target="_blank" rel="nofollow" href="#ulink_35abb9d9-e3af-5e69-9bbb-0b415cafa2af">6. See Culpepper 2000: 75–76.
7. Both Brown (1979: 33–34) and Schnackenburg (1982: 3.385) changed their view that the beloved disciple was John, the Son of Zebedee, by arguing that the disciple whom Jesus loved is an anonymous, but historical, figure who was not one of the twelve, but who was probably a man from Jerusalem. However, their arguments for later position are not as convincing as their original arguments for the beloved disciple as the son of Zebedee.
8. Cf. Brown 2010: 200–202.
9. Hengel 1989: 80–83, 109–10.
10. Barrett 1978: 103.
11. Hengel 1989: 17–21; Culpepper 2000: 111–12.
12. Cf. Anderson 2011: 135.
13. Hengel 1989: 7, 125, 144 n. 29; Barrett 1978: 101–2. However, Polycrates, the bishop of Ephesus (189–98 CE), identifies John, who leaned back on the Lord’s breast, as a priest (Eccl. Hist. 3.31.3; 5.24.3). This indicates the confusions prevailing in the “John tradition.”
14. Hengel (1989: 22, 159 n. 122) gives evidence of several fragments that show a direct connection existed between Papias and the presbyter John.
15. Köstenberger 2009: 7–8.
16. Alexandria, Antioch, and Transjordan are proposed as other possible places for the composition of John’s Gospel; cf. Brown 2010: 202–6.
17. For the three-person theory see Culpepper 1989: 3–49.
18. Perrin 2010: 301–18, esp. 315.
19. See von Wahlde 2010: 1.7 n. 6.
20. Barrett 1978: 110, 128.
21. So Hengel 1989: 81. More recently Czachesz (Czachesz 2010: 69 n. 75) has rejected that P52 necessitates a first-century date for John by uncritically following Nongbri’s.
22. Dodd 1965.
23. Robinson (1985: 3–5) argues for a “procedural” priority of John rather than for a temporal priority; for him John’s Gospel is the nearest to the source because it is believed to have come from the inner circle of the Twelve; cf. Robinson 1976: 307–8 n. 218.
24. Bauckham 2007: 17–36.
25. Dunn 2011: 157–85.
26. Keener 2005: 1.140–42 suggests a date around 90 CE as a working hypothesis.
27. Kanagaraj 2002: 47–60.
28. Eccl. Hist. 6.14.5–7.
29. Santram 1975: 108, 111–12.
30. Cf. Brown 2010: 153–80.
31. Bauckham (1998: 9–48) argues that the Gospels were written for a wider circulation rather than to a particular audience; cf. Evans 2008: 112.
32. Cf. Brown 2010: 180–83.
33. Bauckham 2007: 21; cf. Pryor 1992: 157–80; Brown 1979.
John 1
The Origin of Jesus and of the New Community
Prologue (1:1–18)
The Gospel of John commences with the prologue (1:1–18), which, by virtue of major themes it covers, is called the “window” through which the whole Gospel may be read.1 The structure of the prologue betrays a Jewish poem or hymn rather than “rhythmical prose” with at least six strophes (1:1–3, 3–5, 10–11, 12–13, 14–16, 17–18), with the author’s insertion of verses 6–8 and 15.2 The prologue serves as a “poetic preamble” to John’s Gospel, composed by the author himself, perhaps by using the hymn on Wisdom.
Pre-Existence of Christ as the Word (1:1–5)
John’s opening statement, “In the beginning was the Word,” takes us not only to the existence of the Word (logos in Greek) before creation, but also sets God’s redemptive work in the context of the eternal existence of the Logos. The phrase “in the beginning,” unlike that in Genesis 1:1, speaks of the time before the genesis (cf. Prov 8:23). The word Logos here is a title used in an absolute sense.
By referring to the Logos, John uses a term that was familiar to all sections of the society in the first century CE (see the excursus below). The Logos was in existence as a personal being and the sphere of his existence was God himself, as the assertion “the Logos was with God” (1:1b) shows. The phrase “with God” does not have the sense of “motion towards God” but the sense of “being from God” (6:46) or “living in communion with God.” That is, the Logos was living so close to God that he was sharing in the very life of God. The Logos and God, as two personalities, were living so close with one another that they cannot be separated one from the other. Such union means an active partnership or a reciprocal indwelling between two personalities.3
The Word’s mutual indwelling and life in oneness with God are eternal, as the statement “the Word was God” (1:1c) shows. Like Philo, John also identifies the pre-existent Logos with God without the definite article, for in 1:1c the Logos, as God, is differentiated from “the God.” Otherwise, 1:1c will contradict what is expressed in 1:1b–2 and 14:28. Therefore it is needless to translate “divine (in essence) was the Logos.”4 While “the God” points to “the one true God,” the Father, “God,” in this context, can only indicate the Logos as the manifestation of that God. “The
