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—Cathryn Turrentine

People are passionate about the Gospel of John, in both directions. They may simultaneously love its soaring spiritual language, abhor its representation of “the Jews,” and find some of its discourses maddeningly obscure. This book is intended to lead students into a passionate interaction with the Fourth Gospel. It is written for students who have already had an introduction to the New Testament and are ready now for a closer look at the Fourth Gospel. This introduction briefly summarizes some background information that students will need in this quest.

Authorship, Date, and Location

The author of the Fourth Gospel is not identified anywhere within the text itself. The inclusion of many favorable references to the “Beloved Disciple”—who is not named in this Gospel nor mentioned at all in the Synoptics—led to the assumption that this Gospel was written by him. It has been traditional, beginning with Irenaeus, to associate the Beloved Disciple with John, son of Zebedee, and so authorship of the Fourth Gospel has long been ascribed to him,1 and all of the Johannine corpus has taken his name. Modern scholars differ as to whether the Beloved Disciple was, in fact, John, son of Zebedee,2 but they are in accord in asserting that it was not the Beloved Disciple himself but one of his own disciples, a later member of the Johannine community, who was the Fourth Evangelist.3

The version of the Fourth Gospel that we read today is not exactly as the Evangelist created it. Sometime after it was first recorded, a redactor added materials and likely changed the order of some sections. The opening hymn and the final chapter of the Gospel are examples of likely additions by this editor.4 Scholars disagree, however, about the purpose of these emendations. Bultmann asserts that the redactor had an ecclesiastical focus, and wanted to make this text less Gnostic and more acceptable to the wider church, outside the Johannine community.5 Raymond Brown argues that the redactor’s principal interest was to preserve Johannine materials that had not been included in the original text.6

The Fourth Gospel was the last gospel to be recorded7 (possibly 90–110 CE).8 The author’s location is disputed, however. Tradition, beginning with Irenaeus in the second century argues for Ephesus,9 and most scholars now accept this view.10 Bultmann objects, however, noting that “nothing in the Gospel points to its origin in . . . Asia Minor.” He suggests Syria as a more likely location.11

Structure

The Gospel is comprised of two main sections. The first is widely referred to as the Book of Signs, roughly chapters 1–12. This section describes Jesus’ public ministry. It is named for the seven signs that Jesus performs, pointing to himself as the One who came down from heaven to reveal the glory of God. These are the signs:

1. Changing water into wine at the Cana wedding (chapter 2)

2. Healing the official’s son (chapter 4)

3. Healing of the man who had been sick for thirty-eight years (chapter 5)

4. Multiplication of loaves and fish (chapter 6)

5. Walking on the sea (chapter 6)

6. Healing of the man born blind (chapter 9)

7. Raising of Lazarus (chapter 11)

In this section of the Gospel, signs are followed by discourses in which Jesus explains the meaning of the signs. For example, chapter 6 contains both the multiplication of loaves and fish and also the Bread of Life discourses.

The last sign, the raising of Lazarus from the dead, is the proximate cause of Jesus’ arrest, trial, and crucifixion, according to the Fourth Gospel. This sign creates a bridge from the Book of Signs to the second major section of the Gospel, which may be called the Book of Glory. In this section of the Gospel, Jesus turns away from public ministry toward his own disciples and his passion. This section contains the lengthy final discourses, with their promise of the Paraclete to sustain the disciples in Jesus’ absence, and it tells the story of Jesus’ passion and resurrection.

Intended Audience

All of the canonical gospels were stories of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, written for an audience that already knew about and believed in the resurrection. As time passed, the early Christians’ practical circumstances diverged significantly from those of the original disciples, and they needed more and more assistance understanding and interpreting the gospel story in the context of new events. Each of the gospels was written for a different community in a different time, responding to a different set of circumstances, and these differences (as much as any variation in sources) help to explain the different approaches that the Evangelists take to the same basic story. In the words of Raymond Brown, “The deeds and words of Jesus are included in the Gospels because the Evangelist sees that they are (or have been) useful to the members of his community.”12 So to understand any of the gospels, one must understand something of the community and circumstances into which it was written. This is especially true of the Fourth Gospel and its relationship to the Johannine community.

This faith community, like the Fourth Gospel, shared an emphasis on realized eschatology; a high, pre-existence Christology; and a belief in the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, or Paraclete, in each member of the community, from whom each Christ-believer individually received divine truth. Each of these characteristics of the Johannine community is described below.

The Passage of Time and Realized Eschatology

Eschatology is the “doctrine about ‘last things’ (final judgment and the afterlife).”13 Around 225 BCE, an apocalyptic eschatology developed in Jewish thought and continued through at least the first century CE. This apocalyptic world view provides a main backdrop for understanding the New Testament In apocalyptic eschatology, the idea of end times did not originally refer to the end of the world but to the end of the present evil age, in which God’s people would at last be vindicated against their oppressors by an in-breaking of God to set things right. This Day of the Lord would be inaugurated by a final battle between the forces of God and the forces of evil. Apocalyptic literature classically includes vivid images of “battles, angels, demons, dramatic appearance on clouds, [and] wrathful judgment on God’s enemies.”14

The synoptic gospels and the Pauline letters adopted and adapted this apocalyptic world view by associating the eschaton with the second coming of Christ (parousia). Then the dead would be resurrected and all would be judged, receiving either eternal life or damnation on that day. In the early letters of Paul, it is clear that this return is expected soon—within the lifetime of most early Christians.15 For Mark, the fall of the Temple in 70 CE was “the birth pangs for the eschaton.”16 This expectation of a near and coming eschatological fulfillment is seen in Matthew, as well, in the passages where Jesus says that the Kingdom of God is at hand.17 The problem for Luke-Acts was that the Temple had fallen and Christ had still not yet returned. Luke solved this eschatological dilemma by associating the eschaton with Pentecost, while still anticipating a second coming of Christ in the indefinite future, a “present and future eschatology.”18

By the time that the Gospel of John was written, at the end of the first century or early in the second, Christians had begun to realize that the second coming was not coming soon, and might not be coming at all. This great disappointment created a crisis of faith. On what could believers rely, if not on this? The Fourth Gospel responds to this great disappointment with a new eschatology—an affirmation that the Kingdom of God has already come in Jesus Christ. This characteristically Johannine view is called realized eschatology (or inaugurated, proleptic, or fulfilled eschatology) and Raymond Brown argues that the Gospel of John is the best example of it in the New Testament.19 He writes,

For John the presence of Jesus in the world as the light separates men into those who are sons of darkness, hating the light, and those who come to the light All through the gospel Jesus provokes self-judgment as men line up for or against him. . . Those who refuse to believe are already condemned [3:18], while those who have faith do not come under condemnation. . . For the Synoptics “eternal life” is something that one receives at the final judgment or in a future age [Mark 10:30; Matt 18:8–9], but for John it is a present possibility for men; “The man who hears my words and has faith in Him who sent me possesses eternal life. . . he has passed from death to life” [3:24]. For Luke [6:35, 10:36] divine sonship is a reward of the future life; for John [1:12] it is a gift granted here on earth.20

High Christology and Expulsion from the Synagogue

The Fourth Gospel presents a layered picture of Jesus that reflects the development over time of the Johannine community’s uniquely high, pre-existent Christology. One can perhaps see this development most clearly in the titles that refer to Jesus.21 Although the various titles are scattered throughout the gospel, in general one can say that the lowest view of Jesus is found in the Book of Signs. This earliest stage is characterized by references to Jesus as the Messiah (a term that is clearly not divine). There is a middle stage with a somewhat higher Christology, which may be associated with the title Son of God (a higher, but still not necessarily divine, title). The highest title associated with Jesus, according to Ashton, is Son of Man, a truly divine figure.

Although there are traces of the whole upward development of the community’s Christology in the Fourth Gospel, the final, received text overall gives us the highest Christology that is found anywhere in the Bible. The gospel begins with the beautiful Christological hymn, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” The original ending of the gospel text was Thomas’s confession of Jesus as “my Lord and my God.” Between these two affirmations, the divine name formula—I AM—recurs as a leitmotiv throughout the gospel. Over and over again, Jesus claims the name of God that was revealed to Moses at the burning bush. He uses it dozens of times in this text, for example in the walk on the sea and in his trial before Pilate. The evangelist clearly intends that the reader and believer understand that Jesus is divine, representative of the Father, one with the Father, revealer of the Father’s glory, himself truly God.

The development of this high Christology over time created serious social and political problems for the Johannine Christians. Like other Christian groups, the Johannine Christians were originally part of the local synagogue. They were Christian Jews, believing in Christ, but continuing to worship as Jews. Somewhere toward the end of the first century, these Christians were kicked out of the synagogue altogether, and evidence from the Gospel text indicates that this expulsion occurred because the Johannine Christians’ Christology was so high that it became unacceptable to Jewish monotheism. Johannine Christians were persecuted and beaten by the Jewish leaders, and the fact that they were no longer counted religiously as Jews made them vulnerable to persecution by the Romans. The decision by the Jewish leaders to evict these Christians from the synagogue placed them in mortal danger, and it cut them off from all the social networks that had sustained their lives. They were politically, socially, emotionally, and theologically dislocated. Martyn has demonstrated that the whole Gospel can be read as a two-level drama.22 One level tells the story of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. On the other level one can discern the story of the Johannine community itself, struggling to make theological sense of their life cut off from the synagogue.

The Johannine community did not begin with such a high Christology, and it cost them quite a lot to retain it as they were expelled from the synagogue, so the question arises, how did this higher Christology develop? Bultmann proposed that the evangelist was a converted Gnostic.23 For decades scholars rejected this view, defending the orthodoxy of the Johannine text by distinguishing between the Gnostic and apocalyptic world views, asserting that since the Fourth Gospel contains at least some elements of apocalyptic eschatology, it would not have been compatible with Gnostic influences. Hill has shown that there was more variety in both Gnostic and apocalyptic literature than had previously been acknowledged, so that their world views overlapped and the possibility of Gnostic influences in the Fourth Gospel can be supported.24

Raymond Brown suggests that it was the incorporation of converted Samaritans into the Johannine community that pressed the group toward a higher Christology.25 Ashton rejects this view, arguing that Samaritan beliefs would not have militated in this direction. Ashton himself argues that Judaism was not monolithic in the first century, and that there were many existing Jewish motifs that were incorporated more or less organically into the Johannine faith, pressing it toward a higher Christology. As some were expelled from the synagogue for affirming the divinity of Christ, their commitment to this belief was strengthened.26

Another possible source of the higher Johannine Christology is the Paraclete. In the final discourses of the Fourth Gospel, Jesus tells the disciples that he cannot explain everything to them, but he promises that the Paraclete, the Spirit of Truth, will come later to teach the disciples all they need to know. Like all the early Christian communities, the Johannine Christians looked back on Jesus’ life through the lens of the Resurrection, reinterpreting the pre-Easter events in light of Easter Day. Claiming the authority of the Paraclete as the source of revelation, each member of the Johannine community was free to reinterpret Jesus’ life in light of the Resurrection in almost any way he or she chose. At least some Johannine Christians may have read the Resurrection a lot more broadly than others, resulting in a more divine understanding of Christ. They were probably encouraged to do this by the presence in the culture of Gnostic and Essene views as well as the various Jewish images that Ashton cites.

Johannine Anti-Semitism

The Fourth Gospel is well known for its negative portrayal of people the Evangelist refers to as “the Jews.” This enmity has been used by some Christians for centuries as an excuse for violent anti-Semitism, and it is today a source of great concern for students who want to feel free to love the soaring beauty of the Gospel but who must reject its anti-Semitic character. How can one make sense of this?

To understand the characterization of Jews in this Gospel, he first question one needs to answer is, Who are “the Jews”? Many people have asked why Jesus and the disciples, who were Jews themselves, would refer to “the Jews” as though they were the “other” group in this gospel. This term probably does not refer to all Jews, but primarily to the Pharisees and other Jewish leaders who took control of the synagogues in the chaotic period after the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple by the Romans in 70 CE.27 Under their leadership, this group began to enforce a uniformity of belief and practice that had not been emphasized so much in the decades around Jesus’ lifetime. This group of Jewish leaders made decisions that seriously affected the Christian community for whom the Gospel of John was written, including their eventual expulsion from the synagogue. Since the gospel writer was writing for a community that was trying to make sense of this period of stern religious enforcement, he retrojected the actions and attitudes of this group of Jewish leaders back into the story of Jesus’ life and his interactions with the Jewish leaders of his own day.

The decision by the Jewish leaders to evict the Johannine community from the synagogue placed them in mortal danger, and it cut them off from all the social networks that had sustained their lives. At the same time that this eviction solidified these Christians’ belief in the divinity of Christ, it made them angry and fearful of the Jewish leaders who had put them in this position.

One can see this fear and anger most frequently in the little asides that the gospel writer provides to guide his readers in interpreting his story. For example, in Chapter 20, which describes Jesus’ resurrection appearances, the gospel writer tells us that the disciples were hiding in a room that was locked “for fear of the Jews.” It is impossible to know if the first disciples were feeling this fearful on that first Easter Day, but it is certain that the Johannine Christians were hiding behind locked doors to protect themselves from the Jewish leaders who wanted to persecute them.

One can also see this negative attitude toward Jews in Jesus’ own conversations (as reported by this gospel writer). For example, in the eighth chapter, Jesus calls the Jews liars and sons of the devil. It is unlikely that Jesus himself had quite such an antagonistic relationship with Pharisees as this story describes,28 so this part of the gospel suggests instead the kind of interactions that the Johannine Christians were having with the Jewish authorities around 100 CE.

Finally, and most famously, the negative portrayal of the Jews appears in the Passion story. The Jewish leaders are painted as sinister and cowardly, wanting to kill Jesus, but conniving to get the Romans to do it for them; and the crowd chooses Barabbas to be saved rather than Jesus, shouting “Crucify him!” In this gospel, Pilate is portrayed as the one official who finds Jesus to be innocent, but who yields to pressure to crucify him nevertheless. It is impossible to know, two thousand years later, exactly what the role of the Jewish authorities or the Jewish populace was in the crucifixion of Jesus, but it is clear that this gospel writer portrays them in the worst possible light, because he wanted to use the gospel story to help his community make sense of their own lives, which were endangered and cut off from social support by the Jewish leaders.

This story was written to provide spiritual and emotional support for an early second century community that was under persecution. It is the responsibility of modern readers to keep those defensive messages from being turned in persecution against Jews today. This does not mean that one must reject the whole gospel, however. Having understood and rejected the text’s hateful messages about Jews, it is also the privilege of Christians today to glean from the rest of the gospel the beautiful and lofty affirmations that led to the persecution in the Johannine community in the first place—that Jesus was in the beginning, and all things were created through him; that he is the Light that has come into the world and the darkness did not overcome it; that Jesus and the Father are one. These remain the foundation of the Christian faith, and the Gospel of John contains the most beautiful statements of them that are found anywhere in Scripture.

The Paraclete

Clement of Alexandria famously called the Gospel of John the “spiritual gospel.”29 Indeed, spirit is a major theme throughout the Gospel, beginning in Chapter 1: “John testified, ‘I saw the spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him’” (1:32). The final appearance of the Spirit in the Fourth Gospel is in the insufflation—the scene in Chapter 20 in which the risen Christ breathes on the disciples and says, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”

Throughout the Gospel, Spirit is associated with images of breath and water. The linking of Spirit and breath is consistent with the Hebrew scripture’s use of ruah YHWH to indicate the powerful spirit (breath) of God that authorized and informed prophets. The linking of Spirit and water suggests baptism, and in fact the first chapter of the gospel contrasts John’s baptism with water to the baptism of the spirit that Christ will provide.

Unique to the Fourth Gospel is the description of Spirit as Paraclete in the Final Discourses. This appearance of the Paraclete in the second half of the Gospel of John, and nowhere else in the whole Bible, has raises interesting and important questions. For example, is this Paraclete the same as the Holy Spirit described elsewhere in the Fourth Gospel? Many scholars believe that the Paraclete references may be later additions that have no clear connection to the use of Spirit in the rest of the Gospel. They point out that the functions of the Paraclete appear to be more closely associated with Christ than with a separate Spirit figure. Tricia Gates Brown disagrees with this view, arguing that “the interrelationship of Jesus and the Paraclete . . . does not require pneumatology to become subsumed in Christology.”30

A second important question is the source of the Spirit. In chapter 14, Jesus says, “But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you” (14:26). But in chapter 20 Jesus breathes on the disciples himself and says, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” The first passage states that the Spirit is a gift of the Father, while the second demonstrates that it is a gift of the Son. This issue has occupied theologians for centuries, arising most famously in the question of the appropriateness of the filioque in the Nicene Creed. These differences are not irreconcilable, however. Bultmann is among those who argue that the insufflation in Chapter 20 is, in fact, the authoritative fulfillment of the promises throughout the Final Discourses of the gift of the Paraclete.31

However these and other pneumatological questions about the Paraclete are resolved, it is clear that the presentation of the Paraclete in the Fourth Gospel is a very particular view of the Spirit. The Final Discourses describe the Paraclete as Spirit of Truth, Advocate, Teacher, Comforter.

The Paraclete gave the Johannine Christians (and only them) personal and individual access to divine truth. In the context of the Fourth Gospel, Jesus’ promise of the Paraclete lent support to any theological claims that the Fourth Evangelist might make that went beyond the written and oral records of the original ministry of Jesus Christ himself, since the insight he recorded had come from Jesus via the Paraclete.32 The Paraclete is the irrefutable source of authority for this Gospel.

Organization of This Text

This is not a comprehensive commentary. Readers will see from a glance at the table of contents that this book does not address every chapter of the Fourth Gospel. Some readers may be surprised, for example, to notice that the passion story is not included here. Rather, the chapters 2–8 revolve around two major issues discussed above: the disappointment that the Johannine Christians faced in the delay of the second coming, and their dislocation after being expelled from the synagogue. Then chapters 9–12 examine the gifts of the Paraclete, Spirit of Truth.

Each of the following chapters selects a key passage from the Gospel and wrestles with it in different ways. Each begins with a sermon. Most also include some class notes from a course taught by Raymond Brown at Union Theological Seminary in 1978. The chapters close with other related materials.

Readers become lovers of this Gospel by wrestling with it. This book is intended to lead students into a just such a passionate interaction.

1. Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 3.1.1; available from http://www.ccel.org/fathers2/ANF-01/anf01–60.htm#P7304_1933972.

2. So L. Michael White, From Jesus to Christianity (New York Harper, 2004) 306; contra Rudolf Bultmann, The Gospel of John: A Commentary, trans. G. R. Beasley-Murray, R. W. N. Hoate, and J. K. Riches (Philadelphia Westminster, 1971) 11; and Raymond E. Brown, An Introduction to the New Testament (New York: Doubleday, 1977) 369.

3. White, 307.

4. Francis J. Moloney, The Gospel of John: Text and Context (Boston: Brill, 2005) 117.

5. Bultmann, Gospel.

6. Raymond E. Brown, The Gospel According to John, Anchor Bible 29–29A (New York: Doubleday, 1966–1970) xxxviii.

7. Brown, Gospel, 215.

8. Raymond E. Brown, The Community of the Beloved Disciple: The Life, Loves, and Hates of an Individual Church in New Testament Times (New York: Paulist, 1979) 23.

9. Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 3.1.1.

10. Brown, Introduction to the NT, 368.

11. Bultmann, Gospel, 12.

12. Brown, Community, 18.

13. Geddes MacGregor, Dictionary of Religion and Philosophy (New York: Paragon, 1992) 224.

14. Raymond E. Brown, An Introduction to the Gospel of John, edited, updated, and concluded by Francis J. Moloney (New York: Doubleday, 2003) 238.

15. 1 Thessalonians 4:16–17.

16. White, From Jesus to Christianity, 228; see Mark 8:38—9:1 and 13:30–32.

17. Matthew 10:22–23, for example.

18. Acts 2:17; White, From Jesus to Christianity, 258.

19. Brown, Introduction to the NT, 238.

20. Brown, Gospel, cxvii–cxviii.

21. This description follows John Ashton, Understanding the Fourth Gospel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).

22. J. Louis Martyn, History and Theology in the Fourth Gospel, 3rd ed. (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2003).

23. Bultmann, Gospel.

24. Robert Allan Hill, An Examination and Critique of the Understanding of the Relationship between Apocalypticism and Gnosticism in Johannine Studies (Lewiston, NY: Mellen, 1997).

25. Brown, Community.

26. Ashton, Understanding.

27. Ashton, Understanding.

28. Ashton, Understanding.

29. Eusebius of Caesarea, Ecclesiastical History, Book VI, Chapter XIV. http://www.ucalgary.ca/~vandersp/Courses/texs/eusebius/eusehe6.html#XIV.

30. Tricia Gates Brown, Spirit in the Writings of John: Johannine Pneumatology in Social-Scientific Perspective (New York: T. & T. Clark, 2003) 13.

31. Bultmann, Gospel, 692.

32. Brown, Community, 28–29.