The Gospel of John: An Introduction

After wrapping up our high-level journey through the Bible, we are now a few weeks into our extended study of John’s Gospel. To be clear, if you’ve never been to Harbor, or it’s been a while, you can join us any week. You won’t be left behind in our discussions (or in the Rapture from the Left Behind books). While our various dialogues about this letter will relate to each other, you will not need to know anything from previous weeks in order to participate.

That being said, in case you haven’t been with us for the last few weeks and you’d like to catch up, here’s some of what we’ve explored so far in the fourth Gospel: purpose, structure, and prologue.

The Purpose of John’s Gospel

The letter doesn’t tell us much about its situation in history. We don’t know the date, the recipients, the location, or (despite a reference to “the beloved disciple”) the author. But the document gives us one important fact: the reason it exists.

Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.
(—John 20:30-31)

And this, frankly, might be a little off-putting to some of us. After so many years in evangelicalism, the last thing we need is someone trying to convince us what to believe. Maybe it’s a little better coming from an ancient document than a street-corner proselyte, but still.

However, some insight from Dr. Sherri Brown might help us understand that, for us here on this side of the Enlightenment, what it means to believe something might be a bit different than what it meant for John (or Jesus). What sort of belief is this letter trying to engender?

Is the concept of faith/belief restricted to the personal relationship between God and the believer?
The narrative is a Gospel of encounters, as Jesus interacts with people in the midst of their celebrations, their questioning, their daily lives, their ritual lives, and their suffering. We can also notice that “faith/belief” as a noun (pistis) does not occur in the Fourth Gospel, but forms of the verb “to believe” (pisteuein) occur regularly and often (98 times). Thus, faith in the Gospel of John is always dynamic and described in terms of an action, or better, an active journey powered by encountering others along the way.
(—Dr. Sherri Brown, lightly edited)

So we might say this letter exists in order to encourage people to join Jesus in the faith journey of encountering others.

The Structure of John’s Gospel

One of the most significant scholars on this Gospel has been Dr. Raymond E. Brown. Borrowing from him, here’s a very broad outline for this Gospel:

Prologue (1:1-18): Introduction of Jesus, the Word of God
The Book of Signs (ch. 1-12): The Word revealed in Jesus’ public ministry
The Book of Glory (ch. 13-20): The Word glorified in Jesus’ death and resurrection
Epilogue (ch. 21): Transition from the Word of God to the community of God

We can observe that there are two large narrative sections that make up this account: the “book of signs,” focused on Jesus’ public ministry, and the “book of glory,” focused on his private teachings and the events leading up to his death and resurrection.

Prologues were quite common in ancient Greek literature, especially in dramas. They would typically provide some mythological background for the audience. This would, in a sense, make the audience better-informed than the characters in the play, who would not be privy to these cosmic secrets hidden behind the unfolding plot. So the drama would leave the audience wondering, “When will these characters discover the truths that we already know?” John’s prologue serves a very similar function, letting us peek behind the curtain before we see any of the action.

The epilogue is the final chapter, which nearly all scholars think was written after the rest of the letter. They think this because the previous chapter contains its own ending! Why would the author(s)/editor(s) produce a new ending for the Gospel? This is a question that invites speculation. Many New Testament scholars speculate that the Johannine community (the name for the group of Christians who first produced and/or used this document) needed a bridge between the Gospel events and their own situation. This ending, which has its own parting words (21:25) that mirror chapter 20’s, helps build that bridge.

The Prologue of John’s Gospel

Scholars are quick to point out connections between John’s prologue and two older Jewish writings: the creation accounts of Genesis, and the Wisdom tradition (as in the seven Books of Wisdom in the Hebrew Bible).

In our English traditions, both Genesis 1 and John 1 start with the phrase “In the beginning,” and of course both describe the creation of the universe. John’s Gospel will continue to interact with Genesis in various ways—including a day-by-day account of Jesus’ first week of public ministry (like the days of creation) and multiple references to Jacob in chapter 1 alone.

Perhaps even more evocative is the way this prologue steps into the Wisdom tradition. In the Jewish Books of Wisdom, we find a female Wisdom who seems to follow the same trajectory as the “Word” in John 1:

The Prologue to John’s Gospel, which more than any other scriptural text influences the subsequent development of Christology, actually presents the prehistory of Jesus as the story of the Old Testament’s Wisdom: present ‘in the beginning,’ an active agent in creation, descending from heaven to pitch a tent among the people, rejected by some, giving life to those who seek, a radiant light that darkness cannot overcome.
(—Dr. Elizabeth A. Johnson)

It can be incredibly rich to reflect on Jesus as both Word (grammatically masculine, and incarnated as a man) and Wisdom (grammatically feminine, and personified as a woman). Here’s just one example:

Wisdom who teaches God’s way and hosts a generous banquet (see, for example, Prov. 9:5-6) is defeated unless she finds people who accept her, and one cannot be a friend alone. For the Fourth Gospel, then, one way of speaking of “the church” is as the community called into being around Wisdom, which is also the community defined by the gift and demand of friendship with God, Christ, and one another.
(—Dr. Sharon Ringe)

Our community also discussed the rest of John 1, which explains John the Baptist and narrates the gathering of Jesus’ first disciples. We discussed what “discipleship” actually is, using the language of the passage—seeking, remaining, following. But this blog post is long enough already! If you have questions about any of our discussions, or of John’s Gospel more generally, please let us know.

If you’d like to participate in our Thursday night discussions, you can sign up here. We hope you will!