Category: Gospel of John

John 1:1-50

The first chapter of the Gospel of John includes some of the most famous lines in all of scripture: the “prologue” in 1:1-18. Scholars debate whether the prologue was part of the original materials that comprised this Gospel or whether it comes from a source who had a different theological outlook than other narrative parts of the book. Many scholars think the Gospel writer adopted an existing hymn for the prologue. You might say that the prose of the prologue sings, and is meant to be sung.

Karoline Lewis suggests that the prologue identifies eight themes that are unpacked in the narratives throughout the rest of the Gospel:

1. Jesus’ connection to God’s creative activity in creation, new creation, and rebirth.
2. The origin of Jesus and his relationship to God.
3. How the incarnation — “the word made flesh” — reveals God’s character.
4. How the divine and the human are held together in Jesus.
5. Contrast between “light” and “darkness.”
6. Witness.
7. What it means to be in relationship with God.
8. Abundance.

On this last theme of “abundance,” Lewis notes that the word “grace” (charis) appears only four times in the Gospel of John, and only in the prologue (1:14, 16, 17). The rest of the Gospel narratives “show the reader what grace looks like, tastes like, smells like, sounds like, and feels like.”

Some questions for discussion on the prologue:

• What do you think is the significance of the connection between Jesus and creation?
• What does the term / title “Word” (Logos) suggest to you?
• What do you think about the themes of “light,” “life,” and “darkness” in this passage?
• Who are the ones who “received” Jesus and “believed in his name?” Why does the text emphasize this here?
• Why does verse 18 emphasize that “No one has ever seen God” but that the Son has made God known?

The section from 1:19-34 demonstrates that Jesus is superior to John the Baptist. There are similar materials later in John 3:22-36, where John the Baptist himself is depicted as saying “He [Jesus] must increase, but I must decrease.” (John 3:30.) Some scholars think these references suggest the Gospel of John might in part have been written to counter groups that continued to favor John the Baptist over Jesus and that did not understand Jesus was God. Some of these groups, those scholars suggest, might have also been attracted to Gnostic ideas. There is still a community today in the Middle East called the Mandaeans who hold such beliefs and trace their origins back to John the Baptist. Other scholars, however, think the evidence for this kind of connection is thin.

The section from 1:35-51 narrates Jesus’ call of his first disciples. Many commentators remark on what Jesus says to Philip in 1:50-51: “You will see greater things than these . . . you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.” This is a reference to eschatology, that is, to God’s consummation of history. Scholars debate whether the eschatology in the Gospel of John is “realized” or “futurist.” In a “realized” eschatology, the Kingdom of God has already arrived and is operating in the present time. For the Gospel of John, this would mean that the coming of Jesus is the arrival of the Kingdom of God. In a “futurist” eschatology, the arrival of God’s Kingdom and its attendant blessings remains a future event. Many scholars see elements of both a realized and a futurist eschatology in the Gospel of John: the Kingdom is now present in Jesus, but also there are elements of the Kingdom that are just over the horizon.

The title Jesus applies to himself in verse 51 — “Son of Man” — appears about eighty times in the four Gospels, including in thirteen different passages in the Gospel of John, but occurs only four times in all of the rest of the New Testament. The original Greek literally translates “the son of the man,” a phrase that does not appear in any secular Greek literature and that makes no grammatical sense. Most scholars agree that this title must relate to Jesus’ humanity, but there is significant debate over what the title says about Jesus’ humanity and how this relates to the claim that Jesus is divine.

Some questions for discussion on these sections:

• What strikes you about the differences in how Andrew, Peter, Philip, and Nathanael come to follow Jesus?
• Notice the different titles used for Jesus in these sections: “Lamb of God” (by John the Baptist); “Rabbi” (Teacher) (by John the Baptist’s two disciples); “Messiah” (Christ, Anointed)(by Simon / Peter); “Him about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote” (Philip); “Son of God” and “King of Israel” (by Nathanael); and “Son of Man” (by Jesus). What does the use of these titles here tell us about Jesus? What does it tell us about his followers (including us)?
• What is the significance of the name Jesus gives Simon in verse 42? (Cephas comes from kepha in Aramaic, and Petros (Peter) comes from petra in Greek — kepha and petra mean “rock.”)
• What sorts of events do you think the “greater things than these” in verses 50-51 foreshadow? What kind of eschatology does this suggest?

I’ve been leading a Bible study on the Gospel of John. Here are my “background” notes.

he Gospel of John occupies a unique place in Christian faith and spirituality. It has often been called the “spiritual Gospel” for its emphasis on Jesus’ divine character and its call to inner transformation. It differs from the “Synoptic” Gospels — Matthew, Mark, and Luke — both in its tone and in many of its details. Because of these features, the cultural background, editorial history, and theological significance of the Gospel of John has been subject to significant discussion throughout history.

The Gospel of John refers to an anonymous disciple “whom Jesus loved.” (John 13:23; 19:26; 20:2-9.) This anonymous “beloved disciple” is portrayed as first-hand witness to Jesus’ ministry and as the source of the Gospel’s narratives. (John 19:35; 21:20-24.) Although the Gospel of John does not refer to anyone named “John,” early Church tradition identifies him (presumably, a man), as someone named “John.” The Synoptic Gospels identify “John the son of Zebedee” as one of the twelve Apostles, and this John appears in Acts as a leader of the church in Jerusalem along with Peter. (See Matt. 10:2; Acts 3:1; Acts 8:14.) It is possible that the Apostle John is the first-hand source behind the Gospel of John, be we cannot be sure.

The suggestion that the text reflects the input of a first-hand source, perhaps even the Apostle John, however, does not mean it is a simple transcript of events written by this one person. The text itself demonstrates that the version we possess went through stages of editing or “redaction.” This includes, for example, the addition of the final Chapter 21 as a sort of post-script to the events described elsewhere in the text. Like the Synoptic Gospels, the Gospel of John likely is based on some material collected close to the time of Jesus’ life that was subsequently shaped, supplemented, and amended to reflect the concerns of a community or related communities of First or Second-Century Christians. It seems that the Synoptic Gospels relied on some common source materials, starting with the Gospel of Mark, and that the Gospel of John relied on some different source materials, which perhaps accounts for some of the differences between the Synoptics and John. At the same time, scholars have begun to note similarities as well as differences between John and the Synoptics.

Some scholars have suggested that the earliest source material behind the Gospel of John might have been a “Gnostic” source that portrayed Jesus as more “spiritual” and less human than the final canonical form of the text. The final canonical form, in this view, came to reflect a more “orthodox” Jesus than the earliest versions. In the first few centuries of church history, what came to be considered “orthodox” Christian theology existed in tension with “Gnostic” versions of the faith. Gnosticism was a family of Greek religious philosophies that elevated “spirit” over “matter” and that offered its adherents secret forms of knowledge that would allow them to access the Divine. Christian thought tried to emphasize both the humanity and divinity of Jesus, and the related goodness of the material creation, in a way that came to distinguish Christian thought from Gnosticism.

There are themes in the Gospel of John that seem more “Gnostic” than the Synoptic Gospels — not least the famous opening line, “In the beginning was the Word (logos), and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” (John 1:1.) And there are early Gnostic Christian texts, such as the Gospel of Thomas, that did not make it into the canon of scripture. Current scholarship, however, tends to hold that the earliest versions of the Gospel of John were not Gnostic texts and did not differ radically in theology from the final canonical form.

At the same time, the Gospel of John’s theological themes relate to the other “Johanine” writings in the New Testament: the epistles of 1 John, 2 John, and 3 John, the book of Revelation. It is impossible to reconstruct the community that produced the Gospel of John with any precision, but the related themes in these texts suggest there was a unique stream of Christian faith centered on participation in God’s life in Jesus, the presence of Jesus through the Spirit, perseverance through difficulty, and the practice of faith during this world and into the world to come.