The Gospel Of The Beloved Disciple

"Most scholars agree that vv. 24 and 25 [of John 21] belong together, and when they are read together it is impossible to read them as referring only to chapter 21. They are plainly a conclusion to the whole Gospel and 'these things' must be the deeds of Jesus recounted throughout the Gospel. It also seems inadequate to take the sense in which the Beloved Disciple wrote them to be only that he wrote a source used by the author. Later we shall show that 20:30-31 and 21:24-25 form together a carefully composed two-stage conclusion to the Gospel. This requires that 'written' has the same sense in both 20:30-31 and 21:24. In both cases it refers to the writing of 'this book,' not of a source. John 21:24 means that the Beloved Disciple composed the Gospel, whether or not he wielded the pen. He could have received assistance of various kinds in the process of composition or his work could have been edited by someone else, but the statement requires that he was substantially responsible both for the content and for the words of the book....that 'we' [of John 1:16] seems to be deliberately distinguished from the 'we' of v. 14 in that the former is no mere 'we' but 'we all.' There is a distinction here between eyewitness testimony ('we have seen his glory') and the experience of all Christians, who are not all eyewitnesses but who have all received grace from the fullness of grace in Jesus Christ....The preceding context of this statement [in John 1:14] reads: 'The Word became flesh and lived among us...' Whether the 'us' in this case are humanity in general or the eyewitnesses in particular, there is undoubted reference here to the physical presence of the Word in the midst of physical humanity. In this context, to 'see his glory' must surely be to recognize his divine glory in this physical presence....This understanding of [John] 1:14 means that the basis of the Gospel in eyewitness testimony is already indicated in the Prologue, but in such a way that empirical observation and theological perception are inextricable. It is the testimony of those - or of one - who saw the glory of God in the flesh of Jesus Christ, something that neither Jesus' unbelieving contemporaries nor later Christian believers did." (Richard Bauckham, Jesus And The Eyewitnesses [Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 2006], pp. 362, 381, 404)