John - Introduction (1)

Having worked through all of the Bible in my daily blog now is the time for something different. I am going to stick with the Bible (a wise thing to do!), but am going to do an in-depth study of John’s gospel. This will not be a commentary as such (at least I don’t think it will), there are numerous commentaries on John, and written by people far better theologically qualified than I am. My hope is that by carrying out this in-depth study it encourages and strengthens me (almost certain to happen) and that it will also help build-up you who read this blog.

It isn’t an academic paper or book I am writing, so I am not, on the whole, going to give references and footnotes. However, any insight I gain and give will be due in part at least to the work of others that I have read. So here are the two main sources that have helped me:

• John (Tyndale New Testament Commentary), Colin G Kruse, IVP, ISBN 0-85111-327-3 (2003)
• A Commentary on the Gospel of John, David Pawson, Anchor Recordings Limited, ISBN 0957529031 (2013)

There will be other sources that have helped me, but these are the main two. Why these two? Well the first is a traditional commentary, yet easily understood and beneficial to anyone prepared to think a little, it is also written from an evangelical perspective, accepting the Bible as the word of God. The second is written much more from the point of view of a preacher (indeed it was produced out if a series of talks), ie geared more directly to life application, but still containing significant theological insights. So they complement each other well. However, I have to say that I found the commentary by Kruse the more useful of the two.

Authorship and Data

I am not going to dwell on this aspect much, but will say a little as it is quite instructive to do so in this case. I take the book to have been written by John the disciple (as were the three letters of John, and Revelation for that matter). So what is the evidence for the Johannine authorship? Most of this is taken from Kruse. Well many of the early church fathers such as Papias Bishop of Hierapolis, Clement, Polycrates and Irenaeus refer to it as being written by John. John is believed to have written this while he lived in Ephesus.

In the gospel itself, while it does not state explicitly that it was written by John, there verses like John 21:24 that states “this is the disciple who testifies to these things and who wrote them down. We know this testimony is true”. The gospel also demonstrates an intimate knowledge of Christ, containing many personal prayers and teachings from Jesus, and it makes most sense for this to have come from one of His disciples, and John is one of the three who was closest to Jesus.

Now we come to some really useful information. By the end of the nineteenth century the dominant view amongst  scholars was that it was written in the latter half of the second century, ie there was no way it could have been written by a disciple under this view. This piece of nonsense was blown apart in 1920 when a fragment (P52), dated to about 125 AD, was discovered containing five verses from chapter 18. This just goes to show that trusting the Bible is the best thing to do and so-called learned scholars are not always quite so learned as they imagine themselves to be. This in no way is anti-scholarship, we can gain an awful lot from academic study (indeed we wouldn’t have our English versions of the Bible without it. In the case of the Message this might be considered a blessing :-)). Generally it is thought to have been written in the latter part of the first century, though there are some who place it as early as the 60’s.