(by John Drane)
John has always been recognized to be different in character from the other three gospels. At the time that William Barclay was himself a student, it was fashionable to explain this by supposing that John’s account is an essentially fictional narrative, loosely based on the synoptic gospels, but concerned more with defending early Christian beliefs than with providing any sort of independent testimony to the life and teaching of Jesus. By the time that Barclay wrote this volume, the idea that John’s gospel should be rehabilitated as a credible historical account had been proposed by several leading scholars, but was still a matter of considerable ongoing debate. Barclay unhesitatingly accepted this ‘new look’ on John, not only affirming the essential trustworthiness of the gospel as an authentic presentation of the life and teaching of Jesus, but also connecting its composition with the apostle John himself. His proposal that the finished gospel was not actually written down by the apostle himself, but reflected the life and faith of a ‘Johannine community’ that flourished in Ephesus towards the end of the first century, has been more fully explored since Barclay’s time, and is now widely accepted among New Testament scholars, though some would be inclined to date the gospel itself a little earlier than AD 100.
Some aspects of this commentary would certainly be expressed differently today, especially Barclay’s descriptions of the ‘opponents’ whom he believed John was countering. He scarcely noticed the anti-Jewish tone of some passages which has been the subject of heated debate, and the description of Gnosticism at 1:3 as ‘an intellectual and philosophical approach to Christianity’ is by no means the whole story. Texts written by Gnostics themselves have shown that Gnosticism was not an exclusively Christian phenomenon, while some doubt that ‘Gnosticism’ as such really was a definable entity, preferring to see it as a more loosely formulated ‘attitude’, much like today’s ‘New Age’, with which it has much in common.
In characteristic Barclay style, this volume is concerned with the wider meaning of the text to Christian life and witness. He has a good deal to say about what would now be called contextualization, the relevant expression of the Christian message in different cultures. The recurrence of this theme throughout not only reveals Barclay’s own underlying concern for effective mission, but also highlights an issue which continues to be a key challenge for the Church at the beginning of this new century.
John Drane
University of Aberdeen
2001
INTRODUCTION TO THE GOSPEL OF JOHN
The Gospel of the Eagle’s Eye
For many Christian people, the Gospel according to St John is the most precious book in the New Testament. It is the book on which above all they feed their minds and nourish their hearts, and in which they rest their souls. Very often on stained-glass windows and the like, the gospel writers are represented in symbol by the figures of the four animals that the writer of the Revelation saw around the throne (Revelation 4:7). The emblems are variously distributed among the gospel writers, but a common allocation is that the man stands for Mark, which is the plainest, the most straightforward and the most human of the gospels; the lion stands for Matthew, for he specially saw Jesus as the Messiah and the Lion of the tribe of Judah; the ox stands for Luke, because it is the animal of service and sacrifice, and Luke saw Jesus as the great servant of men and women and the universal sacrifice for all people; and the eagle stands for John, because it alone of all living creatures can look straight into the sun and not be dazzled, and, of all the New Testament writers, John has the most penetrating gaze into the eternal mysteries and the eternal truths and the very mind of God. Many people find themselves closer to God and to Jesus Christ in John than in any other book in the world.
The Gospel that is Different
But we have only to read the Fourth Gospel in the most cursory way to see that it is quite different from the other three. It omits so many things that they include. The Fourth Gospel has no account of the birth of Jesus, of his baptism, of his temptations; it tells us nothing of the Last Supper, nothing of Gethsemane and nothing of the ascension. It has no word of the healing of any people possessed by devils and evil spirits. And, perhaps most surprising of all, it has none of the parable stories Jesus told which are such a priceless part of the other three gospels. In these other three gospels, Jesus speaks either in these wonderful stories or in short, epigrammatic, vivid sentences which stick in the memory. But in the Fourth Gospel, the speeches of Jesus are often a whole chapter long and are often involved, argumentative pronouncements quite unlike the pithy, unforgettable sayings of the other three.
Even more surprising, the account in the Fourth Gospel of the facts of the life and ministry of Jesus is often different from that in the other three.
(1) John has a different account of the beginning of the ministry of Jesus. In the other three gospels, it is quite definitely stated that Jesus did not emerge as a preacher until after John the Baptist had been imprisoned. ‘Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God’ (Mark 1:14; cf. Luke 3:18, 20; Matthew 4:12). But in John there is a quite considerable period during which the ministry of Jesus overlapped with the activity of John the Baptist (John 3:22–30, 4:1–2).
(2) John has a different account of the scene of Jesus’ ministry. In the other three gospels, the main scene of the ministry is Galilee, and Jesus does not reach Jerusalem until the last week of his life. In John, the main scene of the ministry is Jerusalem and Judaea, with only occasional withdrawals to Galilee (2:1–13, 4:35–5:1, 6:1–7:14). In John, Jesus is in Jerusalem for a Passover which occurred at the same time as the cleansing of the Temple, as John tells the story (2:13); he is in Jerusalem at the time of an unnamed feast (5:1); he is there for the Feast of Tabernacles (7:2, 10); he is there at the Feast of Dedication in the wintertime (10:22). In fact, according to the Fourth Gospel, Jesus never left Jerusalem after that feast; after chapter 10 he is in Jerusalem all the time, which would mean a stay of months, from the wintertime of the Feast of the Dedication to the springtime of the Passover at which he was crucified.
In point of fact, in this particular matter John is surely right. The other gospels show us Jesus mourning over Jerusalem as the last week came on. ‘Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!’ (Matthew 23:37 = Luke 13:34). It is clear that Jesus could not have said that unless he had paid repeated visits to Jerusalem and made repeated appeals to it. It was impossible for him to say that on a first visit. In this, John is unquestionably right.
It was in fact this difference of scene which provided the great Church historian Eusebius with one of the earliest explanations of the difference between the Fourth Gospel and the other three. He said that in his day (about AD 300) many people who were scholars held the following view. Matthew at first preached to the Hebrew people. The day came when he had to leave them and go to other nations. Before he went, he set down his story of the life of Jesus in Hebrew, ‘and thus compensated those whom he was obliged to leave for the loss of his presence’. After Mark and Luke had published their gospels, John was still preaching the story of Jesus orally. ‘Finally he proceeded to write for the following reason. The three gospels already mentioned having come into the hands of all and into his hands too, they say that he fully accepted them and bore witness to their truthfulness; but there was lacking in them an account of the deeds done by Christ at the beginning of his ministry . . . They therefore say that John, being asked to do it for this reason, gave in his gospel an account of the period which had been omitted by the earlier evangelists, and of the deeds done by the Saviour during that period; that is, of the deeds done before the imprisonment
