of Christ which were performed before the Baptist was cast into prison, but the other three evangelists mention the events which happened after that time . . . The Gospel according to John contains the first acts of Christ, while the others give an account of the latter part of his life’ (Eusebius, The Ecclesiastical History, 5:24).
So then according to Eusebius there is no contradiction at all between the Fourth Gospel and the other three; the difference is due to the fact that the Fourth Gospel is describing a ministry in Jerusalem, at least in its earlier chapters, which preceded the ministry in Galilee, and which took place while John the Baptist was still at liberty. It may well be that this explanation of Eusebius is at least in part correct.
(3) John has a different account of the duration of Jesus’ ministry. The other three gospels, on the face of it, imply that it lasted only one year. Within the ministry, there is only one Passover Feast. In John, there are three Passovers: one at the cleansing of the Temple (2:13), one near the feeding of the 5,000 (6:4), and the final Passover at which Jesus went to the cross. According to John, the ministry of Jesus would take a minimum of two years, and probably a period nearer three years, to cover its events. Again, John is unquestionably right. If we read the other three gospels closely and carefully, we can see that he is right. When the disciples plucked the ears of corn (Mark 2:23), it must have been springtime. When the 5,000 were fed, they sat down on the green grass (Mark 6:39); therefore it was springtime again, and there must have been a year between the two events. There follows the tour through Tyre and Sidon, and the transfiguration. At the transfiguration, Peter wished to build three booths and to stay there. It is most natural to think that it was the time of the Feast of Tabernacles or Booths and that that is why Peter made the suggestion (Mark 9:5). That would make the date early in October. There follows the space between that and the last Passover in April. Therefore, behind the narrative of the other three gospels lies the fact that Jesus’ ministry actually did last for at least three years, as John represents it.
(4) It sometimes even happens that John differs in matters of fact from the other three. There are two outstanding examples. First, John puts the cleansing of the Temple at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry (2:13–22); the others put it at the end (Mark 11:15–17; Matthew 21:12–13; Luke 19:45–6). Second, when we come to study the narratives in detail, we will see that John dates the crucifixion of Jesus on the day before the Passover, while the other gospels date it on the day of the Passover.
We can never shut our eyes to the obvious differences between John and the other gospels.
John’s Special Knowledge
One thing is certain – if John differs from the other three gospels, it is not because of ignorance and lack of information. The plain fact is that, if he omits much that they tell us, he also tells us much that they do not mention. John alone tells of the marriage feast at Cana of Galilee (2:1–11); of the coming of Nicodemus to Jesus (3:1–15); of the woman of Samaria (4); of the raising of Lazarus (11); of the way in which Jesus washed his disciples’ feet (13:1–17); of Jesus’ wonderful teaching about the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, which is scattered through chapters 14–17. It is only in John that some of the disciples really come alive. It is in John alone that Thomas speaks (11:16, 14:5, 20:24–9); that Andrew becomes a real personality (1:40–1, 6:8–9, 12:22); that we get a glimpse of the character of Philip (6:5–7, 14:8–9); that we hear the carping protest of Judas at the anointing at Bethany (12:4–5). And the strange thing is that these little extra touches are intensely revealing. John’s pictures of Thomas and Andrew and Philip are like little cameos or vignettes in which the character of each man is etched in a way we cannot forget.
Further, again and again John has little extra details which read like the memories of one who was there. The loaves which the young boy brought to Jesus were barley loaves (6:9); when Jesus came to the disciples as they crossed the lake in the storm, they had rowed between three and four miles (6:19); there were six stone water pots at Cana of Galilee (2:6); it is only John who tells of the four soldiers gambling for the seamless robe as Jesus dies (19:23); he knows the exact weight of the myrrh and aloes which were used to anoint the dead body of Jesus (19:39); and he remembers how the perfume of the ointment filled the house at the anointing at Bethany (12:3). Many of these things are such apparently unimportant details that they are inexplicable unless they are the memories of someone who was there.
However much John may differ from the other three gospels, that difference is to be explained not by ignorance but rather by the fact that he had more knowledge or better sources or a more vivid memory than the others.
Further evidence of the specialized information of the writer of the Fourth Gospel is his detailed knowledge of Palestine and of Jerusalem. He knows how long it took to build the Temple (2:20); that the Jews and the Samaritans had a permanent quarrel (4:9); the low Jewish view of women (4:9); and how the Jews regard the Sabbath (5:10, 7:21–3, 9:14). His knowledge of the geography of Palestine is intimate. He knows of two Bethanys, one of which is beyond Jordan (1:28, 12:1); he knows that Bethsaida was the home of some of the disciples (1:44, 12:21); that Cana is in Galilee (2:1, 4:46, 21:2); and that Sychar is near Shechem (4:5). He has what one might call a street-by-street knowledge of Jerusalem. He knows the sheepgate and the pool near it (5:2); the pool of Siloam (9:7); Solomon’s Porch (10:23); the brook Kidron (18:1); the pavement which is called Gabbatha (19:13); and Golgotha, which is like a skull (19:17). It must be remembered that Jerusalem was destroyed in AD 70 and that John did not write until around AD 100; and yet from his memory he knows Jerusalem like the back of his hand.
The Circumstances in which John Wrote
We have seen that there are very real differences between the Fourth Gospel and the other three gospels; and we have seen that, whatever the reason, it was not lack of knowledge on John’s part. We must now go on to ask, what was the aim with which John wrote? If we can discover this, we will discover why he selected and treated his facts as he did.
The Fourth Gospel was written in Ephesus around AD 100. By that time, two special features had emerged in the situation of the Christian Church. First, Christianity had gone out into the Gentile world. By that time, the Christian Church was no longer predominantly Jewish; it was in fact overwhelmingly Gentile. The vast majority of its members now came not from a Jewish but a Greek background. That being so, Christianity had to be restated. It was not that the truth of Christianity had changed; but the terms and the categories in which it found expression had to be changed.
Take but one instance. A Greek might take up the Gospel according to St Matthew and immediately on opening it would be confronted with a long genealogy. Genealogies were familiar enough to Jews, but quite unintelligible to Greeks. Moving on, the reader would be confronted with a Jesus who was the Son of David, a king of whom the Greeks had never heard, and the symbol of a racial and nationalist ambition which had no significance for the Greeks. The picture presented was of Jesus as the Messiah, a term of which Greeks had never heard. Must Greeks who wished to become Christians be compelled to reorganize their entire thinking into Jewish categories? Must they learn a good deal about Jewish history and Jewish apocalyptic literature (which told about the coming of the Messiah) before they could become Christians? As the biblical scholar E. J. Goodspeed phrased it: ‘Was there no way in which [they] might be introduced directly to the values of Christian salvation without being for ever routed, we might even say, detoured, through Judaism?’ Greeks were among the world’s greatest thinkers. Was it necessary for them to abandon all their own great intellectual heritage in order to think entirely in Jewish terms and categories of thought?
John faced that problem fairly and squarely. And he found one of the greatest solutions which ever entered the human mind. Later on, in the commentary, we shall deal much more fully with John’s great solution. At the moment, we touch on it briefly. The Greeks had two great conceptions.
(a) They had
