skepticgirl

John 21


20 Peter turned and saw the disciple following whom Jesus loved, the one who had also reclined upon his chest during the supper and had said, "Master, who is the one who will betray you?" Was John the one following, is John known as the disciple Jesus loved?
21 When Peter saw him, he said to Jesus, "Lord, what about him?"
22 Jesus said to him, "What if I want him to remain until I come? What concern is it of yours? You follow me."
23 So the word spread among the brothers that that disciple would not die. But Jesus had not told him that he would not die, just "What if I want him to remain until I come? (What concern is it of yours?)"
24 It is this disciple who testifies to these things and has written them, and we know that his testimony is true. This disciple who testifies, is John himself?

jeffevnz

It certainly appears to cite John as the source of the preceding information, but it's not necessarily referring to the entire Gospel. Note that GJ contains a description of John's death. It's doubtful he wrote that part.

DanBZ

John's Gospel was also written very late in the 1st century, too long ago to have been written by an eyewitness in a time when people rarely lived past 40.

Lucy

Chapter 21 is thought to have been added later.
Look at the last two sentences of chapter 20. These look like final statements.

The 21st chapter reconciles resurrection appearances with the synoptics, while before John only wrote about three resurrections which differ greatly with the synoptics.

Furthermore, the verses seem to be a justification about the death of the beloved disciple. Obviously it was thought that Jesus said that the bolved disciple would not die, but much later, there was no proof of this, so the author of John (ch: 21) had to explain what Jesus really meant.

Lucy

andrewcriddle

I agree that John's Gospel is probably not by an eyewitness but the rarely lived past 40 statement is misleading.

In the ancient world there were shockingly high levels of infant and child mortality (and death in childbirth)

On the other hand a healthy man in his twenties had a reasonable chance of reaching 70-80

(the Emperor Augustus reached 75 Tiberius 77 Claudius 64)

Andrew Criddle

TedM

Thank you!!! You have addressed something that for some reason is a minor pet peeve for me. It would be interesting to know what percentage of people lived to their 70's in the ancient world.

ted

Mythra

Okay - so living to be 70 was not uncommon in the first century.

Assuming John the disciple was roughly the same age as Jesus -

Any of you want to provide support for a dating of 70 C.E. for the authorship of the Gospel of John?

100 - 110 C.E. seems to be a more likely timeframe. I've even seen support for more like 120 C.E. ......

Were there a lot of folks writing books at 110 years of age back then?

And, it's much more likely that it was authored by an Egyptian or Syrian philosopher/scholar who was familiar with Philo Judaeus than by a peasant Galilean fisherman.

Roland

One of the strongest reasons to doubt that John was written by an actual disciple is that none of the quotes in this gospel match up with the quotes in the Synoptics. Even Jesus' STYLE of speaking is totally different here.

Johnny Skeptic

I was under the impression that most of the most important claims in the Bible were not written by eyewitnesses. Am I correct that none of the anonymous Gospel writers claim that they ever witnessed a miracle?

The following claims surely were not witnessed by any human:

God created the heavens and the earth.

Jesus was conceived by the Holy Sprit.

Jesus was born of a virgin.

Jesus never sinned.

Jesus' shed blood and death atoned for the sins of mankind.

The Holy Spirit came to the church.

Of course, we also have many examples of other claims that are not at all convincing in a historical sense. Following are some examples:

The claim of the ten plagues in Egypt.

The claim of a global flood.

The claim of a talking donkey.

Paul's uncorrobated claim of the 500 eyewitnesses.

Matthew's uncorroborated claim of the guards at the tomb.

The claim that God can predict the future.

Will you please give us a few examples of some claims that you believe are reasonably provable in a historical sense? It seems to me that most apologists became Christians based soley upon faith, and later began to use apologetic evidence to try to convince themselves that they made the right decision.

jeffevnz

To anyone in the know -

I don't know too much about scholarship on John. What are the odds that parts of it were written earlier (eg, the passage cited above)? If so, how much earlier? Could it be that parts were written by John, or that he dictated to a follower (like the common theory about Peter and GMark)?