The Gospel of John: A Verse-by-Verse Exposition

INTRODUCTION

1. The Evangelist and his Gospel

The Fourth Gospel , like the three Synoptic Gospels, is anonymous; it does not bear its author’s name. The title According to John is a label attached to it when the four Gospels were gathered together and began to circulate as one collection, in order to distinguish it from its three companions. It is noteworthy that, while the four canonical Gospels could afford to be published anonymously, the apocryphal Gospels which began to appear from the mid-second century onwards claimed (falsely) to be written by apostles or other persons closely associated with the Lord.

As early as the ascription of this Gospel to John can be traced back, it is regularly assumed that the John in question was John the son of Zebedee, one of the twelve. There is indeed positive evidence for another disciple of the Lord called John,¹ living (probably) in the Roman province of Asia to which John the son of Zebedee, according to tradition, migrated from Palestine in the later part of the first century, but no one in antiquity, as far as we can tell, ascribed the Fourth Gospel to this other John rather than to the son of Zebedee. This other John is referred to by Papias, bishop of Flierapolis (c. AD 130), as John the elder (or presbyter)—elder being a designation given especially at that time to Christian leaders of the generation next to the apostles.

A concentric series of arguments for identifying the Fourth Evangelist with John the son of Zebedee was propounded in classical form by B. F. Westcott. According to him the internal evidence of the Gospel indicates that it was written (a) by a Palestinian Jew, (b) by an eyewitness, (c) by the disciple whom Jesus loved, (d) by John the son of Zebedee.²

That the Evangelist was a Jew seems to be clear. The debates between Jesus and the religious leaders in Jerusalem on the finer points of Jewish legal interpretation, reproduced in the central chapters of the Gospel, could not well have been grasped or recorded in those days by an author who was not himself one of the Jews. True, the Evangelist frequently speaks of the Jews in a way that suggests that he is distancing himself from them, but when he does so, he regularly means the other Jews (as distinct from himself and his associates) or else, occasionally, the Judaeans (as distinct from the Galilaeans). As our exposition below emphasizes repeatedly, it is always important to ascertain who precisely the Jews are in each place where the expression occurs.

That the Evangelist was (by origin at least) a Palestinian Jew seems equally clear. If, as seems probable, the Gospel was published in the province of Asia some sixty years after the events which it narrates, we should not be surprised that it reflects not only the situation in which those events took place but also the situation in which they were finally recorded and published. But the Evangelist gives the impression of personal acquaintance with the scenes of Jesus’ ministry which he describes, especially those in and around Jerusalem—even if it is something of an exaggeration to say that he knows his Jerusalem as a Euston taxi-driver knows his London.³

A few scholars have gone farther in maintaining the Palestinian character of the Evangelist and his Gospel, arguing that while the Gospel (like all the other New Testament books) has come down to us in Greek, it was nevertheless written originally in Aramaic, the vernacular of Palestinian Jews.⁴ This is quite improbable. Naturally, if Jesus and his disciples habitually spoke in Aramaic, we might expect to find Aramaisms in the Greek form of their sayings (just as the English spoken by Scottish Highlanders or by Welsh people reflects the idioms of their native Celtic speech); and this indeed we find in all four Gospels. But unless a piece of objective evidence is forthcoming (such as part of an Aramaic text of the Gospel which bears no sign of being a translation from the Greek), there is no reason to doubt that the Gospel of John as such was a Greek composition from the beginning.

An argument for the Palestinian provenance of this Gospel which was not available to scholars of earlier generations has been provided by the discovery and study of documents emanating from the religious community which had its headquarters at Qumran, northwest of the Dead Sea, for about two centuries before AD 70.⁵ Their significance need not be exaggerated (it is salutary to recall that nearly every fresh discovery in Near Eastern religious history of the relevant period has been hailed in its day as the key to the solution of the problem of the Fourth Gospel).⁶ Yet some affinities there are between the two bodies of literature. Characteristic Johannine expressions such as the light of life, the sons of light, doing the truth, the works of God are paralleled in the Qumran writings. Both John and the men of Qumran see the universe in terms of sharply contrasted light and darkness, good and evil, truth and falsehood. But even if John appears to draw from a common reservoir of terminology and ideas which were well known to the Essenes,⁷ the new element in his use of these terms should not be overlooked. When he speaks of the light of life, he is not thinking in abstractions, nor is he primarily concerned with a body of teaching or a holy community. For him the true light is identical with Jesus Christ, the incarnate Word. W. F. Albright, one of the first scholars to draw attention to the Qumran affinities of the Fourth Gospel, wisely emphasized the wide gulf between the doctrines of the Essenes and the essentials of Johannine teaching. He listed four of these essentials: relating to the function of the Messiah, the salvation of sinners, the ministry of healing and the gospel of love.⁸

Was the Evangelist an eyewitness? In one place there is an emphatic and explicit claim to eyewitness authority. That is where the piercing of Jesus’ side after his death on the cross is related (John 19:35): he who has seen it has borne his testimony (i.e. this is the testimony of an eyewitness). It is not said who the eyewitness is—whether he is the Evangelist himself or someone on whose evidence the Evangelist relies. Again, in the epilogue to the Gospel the disciple whom Jesus loved is said to be the one who bears witness to these things and wrote these things (21:24). The statement that he wrote these things could be understood to mean that he caused them to be written, that his was the testimony underlying the record; but the statement that he bears witness to them implies firsthand testimony. These things probably include not only the incident narrated in chapter 21 but others recorded in the main body of the Gospel. In particular, the beloved disciple is said to have been present at the Last Supper (13:23), at the cross (19:26 f.) and at the empty tomb (20:2-10). It may readily be inferred that he is the authority for those phases of the passion and resurrection narratives, if for no more.

The identification of the beloved disciple with John the son of Zebedee has been argued on negative and positive grounds. On the negative side is the absence from this Gospel of the name of John (or of his brother James, for that matter), apart from the statement at the beginning of the epilogue that the sons of Zebedee were among the seven disciples who met the risen Lord by the lake of Galilee (John 21:2). The absence of any mention of John or James is the more remarkable when one considers the part played by name in this Gospel by other members of the twelve—not only more prominent members like Simon Peter and Andrew but less prominent members like Philip, Thomas and Judas not Iscariot.

On the positive side is the presence of the beloved disciple at the Last Supper. If it is proper to infer from Mark 14:17 (and Synoptic parallels) that only the twelve were present with Jesus at the Last Supper, then the beloved disciple was one of the twelve—certainly not Peter (from whom he is distinguished in John 13:24) and probably not any of the other disciples mentioned by name in John 13-17. His recurring designation as the disciple whom Jesus loved implies a deliberate avoidance of his personal name. So also in the epilogue, where he is evidently one of the seven disciples who figure in the incident of the appearance at the lakeside, he is expressly distinguished from Peter (John 21:7, 20) and by implication also from Thomas and Nathanael. We should think of him then as one of the sons of Zebedee (whose names are not given) or as one of the two other disciples listed but not named in John 21:2. So far as the sons of Zebedee are concerned, he cannot be identified with James, for James was put to death by Herod Agrippa I, according to Acts 12:1 f., during his brief reign as king of Judaea (AD 41-44). It was not with regard to James that the rumor spread at a later date that that disciple was not going to die (John 21:23).

At the supper table (John 13:24), at the empty tomb (John 20:2-10) and at the lakeside (John 21:7, 20) the beloved disciple is especially associated with Peter; in the early days of the church John appears repeatedly as a companion of Peter (Acts 3:1-4:23; 8:15-25; cf. also Galatians 2:9, where Peter and John, with James the Lord’s brother, are associated as pillars of the Jerusalem community). In the early chapters of Acts Peter is so much the dominant partner that John is relatively a lay figure beside him. Indeed, we have very little information in the New Testament about John the son of Zebedee as a named individual. He and his brother James were described by Jesus as Boanē-rges, explained as meaning sons of thunder (Mark 3:17). We may guess that they were so described because of their impetuous nature. It was James and John who proposed the calling of fire from heaven to consume the inhospitable Samaritans (Luke 9:54); it was John who reported how he and his associates tried to stop a man who was casting out demons in Jesus’ name because he did not belong to their company (Luke 9:49). James and John incurred the resentment of their fellow disciples on one occasion by appearing to steal a march on them in a bid to secure preferential status for themselves in the coming kingdom of Christ (Mark 10:35-45). Along with Peter, they belonged to an inner group of three disciples admitted to exceptionally close association with their Master (Mark 5:37; 9:2; 14:33).

Our scanty knowledge about John the son of Zebedee is such that it is difficult to go along with a highly respected scholar who judges it to be a moral certainty that the Fourth Gospel was not written by him⁹—unless indeed it is held to be a moral certainty that it was not written by any eyewitness. The scholar referred to (C. K. Barrett) suggests that the Evangelist (not himself an eyewitness) was a disciple of the apostle John, one of those whom he gathered round himself after his migration from Palestine to Ephesus.¹⁰ He is not so rash as to try to identify this disciple with Papias’s John the elder, although this identification has been proposed by some students of the Fourth Gospel. We do not know enough about John the elder to bring him into close association either with his namesake the apostle or with the Fourth Gospel.¹¹

The eyewitness testimony discerned in the Gospel is mainly that of the beloved disciple, and therefore of the apostle John (if his identity with the beloved disciple can be established). But if it was a disciple of his who wrote down (or wrote up) the Gospel on his behalf, he also may have been an eyewitness of some of the incidents recorded. It has been conjectured that he was a Jerusalemite. Was he, for example, the disciple who was known to the high priest (John 18:15 f.)? Was he, further, the witness of the piercing of Jesus’ side (John 19:35)? It is safer to ask these questions than to supply the answers.

Professor Barrett suggests that the Evangelist was the author of the first twenty chapters of the Gospel and that the epilogue (chapter 21) was added when the work was edited for publication—presumably by the group responsible for the we know of John 21:24. This group—the Johannine school or community—certainly played some part in relation to the Gospel.

If the Johannine tradition, as it is called, was primarily preserved in the memory of one man, the disciple whom Jesus loved, he might indeed have said, as P. H. Menoud put it, la tradition, c’est moi ("I am the tradition").¹² Yet it would be a mistake to picture him as cherishing his reminiscences in solitude for many decades. J. A. T. Robinson, who has been for long a vigorous defender of the apostolic authorship of the Gospel, attaches much more than marginal importance to John’s associates. The Johannine tradition, in his view, did not come out of the blue round about the year AD 100. Rather, there is a real continuity, not merely in the memory of one old man, but in the life of an ongoing community, with the earliest days of Christianity.¹³

It is the tradition thus preserved and handed down that forms the only recognizable source of the Fourth Gospel. It would be foolish to deny that the Evangelist knew the other Gospels; with some of them at least he was probably acquainted. But he did not rely on them as sources.¹⁴ Still less ground is there for postulating other written sources on which he may have drawn. Rudolf Bultmann distinguished a signs-source and a sayings-source.¹⁵ But the signs and the discourses are too interdependent to be sorted out into separate sources.

The historical tradition preserved by the beloved disciple and transmitted among his associates is independent of those traditions represented in the Synoptic Gospels, but no less authentic.¹⁶ It is not part of our present purpose to trace the history of the community of the beloved disciple.¹⁷ Suffice it to say that it does not appear to have had close links with the great church of Ephesus. In the early part of the second century that church still ranked as a Pauline foundation, and only later did it lay claim to John as its apostle par excellence.

The historical tradition was not simply preserved by John and his disciples. The sayings of Jesus and incidents from his ministry which it enshrined formed the basis for further meditation, instruction and preaching; it flourished as a living and growing tradition, but remained faithful to its historical basis.

In arranging and recording this tradition, the Evangelist shows remarkable skill in various ways and not least in character portrayal. The Samaritan woman (chapter 4) and the once-blind man of Jerusalem (chapter 9) are well-drawn and unforgettable personalities; and it is almost entirely to this Evangelist that we owe the vivid traditional picture of the personality of Mary of Magdala. Scholars have discussed the dialogue form in this Gospel and distinguished it from that found in the other Gospels,¹⁸ but perhaps the most remarkable testimony to its dramatic realism is borne by Dorothy Sayers when she says, with regard to her sequence of radio plays, The Man Born to be King, that when John is the authority for any scene, the playwright’s task is easy. Either the dialogue is all there—vivid and personal on both sides—or the part of the interlocutor can be readily reconstructed from the replies given.¹⁹

2. The Fourth Gospel in the Early Church

Not long after the publication of the Fourth Gospel, it was brought together with the three Synoptic Gospels to form the fourfold Gospel, and for the most part it was in this form rather than as separate documents that the four Gospels henceforth circulated. The use of the codex (a book more or less as we know it, with leaves and pages), which early Christians preferred to the scroll (a long strip of writing material, containing perhaps as many as a hundred columns of text, which had to be wound and unwound round a central rod), made it practicable for all four Gospels to be contained together in one book.

Some of the earliest pieces of New Testament manuscript which have survived to this day exhibit part of the text of the Fourth Gospel. The earliest known fragment of any part of the New Testament is a tiny piece of one leaf of what was once a codex of this Gospel. This is the papyrus fragment of John’s Gospel in the John Rylands University Library of Manchester, containing a few words from John 18, and dated about AD 130. Henry Guppy, who was Rylands Librarian from 1900 to 1948, said with pardonable exaggeration that it must have been written when the ink of the original autograph was scarcely dry.²⁰ In the authorized catalogue of New Testament papyri it is listed as Papyrus 52.

Two other papyrus codices of the Gospel of John come from the end of the second century; they belong to the Bodmer Library at Cologny, near Geneva. One of them, Papyrus 66, contains most of John 1-14 and substantial portions of the remaining chapters; the other, Papyrus 75, contains most of the Gospel of Luke followed by John 1-11 almost in its entirety and portions of chapters 12-15.

Yet another papyrus codex is Papyrus 45, in the Chester Beatty collection in Dublin. It belongs to the first half of the third century and, with other biblical papyri in the same collection, was probably the property of a Greek-speaking country church in Egypt. When complete, Papyrus 45 contained the Greek text of all four Gospels and Acts, and parts of these five documents are preserved even in its present mutilated form.

In the earlier part of the second century the Fourth Gospel was recognized and quoted by gnostic writers at least as much as by those whose teaching came to be acknowledged as more in line with the apostolic tradition. There are affinities to its thought and language in the letters of Ignatius, bishop of Antioch (c. AD 110), and in the collection of hymns called the Odes of Solomon (from about the same period), which have a gnostic flavor.²¹ Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna (writing c. AD 120), quotes from 1 John, knowledge of which might be thought to presuppose knowledge of the Gospel of John too.²² Hippolytus states that the gnostic Basilides (c. AD 130) quoted John 1:9 (about the true light coming into the world) as a gloss on the creative word Let there be light (Genesis 1:3).²³ If he is right, then that is the earliest known explicit quotation from the Gospel of John.

The Gospel of Truth (c. AD 140), a gnostic work coming either from Valentinus or from one of his disciples, has several echoes of our Gospel if not direct quotations. To Valentinus the incarnation doctrine of the prologue (John 1:14) was not so objectionable as it would have been to many gnostic teachers: when the Word came into the midst, says the Gospel of Truth (26:4-8), "…it became a body (sōma)—perhaps John’s term flesh" (sarx) was too carnal to be palatable to the writer, but body (sōma) was acceptable. However, later he says, "those who were material were strangers and did not see his form or recognize him. For he came forth in flesh (sarx) of such a kind that nothing could block his progress (31:1-7). Here flesh" is conceded, but not in the sense of ordinary flesh. This flesh is not material or subject to physical limitations, but is rather as free from them as was Jesus’ resurrection body, to which closed doors presented no barrier (John 20:19).²⁴

A disciple of Valentinus named Heracleon, who died c. AD 180, is the first known commentator on the Fourth Gospel. His commentary has not survived independently, but it is repeatedly quoted by Origen (AD 185-254) in his own commentary on this Gospel. It is evident from these quotations that Heracleon’s commentary was of a highly allegorizing character.²⁵

Acknowledgement of the ready use which second-century gnostic writers made of the Fourth Gospel cannot blind us to the fact that at every crucial point the Gospel is in tension with the Gnostic point of view, indeed repudiates it.²⁶ Only by a forced exegesis which went against the grain of this Gospel could Gnostics make it serve their purpose.

Apart from the Gnostics, the first writer who makes anything like a quotation from this Gospel is Justin Martyr who, in a discussion of baptism, says, Christ indeed said, ‘Unless you are born again you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.’ It is evident to all that those who have once been born cannot re-enter their mothers’ wombs.²⁷ This is most probably a memory-quotation of John 3:3-5. But Justin does not cite this Gospel explicitly where he might have been expected to do so—for example, in his teaching about the pre-existent Word (logos) of God that became incarnate in Jesus Christ.²⁸ He has nothing to say of the authorship of any one of the canonical Gospels, but refers in general to the memoirs of the apostles.²⁹