) decided to write them down. This, it is held, would account for the persistence of the tradition that links the name of John with the Gospel and at the same time would fit in with that part of the evidence which leads so many recent scholars to find Johannine authorship totally unacceptable. It would probably be true to say that most recent scholarship finds some such solution to the problem.⁶²

Some writers find it helpful to think of a second John, usually referred to as "John the Elder," who, they suggest, wrote the Gospel.⁶³ But then confusion of names led people to think that it was John the Apostle who wrote it. The trouble is that, for all its popularity in some circles, there is little evidence for the existence of John the Elder.⁶⁴ It boils down to Eusebius's interpretation of one sentence in Papias and a much later traveler's tale of two tombs in Ephesus each said to be John's. The sentence in Papias does not necessarily refer to two Johns at all, so that this evidence cannot be said to be impressive.⁶⁵

Some scholars have been impressed by the evidence that the Beloved Disciple was John the Apostle, but also by the objections to seeing John as the author of this Gospel. Thus F.-M. Braun thinks that John's kerygma was crystallized in small units and when, after a lengthy period, John decided to put them into a Gospel he did so with the help of a number of secretaries.⁶⁶ Schnackenburg has a similar idea, but thinks the secretary hypothesis inadequate. He holds that "the evangelist would have been both the spokesman who transmitted the tradition and the preaching of the Apostle John, and a theologian in his own right and teacher of the readers whom he addressed."⁶⁷ In other words, he regards more of the Gospel as coming from "the evangelist" and less from the Apostle John.

The big weakness in all views of this type is what we might call "the disappearance of the hero." Those who hold such views affirm that the tradition embodied in this Gospel derives ultimately from the revered apostle. He is the founder of the "school" (not necessarily in any formal sense). It is his reminiscences that are brought together in this volume. He is a great and honored figure.

Why then should he be ignored so completely that his name is not so much as mentioned even once?

This appears to be a major difficulty in the way of the acceptance of any such theory, but it is rarely faced. But unless some credible reason can be given for such an extraordinary procedure it is difficult to see how the theory can stand. Why should "Johannine Christians," Christians who owe the whole shape of their Christian thinking to John, produce a Gospel that speaks of Peter and Andrew and others, but never once mentions the name of their hero? Such a procedure is surely incredible. By definition "the Johannine circle" owes its very existence to John. It is nothing short of astounding that those who argue for this "school" behind our Fourth Gospel take so calmly their idea that neither the original author of the Gospel, nor any of its various redactors, ever mentions the founder of the "school" when they are narrating the very events that brought the "school" into existence. What sort of "school" is this?

It has also to be reckoned with that on this view the actual author of the Gospel has not only allowed his hero to drop out of sight, but he has dropped some fairly broad hints that he himself was "the beloved disciple." The man who could do this has been called "a psychological monstrosity."⁶⁸ It is, to say the least, a curious procedure. But this, too, does not seem to have been explained by those who put forward the theory.⁶⁹

Some archaeological evidence should be mentioned. There is first the fact that in the catacombs the raising of Lazarus appears on some quite early murals. Η. P. V. Nunn speaks of one such in the Capella Graeca in the catacomb of Priscilla, which, he says, is early second century. There is also a representation of the Eucharist with the baskets connected with the miracle of the loaves and fishes on the table that is thought to show that John 6 is in mind. Nunn points out that the crypt of the Acilii Glabriones, "one of the most aristocratic families in Rome, some of the members of which were Christians in the first century," is quite close to this. He concludes: "This is quite sound archaeological evidence that long before the middle of the second century some of the most characteristic teaching of the Fourth Gospel was well known in Rome, so well known that the most noble members of the Roman Church used representations of it to express their most cherished hopes and to decorate their tombs."⁷⁰ This is important evidence, all the more so since no one argues that John was written in Rome. Allowing time for it to travel to that city and to be accepted as authoritative there, we cannot date the Gospel very late.

Another piece of archaeological evidence is the inscription of Abercius. This man was bishop of Hierapolis in Phrygia, He composed an inscription, to be used on his tomb, which says in part: "My name is Abercius, the disciple of the Holy⁷¹. Shepherd, who feeds his flocks of sheep on the hills and plains and who has great eyes that look in every place. For he taught me the faithful letters of life. . . ."⁷² The difficulty here is twofold: knowing whether this implies knowledge of the Fourth Gospel, and dating the inscription. The reference to the Shepherd recalls John 10, while the "letters of life" remind us of "the words of eternal life" (John 6:68). On the whole it seems that Abercius knew and valued our Gospel. If his death is correctly dated by Nunn c. 150, this will be important early testimony. But others date it later, perhaps near A.D. 200,⁷³ when it would lose some of its force.

Stather Hunt is impressed by a very different consideration from any so far indicated, namely the difficulty of finding another author. He draws our attention to evidence that there is an eyewitness behind this Gospel, notably "the underlying intensity with which the Gospel is written." He goes on to point out that "there does not appear to be any known person of sufficient calibre to have written it except the son of Zebedee."⁷⁴ This will not carry the same conviction to all minds, but it is a relevant point nevertheless.

A popular view in recent writing is that which discerns a number of layers in the Gospel that are usually ascribed to successive revisions and editing of an original text. There are certainly some problem areas, but we must bear in mind that this Gospel "does not have the look of a composition by committee or of a haphazard outcome of heavy-handed editing. ... It stands today as it has for two thousand years as a coherent, profound, and challenging witness."⁷⁵ Whatever the literary history of this writing, as we have it it is possessed of a remarkable unity and offers us a portrait of Jesus that we cannot do without.

Plainly the evidence is not such as to enable us to say without the shadow of a doubt, "This is the solution." No theory so far put forward is without difficulties. It is a matter of choosing that view which presents us with the fewest. Many recent scholars make telling criticisms of the view that John the Apostle was the author. But when we turn to their own views we find little to inspire. The suggested reconstructions are often difficult to follow, sometimes bordering on the bizarre.⁷⁶ There is certainly none that is free from serious objection. It is a matter, then, of accepting that solution which best accounts for the facts and which has the fewest difficulties in its way. It is for this reason that I accept the view that John the Apostle was the author of this Gospel. I agree that this view does not account for all the evidence. But then neither does any other view known to me. This one seems to account for the facts best.⁷⁷

Perhaps we should notice that Kysar makes some strong criticisms of those who view John the Apostle as the author of this Gospel. He says of Werner de Boor, Jean Colson, and myself that "In both cases — their failure to take into account the work of form and redaction criticism and their view of history — they represent critical efforts more at home in the previous century than the current one and certainly at odds with the major movements of fourth gospel criticism in the past decade."⁷⁸ It is curious to find oneself consigned to the last century, but besides doubting the accuracy of this view I find myself wondering whether the scholars of that century were invariably wrong. I would prefer to have been shown to be in the wrong by the facts as we have them than by allegations that I have failed to take into account form and redaction criticism. It does not seem to occur to Kysar that the confident assertions of some redaction critics are not as convincing to all as they evidently are to him. And I wonder how he would deal with the fact that Werner, Colson, and I have been joined, among others, by I. Howard Marshall and J. A. T. Robinson in seeing the evidence as pointing to John the son of Zebedee as the author of this Gospel.⁷⁹ Did Robinson belong to the nineteenth century? Did he too fail to take into account "the work of form and redaction criticism"? That such an eminent scholar, so far from conservatism, could find the evidence for authorship as pointing to John bar-Zebedee surely indicates that the testimony for this position should be taken far more seriously in Kysar's cavalier treatment.

II. DATE

Conservatives and radicals alike generally hold that the Fourth Gospel is of comparatively late date. This view goes back to ancient times, for patristic writers often regarded this Gospel as the latest of the four. It is commonly held that it was written in the last decade of the first century, though some authors prefer a date in the early second century.⁸⁰ It cannot be late in the second century because a papyrus fragment dated in the first half of that century has been found in Egypt. Allowing for the time it would have taken for the Gospel to travel from the place of its composition to Egypt, this means that the early second century is as late as we can reasonably place it. But most writers see very little reason for putting it much earlier. It is hard to understand why there should be such a consensus, for there is very little real evidence for it.⁸¹

One of the points urged by those who favor a late date is the contention that John's manner of referring to "the Jews" points to a time when they had become confirmed enemies of the church. This, it is said, is not natural, neither during the lifetime of Jesus, nor for many years afterward. We require time for the development of opposition so that the followers of Jesus and "the Jews" stand as hostile groups. This, however, does not follow. After Jesus' crucifixion and the kind of opposition the Jews consistently showed to the early Christian preachers, this kind of language is natural. It does not require a prolonged period of development. And in fact we find it in Paul (1 Thess. 2:14-15).

It is often said that John made use of some at least of the Synoptists; many critics hold that he used Mark, some would add Luke, though few think he used Matthew. If he did use the other Gospels, then John will presumably be dated toward the end of the century. But the evidence is slight.⁸² After P. Gardner-Smith's examination of the arguments it does not seem as though the case has been made out; probably most recent scholars hold that John is independent of the Synoptic Gospels. We cannot build on a hypothesis that is far from being universally accepted and is increasingly repudiated.

Some authors suggest that this Gospel gives evidence of lateness in its combination of religious ideas from a variety of sources, and in the indications in the Gospel itself that its teaching has undergone a lengthy period of development. Concerning the first, the evidence of the Qumran scrolls shows that the point is not to be taken seriously. The scrolls show conclusively that many ideas previously regarded as Hellenistic circulated in Palestine before the time of Christ. There is nothing in John along these lines that demands a date later than the scrolls. The second point is a matter of debate. It is put forward very seriously, but the evidence for development is not apparent to all. Nor is the case helped when, as not infrequently happens, the contention of one critic is the refutation of another.

There is no reference in this Gospel to the destruction of Jerusalem. This, it is held, indicates that it was written either before that event or long enough after it for interest to have waned. Since few people think it was written before the fall of Jerusalem, this puts us somewhere near the end of the first century. But it does not exclude the possibility that the Gospel was written before A.D. 70. J. A. T. Robinson points out that with the possible exceptions of Hebrews and Revelation "the gospel of John is that in which we might most expect an allusion (however indirect, subtle or symbolic) to the doom of Jerusalem, if it had in fact already been accomplished. For the focus of the gospel is on the rejection by metropolitan Judaism of the one who comes to his own people (1.11) as the Christ and King and Shepherd of Israel."⁸³ Robinson also reminds us that Caiaphas prophesied that, if they left Jesus alone, the Romans would destroy the temple and the nation (11:47-48). They did not leave him alone, but the Romans came just the same. Would not John have said something about this had it already happened?

Many writers hold that the highly developed theology of John indicates a late date; time must be allowed for the development of this full theology. But this argument will not stand up to examination. Nothing in the theology of John demands a date later than the theology of the Epistle to the Romans, but that book must have been written in the 50s. On the grounds of its theology this Gospel need not be very late.⁸⁴

We must be more respectful of a kindred argument, one that sees the development not so much in theology as in the evolution of the tradition. R. H. Fuller puts it concisely, "Since the evangelist stands at the end of a process of tradition, Palestinian, Hellenistic, and Jewish-heterodox-Baptist, it is impossible to accept the traditional. . . ascription of this gospel to John bar Zebedee."⁸⁵ This argument is more weighty than the previous one but it falls short of demonstration. It is plain from a variety of sources that Palestine in the early first century was a place where many ideas met. From the time of Antiochus Epiphanes Hellenism had been a keenly contested issue, and all the other strands Fuller notes were Palestinian in origin. It is difficult to ascertain why their conjunction is regarded as necessarily later than John the son of Zebedee.

Sometimes use is made of individual expressions in John. Thus there are references to excommunication (9:22; 12:42; 16:2) and it is objected that the Christians were not excluded from the synagogues until the 80s. This, however, is far from certain. What we know, as opposed to surmise, about excommunication does not allow us to say that it did not take place until the 80s. There is little definite information, but as far as our knowledge goes nothing in John on this subject demands a late date. See further the note on 9:22.

Thus none of the contentions usually brought forward is beyond dis-pute. The late date has not been demonstrated. And in recent years a number of critics have drawn attention to some considerations that favor an early date.

John's ignorance of the Synoptic Gospels may be important. As we have already noticed, some scholars who argue for a later date suggest that this is indicated by John's dependence on some at any rate of the Synoptic Gospels. But as it becomes increasingly clear that John did not use any of these Gospels it becomes increasingly clear that an early date for the Fourth Gospel is possible. The later we put John the more difficult it is to account for his failure to refer to the other Gospels.

Some of John's expressions look early. Thus he speaks of the immediate followers of Jesus not as "apostles" but as "disciples," and further he normally says "his disciples" rather than "the disciples." In the days of his ministry some expression was required to differentiate Jesus' disciples from those of other teachers. But when Christianity had begun to develop there was no question in Christian circles whose disciples were being referred to and "the disciples" became the standard expression. It is interesting that John makes use of this early locution.

The Muratorian fragment says that John's "fellow-disciples" urged him to write and that Andrew received a revelation to that effect with the result that this Gospel was written. It is not clear how far this piece of tradition can be accepted, but as far as it goes it points to an early date, for Andrew and other disciples were still alive and were urging John to write. Whatever age he was when he died, there is no reason for thinking John was an old man at the time.

G. A. Turner and J. R. Mantey similarly find John's use of "the Jews" early. They point out that Judaism was much more powerful before the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70 than afterward so that Christianity tended to be on the defensive (cf. 1 Thess. 2:15-16). A century later, however, when Justin Martyr wrote to Trypho the Jew the positions were reversed. The Fourth Gospel reflects the earlier and not the later situation. Such considerations "point to a possible if not probable date contemporary with the Pauline Epistles."⁸⁶

A somewhat similar point is that in John 5:2 we read "there is," not "there was," a pool called Bethesda. It is, of course, possible for John to use the present tense when referring to something in the past, though we might well ask why he should do so here where every other verb in the context is in a past tense. The most natural reading of the passage points to a pool in existence at the time. In that case the city had not yet been destroyed.

Another such note is that which refers to the temple as having taken forty-six years to build (2:20). The temple was not completed until A.D. 64, but forty-six years fits the time at which Jesus would have spoken the words. How would a late writer have fixed the date so accurately? And why? We should perhaps also notice Robinson's point that the correction of the notion that the Beloved Disciple would not die (21:23) would have been called for after the death of Peter, which he dates at 65 or before. He sees no reason why people should wait many years before correcting the error.⁸⁷

It is constantly pointed out that the Qumran scrolls have many points of contact with the Fourth Gospel — more, in fact, than with any other book in the New Testament. Now the monastery at Qumran was completely destroyed before A.D. 70 which means that any point of contact must be quite early. This does not prove an early date for the Gospel, but it is more consistent with an early date than with a late one.

To some authors John's concern over the followers of John the Baptist is an argument for an early date, for the church does not seem to have been unduly concerned with this problem in later days.⁸⁸ Considerations of this kind have convinced a number of recent scholars that this Gospel is earlier than has customarily been thought. W. F. Albright, for example, can say, "All the concrete arguments for a late date for the Johannine literature have now been dissipated."⁸⁹ He prefers a date in "the late 70's or early 80's." Others think it may be earlier. C. C. Tarelli says, "To suggest a date before A.D. 70 is perhaps too daring, and yet the Palestinian atmosphere which many scholars find in the Gospel is certainly the atmosphere of Palestine before that date."⁹⁰. . P. W. Stather Hunt thinks it "natural to date our Gospel just before A.D. 70."⁹¹ In one of the most thorough examinations of the dating of this book F. Lamar Cribbs shows that there are many indications of an early date, and he argues for "the possibility that this gospel could be an interpretation of the life of Jesus written by a cultured Christian Jew of Judea during the late 50's or early 60's."⁹² His examination of the evidence is thorough, and it is not easy to understand how his conclusion can be resisted.

The dating of our Gospel is thus not easy, but while it cannot be said that an early date is proven beyond any doubt, the amount of evidence in favor of it seems to be increasing. I am impressed by the fact that, as Tarelli says, the general atmosphere of the Gospel is that of Palestine before A.D. 70, and by early locutions like "his disciples" and "there is in Jerusalem." I find the arguments of Robinson and Cribbs especially convincing.⁹³

Before leaving this subject it may be well to point out that in recent times a number of scholars have argued for an early date for part at any rate of the tradition embodied in this Gospel and a late date for its actual composition. We have considered some of the thinking behind this contention in our discussion of authorship. The thought is that there was a Johannine "school," perhaps going back to John the Apostle. This "school" passed on its traditions, some at any rate of which comprised very early accounts, possibly those of an eyewitness. The origins of this Gospel thus go back to early times. But the tradition is held to have been retained in oral tradition for a long time and finally to have been reduced to writing at around the turn of the century.⁹⁴ This is a way of trying to get the best of both worlds. It gives a credible account of the early date of some of the material and at the same time takes note of that part of the evidence which convinces many that the Gospel is late. Such views are not, in my opinion, as probable as that the date is pre-A.D. 70. But they certainly cannot be ruled out.

III. PURPOSE

A wide variety of aims attributed to the writer of this Gospel by the scholars who have studied it. It has often been held that he wrote to supplement the Synoptic Gospels.⁹⁵ According to this view he had these Gospels before him and was dissatisfied with some aspects, at any rate, of what they contained. Since he had further knowledge himself he decided to make it available to the Christian public. Against this are the facts that have compelled the wide-spread conviction at the present time that John is completely independent of the Synoptics. I do not see how any theory that John knew the Synoptics can be made to stand up. And if John did not know the Synoptics, then clearly he did not write to supplement them.⁹⁶ The same objection may be urged against a somewhat different theory, namely that John was written to supersede the Synoptic Gospels.⁹⁷ If they were not written at the time John wrote, then obviously he was not trying to supersede them.

Others have felt that John had a polemic aim. Some have thought that he was trying to combat Gnosticism.⁹⁸ However, Gnosticism as a movement appears during the second century.⁹⁹ A number of scholars, it is true, are impressed with "pre-Gnostic" elements in early writings, notably the Qumran scrolls. But when full allowance is made for these early appearances of individual concepts that were later important to the Gnostics, it still seems that Gnosticism in the full sense is a second-century phenomenon. If any writing sets out to combat it, then it must be of that date. Thus if we hold to a fairly early date for this writing there is no question of a combat with Gnosticism.

It is, however, quite possible that one of John's aims was to combat false teaching of a docetic type. The Docetists held that the Christ never became incarnate; everything was "seeming."¹⁰⁰ That the docetic heresy did not appear in the first century seems clear,¹⁰¹ but certain elements that later were to be embodied in this heresy seem to have been quite early. In other words, while John certainly did not have before him the full-fledged docetic heresy, there seems to be nothing in the way of the view that he was confronted by false teachers of a docetic turn of mind. This is especially clear in 1 John, but it is also apparent in the Gospel. Thus we find sayings like "the Word became flesh" (1:14) and the stress on the physical death of Jesus (there is nothing docetic about death). Throughout his Gospel John is concerned to emphasize the genuine humanity of Jesus and at the same time to bring out the fact that Jesus really came from God.¹⁰² But this does not mean that the principal purpose of this Gospel was to combat an early form of Docetism. The false teaching is opposed almost by the way.¹⁰³ The main thrust of this Gospel is certainly elsewhere.

Others have held that John is concerned to write a polemic against unbelieving Jews. The one strong point in favor of this view is the way in which the term "the Jews" is used throughout the Gospel. Our Evangelist makes use of this expression far more often than does any of the others, and he certainly cannot be said to be warmly disposed toward "the Jews."¹⁰⁴ However, this is but one aspect of the Gospel, and it is far from being the most prominent. It cannot be said that a case has really been made out for regarding this as the principal aim.

Others have maintained that John was writing to oppose the continuing followers of John the Baptist.¹⁰⁵ He certainly makes it clear that the Baptist's place was a subordinate one, and it may well be that he had in mind some of that prophet's followers.¹⁰⁶ But again this is too subdued a note for us to think of it as the dominant purpose.

Others, again, think that John was concerned with opposing Christian teachers who gave too much place to the sacraments¹⁰⁷ or too little place to the sacraments.¹⁰⁸ Here everything depends on how much it is held that John had the sacraments in view. It is, of course, true that he never mentions either Christian baptism or the Lord's Supper throughout the Gospel. It is quite possible to hold that he never refers, even obliquely, to either. On the other hand, some scholars have held that particularly in chapters 3 and 6 he is concerned with these two sacraments. Since precisely opposite conclusions have been drawn from this evidence, the argument clearly rests on no certain basis. And to make this the main aim of the Gospel is certainly flying in the face of the evidence.

Another view is that John's principal aim was to present to the world a kind of "Hellenized" Christianity.¹⁰⁹ He was interested in making an intellectually respectable form of Christianity available to as wide a public as possible.¹¹⁰ Those who hold this view point to the use of terms like Logos and suggest that John was a Hellenist interested in commending Christianity to other Hellenists. This view has had its popularity, but it cannot be said to square with the facts, for it is becoming increasingly evident that, however this Gospel is to be understood, it is a product of Jewish and not Hellenistic ways of thinking.¹¹¹ Some writers have held that it was originally composed in Aramaic. Most scholars think that this is too extreme, but they point out that there are many Aramaisms in this writing and that there is evidence of Aramaic thinking behind it. It cannot be said that the view that the Gospel is a manifesto of Hellenistic Christianity has very much to commend it.

In any case, due consideration ought to be given to the fact that John tells us in so many words why he wrote: "these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name" (20:31). There seems to be no reason for ignoring this express statement. John says plainly that he is out to show Jesus as the Christ, the Son of God. And he does this not in order to give his readers some interesting new information but in order that he may bring them to a place of faith and accordingly to new life in Christ's name.¹¹² Not only does John tell us this in set terms, but close examination shows that this is, in fact, what he has done.¹¹³ Again and again he brings before us evidence that Jesus is indeed the Christ. He does not make as extensive use of the term itself as we might possibly have expected. But the idea is often present, and the term is also found on occasion. Moreover, John constantly lets us see the challenge posed by the message of Jesus. People divide in the presence of this message. Either they commit themselves to Christ in faith and so enter life or they refuse to commit themselves and in so doing remain in darkness and a condition of lostness. There seems to be no reason why John's statement should be rejected. This is what he said he would do and this, it seems, is what he has done.¹¹⁴

IV. HISTORY AND THEOLOGY ¹¹⁵

That the writer of the Fourth Gospel has a serious theological purpose is surely beyond doubt. As we saw in the preceding section, he tells us in set terms that his purpose in writing is to show that Jesus is the Christ, God's Son, and by writing in this strain to persuade people to believe in him and so to enter into life. The question at issue is not whether John is interested in conveying theological meaning. It is rather whether he has completely subordinated his historical sense to this aim, or whether he has a concern for facts as well as theology.¹¹⁶

It is worth noticing at the outset that interpretation does not necessarily mean distortion of the facts. Indeed, the absence of interpretation may some-times mean distortion. Thus one can say with truth, "Nicholas Ridley was executed." But if this is all one says, a wrong impression may be conveyed. It means more to say, "Bishop Nicholas Ridley was burned at the stake," and still more to say, "Bishop Nicholas Ridley was martyred." The last statement carries a fuller meaning than the earlier two. It may, of course, be disputed. That is the penalty one pays for the fuller light conveyed by the interpretative statement. There is a parallel here with John's Gospel. It is undoubtedly an interpretative document. In selecting its material it omits much that the other Gospels include and includes much that they do not. And if one does not agree with John's view of Jesus, much may be disputed (as it is by many radical scholars). But if John is right, if the Word was indeed made flesh and dwelt among us, then this interpretative document is of the utmost importance for those who want the fullest light on the facts.

Many writers assure us that there is no question of taking the history in this Gospel seriously. To some it appears so obvious that John's one interest is theology that they pay no attention to the historical information John provides unless they have corroboration from some outside source. Since so very little in this Gospel is corroborated in this way, this means that they regard it as to all intents and purposes a work of theology.¹¹⁷

This attitude is becoming increasingly hard to sustain. Many recent writers have shown that there is good reason for regarding this or that story in John as authentic. C. H. Dodd in his great work Historical Tradition and the Fourth Gospel has carried out a systematic examination as a result of which he concludes that behind this Gospel there lies a very ancient tradition, quite independent of that embodied in the Synoptic Gospels. It is difficult to go through such a sustained examination and still regard John as having little concern for history.

The fact is that John is concerned with historical information. Again and again he drops into his narrative pieces of topographical information, for example, or time notes. Theologically there appears to be no particular reason for telling us that such and such an incident happened in such and such a place, or that Jesus met such and such a person at such and such a time. I do not deny that some exegetes have been able to read edifying meanings into some of John's notes, but I think it has never been proved that these notes are intended to be taken in that way. John apparently records this kind of information because he believes it to be accurate.

It is also the case that John is remarkably accurate in a number of areas in which he can be tested. One result of the finding of the Dead Sea Scrolls has been to convince a number of scholars that this Gospel contains reliable information.¹¹⁸ There can be no doubt that there are very many points of contact between the Scrolls and this Gospel. But on the hypothesis that John is a late theologian there is not the slightest reason why there should be such agreement. On that hypothesis he would have written at a considerable distance both in time and in place from the milieu in which the Scrolls were circulated. And if his purpose was to write theology, he would be unlikely to engage in the archaeological research that would have been necessary if he was to uncover the teaching of the Qumran community. The fact that John is in agreement with the Scrolls in many points makes it clear that he has some reliable information and has recorded it carefully.

Elsewhere I have examined some of John's teaching about John the Baptist.¹¹⁹ I have tried to show that, while John's purpose in dealing with the Baptist is clear (he depicts him always and only as a "witness" to Jesus Christ), yet he does not distort his facts. Recent research has shown that the information on the Baptist in this Gospel is remarkably accurate. Now if John can write accurately while he is setting forth the Baptist in one capacity only, ignoring all other aspects of his ministry, what reason have we for regarding him as unable to do the same thing with other people?

We must not be guided by a priori presumptions. It is simply not good enough to say, "John is a theologian; therefore we need take no notice of his historical notes," or to say, "John is invariably accurate; everything he says must be taken as factual." I see no reason why John should not have written, as many scholars suggest he did write, with a concern for theological truth only. After all, the parable is a well-attested vehicle of theological teaching in the Synoptic Gospels and no one suggests that we must take everything in a parable as literally true. Similarly, I find no reason for maintaining that John must necessarily tell a factual story. It seems to me quite clear that if he so chose John could write a theological narrative cast in the form of a series of historical anecdotes. We could then ignore the anecdotes and concentrate on the theological meaning.

This would, of course, be subject to the heavy discount involved in the question, "What is the theological meaning of something that never happened?" This question should be taken more seriously than it is by many critics who regard this as John's method of writing. It is important to be clear that there is a difference between parables and red happenings considered as teaching media. In the parable we are saying, "God's truth appears to me like this." Then the factuality or otherwise of the story is of little consequence. The story is an illustration. Everyone understands it so. It does not matter whether it happened or not. But if we say, "God's truth is shown in this happening, God's grace is shown in that," then the situation is very different. In that case if what we describe did not happen we cannot say that God's truth has in fact been revealed, that his grace has in fact been shown. Our story may be edifying. It may tell a lot about our ideas. But we should be clear that it is our ideas that it reveals. It tells us nothing about God. The question is whether John is telling us what he thinks about God, or whether he is telling us what God has done. We should never minimize the importance of the distinction between "God's truth is like —" and "God's truth is seen in —."

The question, then, is not whether the parabolic kind of writing is theoretically possible. The question is "What has John in fact done?" Here it seems that too many critics have been content to lay it down dogmatically that John has written in this or that fashion. What they have not done is to adduce evidence to prove the point. To lay it down that John has written theology, not history, can be countered by the simple device of affirming that John has written history but not theology. One dogmatic statement can be met by another. What is required here is evidence. And the evidence is that where he can be tested John proves to be remarkably accurate. The inference is that he is accurate also in other places.

There is also the point that, as we noted earlier, there seems reason for holding that part of John's aim was to counter false teachers of a docetic type. These men held that there was no real incarnation; Jesus only "seemed" to eat and drink and move among people. As a counter to this kind of teaching John insists that Jesus was a real man. He insists on "the flesh" of the Son of man and all in all makes it quite clear that Docetism is incompatible with Christianity. But if John was writing as the kind of critic we are thinking of maintains he wrote, he would have given his whole case against the Docetists away. They would have been quite happy with an incarnation of this type. So long as they could be assured that the things Jesus is alleged to have done he did not actually do, that the stories are no more than the vehicles of authentic teaching, they would have been content to accept them. It always seems surprising to me that critics will affirm so forthrightly at the same time both that John was trying to oppose Docetists and that his facts are not to be relied upon. Unless he knew that his facts were reliable, that they would stand up to challenge, he was highly vulnerable to any docetic attack and he must have known it.¹²⁰

A further point to be considered is that there is a great difference in style between John and the Synoptists. One must always regard with healthy respect the objection that says, "If Jesus was as he is depicted in Matthew and Mark and Luke, he cannot have been as he is depicted in John. The two are incompatible." It certainly is the case that there are significant differences between these two portraits. The usual way of accounting for this difference is to say that in the Fourth Gospel we have the result of the prolonged meditation of the Beloved Disciple and that what he has produced is his view of what God has done in Christ rather than a factual account of what happened.

I have more respect for this argument than for any of the others. But I do not think it will carry the weight that many scholars place upon it. It is possible to account for it, at least in some measure, and H. Riesenfeld has drawn attention to the importance of considering the way in which Jewish rabbis carried on their instruction of scholars.¹²¹ We are almost incurably convinced that the use of notebooks is essential to the learning process. This, however, was not the case in the first century. Then it was often held that if a man had to look something up in a book he did not really know it. The true scholar was a person who had committed to memory the things he had learned. Until a man had a teaching in his memory he was not considered really to have mastered it. The regular process of instruction, then, consisted in the teacher selecting certain items to be committed to memory and the student memorizing them. There was a regular system of instruction among the rabbis and an accepted body of oral teaching. This oral teaching was not expected to be altered in transmission. It would, of course, be nonsense to maintain that in practice it never was. From generation to generation of teachers and students there is not the slightest doubt that modifications were introduced. But the point is that nobody felt that tradition was free and open to the modification of anyone who came along.

We may perhaps bring out this point by drawing attention, as Riesenfeld does, to the idea that is generally held as to how the early Christian church carried on its teaching. Riesenfeld holds that the picture often given is that "it was the custom in the primitive Church to preach freely and without restraint, and in this process sayings and narratives were created and invented. And then from this extensive body of material the evangelists or their predecessors made a well-considered selection."¹²² Riesenfeld immediately continues, "But this romantic picture has no relation to reality. On the contrary, it is probable both that from Jesus' own days the material was far more strictly limited and also that it was handed down in a far more rigid and fixed form."

There is nothing unlikely in this. In the Jewish system, Riesenfeld says, "The ideal pupil was one who never lost one iota of the tradition. That variations in the material took place in the process of tradition for psychological reasons is obvious, and this circumstance enables us to investigate the development of the tradition from another angle. For, however great its receptive capacities, even an Oriental mind is not a tape-recorder."¹²³

We must always be on our guard against reading back our methods of instruction and retention into the circumstances of Jesus and his apostles. They came out of a different culture and understood the learning process in an entirely different fashion. There can be little doubt but that memorization played an important part in the carrying on of the original Christian teaching. Broadly speaking, we may say that it is Riesenfeld's contention that in the Synoptic Gospels we have by and large the public teaching of Jesus, that is the teaching that he caused his disciples to commit to memory. This does not mean, of course, that there would be no variation. The differences between the Synoptic Gospels show that there was in fact variation. But it does mean that this is a recognizably homogeneous whole. This was the kind of thing that was carried on orally and was meant from the first to be carried on orally. Riesenfeld sees it this way: "In the Gospels we are shown very clearly that Jesus was a teacher, and especially in his relation to his disciples. This means more than his mere preaching in their presence. He gave them instruction and in this we are reminded, mutatis mutandis, of the method of the Jewish rabbi. And this implies that Jesus made his disciples, and above all the Twelve, learn, and furthermore that he made them learn by heart."¹²⁴ Riesenfeld finds evidence for this in the form in which Jesus' sayings are formulated in the Synoptic Gospels, in the preservation of some original Aramaic terms, and so on.

But any teacher does more than engage in public discussion and instruction. There is also more informal teaching that takes place in private. Riesenfeld thinks that John's Gospel takes its origin in this kind of thing: "here the starting point is to be found in the discourses and 'meditations' of Jesus in the circle of his disciples, such as certainly took place side by side with the instruction of the disciples proper, with its more rigid forms. Such a view is not incompatible with this line of tradition having also undergone a long and complex development."¹²⁵

It is not necessary to endorse everything that Riesenfeld has said to be convinced that there is an interesting and suggestive possibility here. Nor is it necessary to argue that this must have been the way it was. All that I am contending is that Riesenfeld has shown us one possible way in which two views of Jesus' teaching as divergent as those in the Synoptic Gospels and in John could nevertheless originate from the one Teacher. It is also quite possible that this is the explanation. It is quite possible that something else is the explanation. But in view of Riesenfeld's argument it does not seem possible any longer to maintain that the teaching of Jesus as given to us in the Synoptic Gospels is incompatible with what we see in the Fourth Gospel.

From all this it appears that we ought not to think of John as a writer who is not at all interested in history. He is certainly a theologian, but he has a reverence for the facts. There is no real reason for thinking that he composed edifying stories and discourses that had theological meaning but bore little relationship to what actually happened.

Something like this is often widely assumed. Indeed, it is almost a commonplace of modern Johannine criticism. Yet we should bear in mind that the process does not appear to be evident in the ancient world, at least among careful writers. A. W. Mosley has written a most interesting article, "Historical Reporting in the Ancient World,"¹²⁶ in which he argues that many assumptions commonly made about the way in which the ancients wrote should be discarded. He is able to show that quite a number of historians of antiquity tell us how they understood their task. In the process they show a respect for how things actually happened. They did on occasion, it is true, compose speeches and put them in the mouths of historical characters. But they did this only where they had nothing else to go on. And when they did compose speeches they tried to make their characters say what they probably did say at the time. In other words, historians did not regard themselves as having unlimited freedom. And Mosley makes this further point, which is of the utmost significance for our present inquiry, that, while they might compose speeches in this way, they did not compose accounts of events. This does not mean that we cannot find legendary accounts in antiquity. We can. But these are not found among careful and honest writers. They are found among the second-rate, or among those who are not avowedly attempting to give us accounts of what occurred. The accepted standards in the ancient world among Greeks, Romans, and Hebrews were different from and higher than what a number of New Testament scholars have all too readily assumed.

The point of Mosley's article for our present inquiry is that there is no doubt but that John is a careful and honest writer. If he tells us that a certain thing happened, we have no reason for thinking that this is simply a theological construction. The presumption must always be that John has a respect for the truth. To say otherwise is to depart from the standards, not of our own day only, but of those of the first century.

Hoskyns makes the important point that the very theological significance that John is trying to bring out demands that we take his history seriously. "His whole conscious intention," says Hoskyns, "is to force his readers back upon the life of Jesus in the flesh and upon His death in the flesh, as the place of understanding: he is therefore guilty of gross self-deception if he is inventing or distorting the visible likeness of Jesus to further his purpose."¹²⁷ This point is important. His theological purpose being what it is, he cannot invent or distort history without making that purpose difficult or impossible of attainment.

Another point of view that has attracted a good deal of attention is that of J. L. Martyn, who discerns different levels in this Gospel, On one level the author writes of happenings in Palestine in Jesus' day, on another what he writes refers to what is happening in the community to which the author belongs. Thus Martyn says: "In the two-level drama of John 9, the man born blind plays not only the part of a Jew in Jerusalem healed by Jesus of Nazareth, but also the part of Jews known to John who have become members of the separated church because of their messianic faith and because of the awesome Benediction.''¹²⁸ As the study unfolds the emphasis tends to be more on what is happening in the local community than what happened in Jerusalem many years before. This approach has won much support, though it is not easy to understand why. Martyn has not really cited evidence that this is the way the text ought to be read, and if a thesis like this is to be established we need hard evidence. Martyn has really done no more than show that if the assumption is made that the writer is engaging on a two-level account, then some interesting points can be made. But that is not the same as saying that this is what the author meant. Childs remarks, "To offer a historical reconstruction of the Johannine community of ch. 9 is not to be equated with an exegesis of the biblical text... the text of ch. 9 offers no hint that the passage is to be read on two separate levels."¹²⁹ The substitution of imagination for exegesis means that this approach is not of great importance for an understanding of the theology of the Fourth Gospel.

S. S. Smalley is interested in the way this Gospel gives expression to the primitive apostolic kerygma. He finds in John "all the basic elements belonging to the pattern of apostolic preaching."¹³⁰ He notices six points in the apostolic preaching that he finds in John on the one hand and in Mark and Acts on the other.¹³¹ We should not imagine that John is proclaiming a different gospel from that of the early church in general. He expresses himself in his own way, but his Gospel sets forth the same essential saving message as do other New Testament writers.

It seems, then, that we should take with the utmost seriousness the account that John has given. It is true that it differs in important respects from what we see in the Synoptists. But then we must bear in mind that the Jesus whom all four Evangelists depict was a gigantic figure, greater by far than can be comprehended in any one Gospel.¹³²

V. THE RELATIONSHIP OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL TO THE SYNOPTICS¹³³

It has usually been accepted that John wrote after Matthew, Mark, and Luke. And since he wrote later than the others, and since their writings were regarded very highly in the early church, it has seemed a natural corollary that John must have made use of those Gospels. When we add to this the fact that there are some striking coincidences of language (for example, in the story of the anointing of Jesus by the woman at Bethany, or in certain aspects of the ministry of John the Baptist), it has seemed proven beyond any reasonable doubt that John made use of the other Gospels. Sometimes it has been held that he wrote to correct misapprehensions that might arise from what they said. Sometimes it has been held that, while he agreed with his predecessors, he felt that there were certain aspects of the ministry of Jesus that they had not dealt with or had not dealt with adequately. So he wrote to supplement them. Either way it is felt that he had some of the earlier Gospels before him and that he wrote with a knowledge of what they contained.

In recent years not many have been found to espouse the view that John had all three Synoptists before him, but usually it has been agreed that he made some use of Mark.¹³⁴ It has been held to be a little more uncertain whether he made use of Luke, but a large number of scholars hold that he did so.¹³⁵ But his use of Matthew is contended to be much more problematical. While some scholars have held that he used this Gospel,¹³⁶ most have felt that the points of contact are so few that the probability is that he did not.

In recent years, however, all this has been called in question. Probably the greatest impetus to the new way of thinking has come from P. Gardner-Smith, who made a very close examination of the alleged case for dependence and concluded that it cannot be substantiated.¹³⁷ Others have followed in Gardner-Smith's footsteps, and there is an increasing conviction in recent times that John is independent of the Synoptists.¹³⁸

Perhaps the most cogent argument for dependence in recent times is that of Barrett. He is impressed by two things: the occurrence of a number of passages in Mark and John in the same order, and some striking verbal resemblances. His list of passages is as follows:

(a) The work and witness of the Baptist

(b) Departure to Galilee

(c) Feeding the multitude

(d) Walking on the lake

(e) Peter's confession

(f) The departure to Jerusalem

(g) The entry and the anointing (transposed in John)

(h) The Last Supper with predictions of betrayal and denial

(i) The arrest

(j) The passion and resurrection¹³⁹

Barrett clearly regards the occurrence of these in the same order in Mark and John as being very significant. He repeats the statement, and he puts it in italics. But with all respect to a great scholar, this is not a very impressive list, (a) must come first. Where else are we to put the work of John the Baptist? (b) must follow (a), and (c) must follow (b). And the case for dependence is weakened when one takes notice of the fact that Mark puts (c) 211 verses after (b) and John 99 verses after it. The conjunction of (c) and (d) is more impressive. This is the kind of sequence that is necessary if Barrett's case is to be established.¹⁴⁰ If there were more sequences of this kind we would agree that the order was important. The placing of (e) Peter's confession after (d) walking on the lake is a sequence of the same kind if we could be sure that Mark and John are describing the same event. I do not think they are. There are important differences between Mark's scene at Caesarea Philippi and John's sequel to the synagogue sermon at Capernaum.¹⁴¹ And if these are not the same event, then the item cannot be included in the list, (f) the departure to Jerusalem cannot come anywhere earlier in the list and the following items cannot come before it. It is not without significance that Barrett brackets two items under (g) and that they are in reverse order in the two Gospels. I do not see how (h), (i), and (j) can come in any other than the order given.

From all this it is plain that the argument from the order of events is not really impressive. It is difficult to understand how any other order could be adopted for most of the items Barrett singles out.

The case for verbal dependence is no better. Presumably Barrett has not omitted any cogent evidence, but he gives us only twelve passages with verbal coincidences, most of which are single verses, and the agreements are rarely very close. When we reflect that Mark contains 12,000 words, this is not very convincing.¹⁴²

The cases for dependence on Luke and on Matthew are, of course, even less cogent. There is no point in examining either in detail.¹⁴³

It is true that there are some interesting coincidences of language. The expression "valuable pistic nard" in Mark and John for the perfume used at the anointing is the kind of thing that impresses, for it is an unusual expression. But precisely because it is unusual it might well stick in the mind and be preserved in more than one line of oral tradition.¹⁴⁴ What seems very clear to many who have examined the evidence closely is that the kind of thing that is common to John and the Synoptists is precisely the kind that one would anticipate finding in oral tradition. In fact, if we think of the development of oral tradition in different parts of the church coupled with a great respect for the incidents being narrated, we have the kind of situation that would account for both the resemblances and the differences. In other words, while there is some relationship between the tradition embodied in the Synoptists and that in John there is no valid reason, it would seem, for maintaining that the connection is written. It is much more likely to be oral.

VI. DISLOCATIONS

The Fourth Gospel does not read smoothly throughout. A number of writers have contended that the sequence of thought would be improved immensely if we rearranged the text in several places.¹⁴⁵ The most plausible example is the reversal of the order of chapters 5 and 6. Chapter 5 deals with incidents in Jerusalem, whereas the sixth begins, "Sometime after this, Jesus crossed to the far shore of the Sea of Galilee." This would follow naturally enough from the end of chapter 4, where John has been talking about the healing of the nobleman's son in Galilee. Jesus is then in a position to cross the sea, whereas a reference to crossing the sea with the point of departure in Jerusalem is not so immediately obvious. If this rearrangement be carried out, there is also an improved sequence at the other end. Chapter 7 begins, "After this, Jesus went around in Galilee, purposely staying away from Judea, because the Jews there were waiting to take his life." This does not follow very naturally upon chapter 6, which is located in Galilee, but it would follow very well on chapter 5, which is located in Jerusalem and which speaks of a conflict between Jesus and the Jews that might well have reached serious proportions.

Another suggested rearrangement takes its origin from the words in the Farewell Discourse, "Come now; let us leave" (14:31). This looks like a preparation for leaving the upper room, but there are three more chapters before Jesus and his friends leave for Gethsemane. It would obviously improve matters if the end of chapter 14 could be located somewhere near the end of the discourse. Accordingly, a number of modern students suggest that chapter 14 should immediately precede chapter 17. Bernard points out other difficulties in the Farewell Discourse and suggests a rearrangement to give the order 13:1-30; 15; 16; 13:31-38; 14; 17.¹⁴⁶

And so one might go on. A number of suggested rearrangements have been made, some of which give a smoother sequence, though that is not true of every such rearrangement. In fact, it might almost be laid down that every rearrangement suggested is attended by some disadvantages. For example, G. H. C. MacGregor and A. Q. Morton are among those who wish to rearrange the Farewell Discourse. But having suggested a rearrangement that puts chapter 14 after chapters 15 and 16, they point out that if we adopt it, "Thomas's question in XIV. 5 seems unnatural after Jesus' words in XVI. 5ff. Also, of the two allusions to the 'Comforter' in XIV. 16f. and XV. 26 the former reads like the first and indeed seems presupposed in the latter. There are moreover in ch. XIV many almost needless repetitions of the thought of ch. XV and XVI."¹⁴⁷

Objections may be urged against even the most plausible of all the suggestions, namely the reversal of order of chapters 5 and 6. Thus Dodd stresses the need to establish Jesus' position as the Divine Son (5:19-47) before he advances his claims in chapter 6. He concludes: "We see therefore how important it is for our author's argument that the discourse in ch. ν should precede the present discourse."¹⁴⁸. Some commentators feel that the crisis at the end of chapter 6, where many left Jesus and he challenged the Twelve with "You do not want to leave too, do you?" (6:67), comes too early if it precedes chapter 5. Others point out that a quick removal to Galilee would follow very naturally on the conflict mentioned in chapter 5. So, although many have been convinced, it cannot be said that the case has been made out beyond any shadow of a doubt.

This seems to be more or less the position throughout. The rearrangements are normally suggested for subjective reasons. As the text stands, it seems to some that the sequence is poor and that it would be improved by a rearrangement. But when the rearrangement is carried through, other disadvantages commonly appear.

There is, moreover, the problem of accounting for the present disorder. If any suggested rearrangement is to be accepted, we must have some convincing explanation of how the present text came into existence. What is so obvious to us must surely have been apparent to whoever it was that put the text in the present order. It is, further, not easy to understand how a manuscript could get into such disorder.

Sometimes a note of objectivity is brought into the discussion. It is suggested that originally the manuscript was in separate sheets. A calculation may be made, as, for example, by Bernard.¹⁴⁹ He suggests that each leaf of two pages contained about 750 letters, a figure he arrives at by postulating a page of thirty-four lines, each of eleven letters. He then finds that the various major displacements he sees in the Epistle represent a multiple of approximately this amount of space. But to get this he must insist on approximations. His sixth major section, for example (12:36b-43), contains 598 letters, which is a not inconsiderable distance from his average. In fact, most scholars hold that so many allowances for this sort of thing are required that the apparent note of objectivity cannot be sustained.

A more serious objection is in seeing how the manuscript could come to be scattered in the way postulated. We do not know anything about the way manuscripts were commonly written in antiquity that encourages us to think that a leaf would be written in this way and not form part of a roll or a book. If it were in a roll or codex it could not easily be detached. Bernard does not seem to have given consideration to the fact that in a roll sheets are fastened together in such a way that if these were written on back and front the passages on the two sides of the one sheet would not be consecutive, while in a codex form two leaves (four pages) would form a unit, not one (two pages).¹⁵⁰

Even if this improbability could be overcome we are faced with a further difficulty. We must postulate that modem critics without the separate pages before them are better able to discern the correct sequence than the first- or second-century editor who had the leaves actually in his hands. If he could not perform this feat it is difficult to think that we can. It must also be borne in mind that the theory asks us to think that each page where a displacement occurs conveniently coincided with the end of a sentence. Haphazard displacement is much more likely to result in broken sentences in most cases. All in all, it cannot be said that the hypothesis of dislocations has been successfully made out.

One cannot help thinking that sufficient attention is not being given to the author's intention. We all too readily assume that he must have had somewhat the same canons of consistency as we have. But if he was not interested in producing the kind of consistency that we take for granted, he may well have had different standards as to what part of his writing should follow what other part. In other words, it is always better to try to make sense of the manuscript as it stands than to try our hands at varying the order. A number of modern writers, for example C. K. Barrett,¹⁵¹ C. H. Dodd,¹⁵² and R. H. Lightfoot,¹⁵³ are convinced that we should take the present order of John rather than try to rearrange it. C. J. Wright goes further and suggests that in our rearrangements we may be missing something important: "In trying to make a book conform to standards of our own, we may fail to understand the author's type of mind."¹⁵⁴

VII. SOURCES

A number of scholars have attempted to demonstrate the existence of sources used by this Evangelist.¹⁵⁵ They point to "aporias" ("perplexities"). For example, Jesus does his first "sign" in Can a (2:11), then does "signs" in Jerusalem (2:23), but his next miracle narrated is Jesus' "second sign" (4:54). In the upper room Peter asks Jesus where he is going (13:36), but a little later Jesus says none of them has asked where he is going (16:5). There are quite a number of such aporias in this Gospel, and to some it seems that the best explanation of them is that whoever produced this Gospel in its final form has made use of a number of sources but without smoothing the connections so to speak.

Sometimes the search for sources is done in a fairly modest way. Thus it may be reasoned that 20:30-31 is clearly the end point of an original Gospel. Therefore, chapter 21 is an addition by some later hand, and if this later hand is responsible for chapter 21 perhaps it is responsible for other parts of the Gospel also. In other words, the very presence of chapter 21 may be held to be evidence of the activity of a redactor. This figure, acting as editor, may then be held to be responsible for a number of verses mainly of a connective character. The redactor, it is then plausibly argued, has worked over the Gospel material, putting it into its present shape, and in the process he turns out to be responsible for a good deal of it.¹⁵⁶

Another approach is to point out that there is some evidence that John made use of Mark and Luke, at any rate, possibly Matthew also. This, it is maintained, gives evidence of some use of sources. Since the Evangelist used these sources, he may well have used others also. This argument, however, is not very convincing in the light of the improbability that John used any of the Synoptists. Since we have looked at this possibility and rejected it, there seems no point in pursuing this particular theory of sources.

A very important attempt to disentangle sources is that of Rudolf Bultmann. He thinks that the enumeration of the "signs" in 2:11; 4:54 can scarcely have originated with the Evangelist, for that writer says that Jesus did a large number of signs (2:23; 4:45). The "sign" at the end of chapter 4 is thus not Jesus' "second sign," as 4:54 says. Again, Bultmann feels that 20:30, which speaks of Jesus as having done "many other signs ... in the presence of the disciples," is not a very suitable conclusion for the Gospel. But he thinks it would be quite in place for a conclusion to a narrative of "signs." From these and other considerations Bultmann is led to postulate the existence of a "signs" source. When the "signs" are removed from the Gospel the most notable further feature is the discourses. Bultmann goes on accordingly to deduce that there was a "revelation" source, which he thinks was of Gnostic origin. A third source is to be discerned in the Passion and Resurrection narrative. In addition to all this Bultmann finds evidence of the activity of a redactor.¹⁵⁷

Since Bultmann a number of scholars have given attention to the possibility of discerning sources underlying the Fourth Gospel. Perhaps outstanding among them is R. T. Fortna, who argued strongly from the "signs" related in this Gospel to a primitive document that may properly be called a Gospel.¹⁵⁸ In a later work he examines the relationship between that primitive writing and the present Gospel.¹⁵⁹ There have been others, notably Η. M. Teeple and W. Nicol.¹⁶⁰ D. A. Carson has given a useful summary of a number of recent attempts at source criticism. He concludes, "The results of such criticism are sometimes brilliant, usually stimulating, and often imaginative; but it is doubtful if they are demonstrable, even in the limited sense of commanding sustained assent to their probability." So he says, "In brief, this paper is an appeal for probing agnosticism in these matters."¹⁶¹

And with all respect to those very capable scholars who have argued for sources, that seems about as far as we can go. The writer of this Gospel may have used sources, but if he did he has made them so thoroughly his own that untangling them now seems impossible. Unfortunately for any idea of sources in this Gospel, the precise delineation is very difficult. There seems little question but that the style of the Gospel is uniform.¹⁶² If John did use sources he has so reworked them and made them his own that in the judgment of many competent scholars it is now impossible to discern which were sources and which was John's own material. What Β. H. Streeter said about one particular view with which he was dealing has a much wider application: "if the sources have undergone anything like the amount of amplification, excision, rearrangement and adaptation which the theory postulates, then the critic's pretence that he can unravel the process is grotesque. As well hope to start with a string of sausages and reconstruct the pig."¹⁶³ It seems much safer to take the Gospel as it stands and accept the view that it comes from the Evangelist. There is no need to deny that he made use of sources (or perhaps of "traditions," as Beasley-Murray suggests).¹⁶⁴ He may have done so, but if he did he reworded them in his own language and there is now no way of recovering them. Those who detect sources find awkward jumps from time to time (which enables them to say that they have found the sources). But if they are right, the final redactor has not smoothed things out; if he could leave those awkwardnesses, then John could just as well have done so. In view of the uniformity of style it is better to regard John as responsible.¹⁶⁵ Any criticism of this Gospel that rests on the detection of sources must be regarded as suspect.¹⁶⁶

At the same time we must bear in mind that there are some interesting variations in John. Thus long ago H. R. Reynolds pointed out that John puts over 145 words on the lips of Jesus that he does not use elsewhere in his Gospel.¹⁶⁷ While as far as I know nobody has argued that this points to a separate source for all Jesus' sayings, it must yet be taken into consideration as showing part of the method of the Evangelist. His style is much the same throughout his Gospel, but such facts as this show that he is aware that there were nuances in Jesus' speech that did not characterize his own.¹⁶⁸

A fascinating new approach to Johannine studies is that of R. A. Culpepper, who employs literary criticism in his Anatomy of the Fourth Gospel.¹⁶⁹ There is room for legitimate criticism of this approach, for it is not at all clear that the canons that govern our understanding of the modern novel give us the clue to the understanding of the Fourth Gospel. There are differences between fiction and history, and between fiction and theology. While a novel may claim to be bringing "truth" to its readers the truth claims of the novel are not the same as the truth claims of the Gospel. But for our present purpose the important point is that the aporias that worry so many critics and cause them to postulate sources do not trouble Culpepper. He integrates into a unity the materials that have caused others to discern disparate sources. In a footnote he points out that, while he is not trying to clarify the Gospel's composition and history, his method has implications affecting that task. And he says firmly, "In its present form, if not in its origin, the gospel must be approached as a unity, a literary whole."¹⁷⁰

A recent approach has been that of seeing development from the traditional material rather than the use of sources. Thus Brown argues for five stages in this development, from the basic traditional material to the finished work.¹⁷¹ Lindars likewise stresses the place of development but gives more prominence to sermons. Such approaches are of interest and value, but before espousing them we must bear in mind the caution expressed by Kysar in these words: "They are provocative and imaginative but essentially unprovable."¹⁷²

The idea that preaching lies behind this Gospel has much to be said for it and is favored by many students.¹⁷³ There is not the slightest reason for doubting that the writer of the Gospel was a preacher, nor that he had been preaching for quite a few years before writing this work. Now preachers not uncommonly have sermon notes, and I see nothing against the suggestion that John had made notes for his preaching throughout the years and that when he came to write his Gospel he made use of those notes.¹⁷⁴ The characteristics that have led some scholars to discern sources may reflect nothing more than the use of a variety of sermon notes. Moreover, when an itinerant preacher uses the same sermon in a number of different places it is not uncommon for him to make changes, adding new points, smoothing out difficulties (sometimes introducing new ones!), and the like.¹⁷⁵

Let me conclude this section with some words of Luke T. Johnson: "The FG (i.e. 'The Fourth Gospel') we now read does not have the look of a composition by committee or of a haphazard outcome of heavy-handed editing. Only to minds obsessively concerned with a certain level of consistency are seams always indicators of sources. To other readers, they appear as literary signals. The FG does not require reconstruction. It stands today as it has for two thousand years as a coherent, profound, and challenging witness, itself sufficient evidence that the Johannine community had within it at least one great theologian and writer,"¹⁷⁶

VIII. PLACE OF COMPOSITION

It is, of course, not known where the Gospel was written, but three places show some signs of probability. The first of these is the traditional site, namely Ephesus. This goes back to Irenaeus, who says, "Afterwards, John, the disciple of the Lord, who also had leaned upon His breast, did himself publish a Gospel during his residence at Ephesus in Asia."¹⁷⁷ This is not proof, but it is a fairly early indication, and, as we noted earlier, Irenaeus had had personal contact with Polycarp, who knew John personally. So the tradition is entitled to be heard. It is supported by the fact that Ephesus is not far from Phrygia, the center of the Montanist movement, and the Montanists made early use of this Gospel. It is also true that one of the minor features of the writing is an insistence on the minor role played by John the Baptist. We know that there were continuing disciples of the Baptist in the vicinity of Ephesus (Acts 19:1-7), and it may well be that this state of affairs continued until the writing of this Gospel. A strong point in favor of Ephesus is that no other name seems to be urged in antiquity.

The most popular alternative suggestion is that the Gospel comes from the general region of Antioch. It is pointed out that there are parallels to the Odes of Solomon¹⁷⁸ which are thought to belong to Syria. There are also some coincidences of language with the writings of Ignatius, who was bishop of Antioch. Those who see evidences of a Gnostic way of thinking in John also point out that the type of Gnosticism presupposed is one that has affinities with Judaism, and this is likely to have arisen on the borders of Judaism. This would be supported by familiarity with things Jewish that this Gospel displays, which would be natural in an adjoining country. The fact that the first orthodox commentary on John came from Antioch (written by Theophilus) may also be relevant. A. F. J. Klijn regards the attitude to Peter in this Gospel as significant and "Since Peter was held in particular esteem in Antioch, perhaps that is the place to which this gospel was addressed"¹⁷⁹

The third suggestion is Alexandria¹⁸⁰ or somewhere else in Egypt. It is pointed out that the earliest manuscript of this Gospel was found in Egypt, which indicates early use of John in that land. Further, the teaching of this Gospel is held to have points of contact with the allegorical method thought to have been characteristic of Egypt. Perhaps more relevant is the fact that Egypt was a center of early Gnosticism. The Gnostics made much use of John, and it may be that this was due in part to the fact that this Gospel was there, in Egypt, available to be used.

None of these suggestions can be said to be compelling, and in the end we are left without certain proof. Perhaps there is a little more to be said for Ephesus than for either of the others, but this is as far as we can go.

IX. BACKGROUND

A good deal of attention has been given to the background presupposed by this Gospel. This is, of course, important for its interpretation, for we must know the kind of milieu in which the author moved if we are to be sure we understand his meaning. One reason why different scholars understand this Gospel differently is that they have different ideas of its background.

There can be no doubt that the Old Testament played a large part in the author's thinking. He has obviously read it well and pondered it long. He quotes it a number of times, sometimes from the Septuagint, and sometimes perhaps from his own translation of the Hebrew. But quite apart from specific quotation it is clear that he has absorbed the teaching of the Old Testament. In his treatment of the Good Shepherd (ch. 10) and of the true Vine (ch. 15) he has unmistakable allusions to the Old Testament without specific quotation. Again and again this is the case. It is clear that he knew his Bible very well indeed.

With this we must take Judaism. There can be little doubt that the teachings of the rabbis lie behind some of the teaching of this Gospel, though we must be on our guard here because of the late date of the rabbinic sources. Experts in rabbinics agree, however, that, while the writings as we have them are later than New Testament times, they embody much ancient material. Some of it certainly goes back to the times of John, and even of Jesus. The parallels adduced in Strack-Billerbeck are sufficient to show that this is an area that must not be overlooked. But Judaism was not monolithic. The rabbinic writings give us what we may term normative Judaism, but there were other currents in first-century Judaism. H. Odeberg has given much attention to Jewish mysticism and has been able to show that there are many points of contact.¹⁸¹ We should also notice here the importance of the Qumran scrolls. These give us a useful insight into another section of unorthodox Judaism, and here again there are connections with John.¹⁸² Others have found acquaintance with Jewish apocalyptic thought.¹⁸³ It must be stressed that while the resemblances between the Fourth Gospel and each of these types of Judaism are real, so also are the differences. In fact, this should be obvious from the very fact of the wide spread of the resemblances. It is impossible that any writing should at the same time reflect accurately the essential positions of normative Judaism, mystical Judaism, and Qumran. But something of each is to be discerned in the background.¹⁸⁴

There is also a Hellenistic background. Some have seen this preeminently in the Prologue, with its reference to the Logos, a concept found among Greek philosophers. In the note on this concept I point out that John's is not the typical Greek use, but he may have had the Greek use in mind for all that. It is plain from his habit of explaining Jewish terms, even common ones like "rabbi" (1:38; even Mark does not feel the necessity to explain this term, Mark 9:5, etc.), that he wrote for people who were not Jews. Now any group of cultured people in the first century would have had some acquaintance with Hellenistic thought. When we know that Judaism is not the whole story, allowance must be made for a Greek background. Some scholars think that this is especially true of the writings of Philo.¹⁸⁵ This man appears to have been influential in Hellenistic Judaism, and his writings may well have been known to the first readers of this Gospel. Many scholars see some affinities with Philo in the Prologue.

Another possible background is discerned in the Hermetica, a group of writings of a philosophical and religious nature attributed to Hermes Trismegistus. C. H. Dodd, who has made a thorough examination of these tractates,¹⁸⁶ thinks that this kind of approach to life is presupposed at points in our Gospel. This may well be the case, but Dodd's results must be used with caution. G. D. Kilpatrick has shown that some of the characteristic concepts of the Hermetica are totally absent from John, and that the vocabulary is different. He finds much more affinity with the Septuagint, which is an important conclusion.¹⁸⁷ The Hellenistic world knew other religions of salvation than that brought before us in the Hermetica, and John appears to have some acquaintance with the kind of thinking found in them. The mystery religions brought people the concept of life, and some of John's phraseology recalls it.¹⁸⁸

A number of students have suggested that Gnosticism is the proper background. Sometimes this is precisely located in Mandaism. Mandaeans are continuing Gnostics of a non-Christian type. All the other Gnosticism we know comes before us as a Christian heresy. The Mandaeans are often said to show that Gnosticism was not of Christian origin. And some go further; they maintain that John takes shape only when seen against this background. But despite the confident statements of some who have examined this literature closely, it is difficult to agree with them. The Mandaean documents as we know them are late. Even allowing for the fact that the sixteenth-century manuscripts known to us go back to earlier originals, it is difficult to date this literature early enough to be significant. Dodd says, "The compilation of the Mandaean Canon . . . cannot be dated much, if at all, before A.D. 700."¹⁸⁹ Some of its ideas may, of course, be considerably older than the compilation of the canon, but these dates show that it is most unlikely that this kind of thinking had any real effect on John.

Rudolf Bultmann is the outstanding modern commentator who sees Gnosticism as the significant background to John. He holds that the Gnostic redeemer myth lies behind John's idea of a Christ who came forth from God and who returns to God.¹⁹⁰ This can be made to sound convincing, for there can be no doubt that the thought that Christ came down from heaven and that he returns there, having accomplished his mission of salvation, is of great importance to John. But the existence of this redeemer-myth in any pre-Christian form is far from having been proved.¹⁹¹ So for all its popularity in some circles this idea must be discarded.¹⁹² The Gnosticism we know is definitely second-century. There is no reason for thinking that it sprang full grown from nothing, and Gnosticism was certainly hospitable to ideas from a multitude of sources. We may well hold, accordingly, that some of the ideas that were ultimately to form an integral part of Gnosticism were in existence when John wrote. Indeed, I have earlier suggested that one of John's aims was to combat docetic ideas.¹⁹³ But this is not the same as seeing Gnosticism as a coherent system at the time John wrote,¹⁹⁴ nor of thinking even of its essential ideas as his background. For either of these the evidence is lacking.

It must be insisted that the background to John is the early Christian church. John's fundamental ideas are the basic Christian ideas. He presents an individual picture indeed, but it is a picture of the same Christ and of the same religion as that of other Christian writers. We have rejected the idea that John is dependent on the Synoptic Gospels, but the fact that the contention can be seriously put forward shows that the teaching in these Gospels must be taken as part of the Johannine background. So must the exposition of the faith we find in the Pauline Epistles. Not everyone would agree with Ε. F Scott when he says, "The evangelist is everywhere indebted to Paul."¹⁹⁵. But he does point us to something of importance. The Evangelist is not a Paulinist, but he knows the same Christ that Paul knows. John is an authentic Christian document and for its full meaning to be appreciated it must be viewed in company with the other early Christian writings, the remaining books of the New Testament.

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1. Hoskyns, p. 20.

2. Ibid.

3. I have examined some of the more important problems in my Studies in the Fourth Gospel (Grand Rapids, 1969). For fuller statements about some of the matters referred to in this Introduction I refer to that volume.

4. For a useful discussion of the problems raised by this Gospel see Robert Kysar, The Fourth Evangelist and His Gospel (Minneapolis, 1975).

5. For a fuller account see SFG, ch. 4.

6. This does not mean that the authority of the Gospel depends on its authorship. B. S. Childs is not correct when he says, "The traditional defence sought to establish the theological authority of the gospel by proving that its author was an eyewitness" (The New Testament as Canon [London, 1984], p. 129). The book is authoritative whoever wrote it. That it was written by an eyewitness is a conclusion drawn from the Gospel itself, not a theological presupposition that must be supported somehow.

7. This is not to deny that there are differences. Thus J. S. King can say: "much British scholarship has been concerned to use the Fourth Gospel in the quest of the historical Jesus, but American scholarship, more closely following the instincts of E. F. Scott, has used it for the quest of the Johannine community" (ExT, 94 [1982-83], p. 363).

8. Introducing the New Testament (London, 1945), p. 50.

9. See the full examination of the evidence in the Introduction to his Commentary.

10. Lightfoot, p. 2.

11. R. A. Culpepper, while not accepting the Apostle John as the author, argues that this is what the Gospel itself leads us to think: "When the narrator dramatically pulls the curtain on the implied author in the closing verses of the gospel, the reader recognizes that the Beloved Disciple fits the image the gospel projects of its implied author"; "its implied author is the Beloved Disciple" (Anatomy of the Fourth Gospel [Philadelphia, 1983], p. 47).

12. It is sometimes said that, since ch. 21 is a supplement, added after chs. 1-20, the words refer only to the author of ch. 21. Granted that the final chapter is to be regarded as a supplement (and we must bear in mind that, while some scholars see it as from the hand of another author than chs. 1-20, others do not), T. Zahn's point is still valid: "if it was necessary to assure the readers that chap. xxi. was written by the beloved disciple of Jesus, it was even more important to make clear to them who wrote chaps, i.-xx" (Introduction to the New Testament, III [Edinburgh, 1909], p. 237). If it was a different author we are justified in looking for some hint that this was so.

13. The verb used for "loved" in 20:2 is φιλέω, in the other passages άγαπάω.

14. Advocated, for example, by Filson (pp. 21-25); see also his contribution to Current Issues in New Testament Interpretation, ed. W. Klassen and G. F. Snyder (London, 1962), pp. 119-23. Vernard Eller also argues that Lazarus is meant (The Beloved Disciple [Grand Rapids, 1987], pp. 53-73). J. N. Sanders distinguishes between the disciple whom Jesus ήγάπα, whom he takes to be Lazarus, and him whom Jesus έφίλέι, whom he thinks was John the Elder and was identical with John Mark. He regards the former as the witness behind this Gospel and the latter as responsible for its "publication" (F. L. Cross, ed., Studies in the Fourth Gospel [London, 1957], pp. 72-82).

15. See, for example, Lewis Johnson, ExT, LXXVII (1965-66), pp. 157-58, and the comments on this identification by Donald Rogers, ExT, LXXVII (1965-66), p. 214. So also J. Ernest Davey, The Jesus of St. John (London, 1958), pp. 23-29.

16. Some scholars follow somewhat the same path I have been treading in that they look for the "witness" behind the Gospel among people mentioned in the New Testament and consider him the Beloved Disciple, but they then take a different line by suggesting that someone else was the actual author of the Gospel. Thus MacGregor approves of Swete's suggestion that the rich young ruler was the Beloved Disciple ("Jesus looked at him and loved him," Mark 10:21), but he thinks John the Elder was the writer of the Gospel (pp. Ixiii-ixiv). While the ruler was certainly loved by Jesus, there is no evidence that he ever became a disciple. Others see John the Apostle as the Beloved Disciple and the "witness," but think of a follower of his, perhaps John the Elder, as the actual author of the Gospel. An ingenious view is that of Robert Eisler, who regarded Lazarus as the Beloved Disciple and John, the son of the high priest Annas (mentioned in Acts 4:6), as the Evangelist, with the heretic Marcion as his amanuensis (The Enigma of the Fourth Gospel [London, 1928]). Margaret Pamment argues that the Beloved Disciple "represents gentile Christianity" (ExT, 94 [1982-83], pp. 363-67), but this scarcely does justice to the fact that the Gospel depicts him consistently as an individual, not as a symbol.

17. MacGregor mentions approvingly the curious hypothesis of "the deliberate cancellation by the Redactor, in the interest of his theory that the Beloved Disciple is John, of all independent references to John by name" (p. xlix). There is, of course, not a shred of evidence for this, and the suggestion is noteworthy only as showing that, as the evidence stands, the case for identifying the Beloved Disciple with John is convincing.

18. Yet we should not overlook the point made long ago by W. Sanday, who reminds us that Jesus referred to himself as "the Son of man" and thinks that his followers may have adopted "a similar method of oblique and allusive reference." Sanday thinks that "The beloved disciple had a special reason for not wishing to obtrude his own personality. He was conscious of a great privilege, of a privilege that would single him out for all time among the children of men. He could not resist the temptation to speak of this privilege. The impulse of affection responding to affection prompted him to claim it. But the consciousness that he was doing so, and the reaction of modesty led him at the same moment to suppress, what a vulgar egotism might have accentuated, the lower plane of his own individuality. The son of Zebedee (if it was he) desired to be merged and lost in 'the disciple whom Jesus loved' " (The Criticism of the Fourth Gospel [Oxford, 1905], pp. 79-80).

19. Cf. A. M. Hunter: "after all the conjectures have been heard, the likeliest view is that which identifies the Beloved Disciple with the Apostle John" (Interpreting the New Testament 1900-1950 [London, 1951], p. 86). More recently Stephen S. Smalley has written, "i have found no convincing reasons so far to deny that the beloved disciple was John the son of Zebedee, one of the twelve, and that his initial witness brought the Fourth Gospel to birth in due course" (ExT, 97 [1985-86], p. 103; Smalley does not view John as the writer of this Gospel, but as the witness behind it). J. A. T. Robinson can say, "at least a good deal begins to come together and make sense if the hypothesis is accepted, on its own merits, that the man behind John's Gospel, the beloved disciple, is indeed the son of Zebedee, as tradition has unanimously asserted" (The Priority of John (London, 1985], p. 122).

20. See R. D. Potter, SE, I, pp. 329-37.

21. The Aramaic Origin of the Fourth Gospel (Oxford, 1922).

22. Our Translated Gospels (London, n.d.). He begins his Preface with this uncompromising statement: "The material of our Four Gospels is all Palestinian, and the language in which it was originally written is Aramaic, then the principal language of the land, with the exception of the first two chapters of Lk., which were composed in Hebrew." I should perhaps add that he thinks John 21 formed no part of the original, but that it was composed in Greek by the translator.

23. An exception is E. C. Colwell. He examines the case made out by Burney and Torrey and concludes: "(I) The method employed by Burney and the other Aramaic scholars is unsound — for (1) they use no adequate control; (2) they are inaccurate and inconsistent; (3) they point to the cumulative force of a list of Aramaisms of the weakest sort. (Π) Their results are not at all convincing: (1) they do not pick the same Aramaisms when they work independently; (2) they reject each other's mistranslations; (3) the vast majority (about 90 per cent) of their Aramaisms have been shown by this study to be paralleled in Greek; (4) what remains is the inevitable minimum of Semitisms in a gospel which inherited the earlier Christian traditions. There is here nothing to justify the claim that the author of the Fourth Gospel thought in Aramaic or wrote in Aramaic" {The Greek of the Fourth Gospel [Chicago, 1931], pp. 130-31).

24. ExT, LXXI (1959-60), p. 166. Later he says, "The trend of recent studies has been to make the Evangelist's links with Palestine much stronger than many of us have allowed" (ibid., p. 222).

25. See, for example, the many passages cited by SBk. Curiously W. G. Kümmel says, "any kind of familiarity with the views of the rabbis nowhere is evident in John" (.Introduction to the New Testament [London, 1965], p. 155). It is better to take the verdict of Israel Abrahams than this sweeping statement. Abrahams speaks of "the Fourth Gospel's close acquaintance with Hebraic traditions" (Studies in Pharisaism and the Gospels, first series [Cambridge, 1917], p. 135). S. Neill reports him as saying, "to us Jews the Fourth Gospel is the most Jewish of the four" (The Interpretation of the New Testament [London, 1964], p. 315). Neill immediately goes on, "If a learned Jew makes a remark of this kind, it is impossible for a Christian to say that he does not know what he is talking about." Again, Odeberg detects "already, at a superficial reading, passages, sentences and words revealing a terminology all but identical with the Rabbinic" (FG, p. 5). It seems clear that John has points of contact both with official Judaism as represented by the Pharisees and with unorthodox Judaism as depicted in the Qumran scrolls.

26. For example, W. C. van Unnik says, "Many things in this Gospel are suggestive of personal reminiscence (l:39f.: 4:6; 13:21ff., especially in chs. 18 to 21" (The New Testament: Its History and Message [London, 1964], p. 61). So also Barclay: "Many of these things are such apparently unimportant details that they are inexplicable unless they are the memories of a man who was there" (I, p. xx). B. P. W. Stather Hunt goes so far as to say, "no other Gospel bears upon its face such undeniable proof that its author was an eyewitness of the scenes which he records" (Some Johannine Problems [London, 1958], p. 7).

27. The verb is θέάομαι, of which AS says, "in NT apparently always in literal, physical sense of 'careful and deliberate vision which interprets ... its object.' "

28. Sanday refers to "all those marks of an eye-witness which we shall see to be present in great number and strength. They point to a firsthand relation between the author and the facts which he records. If the Gospel is not the work of an eye-witness, then the writer has made a very sustained and extraordinary effort to give the impression that he was one" (Criticism, p. 70).

29. F. L. Cribbs makes a similar point with regard to "the concerns found in John," which are "those that were typical of the church prior to A.D. 70 (e.g., church unity, brotherly love, the Messiahship of Jesus, the relationship of the church to Israel, the mystery of Israel's unbelief, Jewish persecutions), while the important concerns towards which the late first-century churches directed their attention (e.g., the rise of false prophets within the church, the loss of early enthusiasm, apostasy, the antichrist, church discipline and organization, Roman persecutions) are totally lacking in John" (JBL, LXXXIX [1970], p. 54).

30. Bread from Heaven (Leiden, 1965). The book is subtitled "An Exegetical Study of the Concept of Manna in the Gospel of John and the Writings of Philo." He sees both Philo and John as interpreting Jewish traditions in the face of non-Jewish ideas.

31. Brown, I, pp. 519-24. He concludes, "In sum, it seems that the Prologue's description of the Word is far closer to biblical and Jewish strains of thought than it is to anything purely Hellenistic" (p. 524). See also W. F. Howard, FGRCI, p. 11.

32. The Fourth Gospel (Edinburgh, 1906), p. 100. He locates the writing of this Gospel in the "period of truce" before the conflict with Gnosticism (p. 103). S. S. Smalley says, "The fourth evangelist not only has a real concern for the historical basis of salvation, he also has what gnosticism lacks — a theology of salvation which involves deliverance from sin by means of a cross" {John: Evangelist and Interpreter [Exeter, 1978]), p. 53.

33. Some authors draw attention to the role of Qumran in this connection. Thus A. Feuillet: "as Father Mollat justly points out, at the very heart of Judaism there was a whole school of thought, now brought to light by the Dead Sea Scrolls, which attributed great importance to knowledge and used a vocabulary which makes one think of Hellenism. If a Greek influence was brought to bear on St. John, perhaps it was only in this way, and therefore very indirectly. Further research will be able to clear up these delicate points" (A. Robert and A. Feuillet, Introduction to the New Testament [New York, 1965], p. 884). But this may be ascribing too large a function to the Scrolls. If this Gospel was intended for an audience living in a center of Greek culture, it is not unnatural to hold that its author had direct experience of Greek thought. Nevertheless Feuillet does well to remind us that we should look carefully at what the Scrolls can tell us and not be too ready to assume Hellenistic influence.

34. Strachan thinks that this Gospel was written in part with people like the Stoics in mind. "Gethsemane, to the Stoic, would represent a moral breakdown." While retaining what is essential (12:27), John omits what would repel such readers (Strachan, p. 58). This at least merits consideration.

35. See further SFG, pp. 184-85.

36. It is usually said, sometimes quite dogmatically, that the omission is due to a desire to keep information about this "holy mystery" from the uninitiated. Thus J. Jeremias writes: "All difficulties disappear, however, when it is realized that the author of the Fourth Gospel consciously omitted the account of the Last Supper because he did not want to disclose the sacred formula to the heathen"(The Eucharistic Words of Jesus [Oxford, 1955], p. 73). But this immediately confronts us with another problem: If the "sacred formula" is to be kept from outsiders, why do Matthew and Mark and Luke all include it in their Gospels?

37. Introduction, p. 174.

38. As D. Moody Smith Jr., holds: "If Jesus actually spoke as he speaks in the various strands of the Synoptic tradition, I find it impossible to believe that he also spoke as does the Johannine Christ" (Interpretation, XXI [1967], p. 475).

39. Cf. R. H. Lightfoot, "the Church has never been aware of any fundamental incompatibility between the portrait of the Lord in this gospel and that in the other three. This question has long ago been settled by the religious consciousness of Christendom" (p. 1).

40. BNT, p. 171, η. 1.

41. ExT, LXXI (1959-60), p. 340.

42. See below, pp. 39-40.

43. Adv. Haer. 2.22.5; 3.1; 3.3.4. Eusebius cites a letter of Irenaeus to Florinus in which he speaks of what he learned from Polycarp, who had known John. Among other things Irenaeus says, "I remember the events of those days more clearly than those which happened recently.... 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 discourses which he made to the people, how he reported his intercourse with John and with the others who had seen the Lord, how he remembered their words . . ." (HE 5.20.5-6). The importance of this should not be minimized. Cf. R. H. Maiden: "A historical fact which appears in a contemporary or nearly contemporary letter may generally be accepted without demur, for the reason that the author is not trying to write history.. .. When historical facts are referred to in letters, it shows that they were matters of common knowledge in the circle in which the writer and his correspondent moved" (cited by Η. P. V. Nunn, The Authorship of the Fourth Gospel [Eton, 1952], pp. 37-38).

44. Westcott, p. lix. C. H. Dodd regards the idea that the beloved disciple was the author as possible but not probable. But of Irenaeus he says, "His evidence is formidable, even if it is not conclusive. Anyone who should take the view that in the absence of any cogent evidence to the contrary it is reasonable to accept Irenaeus's testimony is on strong ground" (HTFG, p. 12). Η. P. V. Nunn reminds us that some of those who commended this Gospel in early days knew what persecution was. Irenaeus may have witnessed the persecution at Lyons and certainly succeeded the martyr Pothinus. Tertullian gave up a brilliant career to become a Christian, and he lived through the persecution of Severus. Origen's father was killed in this persecution, and he himself nearly suffered the same fate. Nunn proceeds: "It is not usual for exceptionally well educated men living under these conditions to accept the capital documents on which their faith depends without enquiry or examination, when such are possible, as they undoubtedly were at that time. They were even less likely to compose a spurious Gospel and to find acceptance for it when they had seen men and women put to horrible deaths for believing statements which this Gospel was intended to commend" (Authorship, p. 101).

45. Sanday brings out the importance of Heracleon: "To recognize a writing is one thing; to recognize it as sacred is another; to comment upon it as so sacred and authoritative that its contents can be interpreted allegorically is a third; and all this is so early as c. 170" {The Criticism, p. 240).

46. The Chenoboskion documents show only that the Gospel was held in high esteem. But Irenaeus adds that Ptolemaeus and his followers held this Gospel to have been written by "John, the disciple of the Lord" {Adv. Haer. 1.8.5; ANF, I, p. 328).

47. K. Grobel, The Gospel of Truth (London, 1960), p. 28.

48. H. C. Puech, G. Quispel, and W. C. van Unnik, The Jung Codex: Three Studies (London, 1955), p. 54.

49. Ibid., p. 104.

50. Ibid., p. 49 (my italics).

51. Barrett examines the passages in which it has been said that Ignatius depends on John and concludes: "There is nothing in these (or any other) passages to prove that Ignatius had read John" (p. 111). After a similar treatment of Justin Martyr he likewise says: "These passages do not prove that Justin had read John; yet they are sufficient to give some plausibility to that hypothesis" (p. 94). These estimates, especially the latter, are far from being unchallenged. Thus Bernard thinks that it is "in accordance with all probabilities that Ignatius had read this famous book. ... He uses several Johannine phrases after a fashion which is difficult to explain if they are no more than reflexions of current Christian teaching" (p. lxxi). In view of such uncertainties it is good to have solid evidence for the acceptance of this Gospel at such an early date.

52. Yet this should not be exaggerated. Cf. Τ. E. Pollard, "There is no evidence that the Fourth Gospel was treated with suspicion anywhere other than in Rome, and then only by a small group, although we must allow the possibility that some writers like Justin Martyr, the contemporary and strong critic of Valentinus, hesitated to use it openly" (ABR, VII [1959], p. 45).

53. Contra Marcionem 4.3 (ANF, ΠΙ, p. 348).

54. Lagrange thinks that the evidence of Marcion points to an accepted view that John was the author (pp. XLVII-XLVm).

55. Some commentators cite Celsus as one who bears testimony to John. From Origen's Contra Celsum it is clear that this opponent of Christianity referred to the Fourth Gospel (e.g., 1.70). Since Celsus appears to have been active during the third quarter of the second century this is early testimony to the fact that Christians regarded the book as authoritative. But Celsus, naturally enough, does not use the name "John," so we cannot cite him for authorship.

56. Cited from Eusebius, HE 6.14.7 (Loeb translation).

57. Cited from H. Bettenson, Documents of the Christian Church (London, 1944), p. 40.

58. The Johannine Circle (London, 1976), p. 5. He discerns three stages: "1. The author, a strong personality, made use both of traditions belonging to the common legacy of early Christianity and of a number of special traditions. ... 2. He was responsible for the main lines of the work as we have it now. 3. A redactor or a group of redactors under the influence of the author and belonging to his circle revised or completed the whole work after his death" (pp. 9-10).

59. The Community of the Beloved Disciple (London, 1979), pp. 22-24. G. Johnston says of Brown's view: "A theory that multiplies the hypotheses like this should be rejected in favour of the simplest reasonable explanation. The evidence, in our judgment, warrants only that the book was left unfinished and has been edited by persons unknown" (Johnstone, p. 14; he rejects the idea of a Johannine "school," p. 75).

60. For a survey of writing on the Johannine "community" or "school" see R. Kysar in Interpretation 31 (1977), pp. 355-66.

61. Hengel, p. 81; he concedes that pupils edited the book and put it into circulation (p. 84).

62. J. A. T. Robinson has a useful comment: "To sum up on the question of authorship, perhaps I can make the point by comparison and contrast. Brown, as we saw earlier, argues for the identity of the beloved disciple with John son of Zebedee but denies the identity of the beloved disciple with the evangelist. Cullmann per contra argues for the identity of the beloved disciple with the evangelist but denies the identity of the beloved disciple with John. He believes he was an anonymous Judaean disciple, a former follower of the Baptist, in part an eye witness, but not one of the twelve. ... I believe that both men are right in what they assert and wrong in what they deny" (Redating the New Testament [London, 1976], p. 310).

63. Ralph P. Martin holds this view: "John the presbyter sets out in a polemic and evangelistic tract the authentic teaching of John the apostle as the former confronts a new situation in the Dispersion in the light of the old Palestinian debate in which the apostle had been engaged" (New Testament Foundations, Volume 1: The Four Gospels [Grand Rapids and Exeter, 1975], p. 281).

64. C. S. Petrie has made a careful examination of the evidence in his article "The Authorship of 'The Gospel according to Matthew': A Reconsideration of the External Evidence" (NTS, 14 [1967-68], pp. 15-32). He speaks of John the Elder as "that elusive mythical figure that for so long has bedevilled students of the Fourth Gospel" and goes on, "We must see just how Eusebius brings him into the picture and why; and then, after wondering at the fuss he has been allowed to cause, consign him to oblivion" (p. 20). J. A. T. Robinson says, "as author of the Gospel he is a mere construct of modern scholarship. In fact it is at least doubtful whether he ever even existed as a second character (he is not alluded to anywhere else in ancient literature)" (The Priority of John [London, 1985], p. 103).

65. Sometimes the view is reinforced by the assertion that the Apostle John was martyred early. But the evidence for this is very shaky. See SFG, pp. 280-92. And it is curious that those who put forward this theory do not usually take notice of the fact that, even if it be accepted at its face value, it does not say when John was martyred. At best it says that James and John were both killed by the Jews. It says nothing about time or place, or whether the two were martyred together. Yet this is obviously the critical point.

66. Jean le Theologien (Paris, 1959), pp. 396-97.

67. Schnackenburg, I, p. 102.

68. Α. Η. N. Green-Armytage, John Who Saw (London, 1952), p. 132.

69. Β. H. Streeter, for example, argued that John the elder need not have come into contact with the apostle very much (he thinks that he derived most of his facts from Mark or Luke): "We need only postulate for him a connection with the Apostle and an attitude to his memory comparable to that of Irenaeus towards Polycarp. A brief and, as it seemed in the halo of later recollection, a wonderful connection with the Apostle — perhaps also a few never-to-be-forgotten words of Christ derived from his lips — would make the attitude towards the Beloved Disciple expressed in the Gospel psychologically explicable" (The Four Gospels [London, 1930], p. 433). But that is just what it would not do. Plainly Streeter did not reflect on his analogy. Irenaeus clearly thought a great deal of Polycarp. But the point is that he said so. He mentioned the name and he spoke of things Polycarp said and did. Streeter, however, asks us to believe that the Elder John all but obliterated his hero. That is psychologically impossible.

70. The Son of Zebedee (London, 1927), p. 86.

71. Or "Pure"; the word is άγνοϋ.

72. Cited from Η. P. V. (wrongly given on the title page as Η. V. P.) Nunn, Christian Inscriptions (Eton, 1951), p. 30.

73. E.g., ODCC, s.v. "Abercius."

74. Some Johannine Problems, p. 8.

75. L. T. Johnson, The Writings of the New Testament (Philadelphia, 1986), p. 470.

76. R. A. Edwards gives as one reason for his accepting the Johannine authorship that "the alternative suggestions seemed far too complicated for them to be possible in a real world where living men met and talked" (The Gospel according to St. John [London, 1954], p. ix).

77. Michaels sees the apostle John as the author, but this "does not necessarily mean that he composed it all at once." He finds "a complex creative process centering on the historical and theological reflections of one man as hammered out in the context of a particular community of faith and in relation to that community's concerns" (Michaels, p. xxii).

78. Kysar, p. 92.

79. For Marshall see The Illustrated Bible Dictionary, ed. J. D. Douglas et al. (Leicester, 1980), II, p. 804, and for Robinson see The Priority of John. p. 122.

80. Sometimes the position is oversimplified. M. S. Enslin, for example, wrote: "every critic, whatever his views as to the author, agrees that the gospel cannot antedate the year 100" (Christian Beginnings [New York and London, 1938], p. 448). This was not true in 1938 and it is not true now.

81. Cf. C. C. Torrey: "At the annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature and Exegesis in New York City, in December, 1934, I challenged my New Testament colleagues to designate even one passage, from any of the Four Gospels, giving clear evidence of a date later than 50 a.d., or of origin outside Palestine. The challenge was not met, nor will it be, for there is no such passage" (Our Translated Gospels, p. x). At least this incident shows that the evidence for a late date is not obvious.

82. See below, pp. 43ff.

83. Redating the New Testament, p. 276.

84. Cf. R. M. Grant, "The only grounds on which this point [i.e. that John is earlier or later than the Synoptics] can definitely be 'proved' lie in a general theory of the development of early Christian thought, and the chief support of this theory is provided by the Gospel itself. Since the argument is circular we shall do well to neglect it" (A Historical Introduction to the New Testament [London, 1963], p. 155).

85. A Critical Introduction to the New Testament (London, 1966), p. 176.

86. Turner, p. 18.

87. Redating the New Testament, pp. 280-82.

88. Cf. R. M. Grant, "This outside evidence, scanty though it is, confirms our impression that the evangelist is dealing with the real problem presented by those who revered the Baptist more highly than Jesus. This feature of his gospel suggests that it was written at a relatively early date" (A Historical Introduction, p. 153).

89. New Horizons in Biblical Research (London, 1966), p. 46.

90. JThS, XLVII (1947), p. 209.

91. Some Johannine Problems, p. 113.

92. See JBL, LXXXIX (1970), pp. 38-55; the quotation is on p. 55.

93. A. M. Hunter comes somewhere near this when he says, "It might have been written about 80; but then again it might have been written a decade earlier" (Interpreting the New Testament, p. 222). C. L. Mitton mentions this verdict approvingly (ExT, LXXI [1959-60], p. 340). R. M. Grant thinks that it was written "around the time of the Roman-Jewish war of 66-70 (probably not long after it)" (A Historical Introduction, p. 160).

94. Cf. J. A. T. Robinson: "The decisive question is the status and origin of the Johannine tradition. Did this come out of the blue round about the year A.D. 100? Or is there a real continuity, not merely in the memory of one old man, but in the life of an on-going community, with the earliest days of Christianity? What, I think, fundamentally distinguishes the 'new look' on the fourth Gospel is that it answers that question in the affirmative" (SE, I, p. 350). Robinson, of course, has since argued that the Gospel was written before A.D. 70.

95. This is as old as Clement of Alexandria, who thought that John was content with "the bodily facts" (τα σωματικά) in the Synoptists, but wrote as well "a spiritual Gospel" (πνευματικόν εύαγγὲλιον) (Eusebius, HE 6.14.7).

96. A. Wikenhauser further points out that "if it was John's intention to supplement the Synoptics, he would certainly have shown clearly how his account was to be harmonized with theirs" (New Testament Introduction [New York, 1958], p. 301). The difficulties in harmonizing the accounts are, of course, notorious.

97. D. Guthrie cites H. Windisch, supported by W. Bauer, for this view (New Testament Introduction: The Gospels and Acts [London, 1965], p. 249 and η. 1).

98. This view is as old as Irenaeus, who viewed the Gospel as written to oppose Cerinthus (Adv. Haer. 3.11.1).

99. See the comments by R. M. Grant and J. Munck on p. 58, nn. 191 and 192 below.

100. Gk. δοκείν, "to seem," gives the name to the heresy.

101. J. N. D. Kelly points out that the first person to mention Docetists (δοκηταί) is Serapion of Antioch (ft. 200). "But Docetism was not a simple heresy on its own; it was an attitude which infected a number of heresies, particularly Marcionism and Gnosticism" (Early Christian Doctrines [London, 1958], p. 141). The attitude appears to have been earlier than the emergence of fully developed Docetism.

102. Lindars, pp. 61-63.

103. A curiosity of scholarship is the view of E. L. Titus that this Gospel teaches Docetism: "with the descent of the Spirit — the point of the Incarnation — that humanity ceased to operate, except in terms of the physical organism: he walked about, used the voice mechanism, etc., but the mental and spiritual qualities were no longer those of a man. From the point of the Incarnation, the continuum of the human element remained only in the minds of the Jews" (The Message of the Fourth Gospel [New York, 1957], p. 33). If this is not Docetism, it is Apollinarianism. Either way Titus makes our author a heretic. Another author who regards John as heretical is E. Käsemann, who says forthrightly, "From the historical viewpoint, the Church committed an error when it declared the Gospel to be orthodox" (The Testament of Jesus [London, 1968], p. 76). He says that this Gospel's "acceptance into the Church's canon took place through man's error and God's providence" (ibid., p. 75). I have examined Kasemann's position in "The Jesus of Saint John," in Robert A. Guelich, ed., Unity and Diversity in New Testament Theology (Grand Rapids, 1978), pp. 37-53. Raymond E. Brown thinks John's statements are closer to Monophysitism than to Docetism but rejects both views (Interpretation, XXI [1967], p. 399, n. 27).

104. C. F. D. Moule points out that this Gospel "contains tough polemic against Jews." He thinks that here there "may be good traditions of the actual controversies of Christ's own lifetime, preserved and reset in such a way as to be entirely topical to the evangelist's own circumstances" (The Birth of the New Testament [London, 1962], pp. 94 and 95).

105. W. Baldensperger is usually cited as the outstanding example of a scholar who viewed John this way. I do not think that any recent writer sees this as the dominant purpose of the Evangelist, though many hold that it was one of his subordinate aims (e.g. Strachan, pp. 109-12).

106. For John's followers as a continuing movement see C. Η. H. Scobie, John the Baptist (London, 1964), ch. XII.

107. . Thus in discussing John 6 Odeberg refers to the views of J. Kreyenbühl, who, he says, "maintains that the section really speaks of the Eucharist, but not by way of advocating it but by way of a strong rejection of this sacrament, as being a ritus, an institution of the Church. The object of the Evangelist is, acc. to Kreyenbühl, to put against the Sacrament of the Church ... his own spiritual understanding: the real flesh and blood of the Son of Man (= the Evangelist) are his teaching, his religion, his life in God and of God, and these only are potent of eternal Life" (FG, p. 237). Cf. Also E. C. Colwell and E. L. Titus: "We would go so far as to say that the Fourth Gospel represents a reaction to an increasing suppression of spontaneous religious experience through the substitution of an ex opere operato sacramental ritual" (The Gospel of the Spirit [New York, 1953], p. 52).

108. Cf. O. Cullmann, "Scholars have long ago observed and commentators fittingly commented upon the author's deep interest in the sacraments, in this or that passage. We mean to go further, however, and to show how the Gospel of John regards it as one of its chief concerns to set forth the connexion between the contemporary Christian worship and the historical life of Jesus" (Early Christian Worship [London, 1953], p. 37). K. and S. Lake think of this Gospel as written "by a Hellenistic Christian in order to support the sacramental theology which finds a centre in the divine Jesus" (An Introduction to the New Testament [London, 1938], p. 51; see also pp. 61-62).

109. Cf. E. F. Scott: "In order that the religion might naturalise itself in the larger Gentile world to which, since the days of Paul, it had chiefly appealed, it required to find expression in the Hellenic modes of thought. . . . The writer of the Fourth Gospel, not content with employing a Greek idea here and there, attempts an entire restatement of the Christian message in terms of the current philosophy" (The Fourth Gospel, p. 6).

110. This seems to be the view of C. H. Dodd: "It seems therefore that we are to think of the work as addressed to a wide public consisting primarily of devout and thoughtful persons ... in the varied and cosmopolitan society of a great Hellenistic city such as Ephesus under the Roman Empire" (IFG, p. 9).

111. H. G. G. Herklots makes an important point as he concludes his discussion of John: "The Greek world wanted Jesus at its own price, as a spiritual influence only, and not as one who had taken on flesh and blood. It was only through being lifted up from the earth, in the bitter anguish of crucifixion, that He began the process in which history finds its meaning and consummation, of drawing all men to Himself" (A Fresh Approach to the New Testament [London, 1950], p. 121). This Gospel makes good use of terms intelligible in the Hellenistic world, but it is to impress ideas that are not Hellenistic.

112. There is a textual problem as to whether the present or the aorist subjunctive of the verb πιστεύω should be read. On the whole it seems that the present is somewhat more probable. Some authors argue from this that the meaning is "that you may continue to believe," and they deduce that John wrote primarily to Christians to strengthen their faith. Thus F. V. Filson thinks there is no doubt about John's purpose, and he cites this text. But a little later he says, "he aimed, not primarily to win new converts or to convince his opponents, but to state the role of Jesus Christ in such a way that his role as Son of God, as the Father's agent in creating and upholding the world, and as the Savior and Lord of the world, would be plain, and so the church would be saved from despising or disparaging the historical Jesus" (A New Testament History [London, 1965], pp. 374, 376-77). But this seems to be reading a good deal into the tense.

113. C. H. Dodd points out that, quite apart from grammatical considerations, the Gospel shows that its author "is thinking in the first place, not so much of Christians who need a deeper theology, as of non-Christians who are concerned about eternal life and the way to it, and may be ready to follow the Christian way if this is presented to them in terms that are intelligibly related to their previous religious interests and experience" (IFG, p. 9).

114. Cf. C. F. D. Moule: "This Gospel, unlike the others, answers the question, 'What must I do to be saved?' The others mainly confine themselves to the story of discipleship; the Fourth Gospel speaks in terms not only of following and imitation, but of belief and incorporation" (The Birth of the New Testament, p. 94). He immediately goes on, "What is less often noticed is that it also answers the question 'What must I do . . .' — it is an extremely individualistic message. ... St John sees Jesus as the source of life, to be connected with whom is, for each individual, life eternal." In a number of places Moule insists on the individualism of this Gospel.

115. See further SFG, ch. 2.

116. Cf. Marsh, "John seems to have believed that theology was not something which could be used to read a meaning into events, but rather something that was to be discovered in them. His story is what it is because his theology is what it is; but his theology is what it is because the story happened so" (pp. 580-81).

117. Cf. Titus: "it is natural for the modern mind, unaccustomed to ways of antiquity, to view the material as history. This view has vitiated even the best of modern commentaries"; "If, at any point, his narrative conveys information on the subject, it is more by accident than by intent"; "the question of the historical accuracy of the medium of communication is quite beside the point" (The Message of the Fourth Gospel, pp. 13,14, 21).

118. A good example is W. H. Brownlee's verdict on what the Scrolls have shown us about the teaching of John the Baptist: "The most astonishing result of all is the validation of the Fourth Gospel as an authentic source concerning the Baptist" (SNT, p. 52).

119. See SFG, pp. 110-12.

120. Cf. B. W. Bacon: "In an age so eagerly bent on ascertaining the historic facts regarding Jesus' life, and the true sequence of events (Luke i.1-4), it is insupposable that an author so strenuous to uphold the concrete reality of the church's historic tradition should not give real history so far as he was able. He could not afford to depreciate it in the face of Docetic myth and fancy and contempt for a 'Christ in the flesh' " (The Making of the New Testament [London, n.d.J, p. 222). Bacon, it is true, thinks that John wrote late and that "real history was no longer attainable" (p. 223). But that is another matter. If John was early or had access to reliable tradition, real history was attainable and on Bacon's showing he must have used it.

121. See "The Gospel Tradition and its Beginnings," in SE, I, pp. 43-65. The point of view is argued more fully by B. Gerhardsson in Memory and Manuscript (Uppsala, 1961). This view has been vigorously criticized, as, for example, by C. F. Evans in Theology, LXI (1958), pp. 355-62. J. J. Vincent summarizes in SE, III, pp. 105-18.1 have written on this at somewhat greater length in SFG, pp. 131-37.

122. SE, I, p. 61.

123. SE, I, p. 55.

124. SE, I, p. 59.

125. SE, I, p. 63.

126. NTS, 12 (1965-66), pp. 10-26.

127. Hoskyns, p. 117.

128. History and Theology in the Fourth Gospel². (Nashville, 1979), p. 62.

129. The New Testament as Canon, p. 133.

130. Tyndale Bulletin, 17 (1966), p. 45.

131. Ibid., p. 49.

132. William Temple says, "A good photograph is vastly preferable to a bad portrait. But the great portrait painter may give a representation of a man which no photographer can emulate." He goes on to suggest that the Synoptists "may give us something more like the perfect photograph; St John gives us the more perfect portrait" (p. xvi). It might be more accurate to speak of the Synoptists as also giving us portraits (after all, different painters may paint differing, but worthwhile portraits of the same sitter). Each brings out some of the original that the others miss. See further the comments by Albright and Mitton, p. 15 above.

133. This topic is treated at greater length in SFG, ch. 1.

134. See, for example, Ε. K. Lee, "St Mark and the Fourth Gospel," NTS, 3 (1956-57), pp. 50-58.

135. The evidence is set out by J. M. Creed, The Gospel according to St. Luke (London, 1950), pp. 318-21.

136. H. F. D. Sparks argues that John knew Matthew JTS, n.s. ΙII [1952], pp. 58-61). See also the reply by P. Gardner-Smith (JTS, n.s. IV [1953], pp. 31-35).

137. Saint John and the Synoptic Gospels (Cambridge, 1938).

138. Kümmel cites as supporters of John's independence of the Synoptists Michaelis, Manson, Menoud, J. A. T. Robinson, Sanders, Wilkens, and Higgins. He lists others who hold that John knew none of the Synoptists though he did know the tradition they reproduce, namely Feine-Behm, Connick, Noack, Mendner, Feuillet, Klijn, Heard, F. C. Grant, Bultmann, Dodd, Hunter, Kasemann, Borgen, Haenchen, Grundmann; Buse and Temple hold that John knew one of Mark's sources (Introduction, pp. 143-44).

139. Barrett, pp. 43-45.

140. Gardner-Smith, however, suggests that "it may have been customary at quite an early period to relate the story of Christ's walking on the water immediately after the story of the feeding of the five thousand" (Saint John and the Synoptic Gospels, p. 89, n.). If this were so, Barrett's point would have less force. Is it too prosaic to suggest that they are in this order because this is the order in which they happened?

141. Cf. Ε. B. Redlich, "This is identification run riot, for the words of confession are too unlike to be referred to one event; besides the locality is not the same" (An Introduction to the Fourth Gospel [London, 1939], p. 71).

142. Cf. Kümmel, "The number of texts for which a dependence of John upon the Synoptics can be defended with any reason is astonishingly small, and by closer inspection even for those texts the number of divergencies is far greater than that of the agreements" (Introduction, p. 144); he thinks, however, that John probably had Mark and Luke in mind "and used them from memory" (p. 145).

143. For a fuller treatment see SFG, pp. 15-19.

144. Thus Gardner-Smith draws attention to three verbal correspondences in the narratives of the Anointing and proceeds, "All these three are of a kind very easily remembered, striking in character, and therefore likely to become stereotyped in oral tradition" (Saint John and the Synoptic Gospels, p. 49).

145. Howard summarizes the principal theories of textual dislocation (FGRCI,

146. Bernard, p. xx.

147. The Structure of the Fourth Gospel (Edinburgh and London, 1961), p. 70.

148. IFG, p. 340.

149. Bernard, pp. xxviii-xxx.

150. There is a further difficulty concerning the dating of the use of the codex form. Bernard's view will not stand, I think, if the roll form was used for the original writing of this Gospel. The codex form does not seem to have been widely used until the second century A.D. (F. G. Kenyon, Our Bible and the Ancient Manuscripts [London, 1939], pp. 12-13). It may be just early enough for the autograph of John, but it is a near thing. As Guthrie puts it, "there is no certain evidence to show whether codices were used quite as early as this" (New Testament Introduction, p. 287).

151. "Neither displacement theories nor redaction theories are needed to explain the present state of the gospel" (Barrett, p. 26).

152. "Unfortunately, when once the gospel has been taken to pieces, its reassemblage is liable to be affected by individual preferences, preconceptions and even prejudices. ... If ... it should appear that the structure of the gospel as we have it has been shaped in most of its details by the ideas which seem to dominate the author's thought, then it would appear not improbable that we have his work before us substantially in the form which he designed" (IFG, p. 240).

153. "It is reasonable to hold that no attempt should be made to alter the order of the text as we have it" (Lightfoot, p. 8).

154. Wright, p. 29. He goes on, "Not only so, but by the multiplicity and diversity of our schemes of rearrangement we are in danger of making our conclusions a laughing-stock to those not yet bereft of a sense of humour." Haenchen surveys a number of theories and concludes succinctly, "The time of theories of displacement is gone" (Haenchen, p. 51).

155. There is a useful summary of "Theories of Partition and Redaction" in Howard, FGRCI, pp. 297-302. See also Guthrie, New Testament Introduction, pp. 275-87, and especially Kysar, pp. 13-81.

156. R. H. Strachan in the earlier editions of his commentary worked on the theory of redaction, but abandoned it in the third edition, where he says, "All attempts ... to discover the work of different hands in the Gospel have reached hardly any agreement, and are open to the charge of oversubtlety" (Strachan, p. 81).

157. For a convenient summary see Bultmann, pp. 6-7. Hengel says that E. Ruckstuhl has shown that "from a stylistic point of view there is no justification for Bultmann's numerous literary-critical operations." Further, "The Fourth Gospel is 'a unitary work throughout', 'it has a clear ground plan of its own' and forms 'an unusually strong stylistic unity' which includes ch. 21." Ruckstuhl's conclusions, Hengel says, "have never really been refuted" (Hengel, p. 89).

158. The Gospel of Signs (Cambridge, 1970).

159. The Fourth Gospel and its Predecessor (Philadelphia, 1988). Hengel thinks that this book is "totally unsatisfactory"; it ignores the work of A. Schweizer and B. Noack and relegates E. Ruckstuhl to one footnote, while its own investigation of style "is more than scanty" (Hengel, p. 203, n. 72). He also speaks of Ruckstuhl as "taking apart piece by piece the opposed theses of R. T. Fortna" (p. 90).

160. Η. M. Teeple, The Literary Origin of the Gospel of John (Evanston, 1974); W. Nicol, The Semeia in the Fourth Gospel (Leiden, 1972). C. K. Barrett forthrightly says that the theory of "a special source consisting of miracles" is "nonsense" (Essays on John [London, 1982], p. 76).

161. JBL, 97 (1978), pp. 411-29. The quotations are from p. 428.

162. Howard produces tables that show the incidence of certain stylistic characteristics. He says, "It would be absurd to claim that they amount to a demonstration. We may, however, point out that there is a remarkable distribution of these characteristics through all parts of the Gospel, narrative and discourse, Galilean and Judaean" (FGRCI, p, 107; the tables are found in Appendix B, pp. 276-81). See also the studies by Vern Poythress in NovT, 26 (1984), pp. 312-40; WThJ, XLVI (1984), pp. 350-69. He argues that the use of de, oun, kai, and asyndeton show that the Fourth Gospel differs from other New Testament books, but that in the use of these constructions the Fourth Gospel is remarkably uniform. J. J. O'Rourke has examined the use of the historic present in John and demonstrated that it "does not show any pattern nor does it provide any evidence for determining sources" (JBL, 93 [1974], pp. 585-90; the words quoted are on p. 590). Η. M. Teeple argues that "four main writers are involved: the authors of two written sources, the editor who used portions of the sources in his composition, and the redactor" (The Literary Origin of the Gospel of John, p. 249). But few authors have been persuaded. R. Kysar reviews Teeple's book sympathetically but says, "this is a study vulnerable to serious criticism" (JBL, 93 [1974], p. 310). W. Nicol has stressed the place of redaction in his The Semeia in the Fourth Gospel (Leiden, 1972).

163. The Four Gospels, p. 377. It is hard to dissent from Kysar's view that "it would seem fair to conclude that the method of source criticism of the fourth gospel is somewhat in shambles" (Kysar, p. 24). There is a well-known dictum of Pierson Parker, "It looks as though, if the author of the fourth Gospel used documentary sources, he wrote them all himself" (JBL, 75 [1956], p. 304).

164. See p. xli.

165. Even when an author does not impose his own stamp as thoroughly as does John, the difficulty of detecting sources may be immense. If I may quote Streeter again, "In Mark we have extant one of the main sources of both Matthew and Luke. But if we had before us only Matthew, or only Luke, no critic on earth would have been able to reconstruct a source like Mark. Even where we have two copies of a lost document to help us, we are at times baffled; witness the fact that no one has yet made a convincing reconstruction of Q" (The Four Gospels, p. 378).

166. W. G. Kümmel examines and rejects a number of different source theories with comments like: "these partition hypotheses have proved to be inadequately grounded in respect to methodology" (Introduction, p. 141); "the tenability of such source theories has been fundamentally disputed with the help of vocabulary statistics" (idem); The more far-reaching hypotheses of Wellhausen, Schwarz, and Hirsch, according to which John arose through extensive expansion of a 'Grundschrift,' can only be designated as arbitrary and undemonstrable" (p. 150). He rejects the theories of Eckhardt, Boismard, Broome, and Macgregor and Morton. He is more respectful of Bultmann, but rejects his views, too (pp. 150-52).

167. Reynolds, I, pp. cxxiii-cxxv.

168. I have tried to show that John habitually introduces small changes in "Variation — A Feature of the Johannine Style" (SFG, ch. 5).

169. Philadelphia, 1983.

170. P. 49, n. 65.

171. Brown, pp. xxxiv-xxxvi.

172. Kysar, p. 53. He says that Brown's five-stage theory "seems supremely imprecise" (p. 52), and that Lindars has "only the rather subjective appraisal of plausibility upon which to rely" (p. 53).

173. "The hypothesis that (the Johannine discourses) were in the first place sermons delivered by the evangelist and subsequently (perhaps even after his death) arranged in the gospel has much to commend it" (Barrett, p. 21). Brown emphasizes the place of "oral preaching and teaching" in stage 2 of the formation of this Gospel (Brown, I, ρ. XXXV). Lindars assigns a large place to "the homilies of John" (Lindars, pp. 51-54).

174. Though Eusebius says he used "unwritten preaching" άγράφφ κηρύγματι, HE 3.24.7.

175. See further my essay "The Composition of the Fourth Gospel," in W. Ward Gasque and W. S. LaSor, eds., Scripture, Tradition, and Interpretation (Grand Rapids, 1978), pp. 157-75.

176. The Writings of the New Testament, p. 470.

177. Adv. Haer. 3.1.1 (ANF, I, p. 414).

178. Turner and Mantey, however, discount this: "The Odes of Solomon were viewed by Harnack as affording an important source of ideas for the Fourth Gospel, but subsequent research has modified this judgment and virtually annulled it" (p. 7). Barrett thinks that the parallels "hardly go beyond what might reasonably be expected in two Christian writers who use a variety of images to express union with Christ and the blessings that flow from that union" (Barrett, p. 65).

179. An Introduction to the New Testament (Leiden, 1967), p. 59.

180. So K. and S. Lake (Introduction, p. 53).

181. See FG passim.

182. See SFG, ch. 6.

183. E.g., Barrett, p. 31. In his Franz Delitzsch lectures Barrett insists that Judaism is part of the background of this Gospel. He can say things like "John is both Jewish and anti-Jewish" (The Gospel of John and Judaism [London, 1975], p. 71).

184. "One clue is crystal clear, namely, that contemporary research favors a Palestinian, Old Testament, Jewish setting for the thought of the gospel" (Kysar, p. 144). Barrett has brought out very clearly the importance of more than one strand of Judaism for an understanding of this Gospel (The Gospel of John and Judaism).

185. Dodd regards Philo as important (IFG, pp. 54-73). So also A, W. Argyle, ExT, LXIII (1951-52), pp. 385-86.

186. IFG, pp. 10-53; The Bible and the Greeks (London, 1954), pp. 99-248.

187. See Studies in the Fourth Gospel, ed. F. L. Cross (London, 1957), pp. 36-44. He concludes that "we can discard the Hermetica along with the Mandaean texts and other evidences of Gnosticism. They constitute no significant part of the background of the Gospel, they do not provide the key to its interpretation" (p. 43).

188. N. Perrin and D. C. Duling say, "Certainly no one would deny the diversified nature of John's Jewish environment. ... It seems all observers acknowledge a highly complex environment which might, for want of precise language, be called syncretistic Hellenistic Judaism" (The New Testament, An Introduction²[San Diego, 1982], p. 342). Cf. Kysar, "contemporary research favors a Palestinian, Old Testament, Jewish setting for the thought of the gospel" (Kysar, p. 144).

189. IFG, p. 115.

190. See, for example, Primitive Christianity in its Contemporary Setting (London, 1956), pp. 163-64.

191. Cf. R. M. Grant: "The most obvious explanation of the origin of the Gnostic redeemer is that he was modelled after the Christian conception of Jesus. It seems significant that we know no redeemer before Jesus, while we encounter other redeemers (Simon Magus, Menander) immediately after his time" (Gnosticism [London, 1961], p. 18). Again, G. Quispel, writing on the Gnostic documents of Chenoboskion, sees the possibility of giving "the death-sentence to Bultmann's hypothesis of a pre-Christian Gnostic Redeemer" (The Jung Codex, p. 38).

192. J. Munck has an incisive criticism of Bultmann: "Bultmann believes he can prove that the Gospel of St. John presupposes this redeemer myth and can only be understood in the light of it. But no attempt has been made at a critical evaluation of the material cited, and the author does not distinguish between probable dependence, the use of the same terminus technicus in the same sense and in quite another sense, ana the use of the same imagery in the same sense and in quite another, and therefore probably entirely irrelevant, sense. For these reasons the data so meritoriously assembled form only a kind of valuable raw material for defining concepts and have not the power of a proof, as Bultmann believed" (W. Klassen and G. F. Snyder, eds., Current Issues in New Testament Interpretation [London, 1962], pp. 227-28).

193. See above, p. 31.

194. Munck objects even to the term "proto-gnostic" (as implying "that the proto-gnostic forms a preliminary to Gnosticism"), and prefers "syncretistic" as "a term which does not definitely anticipate the specially gnostic but merely describes an observed phenomenon as a single expression of the religious mixture from which Gnosticism derives" (Current Issues, pp. 236-37).

195. The Fourth Gospel, p. 46. Moffatt puts "Paulinism" at the head of "the main currents which flow through the gospel" apart from the Old Testament (An Introduction to the Literature of the New Testament [Edinburgh, 1927], p. 522).

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