Q.
Why is the gospel of John so different?
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concerned with writing an accurate historical account of the human Jesus.
Rather, as Garry Wills, author of What Jesus Meant, points out, they were trying
to answer this question: What does Jesus mean for us?Joshua Toulouse
Who is...
?
Joshua Toulouse
I believe every year that this will be the year the
Cubs win the World Series. (Go Cubs!)A.
While it’s believed the gospel of John was written later than Mark,
Matthew, or Luke, scholars also believe that the author of John
didn’t use, or perhaps didn’t even know of, the other gospels. Con-
sensus these days is that Mark was written fi rst among the four gospels and
then was used as a source in the writing of Matthew and Luke.
Matthew and Luke are then also believed to have used another common
source (generally referred to as “Q,” short for quelle, which means source) as
well as sources specifi c to themselves (referred to as “M” for Matthew and “L”
for Luke).
If John was written without using (or perhaps even being aware) of any
of these sources, we could certainly expect that it would be different in its
composition. And just as Mark, Matthew, and Luke were written for different
audiences in different situations with different needs, so too was John. Some of
the theological decisions concerning John’s understanding and description of
Jesus help explain some of the differences.
For instance, while the other three gospels have Jesus baptized, John does
not have an explicit baptism scene. In the other three gospels, this scene serves
as a legitimation of Jesus’ ministry, but John opens with Jesus being with God
and of God, legitimized before he is even born. This makes the birth and bap-
tism stories less necessary.Scriptural References
Mark 1: 9–11, 14–15, 35–39; 3:13–17; Luke 3:21–22; 4:14–21; John 1:1–5; 3:22–36;
9—10; 20:30–31