Category:John--research (subject)

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Survey of scholarly works on the Apostle John.

Overview

The tradition of the early Church naturally assumed a connection between John the son of Zebedee and the author of the Gospel of John and the Epistles of John and the Revelation. That presumption was assumed through the Reformation and up to the Age of Enlightenment. That era, though, saw a seismic shift in the way scholars (though not the general public) understood the identity of the author of the Gospels, epistles, and Revelation. It was during the Enlightenment that everything assumed was questioned- including and especially the authorship of every biblical text. John the son of Zebedee was no longer seen as the author of the anonymous Gospel; nor the Epistles which bore the name John, nor the final (and most disconcerting) New Testament book.

It is not surprising, then, that the identification of John with the beloved disciple, and even more with John of Patmos, is openly disputed in modern scholarship. What is surprising is how the scholarly guild seems to be retreating to something of a pre-Enlightenment point of view. Or at least some scholars have done. One of the most outspoken supporters of Johannine authorship of the Fourth Gospel, Richard Bauckham, has recently suggested that John, the son of Zebedee, was in fact the author of that Gospel. In his 'Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony' (Eerdmans, 2006) Bauckham evaluates every bit of relevant evidence he can muster and concludes by asserting that, in the case of John's Gospel, the author was in fact that very John who was the son of Zebedee.

Bauckham's work has tended to convince more conservatively oriented scholars but others have been less than impressed not to say remain unpersuaded. Nevertheless, on the question of Johannine authorship, no one has looked into the question more deeply than Bauckham.

Similarly interested in the authorship of the Gospel and, more importantly, on the historical reliability of that Gospel, is the Society of Biblical Literature Section 'John, Jesus and History', - http://johannine.org/JJH.html - led by Tom Thatcher and Paul Anderson. Thatcher and Anderson and others have focused attention recently on the historical usefulness of John's Gospel. A herculean task, given the fact that most New Testament scholars have ignored John in favor of the Synoptics in their historical reconstructions of the life of Jesus of Nazareth.

On the other end of the spectrum rests the work of Ben Witherington III, who has asserted in numerous publications that the author of the Fourth Gospel, and the 'Beloved Disciple', is Lazarus. The man whom Jesus raised from the dead. His views are available online here- http://benwitherington.blogspot.com/2007/01/was-lazarus-beloved-disciple.html Few have followed Witherington down this rather idiosyncratic path and so refuse to identify the 'Beloved Disciple' with Lazarus.

Select Bibliography

Smalley, Stephen S. John: Evangelist and Interpreter. 2nd ed. 2nd ed. Carlisle: Paternoster, 1998. Kazmierski, Carl R. John the Baptist: Prophet and Evangelist. Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1996. Pryor, John W. John, Evangelist of the Covenant People: The Narrative & Themes of the Fourth Gospel. Downers Grove, Ill: InterVarsity Press, 1992.