Sensei Meela

Tell me if I'm remembering incorrectly:

John, son of Zebedee, (aka John the Baptist) is often credited as having written the Gospel of John while John the Seer is considered the author of The Revelation to John. Right?

IOW; two books, two Johns. Or are both books credited to one John?

Thanks in advance.

Bede

Correct. The writer of Revelation is often called John the Elder or Presbyter. Even in antiquity, for instance by Papias, he was often not identifed with John the Apostle or Zebedee who is credited with the Gospel and three letters of John.

I should point out that modern liberals reject all tradiation authorship regardless of the evidence for them, but would also admit that Revelation and the Gospel/Letters are by different authors.

Yours

Bede

Bede's Library - faith and reason

Amaleq13

You are remembering partially correctly. Perhaps too much of your namesake?

JBap isn't thought to be "the beloved disciple" nor John Zebedee. The traditional view is that John Zebedee and "the beloved disciple" are the same guy and he wrote both the Gospel and Revelation.

The two John's that are discussed as possible authors are John Zebedee and John the Elder, I believe. I think it is Papias who muddies the waters with the second reference.

Mageth

I've never heard of John the Baptist as credited with writing the Gospel of John.

Bede

Yes, my mistake. John the Baptist is not John the Apostle who wrote the Gospel. Wasn't reading the question carefully enough. Sensei arrived with two Johns and now has three.

B

Sensei Meela

I was afraid of that...!

SO, for clarity, John the Apostle =/= John the Baptist =/= John the Elder.

John the Apostle authored the Gospel of John.
John the Elder authored the Revelation to John.

Or so the contemporary scholarship has it. The two books were, at one time, credited to the John the Apostle. John the Baptist, then, is not considered an author of any book and is more akin to 'the first missionary'.

Did I do better this time?

[p.s. JtA is aka John, Son of Zebedee, and JtE is aka John the Seer, right?]

Amaleq13

As I understand "modern scholarship", the fourth Gospel is understood to have passed through several hands before it became the version we have today. While it is possible that the original version was written by an actual disciple of Jesus named "John", this is not generally assumed to be true.

I recently posted the following quotes about this Gospel from the Catholic Study Bible in the "James Carroll" thread:

"Critical analysis makes it difficult to accept the idea that the gospel as it now stands was written by one person."

"...the inconsistencies were probably produced by subsequent editing in which homogeneous materials were added to a shorter original."

"Other difficulties for any theory of eyewitness authorship of the gospel in its present form are presented by its highly developed theology and by certain elements of its literary style."

In discussing the notion that certain apparently accurate details argue for eyewitness testimony:

"Although tradition identifies this person as John, the son of Zebedee, most modern scholars find that the evidence does not support this."

Sensei Meela

Interesting...I just got done reading that thread, Amaleq. How serendipitous.

Yes; I had wanted to avoid the 'multiple authorship' issue, so I knew that I was oversimplifying by attaching a single name to (any) book. The real point I was driving at was that 'the' author of GJohn =/= 'the' author of RJohn. Or so it would seem.

Once agian, thanks.

Doctor X

He would have to be pretty damn old and have a poor memory.

"Shakespeare did not write his plays, they were written by someone else with the same name."

Mark Twain . . . or was that Samuel Clemens?

--J.D.