The Gospel according to John
		Sons of Thunder
		The following is a summary of the introduction to "The Gospel of John" in the series "The Daily Study Bible" by William Barclay, Saint Andrew Press. The Gospel according to John
		Introduction
		Among the four Gospels in the Second Testament (New Testament), the fourth Gospel is quite different from the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke). Various sources from the second to the fourth century claim that it has been composed by Saint John who was one of the twelve Apostles chosen by Jesus at the beginning of his public life. A superficial reading already shows these differences.There is no account or story of the birth of Jesus, of his baptism and temptation. We do not read about the healing of people possessed by evil spirits, and there are no parable stories as in the other Evangelists. Instead the speeches of Jesus in John's Gospel are often a whole chapter long and sound like profound "theological" teaching. What John tells about Jesus' last days and hours of his life is also different from what the Synoptic Gospels had found in the tradition of the community of believers. There is no mentioning of a "Last Supper" during which Jesus gave bread and wine as symbols of his life for mankind. In John's Gospel Jesus gives his friends during the (Paschal-)meal the example of his serving-love by washing their feet, then he talks to them and prays for them to the Father and for all those who will come to believe in him through their testimony. John does neither speak about Jesus' suffering in the garden of Gethsemane nor does he mention Jesus' "ascension" to the Father.
		John has a different account of the beginning of the ministry or public life of Jesus. While the Synoptic Gospels state that Jesus began preaching the Good News only after John the Baptist had been imprisoned (Mark 1,14; Luke 3,18.20; Matthew 4,12), in John's Gospel Jesus' teaching and ministry over-lapped with the activity of John the Baptist (John 3,22-30; 4,1). Also the account of the scene of Jesus' ministry is quite different. In the Synoptic Gospels the main scene is Galilee and Jesus goes to Jerusalem only shortly before his death. In John the main scene of his ministry is Jerusalem and Judaea, with only occasional withdrawals to Galilee (John 2,1-13; 4,35-5,1; 6,1-7,14). Eusebius in his "Ecclesiastical History" (about AD 300) tries an explanation to the extent that John's Gospel describes at least in the earlier chapters a ministry in Jerusalem which took place while John the Baptist was still at liberty. This ministry preceded the ministry in Galilee. The Synoptic Gospels' story on the other hand concentrate on Jesus' ministry in Galilee. John also reports the duration of Jesus' ministry differently. According to his account Jesus celebrated the Passover feast three times in Jerusalem which would mean that Jesus' public life lasted at least two, if not three years while the Synoptic Gospels know of only one Pasha during his ministry. John also differs in some matters of fact from the Synoptic Gospels: he puts the cleansing of the temple at the beginning of the ministry, the other gospels at the end (John 2,13-22; Mark 11,15-17; Luke 19,45.46; Matthew 21,12.13); for him, Jesus died on the day before the Passover, the other gospels report it on the day itself.
		John's special purpose
	John's Gospel differs from the Synoptic Gospels not because of the writer's ignorance or lack of information (even if the writer was not the apostle himself but someone very close to him). John's Gospel was written at least 70 years after Jesus had died and risen, i.e. around the year 100. Mark had composed his Gospel about the year 65 and Luke and Matthew about 20 years later. We can suppose that the writer of John's Gospel knew at least the Gospel of Mark. He must therefore have felt free to omit what the other Gospels had already told and to add what they did not or could not mention for various reasons. Often John's additions have a real vivid touch of a man who was present at these events.
		What then was John's aim, what and whom did he have in mind when he wrote? The Fourth Gospel was written in Ephesus. Christian communities had spread out throughout the Mediterranean regions. Those who called themselves Christians mostly came from an Hellenistic background. To them, the teaching of Jesus had to be restated. Not its truth or contents, but the terms and the categories, the way of conveying it to the people from a non-Jewish tradition. How important and necessary John's restating of Jesus' teaching was can easily be seen if one takes a look at Matthew's Gospel. Matthew begins with a long genealogy. The names of Jesus' ancestors were familiar to the Jews, because they knew them from their Bible. But for a Greek they were a list of unknown names. That Jesus was a descendant from David whose hometown was Bethlehem and that he was believed to be the Messiah was quite unimportant to a Greek. Should a Greek have to reorganize his whole thinking into Jewish categories if he wanted to become a Christian? Must he learn Jewish history and literature before he could become a Christian? The Greek was used to reasoning and discussing to find the truth. Was he to abandon his own intellectual heritage in order to think in Jewish terms and categories of thought? John found a way to introduce the truth Jesus had taught to the mind of the people he wanted to address. He started out using their categories and terms. The first conception was that of the LOGOS, meaning WORD and REASON. In Greek thinking the LOGOS or mind of God was responsible for the order he saw in nature. The mind of the human being, his ability to think and reason, owes his faculties to the LOGOS dwelling within him. John used this Greek thought to present Jesus as the LOGOS of God acting in and through this human being (John 1,1-18, the Prologue). The second conception was that of TWO WORLDS: the one was the world in which we live here and now. Wonderful as it may be, it is only a world of shadows, as Plato said. Then there is the other world, the real world of eternal truths of which our earthly things are only poor copies. That world is unseen. The great problem was how to get into this world of reality, how to get out of our shadows into the eternal truths. John declares that it is Jesus who enables us to do it. He is the reality that has come to earth. John therefore speaks of Jesus as the "true or real light" (1,9), the "true or real bread" (6,32), the "true or real vine" (15,1), he has the "real judgment" (8,16). Jesus alone has reality in this world of shadows and imperfections. Therefore every action that Jesus did was not only an act in time but also a window which allows us to see into reality. That is why John speaks of the "miracles" of Jesus as "signs". John does not speak about Jesus' compassion as for example Mark does when he meets the leper (1,41; see also Mark 5,22; 9,14; Luke 7,15). In John's Gospel Jesus' deeds are not deeds of compassion but rather deeds that demonstrate the power and glory of the one who represents the real world, the world of God's reality (John 2,11; 11,4; 9,3). God's reality breaks into time and into human affairs in these signs. Often the signs of Jesus in John's Gospel are accompanied by a long discourse (chapters 6; 9;11). To John the signs are not simply single events in time. They are insights into what God is always doing and what Jesus always is. When he feeds the five thousand (the number is symbolic too) he illustrates that he is for ever the "real bread" of life for all (chapter 6). When he makes the blind man see he illustrates that he is the "real light" of the world (chapter 9). When he raises Lazarus from the dead it means that he is for ever and for all humans the "real life", even eternal life (chapter 11). To John a "miracle" was never an isolated act. It was a window into the reality of what Jesus, the LOGOS of God, was and always is and always did and always does. John did not write a historical, but a "spiritual" gospel. John presents Jesus as the mind (LOGOS) of God in a person come to earth, and as the one person who possesses reality instead of shadows and who is able to lead humans out of the shadows into the "real world" of which the Greeks dreamt.
	The second of the great facts confronting John and the Christian community was the rise of heresy. A heresy is seldom a complete untruth. It usually results when one side or point of the truth is unduly emphasized. In John's time some Jewish Christians gave too high a place to John the Baptist. He was working and talking like the great prophets of olden times. There seems to have been an accepted sect of John the Baptist within the orthodox Jewish faith. In the Acts of the Apostles we come upon a group of people who thought themselves to be Christians but knew only the baptism of John and had not even heard of the Holy Spirit (19,1-7). They were baptized "in the name of Jesus" and "received the Holy Spirit" when Paul laid his hands on them. In John's gospel the Baptist is relegated to his proper place: when Jesus and John meet the gospel attributes supremacy to Jesus (1,19-34) without criticizing John. But there is a rebuke to those who would give John a place which ought to belong to Jesus (3,22-36).
		Another heresy which was wide spread in the days when John's Gospel was written is called by the general name of GNOSTICISM. Its basic assumption was that matter is essentially evil and spirit is essentially good. They therefore argued that God cannot touch matter and therefore did not create the world. The world was created by an emanation, a certain power, which God put out and which was so far from him that it even was hostile to him. Against the Gnostic view that God had nothing to do with the creating of the world, John begins his gospel with the statement: "All things were made through him; and without him was not anything made that was made (1,3). He states that God loved the world (3,16). A Gnostic teaching about Jesus was another heresy which John had to fight. Some of the Gnostics held that Jesus was only a kind of half-god who was more or less distant from God, a being somewhere between God and the world. Some Gnostics held that Jesus hat no real body. A body is matter and God could not touch matter. Therefore Jesus was a kind of phantom without flesh and blood. Against these heresies John writes in his gospel that The Word was with God and was the same as God and The Word became flesh, a real human being and lived among us (1,1; 1,14). Other Gnostics admitted that Jesus was a man into whom the Spirit of God came at his baptism and remained with him until the end of his life, but since the Spirit of God could never suffer and die, they claimed that it left him before he was crucified. John corrects these ideas by stressing the real humanity of Jesus. Jesus gets angry (2,15), tired (4,6), his disciples offer him food (4,31), he wept (11,33.35.38), one of his last words on the cross were "I thirst" (19,28). John also stresses Jesus' special closeness to the Father in whose glory he shared from eternity (17,5; 6,33-38). He stresses the fact that Jesus always acted entirely on his own initiative but at the same time in accordance with the will of the Father (2,4;7,10;10,18;19,11). Jesus tells his disciples that there is no need for them to see the Father because they saw and heard him (14,1-14). He promises them that he will ask the Father to send them the Holy Spirit who will reveal to them the truth about God and make them understand the mystery of Jesus' life (16,4-15; 17,24-26). The Gospel of John presents us with a Jesus who is undeniable human and who yet is undeniably divine.
		The Special Gospel
		We believe that all the gospels were written by honest men who wanted to write the truth about Jesus and who were guided by his Spirit he had promised them. But the Fourth Gospel takes one step further. It is like a ripe fruit of a long life during which the author and his community had prayed and reflected about the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. John writes not only about what he had seen and heard but also what now, 70 years later, he had come to understand that Jesus had meant. The Fourth Gospel teaches us among many other things that it is the Spirit of Jesus, the Holy Spirit, who speaks to us not only through the mind and memory of John the apostle and by the pen of John the elder. The whole believing community of Ephesus is speaking to us as witnesses of the Risen Christ through this gospel.
		Who wrote the fourth Gospel?
		Tradition answers that the author was John the apostle, the younger son of Zebedee, a fisherman like his father and his brother James. Jesus gave the two brothers the name "Boanerges" which means Sons of Thunder, hinting at their temper, which seems to have been exclusive and intolerant (Mark 9,38; Luke 9,49. 54). John was very close to Jesus. He was among the three disciples whom Jesus always took with him on special occasions (Mark 9,2;14,33; Luke 8,51). The Fourth Gospel calls John "the disciple whom Jesus loved" (13,23) although his name is not mentioned. John is the only one who stays with Jesus until he died on the cross giving testimony of Jesus' death (19,35; 21,24). Although tradition has always identified the beloved disciple with John, it seems to be rather unlikely that John speaks of himself as the beloved disciple of Jesus. But we can be sure that the mind and memory behind the Fourth Gospel is that of John the apostle. There are testimonies which point to a writer who also was a witness of the life and teaching of Jesus whose name was John the Elder and who actually was the penman. We find hints about this man in the second and third letters of John, which were written by the same hand and which begin: "From the Elder to the elect lady and her children" (2 John 1)and "From the Elder to the beloved Gaius" (3 John 1).
		We should be grateful for the treasure that John the Elder and his church in Ephesus have transmitted to us through the Gospel of John.
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