Gospel according to John

This blog post is twice too long but I’m not about to edit and cut at this hour, so just read half of it. Which half? Reader's choice.

Sunday school this morning. Closing out our Lenten focus on the Gospel according to John by leafing through John’s entire book and spotting interesting things.

Sometimes I use the phrase “scholars say” but the fact is no two Bible scholars say the same thing or completely agree on anything. I tend to cite scholars I agree with. It's always OK to disagree with them or me.
The Bible is not a book with chapters like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; it’s the rabbis’ (Old Testament) and the Church’s (New Testament) compilation of many books, many writings by many different writers over centuries and millennia.
Books of the New Testament seem to have been written between about 50 A.D. (1st Thessalonians) and perhaps 100 to 160 A.D. (2nd Peter). Every writer wrote at a different time for different reasons, to a different audience and with different agenda. We Bible students should therefore be interested but not upset when we see differences and contradictions.
Though very different from Mark, Matthew and Luke, John is also a story of the life of Jesus. John proclaims what is called a high Christology of the divinity of Christ that the synoptics do not have; also presents long discourses that do not occur in the synoptics, has no parables, and presents the same event (such as the “cleansing of the Temple” and the “feeding of the five thousand”) differently.
John seems to have written his gospel for a Jewish-Christian community, perhaps at a time when his congregation were faced with choosing EITHER the synagogue and traditional monotheistic Judaism OR Jesus as Messiah with expulsion from the synagogue and ostracism by Jewish family and friends on suspicion of polytheism as the divinity of Christ was revealed in the church. Dating may be 90 to 120 A.D.
John makes frequent reference to Hebrew Bible events and people that would be persuasive to his audience.
The seeming anti-Jewishness of John, which has been so tragically unfortunate for long centuries, may be tempered by correctly translating John’s Greek word “ioudaion” and reading “Judeans” when the English word “Jews” occurs. Judeans were citizens of Judea as opposed to Samaritans or Galileans. Jesus was not a Judean but a Galilean (once even accused of being a Samaritan) and therefore an outsider, regarded as a foreigner in Judea and Jerusalem. Realizing this may make their hostility toward him in John more understandable.
Using a Greek word that is not in the synoptics, John presents Jesus doing “signs” not simply “miracles” as in the synoptics. By each sign John’s audience (both internal and external) are meant to see Jesus’ divinity.
Jesus in John uses “I AM” (ego eimi) as a bold connection to God’s name "I AM" that Jahweh The Lord gave to Moses in Exodus 3.
The term “Lamb of God” has strong but subtle significance in John’s gospel.
In John’s gospel, the Judeans’ “last straw” reason for deciding to kill Jesus seems different from the synoptics.
In John’s gospel the Last Supper with footwashing and New Commandment is not at all the same as in the synoptics with their sacramental bread and wine. Also, in the synoptics the Last Supper is the Passover meal, not so in John, where the Last Supper is significantly the night before.
In the synoptics the arrest, trial and crucifixion are after the Passover meal. In John’s gospel those things happen before the Passover meal. John has a proclamation agenda for his difference.

Everyone who would like to make discoveries in the Gospel according to John is invited to my Sunday School class this morning, 9:15 to 10:15 a.m. in the Mary Stuart Poole Library.

Fr. Tom+