show_no_mercy

The gospel of John is the most other-worldly portrayal of Jesus. In this gospel he's displaying his superpowers out in the open, making no apologies that he's claiming to be God... as opposed to the synoptics where he's sort of playing the Clark Kent - Superman deal. It also has the longest speeches by Jesus, sometimes taking up entire chapters, which I think is evidence against any sort of eyewitness testimony (among others).

Anyway, I was thinking about John 19:25 - 27 where the writer implies that the beloved disciple, on who's testimony this gospel is based on, is Jesus' "brother". The only disciple who in my knowledge is constantly refered to as Jesus' "brother" is James Adelphotheos... James the "brother of God". This seems contrary to some other types of Christianities that existed at the time like the Nazarenes or the Ebionites. From what I read, the Ebionites rejected many of the divinity claims about Jesus that modern Christians take as an axiom, and that their church was based on strict familial apostolic succession - their church belong to James and James only.

So it would be really weird if James - in John - is explicitly stated as the beloved disciple since this gospel is basically the opposite of Ebionite theology. This is why I think that the beloved disciple is never named outright, because it is in complete contrast to the Ebionite claims about Jesus. So I think this gospel was written as an under the radar attack on the Ebionites and other "Judaizers" who pictured Jesus as a normal human being.

Thoughts?

bacht

disclaimer: amateur at large, but here's some bits & pieces:

The gospels present Jesus as having brothers including James - the title "brother of the Lord" appears in Paul's letters, and Acts confirms his seniority in Jerusalem

The epistle of James is conservative in comparison to gJohn

The gospel of John is usually dated later in the 2nd C, after the other three

The Catholics picked a middle path between a purely physical Jesus such as the Ebionite version, and the gnostic belief that Jesus was pure spirit

others here can fill in the gaps

renassault

The Gospel of John certainly leans toward having Christ perform miracles in order to invoke faith, yet the Gospel certainly doesn't eliminate that Christ knew that ultimately only faith can save, and thus signs given to those without faith are useless (for example, John 6:44 ff.).

show_no_mercy

Well I'm not arguing that James actually did write it, quite the contrary. I'm putting forth the idea that possibly someone from Paul's church or influenced by Paul's view of a non-human Jesus wrote gJohn and alluded to it being written by, or influenced by James. Their intent was to discredit Jame's church - like the Ebionites - by saying that James actually didn't believe in a fully human, non-god Jesus. In order to do that, they'd obviously have to write gJohn after the death of James.