JOHN REFLECTION - Week 1

To kick off our reflections on the daily reading through the Gospel of John, I’ve got two things for you. One theological point and one on the world behind the Bible.

1)   Jesus, the Lamb of God

2)   The authorship of John

1)  Jesus, the Lamb of God

This is a fun little snippet from John 1 – following the unusual introduction (which I unpacked a bit on Sunday, catch up here if you missed it), the first thing we read is a proclamation from John the Baptist;

“Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29, NRSV)

This is followed soon after by another similar verse;

“The next day John again was standing with two of his disciples, and as he watched Jesus walk by he exclaimed, “Look, here is the Lamb of God!” ( John 1:35-36)

The title ‘Lamb of God’ is not found in the other gospel accounts, so this is an instance of John’s author wanting to emphasise something particular, for a particular reason. And the deployment of this title at the beginning of the gospel suggests that this is a key characteristic of Jesus that is being highlighted. First, we hear that Jesus is the Word of God and now the Lamb of God. John is not shy to tell the readers who Jesus is from the outset.

What does Lamb of God mean? And why is it important for John to communicate that in the beginning of the gospel account? Well, for those who are more familiar with the Christian faith and some of the symbolic language used, you might recognise this title.

The straight forward explanation is that this is a foreshadowing of the sacrifice made by Jesus, connecting that with the tradition of a sacrificial lamb – introduced in the story of Abraham and Isaac, but brought into greater significance in the Passover event of Exodus (Exodus 12). It isn’t necessarily the symbolism that’s the interesting thing, however, but the apparent contradiction between two gospel accounts which serves to highlight the lamb imagery. This comes in some of the details of Jesus’ death.

Mark 15:25 - It was nine o’clock in the morning when they crucified him.

John 19:14 - Now it was the day of Preparation for the Passover, and it was about noon.

John’s gospel, unlike the others, doesn’t include a Passover meal as the last supper. Instead, we see that Jesus was killed around noon on the day of Preparation, where Mark, for instance, has a Passover meal on the evening and then Jesus killed at 9am the next day. Traditionally, the lamb used for the Passover meal would have been killed at midday on the day of preparation, in advance of the meal that evening.

So in John’s gospel, Jesus appears to die 21 hours earlier than in Mark’s gospel – which can’t both be technically accurate. But, in considering the passage in John 1, where Jesus is introduced as the Lamb of God, we can see that John’s gospel is using this detail to further connect Jesus with the Passover lamb.

This is just one of many instances where our modern sensibilities might think ‘contradiction’ when actually the text is doing something really clever!

2)  The authorship of John

So, to pre-empt this, I said on Sunday that ultimately, we don’t know who wrote what we call the Gospel of John. With that in mind, what I’ll do here is show how we ended up attributing this text to John, and offer some evidence as to why that might not be the case.

Tradition holds that it is written by John, who was one of the twelve disciples of Jesus. Certainly, given the detail of some of this account, in particular some of the private moments that only the disciples would know about, it makes sense to think of this as originating with a disciple. However, ancient texts are often not that straight forward.

Let’s read the main passage which shapes some ideas around authorship. This is the very end of the gospel – like letters, some ancient texts would have either an introduction or a sign off, or both, from the author. That is what this appears to be.

Peter turned and saw the disciple whom Jesus loved following them; he was the one who had reclined next to Jesus at the supper and had said, “Lord, who is it that is going to betray you?” When Peter saw him, he said to Jesus, “Lord, what about him?” Jesus said to him, “If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you? Follow me!” So the rumour spread among the brothers and sisters that this disciple would not die. Yet Jesus did not say to him that he would not die, but, “If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you?”

This is the disciple who is testifying to these things and has written them, and we know that his testimony is true. But there are also many other things that Jesus did; if every one of them were written down, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written. (John 21:20-25)

This reads as though it is a formal ending, suggesting that ‘the disciple whom Jesus loved’ was the one who wrote the gospel account.

The first question, then, is who is that disciple? The language used suggests an intimate relationship, as does as a story in John 13:23, when this disciple reclines ‘close to his (Jesus’) heart’ We know from the synoptic gospels that there are three disciples who are especially close to Jesus – Peter, James and John. ‘The disciple whom Jesus loved’ can’t be Peter, as they are mentioned in the same stories. It is unlikely to be James as we know that he died in 44AD (see Acts 12:2), which is long before this text would have been written.

That leaves us with John.

Another aspect of this tradition is that the earliest recorded identification of this as ‘John’s Gospel’ was by someone called Irenaeus, a hugely influential early church father, around the end of the 2nd century. Even though this was up to around 100 years after ‘John’ was written, such was the influence of Irenaeus that his claims were often taken as fact. With his views on record, this understanding of the authorship of the gospel was cemented into common understanding – and there was no real cause for dispute. Irenaeus was similarly responsible for the earliest recorded naming of Luke’s gospel.

So, what changed?

Well, the modern discipline of textual criticism leaves no stone unturned and over the past 100 years or so, scholars have had a renewed focus on understanding the historical context in which the bible was formed.

But it doesn’t take long before even we can see some of the potential flaws in attributing this gospel to the Apostle John.

First, literacy rates in the ancient world were very low. Studies have suggested that, at most, only around 10% of people could read in antiquity. Perhaps only as few as 3 or 4% could write, and that might only be being able to sign their names. The main concentration of those who could read and write would have been in cities, where there was an infrastructure of education and business. Whilst Jewish communities would likely have placed greater importance on literacy, the chances that John, a rural fisherman who evidently took up the family trade rather than progress in his religious studies, being able to read and write a text, let alone one of this complexity, are very low.

There is also another sign within the text. Our passage earlier came at the end of John 21, but let’s take a look at the end of John 20, the penultimate chapter in the gospel;

30 Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples that are not written in this book. 31 But these are written so that you may continue to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.

Here we have another fairly traditional ending to a text - a summarising statement and a declaration of the purpose. This ending, which comes after the resurrection appearances, could have been the ending to the gospel.

There are some scholars who argue that this is the ending of John originally, and that John 21 was added as a kind of editors note, or an epilogue. That would suggest that if someone did add 21, particularly that last paragraph, they are seeking to attribute the text to the Beloved Disciple. This was fairly common practice in ancient texts, with numerous other biblical texts being named after people who might not have been involved.

There were a number of reasons this might happen, but a leading suggestion is simply that the author, or perhaps a community of authors, of this gospel account were influenced by the teaching of John. They could even have been his followers. Mark’s gospel is thought to have been written by a follower of Peter, and Luke is believed to have been a follower of Paul, so this is in keeping with the pattern of connections to those who lived these stories. The author/s of John’s gospel seemed to have interwoven some recollections and stories about the life of Jesus with themes that resonated for their community in their time, for instance the challenges to the Gnostics that I mentioned on Sunday.

As I said to begin, we don’t know who wrote this gospel, and we don’t know where it was written. But we do have some signs as to what their purpose is in writing and, most importantly, we find in John an exceptionally valuable insight into the life of Jesus and some wonderful stories and teachings that aren’t included in the synoptic gospels.

We are undoubtedly better off for having the Gospel of John in our bibles, and I’m really looking forward to delving in deeper over these coming weeks!