Gospel of John

Overview

John is about seventy pages and it is a different book from the other three in almost every respect. Matthew, Mark and Luke share so much material and wording that they can be printed in parallel columns and are called the synoptics, seen together. John cannot be printed that way. It has different episodes, a different chronology, a different geography, a different style of speech and a different Jesus.

The differences are worth listing because they are the first thing to notice. There are no parables. There are no exorcisms. The ministry lasts about three years and is centred on Jerusalem rather than a single year centred on Galilee. The cleansing of the temple happens at the beginning rather than at the end. There is no transfiguration, no agony in Gethsemane, no institution of the eucharist at the last supper, and instead a foot-washing. The crucifixion falls on a different day relative to Passover. And the speech is entirely unlike the short aphorisms and stories of the synoptics: long, circling, repetitive discourses that sound the same whether Jesus, John the Baptist or the narrator is speaking.

It was probably written around 90 to 100 CE, later than the others, in a community that had been expelled from the synagogue, which explains some of its bitterness. The hostile use of the phrase the Jews, which appears about seventy times and means the authorities rather than the people, was written by Jews about other Jews and has been used against Jews ever since. Any honest reading has to say that.

The book states its own purpose near the end: these are written that you may believe.

What happens

The prologue. Eighteen verses of poetry about the Word, who was in the beginning with God, through whom everything was made, in whom was life and light, who came to his own and was not received, and who became flesh and lived among us. It is the single most consequential paragraph in Christian literature and it has no parallel in the other Gospels, which begin with a genealogy, a baptism or an annunciation.

The book of signs, chapters 2 to 12. John organises the ministry around seven miracles, which he calls signs, each pointing beyond itself.

Water into wine at a wedding in Cana, where the mother of Jesus is never named. A healing at Capernaum. A paralysed man at the pool of Bethesda. The feeding of five thousand, followed by the discourse on the bread of life that drives many followers away. Walking on the sea. A man born blind, given sight, interrogated at length by authorities who want him to denounce his healer, and who gets steadily funnier and more stubborn under questioning until he is thrown out. And the raising of Lazarus, four days dead.

Between the signs are the conversations that give John its method. Nicodemus comes at night and is told that a man must be born again, and asks how anyone can enter his mother’s womb a second time. A Samaritan woman at a well is offered living water and points out that the well is deep and he has nothing to draw with. In both cases the literal reading is wrong, the speaker is corrected, and the reader is trained.

The I am sayings run through this half: the bread of life, the light of the world, the door, the good shepherd, the resurrection and the life, the way and the truth and the life, the true vine. And once without any completion at all: before Abraham was, I am, at which point the hearers pick up stones, because those are the words spoken from the burning bush.

Lazarus is the turning point. It is the greatest sign and it is what decides the authorities to act, on the explicit calculation that if the movement continues the Romans will destroy the temple and the nation.

The book of glory, chapters 13 to 20. At the last supper there is no bread and cup. Instead Jesus washes the disciples’ feet, a slave’s job, and tells them to do the same for each other.

Then the farewell discourse, four chapters of it, the longest continuous speech in the Gospels. Let not your heart be troubled. I am the way. I am the vine and you are the branches. A new commandment, to love one another. The promise of the Advocate, the Spirit who will come. And a long prayer in chapter 17 for the disciples and for those who will believe through them.

The arrest, in which Jesus identifies himself and the soldiers fall back. The trial before Pilate, which John gives at length and stages as a debate about kingship and truth, with Pilate asking what truth is and not waiting. The crucifixion, where the mother and the beloved disciple are at the foot of the cross and Jesus’ last word is that it is finished.

Resurrection, chapters 20 and 21. Mary Magdalene at the tomb, mistaking him for the gardener until he says her name. Thomas, absent the first time and refusing to believe without touching the wounds, who is offered exactly that and answers with the highest confession in the book. Then chapter 21, which reads as an appendix added later: a breakfast of fish on the shore, and Peter asked three times whether he loves him, once for each denial.

How to read it

Read the prologue twice and then keep it in view. Everything the Gospel does afterwards is contained there.

Read a synoptic Gospel first, preferably Mark, which is short. John’s distinctiveness is invisible unless you know what it is distinct from.

Watch for misunderstanding as a device. Every time a character takes a statement materially, ask what the right level is. This is how the book teaches, and it is why the conversations are more important than the miracles.

Read the farewell discourse slowly and do not expect it to progress. It circles, repeats and returns, and the effect is closer to music than to argument.

Read the hostile passages about the Jews with the history in front of you. The Gospel comes out of a bitter internal quarrel and has been used for two millennia to justify persecution of the people its author belonged to.

Notice what is missing. No parables, no institution of the eucharist, no cry of abandonment from the cross. Each absence is a choice, and this Jesus is never in doubt about who he is or what is happening.

Questions it raises

• If John’s Jesus speaks nothing like the synoptic one, what kind of book is each trying to be, and can both be reports?
• The Word became flesh. What is being claimed, and what would the sentence have meant to someone who knew Greek philosophy?
• John states his purpose: that you may believe. Does a book written to persuade count as evidence, and does the author think it does?
• The new commandment is to love one another. Why is the horizon the group rather than the world, when chapter 3 says God loved the world?
• Thomas is rebuked for needing to see and then shown. Is the Gospel for or against demanding evidence?
• Pilate asks what truth is and leaves. Is that scepticism, indifference, or the author’s judgement on the Roman order?