The Birth of Christianity 8: John and Beyond

The Gospel of John is quite different to the other gospels. It is dated to 90 to 130 AD, so is later, but it has been suggested that it had multiple authors, or to put it another way, it got revised several times before it achieved (more or less) its final form.

This might suggest it is the work of a community somewhat in isolation, and while mainstream Christianity has the passion narrative, which was edited to became Mark, which was itself edited to become Matthew, in John we only have the product of a similar development process.

In John we see a somewhat different theology, which may be due to the time it was written, or could represent the theology of the isolated community - or a mixture of the two. Either way, in John it was believed that Jesus had existed even before his birth, and perhaps for that reason the author felt a nativity story was not needed. Like Luke, John has Jesus appearing in Jerusalem subsequent to the resurrection, indicating some familiarity with Luke or the stories Luke used.

John has Jesus crucified on the Thursday, and there are some indications in other gospels that this is right, and that Mark got it wrong - or was misunderstood. Mark says before the Sabbath, but as this was the Passover, both Friday and Saturday would have been Sabbaths. That might suggest John had access to other sources, such as the pre-Markan passion narrative.

In John we see the most embellishment, for example with Jesus body drowned in 75 or 100 pounds of spices, even before burial, and when he appears to the disciples, we see the most thorough examination of him in the incident with Thomas. The former, of course, is giving as much honour as possible to Jesus death, whilst the latter is clearly to counter attacks against the resurrection claims.

John 21

For this this series of posts, the most interesting part of John is Chapter 21. This is an obvious later addition; 20:30-31 are signing off the original story. Usually this would be good reason to just ignore the later addition (as with the second half of Mark 16). However, John 21 is a sighting of Jesus in Galilee. Could this be an account of the actually sighting?

The gospel writers for the most part were compiling what was known about Jesus into a coherent narrative, and it is certainly plausible that a story about the original Galilean sightings was still circulating, and was later added to John.

If we suppose Luke chose to omit the Galilean sightings for political reasons, it is possible the original author of John did so too. Perhaps the political wind changed, and it became acceptable to acknowledge the Galilean sightings, and so they got appended to the text (and John 21:1 is an attempt to meld the two together).

2 Simon Peter, Thomas (also known as Didymus[b]), Nathanael from Cana in Galilee, the sons of Zebedee, and two other disciples were together. 3 “I’m going out to fish,” Simon Peter told them, and they said, “We’ll go with you.” So they went out and got into the boat, but that night they caught nothing.

Note that in the context of John, this makes no sense. Why would the disciples be fishing in Galilee, when Jesus has told them to proclaim the good news?

But if the Empty Tomb and Jerusalem sightings were all made up, this makes perfect sense. After Jesus was crucified, the disciples fled Jerusalem in fear and despair, and returned to their old lives. Thus, we find them fishing in boats here, which agrees exactly with the fragment of the Gospel of Peter:

(58) Now it was the final day of the Unleavened Bread; and many went out returning to their home since the feast was over. (59) But we twelve disciples of the Lord were weeping and sorrowful; and each one, sorrowful because of what had come to pass, departed to his home. (60) But I, Simon Peter, and my brother Andrew, having taken our nets, went off to the sea. And there was with us Levi of Alphaeus whom the Lord ...

This account puts Peter very much to the fore, which also agrees with the account Paul gives us, with Peter seeing Jesus first. We have to wonder if it was opponents of Peter within the Christian community who causes Luke to omit the Galilean appearances. Could they also have removed the original ending of Mark?

Worth noting that the account is very like that in Luke 5 in parts, the latter recounting when Peter first met Jesus. It may be that the two somewhere along the way, before being added to John (some time after 90 AD presumably).

Beyond John

It was only decades later that the idea of the trinity appeared. This seems in part in response to Arianism in the third and fourth centuries. Christians pondered the nature of Jesus, and Arianism held that Jesus was created by God, and hence not God. Eventually it was denounced as heresy.

Later the Holy Spirit was added to form the trinity, based on the common occurance of the three in scripture. It was highly controversial until ratified by the Nicene creed in 381 AD.