Gospel of John Warning: You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.Anti-spam check. Do not fill this in! ==Authorship== {{Main|Authorship of the Johannine works#Gospel of John}} ===Composition=== The Gospel of John, like all the gospels, is anonymous.{{sfn|O'Day|1998|p=381}} John 21:22<ref>{{bibleverse|John|21:22}}</ref> references a [[disciple whom Jesus loved]] and John 21:24–25<ref>{{bibleverse|John|21:24–25}}</ref> says: "This is the disciple who is testifying to these things and has written them, and we know that his testimony is true..."{{sfn|Reddish|2011|p=41}} Early Christian tradition, first found in [[Irenaeus]] ({{circa|130|202}} AD), identified this disciple with [[John the Apostle]], but most scholars have abandoned this hypothesis or hold it only tenuously;{{sfn|Lindars|Edwards|Court|2000|p=41}} there are multiple reasons for this conclusion, including, for example, the fact that the gospel is written in good Greek and displays sophisticated theology, and is therefore unlikely to have been the work of a simple fisherman.{{sfn|Kelly|2012|p=115}} These verses imply, rather, that the core of the gospel relies on the testimony (perhaps written) of the "disciple who is testifying", as collected, preserved and reshaped by a community of followers (the "we" of the passage), and that a single follower (the "I") rearranged this material and perhaps added the final chapter and other passages to produce the final gospel.{{sfn|Reddish|2011|p=41}} Most scholars estimate the final form of the text to be around AD 90–110.{{sfn|Lincoln|2005|p=18}} Given its complex history there may have been more than one place of composition, and while the author was familiar with Jewish customs and traditions, their frequent clarification of these implies that they wrote for a mixed Jewish/Gentile or Jewish context outside [[Palestine (region)|Palestine]].{{citation needed|date=July 2021}} The author may have drawn on a "signs source" (a collection of miracles) for chapters 1–12, a "passion source" for the story of Jesus's arrest and crucifixion, and a "sayings source" for the discourses, but these hypotheses are much debated.{{sfn|Reddish|2011|p=187–188}} The author seems to have known some version of Mark and Luke, as the Gospel of John shares with them some items of vocabulary and clusters of incidents arranged in the same order,{{sfn|Lincoln|2005|pp=29–30}}{{sfn|Fredriksen|2008|p=unpaginated}} but key terms from those gospels are absent or nearly so, implying that if the author did know them they felt free to write independently.{{sfn|Fredriksen|2008|p=unpaginated}} The Hebrew scriptures were an important source,{{sfn|Valantasis|Bleyle|Haugh|2009|p=14}} with 14 direct quotations (versus 27 in Mark, 54 in Matthew, 24 in Luke), and their influence is vastly increased when allusions and echoes are included,{{sfn|Yu Chui Siang Lau|2010|p=159}} but the majority of John's direct quotations do not agree exactly with any known version of the Jewish scriptures.{{sfn|Menken|1996|p=11–13}} Recent arguments by [[Richard Bauckham]] and others that the Gospel of John preserves eyewitness testimony have not won general acceptance.{{sfn|Eve|2016|p=135}}{{sfn|Porter|Fay|2018|p=41}} ===Setting: the Johannine community debate=== For much of the 20th century, scholars interpreted the Gospel of John within the paradigm of a hypothetical "[[Johannine community]]",{{sfn|Lamb|2014|p=2}} meaning that the gospel was held to have sprung from a late-1st-century Christian community excommunicated from the Jewish synagogue (probably meaning the Jewish community){{sfn|Hurtado|2005|p=70}} on account of its belief in Jesus as the promised Jewish messiah.{{sfn|Köstenberger|2006|p=72}} This interpretation, which saw the community as essentially sectarian and standing outside the mainstream of early Christianity, has been increasingly challenged in the first decades of the 21st century,{{sfn|Lamb|2014|p=2-3}} and there is currently considerable debate over the social, religious and historical context of the gospel.{{sfn|Bynum|2012|p=7,12}} Nevertheless, the Johannine literature as a whole (made up of the gospel, the three Johannine epistles, and Revelation), points to a community holding itself distinct from the Jewish culture from which it arose while cultivating an intense devotion to Jesus as the definitive revelation of a God with whom they were in close contact through the [[Paraclete]].{{sfn|Attridge|2008|p=125}} Summary: Please note that all contributions to Christianpedia may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. 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