EXPLORING CHRISTIANITY: New Testament writers; John

EXPLORING CHRISTIANITY - EYEWITNESS

THE BIBLE
Can we trust a book written 2000 years ago?

EYEWITNESS
Did the writers of the New Testament get their picture of Jesus right?

GOD - MAN
Is Jesus really God?

RESURRECTION
Did Jesus really rise from the dead?

RELIGIONS
With so many religions, why Christianity?

SUFFERING
If there is a God, why is there so much suffering?

TRINITY
Understanding the Trinity.

SCIENCE
The complementary nature of Science & Christianity.

FORGIVENESS
What it is and why it matters?

GUIDANCE
How does God guide?

REPENTANCE
What it is and why you can't get to heaven without it.

BORN AGAIN
What does it mean to be converted and born again?

SAVING FAITH
The kind of faith that will get you to heaven

ASSURANCE
Can I know for sure that I am going to heaven?

TRUTH
What is truth and does it matter?

MORALITY
Does it matter how we live? A Christian view of morality.

THE CHURCH
God's vision for his family, the Church. A call to the churches of the new millennium.

PURPOSE
How can I find a great purpose for living?

IDENTITY
Who am I; Finding my true identity as a human being and as a child of God.

SELF-ESTEEM
How can I feel good about my self? The Christian basis for proper sel-esteem.

LIFE AFTER DEATHChristianity's Hope & Challenge.

THE CROSS
Why did Jesus Die? What the Bible says about the Cross.

Grace
The importance of grace in the New Testament.

Eyewitness Testimony in the New Testament
John

John's gospel is the only gospel that specifically claims to be a direct eyewitness account. We have the plain statement at the end of the gospel concerning "the disciple that Jesus loved" that: "This is the disciple who testifies to these things and who wrote them down. We know that his testimony is true" (John 21:24). This is probably an editorial comment added by someone closely associated with John.

"John bears all the marks of having been one involved in the events recorded."

There is plenty to support the conviction that "the disciple that Jesus loved" is John himself. We know from the other gospels that the three apostles closest to Jesus were Peter, James and John. "The disciple that Jesus loved" cannot be Peter as he is mentioned together with Peter in several passages. Neither can he be James as he was martyred about AD 44 and there would scarcely be rumours going around that he would not die! (See John 21:23). That leaves John. There is plenty of evidence, both from within the Gospel and from other sources, to back this up. He certainly proves to be very knowledgeable about Jerusalem and Jewish customs as they were before the destruction of the city in AD 70. William Temple, the influential Archbishop of Canterbury, asserted in his Readings in St. John's Gospel:

I regard as self-condemned any theory about the origin of the Gospel which fails to find a very close connection between it and John the son of Zebedee. The combination of internal and external evidence is overwhelming on this point.

We can only guess at the reason why he used the term "the disciple that Jesus loved" of himself. Do we discern the hand of an editor to whom John told the stories and who wrote them down? Did he have a natural reserve about using his own name? Was it the wonderful sense of Jesus' love that grew out of his close relationship with him over a period of three years?

John's Gospel bears all the marks of having been written by one involved in the events recorded. In The Man Born to be King, Dorothy Sayers, who approached the subject from the standpoint of a creative artist, says of its claims to be an eyewitness testimony:

...to anyone accustomed to the imaginative handling of documents, the internal evidence bears this out.

John's gospel contains a good deal more conversation than the other gospels - conversation between Jesus and the disciples, Jesus and individuals or Jesus and the religious leaders. Could it be that this is simply because John was there and remembered what was said? I find it difficult to imagine that this is the sort of conversation that one would make up or get second hand. Franco Zeffirelli, who directed the film Jesus of Nazareth which cost $25 million and took three years in the making, said of John:

[His] accounts are often extraordinary, even from a purely dramatic viewpoint. There are certain scenes told by St. John which are perfect screenplays with dialogue. All we had to do was take his material and put it before the cameras.

Even the miraculous narratives exhibit this quality of eyewitness testimony. For example, A. T. Olmstead, who was Professor of Ancient and Oriental History at the University of Chicago, finds the story of the raising of Lazarus (chapter 11) to have "all the circumstantial detail of the convinced eyewitness", while the narrative of the empty tomb in chapter 20 is "told by an undoubted witness-full of life, and lacking any detail to which the sceptic might take justifiable objection." I suggest that in choosing the particular episodes from the life of Jesus that he does, John only selects events at which he was actually present. Maybe that is one of the reasons he gives a rather philosophical introduction to his gospel (John 1:1-18) rather than telling the stories of Jesus' birth as do Matthew and Luke.

The most revealing evidence, however, that John was present, occurs in those passages where "the disciple that Jesus loved" is mentioned. This phrase occurs five times: at the last supper (13:23), at the cross (19:26), at the empty tomb (20:2), and when the risen Christ appears to the disciples by the Sea of Galilee (21:7,20). Each of these instances reveals something of his intimate relationship with Jesus. They are very special to him. Archbishop William Temple comments on the story of Peter and this disciple running to the tomb and finding the grave clothes, but not the body:

It is most manifestly the record of a personal memory. Nothing else can account for the little details, so vivid, so little like the kind of thing that comes from invention or imagination.

The same could be said of the final appearance of the risen Jesus by the sea of Galilee that John records in chapter 21. There are vivid details here, such as Peter jumping overboard, that bear the marks of having been recorded by one who saw it. Why include the number of fish that were caught? I expect it was John who counted them!

Tradition has it that John wrote this gospel in his latter years. That may well be the case, but I would suggest that the kind of events that he records were so unique, and in most instances so dramatic, that he would have remembered them regardless of how long he lived. It is interesting that John devotes seven chapters to the events of the last 24 hours of Jesus' life and two more describing the resurrection appearances: that is about half his gospel! Of all the things that had impacted his life over the years, surely the memories of those hours would remain with him forever.

Not only the gospel, but also three letters in the New Testament are credited to John. The majority of scholars affirm that at least the first of these is written by the same author as the gospel. In referring to Jesus as "the Word", as he does in his gospel, he says, "That ...which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched-this we proclaim concerning the Word of life" (1 John 1:1). Maybe John was lucky, but for him, seeing was believing. He did not need to quote other written sources.