John has been called the "maverick" gospel because it is, in some ways, very different from the synoptic (meaning similar) Gospels of Mark, Matthew, and Luke. From the time of the early Church, this difference was well noted. One example, and we will explore others, of these obvious differences: the synoptics all begin with the story of Jesus's virgin birth to Mary and Joseph. John spends no time telling us about the birth of Jesus at all...John's beginning (v1-15)is a hymn called the "prologama" (a Greek word from which we derive the English word "prolog" or "prologue"). It is indicative of the purpose behind the entire gospel, and that purpose is to convey enough information to the reader so that he/she may understand and learn that Jesus Christ is God, "that he might be revealed to Israel," and that it is only through Jesus Christ that anyone can reach salvation. Chapter 20 ends with the words,

But these [things] are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.(NIV)

It is, in fact, the prologama that sets up the majesty and purpose of the entire gospel that follows. Matthew Henry begins his commentary on John with these words:

Austin says (de Civitate Dei, lib. 10, cap. 29) that his friend Simplicius told him he had heard a Platonic philosopher say that these first verses of St. John's gospel were worthy to be written in letters of gold. The learned Francis Junius, in the account he gives of his own life, tells how he was in his youth infected with loose notions in religion, and by the grace of God was wonderfully recovered by reading accidentally these verses in a bible which his father had designedly laid in his way. He says that he observed such a divinity in the argument, such an authority and majesty in the style, that his flesh trembled, and he was struck with such amazement that for a whole day he scarcely knew where he was or what he did; and thence he dates the beginning of his being religious. Let us enquire what there is in those strong lines. The evangelist here lays down the great truth he is to prove, that Jesus Christ is God, one with the Father.

Other major differences: John also omits the baptism of Jesus, the temptations of Jesus, the exorcisms by Jesus, the Trasfiguration, and Eucharistic the blessing and distribution of the bread and wine at the Last Supper. More on these differences will follow below and as we study the fourth Gospel.

Once past the hymn that is the prologama, the reader who is familiar with the synoptics notes that John has, from start to finish, far more emphasis on the divinity of Christ (e.g. v34). The "I am" sayings of Christ are explicit as to the identity and nature of Jesus, the story of water turned to wine in chapter 2, the verse Martin Luther called the "Gospel in Miniature" (John 3:16) and the verses that follow it, just to name a few instances all lead one to the divinity of Chirst. And John 14:6 makes salvation through Jesus and Jesus alone so clear that no one can mistake its meaning.

THEMES IN JOHN

Among the key themes in John is "belief" or "faith." These words are used nearly 100 times in this Gospel. And John tells us that what comes to us through our belief or faith is salvation in and through the one and only saviour, Jesus Christ. There is no other road to salvation available to us.

Another explicit theme in John's gospel is that Jesus is "the light of the world" and the world loves the darkness more than the light. There are implications of this in the synoptics, of course, but nothing so absolutely explicit or continuous as we find in John. Jesus is God incarnate, the ultimate good, and the world opposes this goodness, preferring its own sinful path.

APOLOGETICS IN JOHN'S GOSPEL

The Johanine tradition also includes a multi-pronged, Orthodox-Christian apologetic. The Synagogue in Jerusalem, the Sect of John The Baptist, and Gnosticism, especialy the branch known as Docetism are all refuted in John's gospel:

• Christian presence in the Synagogue was common at first and disciples, including Paul, often spoke in the Synagogues. Why? Jesus was a Jew. Almost all the disciples and early Christian missionaries of the first generation were Jews, though Koester points out that Barnabas, Paul, and others were from the diaspora, we read that they, too, spoke in the Syangogues wherever and whenever they could. For these people to go to the Synagogue to discuss and preach on religious matters was not only natural, it was inevitable.

  Just as inevitably, tensions developed and came to a head sometime around 62 A.D. when, during a time when the Roman Procurator's office was empty, James, the brother of Jesus, was killed in the Synagogue in Jerusalem. (Had the Romans had a Procurator in the city at that time, they may not have killed James for fear of Roman-Army action or retribution for having broken the pax Roma, the Peace of Rome.)

  By the time the Christians left just prior to the Jewish War with Rome in 64 A.D., the split must have been complete. By the 80's there was an organized attempt to force the Chrisitan Jews out of synagogues entirely. The Shemoneh Esreh or Eighteen Benedictions recited as the chief prayer in the synagogues included a curse on the minim or heretics and this was aimed primarily at Jewish-Christians. This being the chief prayer, forced the Christian to curse him/herself or admit they were Christian and thereby be ostracized from the Synagogue and commuity.During the 90's formal excommunication came into more frequent use against the minim.All of this is reflected in the apologetic and polemic attitude we see in John's Gospel. It is important to note that John is not anti-Semitic: his condemnation is not for a race of people, but rather for a rejection of Jesus Christ.

• Since the second century and Iranaeus tradition has held that John wrote his Gospel against Cerinthus, an Asia Minor heretic/Gnostic who preached that Jesus was the son of Joseph and was not born of a virgin, while Christ was a celestial aeon (spirit) who, for a time, descended on Jesus and left him at his death.

  Gnosticism was, almost from the beginning, the adversary of orthodox Christianity. There should be little surprise at the presence of gnosticism in Ephesus, Alexandria, and even Jerusalem. Despite the struggle to keep Judaism pure and untainted by outside religious beliefs, conquest by the Romans ensured their presence and the presence of traders from all over the Roman world followed, bringing with it many Hellenist pagan religions and beliefs. Under Roman rule, the Jewish Diaspora saw many Hebrews leaving and then returning to the land of Israel. Some of these, no doubt, were bringing strange beliefs and ideas from other parts of the world. Guignebert points out that Paul's writings are peppered with terms belonging to the vocabulary of gnosticism, such as Mystery, Gnosis, Epignosis, Pleroma, Archons, Initiation, Perfection, Firstborn of the Cosmos, etc. These terms were native to neither the Hebraic language nor tradition.

  Gnosticism, a religion of dualism held, in about as few words as possible, that there two worlds: one was a spiritual world above; one was the material world here below. According to Docetism, Christ was God, but he was decidedly NOT flesh since the two worlds could not actually meet. Neither could Christ, i.e., God, experience any of the sensations of this world: he could not suffer, feel pain, thirst, etc.; and he most assuredly could NOT die. Angels and spirits of the upper world were all around us. (There was also in Docetism a group that held that Simon of Cyrene took Jesus's place on the cross which may be why Simon is not even mentioned in John's work.)

  John begins his gospel by stressing that Jesus was God incarnate, i.e., in the flesh. He stresses that all things were created by and through Jesus who was before the beginning of the world--in direct conflict with gnosticism. John's Gospel does not mention angels or spirits, stresses the suffering, thirst, and death of Jesus. Simon of Cyrene is not mentioned. Most Biblical scholars see these facts, along with numerous others, as being intended to help refute the heresy of gnosticism. Taken in tandem with 1 John's strong insistence that Jesus is the Christ incarnate and the two cannot be separated, a strong case can be made for seeing John's work as, at least partly, an apologetic against a powerful and popular heresy.

• While evidence for an apologetic against followers of John the Baptist is the weakest supposition of the three outlined here, Hugo Grotius (17th century), G.C. Stor (18th century), and more recently, Wilhelm Baldensperger have pointed out the emphasis in the Johanine gospel on the subordination and place of John The Baptist. In Acts 18 and 19 we find references to those who only knew "the baptism of John The Baptist." In the third-century pseudo-Clementine Recognitions, which was undoubtedly drawn from earlier documents, the "sectarians of John the Baptist" claimed that their master, not Jesus, was the true Son of God, the Messiah. Using a smoke-indicates-fire kind of logic, we arrive at a conclusion that John's author, the beloved disciple, wanted to make it clear that John was not the Son of God, but the one sent to clear the way for Him. He is careful to say that the place John The Baptist filled was of great importance, but he was adamant that John was the one who would open the way for Jesus who is the one and only Son of God.

We will make further note of these apologetic refutations as we progress through the text.

LANGUAGE

Interestingly, there are more extant examples of the Gospel of John than any of the synoptics. This, plus its mention in the writings of the earliest Church Fathers, point to the Gospel's wide-spread use in the early Church. For example, Eusebius (263-393 A.D.) writes in his History of the Church:

And when Mark and Luke had now published their gospels, John, we are told, who hitherto had relied entirely on the spoken word, finally took to writing for the folllowing reason. The three gospels already written were in general circulation and copies had come into John's hands. He welcomed them, we are told, and confirmed their accuracy, but remarked that the narrative only lacked the story of what Christ had done first of all at the beginning of His mission.

We need to mention Eusebius, despite the 200-plus years that had passed between the death of Jesus and Eusebius's writing because his document was well used when the actual canon of our New Testament was determined.

The basic Greek text is determined by a comparison of several different codices amplified and enhanced by early versions in Latin, Syriac, Coptic, and Ethiopic. While there is adequate reason to believe that some of the sayings and, perhaps, even part of the story line originated in Hebrew or Aramaic, most scholars today cannot find adequate evidence to say that the early Gospel of John was not composed in Greek.

THE BRIDGE TO HELLENISTS

Finally, let us take note of the way the Johanine tradition works to bridge the gap between the Hellenistic World and the semi-Judaic world of early Christianity. There was a strong Greco-Roman Hellenist element present in both Israel and Egypt by the time of Jesus, but the traditions that Jesus drew upon were, quite often, Jewish in origin. His knowledge of the Hebrew texts was notably impressive. In this time and place, Jesus could speak a single word or a short phrase that spoke volumes to the Jewish listeners...but it meant little if anything to the Hellenist listener.

If you have ever tried to speak to someone with whom you have little in common, you know that a good first step is to find a bridge, something you both understand. When the early Christians left Jerusalem and moved into the world of Greco-Roman Hellenism, they wanted to convert the people they encountered, to bring them to salvation through Jesus, the Christ. But, the early Christians quickly found that Judaism spoke in terms for which the Hellenists had neither background nor understanding, nor, in many cases, even respect. John's gospel was written, in part, to address this issue.

In his use of the term Logos ("word") in the prologama, John used a term the Hellenists understood: for the Hellenist, the sprit and wisdom of God was invoked by the use of this word. This single word built a way for these people to begin finding common ground, some interest, some understanding, with the new religion. In fact, the use of the word "logos" parallels a popular Hellenist usage in Stoicism. Philo of Alexandria, whose writings were known in Israel at the time of the writing of the Gospel, often employed the term "logos" in his writings, though Philo's writings have little, if anything, else in common with the Gospel.

Interstingly, usage of "Logos" disappears after the prologama, as if it had, perhaps, been placed there specifically and almost exclusively to gain the interest of these Hellenists. (Of course we cannot make such a statement as if it were fact, but it seems plausible enough that we can posit the theory.) From that point forward, the story line keeps your interest today just as it did for these Hellenists of the early first century.

There are other indications of the bridging to Hellenists as new converts. For example, one soon notes that while Jesus's teachings in the synoptics is given in parables and epigrams, forms often used in Hebrew prophecy, in John we find mostly long meditative discourses and dialogues with more similarity to Hellenist writings.

Consider, too, that the Gospel as we know it is written in Greek and each time an Aramaic or Hebrew term is used John takes care to explain its meaning so that the Hellenist Greeks will understand. John included fewer references to the Hebrew Texts than the synoptics, too, though there are numerous instances where he clearly speaks from a Jewish background. John is also careful not to elminate ha goyim, the gentile believers, from Jesus's salvation...Jesus has "other sheep" who are to be saved through their acceptance of Him as Lord and Savior.

WHERE WRITTEN

Almost without exception, early Church traditions say the Gospel of John was written in Ephesus.

Irenaeus, Eusebius, Origen, and others assert that he [John] was a long time in Asia, continuing there till Trajan's time, who succeeded Nerva, A.D. 98. And Polycrates, bishop of Ephesus, A.D. 196, asserts that John was buried in that city. Jerome confirms this testimony , and says that John's death happend in the sixty-eighth year after our Lord's Passion. Tertullian and others say that Domitian having declared war against the Church of Christ in the fifteenth year of his reign, A.D. 95, ...he [John] was banished to the isle of Patmos, in the Aegean Sea, where he wrote the Apocalypse.
                        --Adam Clarke's "Commentary"

Of course, this brief summation confuses John the disciple with another Chrisitan named John who, it can be conclusively shown, wrote the Revelation several years after the disciple John's death, but when we recognize this, we still have a powerful witness to support Ephesus as the place of writing. (As one person has observed, there were lots of Johns in the early church.)

Koester has pointed out that in Asia Minor, including Ephesus, we know that the early catholic tradition recognized the Gospel of John at least by the first half of the second century A.D. However, we also know that especially in Rome, the Johanine writings, including the Gospel, found hesitant acceptance. We also know that Egyptian Christians embraced this gospel early on.

Going still farther, we find that Revelations 2:9 and 3:9 attest bitter anti-synagogue polemics in this area of Asia Minor. If we accept the premise that John includes a polemic against disciples of John the Baptist, we know of only one place where John The Baptist's disciples were found outside of Israel and that is at Ephesus as witnessed in Acts 19:1-7. Finally, we find that Gnosticism, and especially Docetism, found their home in Ephesus.

In short, there is little, if any, reason to believe the Gospel of John originated anywhere other than Ephesus.

AUTHORSHIP

The Gospel of John bears no signature and does not identify its author by name.

According to the earliest known Church traditions, John, the son of a fisherman on the Sea of Galilee named Zebedee and his wife, who may have been named Salome (Mark 15:40), probably of Bethsaida, was our author. In actuality, not much is known about John. According to the synoptics, John and his brother James were called to follow Jesus while they were fishing (Matthew 4:21-22; Mark 1:19-20; Luke 5:10-11). John's name appears in each of the apostolic lists both in the synoptics and in Acts (1:13). John and James were given the nickname of "Boanerges" by Jesus, meaning "sons of thunder" (Mark 3:17). Interestingly, the picture many have painted of these fishermen as poor, working class people runs afoul of certain facts gleaned both from the Bible and from extra-Biblical sources. This family had a boat, nets, etc. They were more like what we would call middle class today. Many believe that Mark's reference to "hired servants" (Mark 1:20) indicates this prosperity. Mark 1:20,21 and Matthew 4:21-23 tell us their home was in Capernaum, an area that Jesus seems to have come closer to calling home than most others.

The first clear use of John is in the epistles of Ignatius of Antioch, dating to about 110 A.D., and in the writings of Justin Martyr a generation later. By the end of the second century, there are many attestations to the value and presence of the Johanine Gospel. No one at that early time of the church believed other than that John ben Zebedee had written the Gospel. After all is said, there has never been an authoritative challenge to this tradition.

THE CHURCH

Pressing John's lack of sacramentalism (below) and his almost single-minded emphasis on having a relationship with Jesus, some have tried to say that the Church is absent from the Gospel. These people have pressed a comparison of the vine and its branches as found in the Gospel of John with the pictures in the synoptics, saying that each leaf, each branch, is separate and dependent only on the vine itself. In the synoptics they see not a vine, but a vinyard, hence, not the individual, but the entirety.

If one reads the Gospel of John with an open mind, this view simply does not hold up. None of the synoptics places so much emphasis on Christian love as a love for one's fellow disciples of Jesus: love within the Christian community. And while Jesus uses the image of the vine, he also uses the image of himself as a shepherd with a flock that includes "other sheep." In fact, it is this latter image that runs throughout the Gospel.

Some have also pointed out the lack of the term "Kingdom of God/Heaven" (basileia tou theou) in John's Gospel except for 3:3,5. The synoptics' emphasis on basileia (kingdom) is morphed in John's Gospel to "king," or basileus. There are some 15 references to Jesus as the king and these folks argue that this moves away from community. Again, one has only to consider that the basileus must have a basilea. For John, the kingdom is made up of those who have accepted Jesus as the one and only Son of God, the only way to salvation. Hence, we see the community that is to become the Church is not precluded by John's writings, but, rather, is present and strong.

Still others have tried to make an argument from silence against the presence of an ecclesiology in the Church. It is true that John is quiet on this point, but as always an argument from silence lacks authority since ecclesiology was simply not something that John held his focus on. Had he done so, there is no way to know what he might have written for us. Therefore, such arguments, one way or the other, are moot.

SACRAMENTS

On this subject, Johanine scholars are decidedly split into two schools of thought. The first school, which includes both Protestant and Roman Catholic scholars, see as many as 25 different sacramental references in the Gospel of John. The second group sees few or, indeed, no sacraments mentioned in John's Gospel. Why this great difference? The problem arises because almost all the references to sacraments, if, as this author believes, that is what they are, are symbolic or indirect references.

In general, those who say, "none there," base their argument on the lack of explicit references to Baptism or the Eucharist. John is mute on both of these at key points. The Last Supper has no Eucharistic language nor do we find the explicit batpismal command as we see in Matthew 28. This school of thought says that by centering the entire Gospel on Word, there is no need or room for sacraments. In their view, seeing the symbolic sacraments in John's Gospel is simply eisegesis--a reading into the text of something you want to find there.

This study will fall into the first school of thought and we will examine the various symbolic references to sacraments as we go through the text. At the same time, we will point out the lack of certain things at appropriate moments.

ESCHATOLOGY

From an eschatalogical standpoint, John's Gospel is very different from the synoptics. In Matthew, Mark, and Luke, where we find eschatalogical overtones, they point to a judgement that is to come at some future time, a final jugement. In John, judgement has already begun with the presence of Jesus in the world, but there is also to be judgement "at the last day." This final judgement will be a culmination of the judgement in the here and now. It is based upon the actions and acceptance of Jesus as the one and only savior, as God in the flesh.

JOHN AND QUMRAN

When the Qumran literature, known as the Dead Sea Scrolls because of the location on the the Dead Sea where the scrolls were found, came to light, there was an obvious parallel between John's use of light and darkness and the Qumran scrolls' battle between the Prince of Light (also called the "spirit of truth" and the "holy spirit") and the Prince of Darkness (also called the "spirit of perversion"). Because of this parallel, some would say that John was heavily influenced by or, perhaps, was an Essene, the name of the ascetic Jewish sect we believe lived and worked at Qumran.

However, while the parallel is too obvious to totally ignore, there are important differences that cannot be ignored. The scolls of Qumran speak of these two created spirits locked in a dualistic battle to dominate humanity until the intervention of of God. Compare that to John where Jesus is God and you instantly see the glory of the most obvious parallel fade to insignificance.

Still, the parallel is not dead. After the death of Jesus, the fight against evil will be carried on by the Holy Spirit (John 14:17, 26). Again, the obvious parallel is put aside by the fact that Christianity identifies the Holy Spirit as part of the Triune God--Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The battle between good and evil is not put off, it is joined already.

Another facet of the Qumran literature that John shares is the love within the community. The Synoptics stress a love of all men, but John stresses the love of one's fellow Christian. This same emphasis is strong in the scrolls of Qumran. On this point John and the Essenes do agree.

Certainly John may have been, in fact, probably was, familiar with the Essene literature found at Qumran. He may even have consciously borrowed some of the language used there. His "dualism" of good and evil may be closer in ways to Essene thought than to anything the Hellenists were familiar with. Yet, in the end, to say that John was dependent on the Qumran writings is wrong. The most important division between John's Gospel and the writings found at Qumran is the main-emphasis point of each. Qumran has as its main emphasis the Torah or "Law" of Judaism. For John, it is Jesus Christ, the son of God who has come to earth in the flesh and who offers salvation to us all as a free gift of God's grace.

Prologue of John (1:1-5)

John 1:1-5

¹ In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ² He was in the beginning with God; ³ all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. ⁴ In him was life, and the life was the light of men. ⁵ The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. (RSV)

"The Word" or Logos (Greek) was well known to the Greek-speaking world of the Roman Empire. It represented God, God's wisdom, and other philosophical ideals. John, our preacher, was bringing a new religion to the world, bringing it out of its cradle, the Jewish realm and world, to a "more sophisticated," more cosmopolitan group of people. John needed a bridge that would let the new religion more quickly and more easily make the leap from the world of Judaism to the Greco-Roman world. Keeping these ideas in mind, his choice of "The Word" is easily understood. "Logos" became that bridge. Having used "the Word" John proceeded to tell his story of Jesus Christ, making it clear to the reader that Jesus is "logos," "the Word."

Still, there's more here than just a bridge between the two worlds, there's a simple statement at the end of the first sentence that is at the core of what John wants to establish in the reader's mind: when he was here on earth, in human flesh, he was God...Jesus Christ is God and.

Notice that when you read the first verses of Genesis, God created the universe. John melds with that thought...He (Jesus) was there with God and nothing was created without him.

Carrying that thought forward, Jesus was "life"--not limited or to be understood as just human life, but eternal life--the light of mankind is salvation unto eternal life and that is Jesus, the Christ. Then comes a theme common to much of the Jewish literature and thought of the era: good is cast as light and evil is cast as darkness. (Hence, we see examples like the Essene writings that refer to "The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness." The Light is fighting the darkness, i.e., good is fighting evil, i.e., God is fighting the forces of evil, the fallen angel, Satan, and all his minions...Jesus, who is God, shines in the darkness and you should make no mistake about it--the darkness has not been able to overcome the Light. I.e., evil has not been able to overcome Jesus, who is God.

And all of this is bridged from the Judeo-Christian world of the time to the thought of the Greco-Roman world and the popular philosophies of that era.

Does any of this relate to life today? For us the beauty of the "logos" bridge is all but lost--almost a historic footnote--but all the rest remains and carries as much meaning for us as it did for the people to whom John spoke and wrote. Jesus Christ is/was God. He was "conceived by the Holy Spirit, suffered under Pontius Pilot, was crucified, dead, and buried." These are stated as basic tenets of orthodox Christianity in the Apostle's Creed and elsewhere: they have withstood the test of numerous heresies throughout the Church's history and are just as valid and as striking today as when John presented them to Greco-Roman people of his own time.

Bibliography of References Used

Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible, "Introduction to John's Gospel", Published by Beacon Hill Press, Kansas City, KS, ©1967.

Harper's Bible Dictionary, Paul J. Achtemeier, General Editor, Published by Harper and Row, New York, New York, ©1985.

Matthew Henry's Commentary, Matthew Henry, various publishers/editors.

The Gospel According to John I-XII: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary by Raymond E. Brown. (Anchor Bible Volume 29) Published by Doubleday, Garden City, New York, ©1966.

The History of the Church by Eusebius, Translated by G.A. Williamson, Published by Dorset Press/Penguin Books, Middlesex, England, ©1965.

The Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible, "John, Gospel of" article by J.N. Sanders, Volume 2, Published by Abingdon Press, Nashville, Tennessee, ©1962.

The Interpreter's Bible, Volume 8, "The Gospel According to St. John: Introduction" by Wilbert F. Howard, Published by Abingdon Press, Nashville, Tennessee, ©1980.

Introduction to the New Testament by Helmut Koester, Published by Fortress Press, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, ©1982.

The Jewish World In The Time Of Jesus by Charles Guignebert, Published by University Books, New Hyde Park, New York, ©1959.

The Revell Bible Dictionary, "The Gospel According to John," Published by Fleming H. Revell, Old Tappan, New Jersey,  ©1990.