The Gospel of John - Apologetics?

[MarkPerz]

Something occured to me the other day, and I’m curious to hear some other opinions.

It is widely accepted that John’s Gospel was written around the year 90 a.d., or so, 20 to 25 years (give or take a few years) after the synoptics.

Does anyone else think it’s possible that John may have written his gospel as much as an apologetics treatise as a tool for evangelization?

 

[lindalou725]

Since he was the last of the writers, I believe you could have hit the nail on the head. Especially in his 6th chapter(the most ignored by non-Catholics) where he explains in such depth and details the importance of believing that the Holy Eucharist IS his flesh given for the life of the world. Careful reading reveals the parallel between the old testament passover meal and the “Last’supper” In BOTH instances the flesh of the lamb MUST BE EATEN for your life to be secured.

How do they not see this?? Lindalou

 

[The_Barrister]

Good points.

However, many biblical scholars are now dating Revelation to 69-70 A.D., and since Revelation assumes much of what is already in John’s Gospel it would seem incongruent for Revelation to have been written before the Gospel.

 

[tkdnick]

The Barrister:

Good points.

However, many biblical scholars are now dating Revelation to 69-70 A.D., and since Revelation assumes much of what is already in John’s Gospel it would seem incongruent for Revelation to have been written before the Gospel.

I have also heard (no promises on the authenticity of the source) that all of the Apostles were dead by the year 75 or so. If this is truly the case (and I can’t say), then there is no way John wrote the Gospel in 90. There is also much speculation that John didn’t actually write the Gospel of John, but that one of his disciples wrote it. Again, I can’t comment on the veracity of that statement either. So many questions, so many different answers…

 

[Gottle_of_Geer]

MarkPerz:

Something occured to me the other day, and I’m curious to hear some other opinions.

It is widely accepted that John’s Gospel was written around the year 90 a.d., or so, 20 to 25 years (give or take a few years) after the synoptics.

Does anyone else think it’s possible that John may have written his gospel as much as an apologetics treatise as a tool for evangelization?

The Gospels were both - evangelisation included apologetic; Christians were preaching a very shocking message, because they were saying that a crucified Jew was to be the judge of all men, and that he had appeared among them, recently.​

There were many problems with this:

1. Crucifixion was the vilest form of punishment, reserved for the dregs of society

Tell a member of the KKK that Martin Luther King is the Saviour of mankind, and you’ll have some faint indication of just how unacceptable the Gospel message was. The difference is, that Jesus of Nazareth really is the Saviour of mankind.

So the Cross was folly to the Greeks, who prized wisdom, and a stumbling block to the Jews, who looked for a Messiah to deliver them - His crucifixion disqualified Him from being the Messiah, because “accursed is everyone who hangs upon a tree” (Deuteronomy 21.23).

1. He was Jewish - and the Jews were very unpopular.
2. He really suffered - so he could not be divine or favoured by God, because such people did not really suffer. Only those who deserved to suffer, did so. So he could not be sinless either. He obviously deserved what he got.

As He was still being preached and adored, long after His death, He must have used magic to attract so many followers. Adoring a crucified Jew could be explained in no other way. This was the complaint of Celsus in 177/8. Crucifixion in the Empire was abolished only in 315, by Constantine.

Alternatively, because crucifixion was an unspeakable obscenity, He could not have been crucified. The Crucifixion was a gigantic embarrassment for some writers, so they skate over it, and emphasis some other feature of Christ’s Person or Work. Christ the Teacher is less embarrassing than Christ the gallows-bird, scorged, nailed, sweating, stinking, bothered by insects, stark naked, cramped, almost to unable to move, bleeding, dying, dead. Yet this is the One Whom St. Paul calls “the Lord of Glory” - “the glorious Lord”; “…they would not have crucified the Lord of Glory.” This must have been indescribably shocking to its earliest readers and hearers.

The Gospels contain the longest accounts of crucifixion that are known - one just did not discuss such things.

1. Antiquity was very important in religion - if something was ancient, it was authoritative. If it was new, it was self-condemned as of no value. That is why first the Jews, then the Christians, were so keen to make out that Plato had borrowed from Moses; because old = good. The Gospel was not old. So it must be nonsense. Besides, look how ignorant and common the Apostles were: fishermen, tradesmen, and the like. What sort of God would choose them, if He had an important work to communicate ?

The Gospel was full of such difficulties - yet it was the Gospel that had to be preached. No one could have invented anything so packed with unacceptable, even blasphemous, ideas.

This ideas, or some of them, were in the air when the fourth Gospel was written. So Jesus is presented as the Revealer of God, as the True Temple, the Giver of the Spirit, and so on: disadvantages are turned around, and made into opportunities for showing Who and What He is. ##

 

[DianJo]

I think it’s very much possible and highly likely. Consider the time John wrote. Persecutions were rampant as evidenced by Revelation (speaking in “code” and symbolism). People of the time were still trying to understand this new religion. People who were entirely new to true religion (i.e. pagans) were beginning to practice and I’m sure brought their misunderstandings of Jesus and just who He was into this religion.

I think the time was ripe for John to write his gospel to explain who Jesus really was and to “prove” that Jesus was God, the Divine and Human as well. I also think that he wrote about the Eucharist for the same reason - cannibalism - to dispel this rumor!

What a prime time for John to write his beautiful gospel!

 

[Maccabees]

The Barrister:

Good points.

However, many biblical scholars are now dating Revelation to 69-70 A.D., and since Revelation assumes much of what is already in John’s Gospel it would seem incongruent for Revelation to have been written before the Gospel.

Yes this is true some scholarship today suggest it was written at an earlier date around the time you mentioned. And their is another thing scholarship suggest Revelation was not written by John the Beleoved apostle at all. Actually this is not a new theory some of the church fathers and other influential theologians believed it was written by another John was was a very influential bishop in the early church.
Unlike most of the books of the NT this authorship remains a mystery even in the times of the early church.
The gosple of John on the other hand was considered almost unamiously to be written by John the beleoved apostle and its late date is confirmed by the tradition of it being the last gospel and the tradition that it was written by John as an old man.
What I am trying to say is this it is entirely possible Revelation was written before John and that each had a seperate author.

 

[germys9]

tkdnick:

I have also heard (no promises on the authenticity of the source) that all of the Apostles were dead by the year 75 or so. If this is truly the case (and I can’t say), then there is no way John wrote the Gospel in 90. There is also much speculation that John didn’t actually write the Gospel of John, but that one of his disciples wrote it. Again, I can’t comment on the veracity of that statement either. So many questions, so many different answers…

Remember that John lived the longest of all the disciples and the only one who did not die a martyr’s death. Most scholars definitely place his gospel around 90 AD.

 

[oriel36]

tkdnick:

I have also heard (no promises on the authenticity of the source) that all of the Apostles were dead by the year 75 or so. If this is truly the case (and I can’t say), then there is no way John wrote the Gospel in 90. There is also much speculation that John didn’t actually write the Gospel of John, but that one of his disciples wrote it. Again, I can’t comment on the veracity of that statement either. So many questions, so many different answers…

The learned Erasmus once wrote of the Johannine Word that -
“you could scarcely believe less than if Jesus Himself was standing right before you”, in other words it does’nt really matter who created the Work save that what the author believed what Christ Believed.

Most of the great Catholic saints often reference Dionysius the Areopagite as a more dynamic expression of Johannine Christianity within the Apostolic Church or indeed the ascending Spiritual life of man in Christ and Christianity.

“Thus the blessed Bartholomew asserts that the divine science is both vast and minute, and that the Gospel is great and broad, yet concise and short; signifying by this, that the beneficent Cause of all is most eloquent, yet utters few words, or rather is altogether silent, as having neither (human) speech nor (human) understanding, because it is super-essentially exalted above created things, and reveals itself in Its naked Truth to those alone who pass beyond all that is pure or impure, and ascend above the topmost altitudes of holy things, and who, leaving behind them all divine light and sound and heavenly utterances, plunge into the Darkness where truly dwells, as the Oracles declare, that ONE who is beyond all.”

esoteric.msu.edu/VolumeII/MysticalTheology.html

Of all the extra-Biblical works,the final sentence of that great work from Dionysius leaves a person almost brethless ]