The Gospel of John ..........................................................................

Lecture 5

The Gospel of John is particularly puzzling because it claims to be an

eyewitness document. And the tradition is that this is written by the

Elder John (probably not the Apostle John), who lived in Ephesus into

the 90s, and who was an eyewitness and a disciple of Jesus. And yet,

boy, does he tell the story differently from the other Gospels. Perhaps

that’s because he’s not drawing on the stories and documents that the

other Gospels drew on.

T

he Gospel of John, probably the last of the Gospels to be written,
is structured very differently from the others. It omits important
episodes in the Synoptic Gospels, includes many episodes they do
not, and reports some episodes in a strikingly different order. It omits the
institution of the Eucharist, but includes a long discourse in which Jesus
describes himself as the bread of life (chapter 6); it omits the baptism of
Jesus, but includes Jesus offering to give believers “living water” (4:14); and
it reports Jesus’s driving the money changers out of the temple in chapter 2,
but not immediately before the Passion narrative.

After a prologue, it includes a “book of signs” organized around Jesus’s
seven miracles and then the “book of the passion” or, more accurately,
the “book of glori¿ cation.” Throughout the Gospel is a series of “I am”
statements, in which Jesus declares his identity: “I am the bread of life”
(6:35); “I am the light of the world” (8:12);
“I am the Good Shepherd” (10:11); “I am the
Way, the Truth and the Life” (14:6). All the “I
am” statements recall the name of the God of
Israel, which means, “I am.”

The Prologue contains a famous description
of Jesus as the Word made À esh. As the Word
(Logos or Reason), Jesus existed before the
creation and hence before his own humanity. In a crucial passage for the
doctrine of the Trinity, John says, “The Word was God.” In a crucial passage

Jesus’s controversies

with his opponents are

especially intense in

the Gospel of John.