Introduction to John

Title and authorship

The book does not give its author a name, and it goes to some trouble not to.

What it does instead is introduce a figure it calls the disciple whom Jesus loved — leaning on him at the supper John 13:23, standing at the cross and given the care of his mother John 19:26–27, outrunning Peter to the tomb John 20:4, and recognizing him on the shore John 21:7. At the very end the book turns and identifies that man as its writer: this is the disciple who testifies about these things and wrote these things, and we know that his witness is true John 21:24.

So the Gospel names its author as a participant and withholds his name. The effect is deliberate — a witness who keeps himself in the account and out of the credit.

Two further observations belong to the text rather than to tradition. The narrative is full of things only an eyewitness would keep: the hour of a conversation John 1:39, the number of stone jars and their capacity John 2:6, the weight of the ointment John 12:3, the count of fish John 21:11. And this is the only Gospel in which John means the man at the Jordan and nobody else — the other three habitually distinguish him as the Baptizer, because they have a second John to keep apart from him.

The early church attached the name of John the son of Zebedee to this book, and the book itself is content to be the testimony of a man who was there and did not say so.

Date

The book gives few handles, and the honest answer is that its date is not fixed by anything inside it.

One detail points early: there is in Jerusalem, by the sheep gate, a pool John 5:2 is written in the present tense about a structure in a city that was destroyed in the year 70. That is a real argument and it is not decisive; writers slip into the present tense when describing a remembered place.

Several point late. The closing chapter records a rumor that that disciple wouldn't die John 21:23 and corrects it — a correction that only becomes necessary when the man is old and the community has begun doing arithmetic. The account of the man born blind assumes a settled practice of expulsion from the synagogue for confessing Christ John 9:22, which reads like a later situation than the Gospel narrates. And the whole book is written by someone who has had a long time to think.

What can be said without qualification is that the writer expects his readers to know the other accounts of these events well enough that he need not repeat them — he names Mary as the woman who anointed the Lord before he tells the story John 11:2 — and that he is writing while it still mattered enormously to state who Jesus was.

Backgrounds

The book is built in two halves, and it says so. Chapters one to twelve are public: seven signs done before crowds, argued about in Jerusalem, and ending with the narrator's verdict that though he had done so many signs before them, yet they didn't believe in him John 12:37. Then a hinge — having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end John 13:1 — and from chapter thirteen the doors are shut, the audience is eleven men, and nothing is addressed to the world again until the trial.

The geography is Judean and the calendar is festal. The other accounts spend most of their length in Galilee; this one keeps returning to Jerusalem, and it dates the returns by feasts — three Passovers John 2:13 John 6:4 John 11:55, a Sabbath, Tabernacles John 7:2, Dedication John 10:22. Much of the teaching is keyed to whatever feast is being kept: living water during the water-drawing of Tabernacles, light of the world under its lamps, the good shepherd at the feast of a rededicated temple.

The signs are counted and they are not called miracles. The word throughout is sign — something done that means something — and the book numbers the first two John 2:11 John 4:54. Seven are worked before the resurrection, and each is followed or preceded by discourse that explains what it was for. Bread is multiplied and then he says he is the bread; a blind man sees and then he says he is the light.

Seven times he says I AM with something after it — bread, light, door, good shepherd, resurrection and life, way and truth and life, true vine — and several times without anything after it at all John 8:58, which is where the sharpest confrontations come.

A recurring method: someone takes him literally and the misunderstanding opens the subject. Nicodemus asks how a man can re-enter his mother's womb; the woman at the well asks where his bucket is; the crowd asks whether he will give them this bread always. Each time the flat reading is allowed to stand for a moment and then becomes the door into what was meant.

The word Jews is used in an unusual way here — often for the authorities in Jerusalem rather than for the people as a whole, which is why the same book can have him say salvation is from the Jews John 4:22 while the Jews are seeking to kill him. Everyone in the story is Jewish: the writer, the twelve, the women, the crowds and the man on the cross. Reading the term as an ethnic verdict inverts the book and has done immense harm.

Theology and purpose

The purpose is stated outright, which is rare. These are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name John 20:31. Two things: an identification to be believed, and a life that comes with believing. Every sign and every discourse serves one or the other.

He is God, and he became a man, and both are said in the first paragraph. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God John 1:1 — with God, so distinct; and God, so not a lesser thing. Then the Word became flesh and lived among us John 1:14. The book opens with the highest claim in Scripture and closes with a disciple saying my Lord and my God John 20:28 to a man he can touch.

Glory is revealed by the cross rather than despite it. This Gospel's word for the crucifixion is lifted up John 3:14 John 12:32, and the hour he waits for through eleven chapters is the hour of his death, called the hour of his glorifying John 12:23. Nothing here treats the cross as a defeat requiring the resurrection to repair it.

Eternal life is a present possession. He who believes has eternal life John 6:47 — has, now — and this is eternal life, that they should know you John 17:3. It is defined as a relationship rather than a duration, and it begins on this side of death, which is why Martha is told I am the resurrection and the life before her brother is raised John 11:25.

The Spirit is a person and is promised as a replacement presence. Called another Counselor John 14:16 — another of the same kind — who teaches, reminds, convicts and guides, and whose coming is given as the reason it is better that he goes away John 16:7.

Love is commanded and it is measured. A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you John 13:34. The standard is not reciprocity or fairness; it is the basin and the towel, and then the cross.

Additional notes

Note — this Gospel and the other three. Most of what this book contains is found in no other account: no birth narrative, no parables of the kind the others record, no transfiguration, no institution of the supper — and in their place seven named signs, long discourses, and five chapters on a single evening. Where it does overlap — a feeding, a walk on the water, an anointing, an entry into the city, the passion and the resurrection — it tells the same events with different detail and toward a different end, so its telling of them repays reading on its own terms rather than as a supplement. Scripture nowhere states which Gospel was written first, and the early church's ordering testimony is not uniform.

Note — the woman taken in adultery. The passage at John 7:53 to John 8:11 is printed differently in different English Bibles, some marking it off and some placing it elsewhere. It is treated here where it stands, on what the text before us says.

Note — the day of the crucifixion. This Gospel dates the trial to the Preparation Day of the Passover John 19:14 and says the priests would not enter the governor's headquarters lest they be defiled and unable to eat the Passover John 18:28, while the other accounts describe the supper as a Passover meal. Several honest reconciliations exist — differing calendars in use at the time, or the phrase covering the whole festival week — and the evidence does not settle it. What all four agree on is the day of the week and the empty tomb on the first day.

Note — the numbered signs. The book numbers the first sign John 2:11 and the second John 4:54 and then stops counting, which has led readers to count for it. Seven before the resurrection is the usual reckoning and it is not stated in the text; nothing in the reading here depends on the total.

Outline

How the book is built

The Word was God, and my Lord and my God inclusio 1:1-20:28

• A 1:1 The narrator: the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
• A′ 20:28 Thomas, to his face: my Lord and my God.

Derived from the book's own first and last confessions, and it is the only frame in Scripture built out of the same predicate spoken by two different voices. The prologue states it as narration, before any character can be asked to accept it: the Word was with God, and the Word was God John 1:1. Twenty chapters later a disciple who has refused every secondhand report says it to his face — my Lord and my God John 20:28 — and it is the last thing anybody says to Jesus in this Gospel. Everything between is the working out of how a reader gets from the first to the second, which is exactly what the purpose statement two verses after the close says the book is for John 20:31. Chapter 21 stands outside the frame as an epilogue, and the frame is what makes it read as one.

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