Thanks!

@@resurrectioncitychurch180 God bless your church

So glad to hear that! Thanks, Brett!

It's certainly a possibility, and it's true some scholars today think there was a Johannine community that compiled the apostle's words and wrote them down later, though I don't think they use that one verse as justification for their view. There isn't much internal evidence for it other than the verse you just mentioned, which is in more translations than just the KJV. However, it's easily read that the "we" there is simply the community of faith that John is a leader of, and his testimony is agreed upon as being the true story of Jesus as opposed to other gnostic Jesus stories that may have been circling at the time.

Resurrection City Church What I find interesting about the idea of John having multiple authors, or being a kind of community is that it suggests a very spiritual world view in comparison to the other gospels and other books of the NT. There’s a character known as John on the Gnostic side who supposedly got his knowledge directly from Jesus, who speaks using spiritual themes like the ones you read about in the canonical writings of John. Though I think you have a different author in the Gnostic writings. I think the true John was a mystic who drew a certain crowd of mystically-minded people, and that he might have even had an esoteric school and tradition. I think that would explain the fact that the gospel of John was written a long time after the synoptic gospels, again with a different worldview that seemed to evolve on its own, independently of the others at least to a certain extent.

Resurrection City Church If you pick one book that doesn’t belong with all the others, OT and NT, then John’s Gospel is that one. John’s talking about a different God. He says as much when he talks to the Pharisees and the Samaritan woman. John’s Gospel is very Gnostic, though most orthodox and evangelical Christians aren’t encouraged to read it that way.

@@thinkneothink3055 You make a lot of interesting points and I agree with you that John is a different book written from a different perspective than the synoptics. I don't think if it's fair to say it's a different God--I actually think the different perspectives are meant to broaden the picture of Jesus and God to form a harmony, kind of like how in a band you might have a guitar, a bass, a drum set, and a singer that forms one complete sound. The best mix is to have a harmony of all the instruments/voices to form one band, and I think the Jesus stories are best read in harmony with one another, forming one composite picture of Jesus. One of the ways people talk about the difference between John and the Synoptics isn't that they have different conclusions but their starting places are different. The synoptics examine Jesus by starting "below" and working their way to Jesus as Messiah and God. John starts from "above", giving you that information from the beginning because John assumes most of his readers have already read the Synoptics and has decided to fill in the gaps and tell stories that weren't in the synoptics not because he's writing about a fundamentally different person but because he is trying to fill in the complete picture of Jesus. The Jesus we find in them all has the same identity, the same mission from God, the same understanding of his royal and sacrificial vocation, the same opposition from religious/political figures in his day, the same companions, and obviously the same conclusion: death and resurrection as the culmination and fulfillment of his ministry. We know that those in the early church who put the Bible together understood the differences in the gospels but thought that meant they needed to be together to give the full picture of Jesus, and that's why we have the four gospels we do.

@@resurrectioncitychurch180 So you agree that it's not "obvious" as you begin by saying that it was written by someone called John. Strike one.

It might seem suspect to us today, but Greek was the language most things were written down in even though the area it took place in was Palestinian. Even in Rome, which spoke Latin, much was still written in Greek. This was the common language to write things in. The ancient Roman empire was one with many languages spoken and written in, unlike the modern West where most people only know English. Additionally, because illiteracy was high and access to written material was difficult with no printing presses, much tradition was oral. It's likely the stories of Jesus were memorized, word for word, and passed along in the form they were later written in for several decades within the early church community before it was written by the author into the book we now have to be shared with churches in other parts of the Roman empire that had begun to spring up, as well as for the purpose of bringing more people to believe.

It's true many people were illiterate but that doesn't mean no one would write his story down, and the most common language to write in is koine Greek, which is what the entire New Testament was written in. Greek was the common language of writing even in Rome, which spoke mostly Latin. This goes to show the influence of the Greek language on the entire Roman empire. There's nothing strange about John writing his gospel in Greek, even if many people at the time were illiterate. There is strong evidence internally in the book of John that the author was a part of the High Priest's family. Consider that he is able to enter into the High Priest's residence while Peter is not.

Hey Gary, this is Joel, one of the pastors at Res City. Thanks for the comment! That's an interesting view. Most scholars, even non-Christian ones, agree John reached its final form *at the latest* about 80 years after Jesus's death, and was composed well within the lifetime of people who had been alive during Jesus's ministry. Below is a link to a Wikipedia article, which is definitely not written by evangelical authors, that sums up the consensus view that John reached the form we have now between 90-110 AD. In fact, we have fragments of the book that date to 110-130 AD, so based on that, it's probably not possible John could have been written 200 years after Jesus's ministry. Hope this helps you study the book of John and the Bible better! Blessings. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_John

Thank you!!