Last year the White Horse Inn had a roundtable discussion regarding the authorship of the Fourth Gospel:
I'm going to quote some excerpts:
[Do you believe that it was written by John the Apostle?]
Craig Blomberg: I think that is still probably the most likely case. There is some uncertainty in some of the early church tradition, not about the name of the author but about whether there was an elder John, perhaps a disciple, a second generation follower of John the Apostle, but that evidence isn't all that strong, and I see no reason to contradict the early church short of having compelling evidence otherwise.
[The first scholar you will hear from is D. A. Carson and I asked him why he thought it was that the Apostle John referred to himself using this strange language of ␣the disciple whom Jesus loved]
D. A. Carson: Let me argue a bit tangentially. There are some people, some pastors, some Christian leaders who think soon, when you get to know them, you come away thinking that you're particularly loved by them. A good pastor does that in part by giving all of his attention to whatever person he is talking to. So, when John, whoever is writing, when John speaks of ␣the one whom Jesus loves,␣ I don't think he's saying I'm loved more than you are or something like that. I don't think it's competitive document. In John 11, Mary and Martha referred to Lazarus, their brother, as the one whom he loved and that has actually made some people wonder if Lazarus wrote the book. But I think that doesn't make any sense either. There's just too much patristic and other evidence against it␣no hint that he was present at the Last Supper. I think that it's a way of saying Jesus so loved people that they felt peculiarly loved by him, and here is John, who is once the son of thunder who sees himself now as "the one whom Jesus loves." You have to remember that his first readers would know who he was talking about. It's not the literary strategy of somebody writing a book that's being thrown out of the open marketplace. I mean, everybody who read him in the first instance would have known whom he was talking about. I think that Bauckham is right when says that the four gospels were meant to circulate widely and not just into little narrow communities. I think that's correct. The gospels for all believers, for all Christians.
Andreas Kostenberger: None of the gospels explicitly identify their author. In that sense, gospels are different from epistles, where the author identifies himself right at the outset. And so, this is not innate to John's gospel. I think the reason why John would not identify himself more directly in part has to do with duplication of names in the gospel. He likes to–when you have multiple figures in the narrative with the same name, he likes to reserve that name for one of those characters, and then refer to another character by the same name in different ways. You see that, for instance, with Mary, Jesus' mother.Of course, everybody knew her name was Mary. Again, it's one of those things that John likely assumed as just people's general knowledge of the Christian story, but in John 2, for example, the wedding at Cana, Mary is never referred to as Mary. She is just called the mother of Jesus. Why? I think it's to eliminate any possible confusion about which Mary are we talking about here. So, in John, Mary is Mary Magdalene. You see in the prologue in John 1:6, "And there was a man, his name was John. He was sent from God." And so, right at the beginning then, that name is essentially claimed. And so, then I think John is identifying himself more obliquely as "the disciple whom Jesus loved", but to me, I think there's probably more weighty reasons why Bauckham rejects apostolic authorship that probably have more to do with, maybe, hesitation to go with the more traditional view. I'm not saying we should blindly follow tradition. I think, in this case, I would say there is a good reason why the tradition holds that the Apostle John wrote the gospel. I know that John 21:2, where he talks about the sons of Zebedee as part of that group of seven who go fishing seems to speak against that, but I think when you look at it more broadly in the big picture, it's a fairly minor piece of evidence that can easily be explained by this common feature of authors occasionally referring to themselves in the third person.
If I were starting out with skepticism toward apostolic authorship, I would probably go to John the Elder, too, because that's just about the only possible piece of evidence for a John other than John the Apostle, but I think when you look at the referencing question to John the Elder, there's many caution flags going up that we should not be too quick to assume that it's even such a person as John the Elder. Remember that John refers to himself as the elder in two of the epistles, and so, I think it's very likely that that particular church father might have separated those two figures, when in fact, John the Apostle and John the Elder were one and the same person.
Lydia McGrew: I would agree with Richard Baukham's general take that that phrase was the person's roundabout way of emphasizing his own role as the witness and recorder–that he is this person, was especially close, and so, he has this role as witness. It's just kind of a conspicuous, stylized reference to himself and to his own self-concept, and one could argue that he's made this decision to not name himself, and therefore, he can't name his brother either because it would be awkward, because they're generally named together and so forth. So, I'm not necessarily leaning heavily on that. I'm just pointing out that the lack of the name could be used, I would say, more plausibly to argue that he is the son of Zebedee than to argue that he is not the son of Zebedee.
Well, I think we find that pretty frequently with ancient authors, generally. Matthew refers to himself in the third person all the time and doesn 't say, by the way, "I'm Matthew." Luke, in Acts, never says, by the way, "I'm Luke, the beloved physician." Papias is the only source for there being two Johns in Ephesus, and that's also a disputed interpretation of Papias, too. It could be a different person. If it is, I don't think we have any reason to believe he's the author of the gospel. Like you've got this possible reading that there's two different Johns, and then Bauckham kind of takes off with it from there to where, okay, maybe this other John is the author of the gospel. That's the part where I think it's incorrect.
That Polycrates argument is extremely weak. Polycrates says that the John who leaned on Jesus' breast was one who wore the priestly mitre. Now he does not contrast that with the son of Zebedee. Bauckham conjectures how Polycrates got confused about this, because he thinks he's wrong that he wore the priestly mitre. And so, he says, "How did he get confused? Oh, maybe in Acts 4, he accidentally identified him with the John who was with the priests in Acts 4, Now this would be a horrible mistake. And then, Bauckham says, "Well he wouldn't have made this mistake if he didn't know that he wasn't the son of Zebedee, because there he is in the same scene with the son of Zebedee, so because I think that's the mistake he made, I think he knew he wasn't the son of Zebedee." So, that's the argument, and it's a terrible argument. So, Polycrates doesn't , in fact, distinguish him from the son of Zebedee. That is a highly dubious conjecture.
D. A. Carson: I'm still surprised that he's [Bauckham] done it. He gives all the reasons why John has to be an eyewitness and so on, and then he appeals to this character called John the Elder. I think a pretty good case can be made. The references to John the Elder are actually a reference to the Apostle John, who calls himself an elder as Peter calls himself an elder in his epistles. The reasons for appealing to John the Elder as a separate individual, in my view, are pretty weak. But Richard Bauckham has made a good a case as you can get, and if somebody wants to go that route, that's fine.
One small point. It's clear that the beloved disciple whom Richard takes to be in reference to this elder was present at the Lord's Supper. So, he must say that present at the Lord's Supper were not only the twelve, but also this extra chap. The synoptics make it pretty clear that the people who present at the Lord's Supper were Jesus and the twelve, that there was nobody else.
I would say, at the level of mere logic, that's correct. But on the other hand, you can show that Matthew's gospel, as compared with Mark, regularly has multiple sub-people. He's interested in the fuller picture and so provides, too, where Mark has one. So, there's a pattern of that going on, but all the sources that we have of the Last Supper, there is no hint of anyone present beyond the Twelve. There's no passage that says "and, of course, there was nobody else present." If you look at something as exclusive as that, then Richard is right. There is no text that is exclusionary. But on the other hand, I think that it's extraordinary that you'd have to argue for the presence of somebody, also, by the name of John who is not mentioned in any of the accounts␣whose very existence as somebody independent of John the Apostle is at least disputable on some tactical grounds connected with the Papias document.It is so tenuous. I really don't see why such a fine scholar as Richard goes down that route.
Shane Rosenthal: Dr. Carson, what's your view of the unnamed disciple who appears in John 18, who follows Jesus into the courtyard of the high priest and then, who later speaks to the servant girl and grants Peter access? Do you think this character is also the beloved disciple and thus the author of this gospel?
D. A. Carson: Probably, but not certainly. I think it's the simplest exclusion. I think that the ones John has adopted, the strategy of not naming himself but referring to him obliquely and commonly as "the one whom Jesus loved," I think that that makes sense. The Galilee fishing business provided food for the capital, and it may well be that John was one of those who had access to the courts of Jerusalem, precisely because he acted in part for the family and sales, and so on. I can't prove any of that but it's a more reasonable speculation to the speculation as to invent another unknown party.
Well, it is not established that the figure has the authority to let Peter in, but that he is known, and therefore, Peter is let in.
Shane Rosenthal: But the text says he went to speak to the servant girl at the gate and she let Peter in.
D A. Carson: Of course, but that doesn 't mean he went to the servant girl and said, "Hey, I'm part of the priestly family here. I command you to let him in." It sounds much more like, "Hey, you know me. Can my friend come in here please?"
Craig Blomberg: It certainly could be. You've got five places in the latter chapters of John where you have this strictly anonymous person called ␣the disciple Jesus loved␣ that the church has associated with the Apostle John since early days. But you also have a handful of other places where you just have an anonymous disciple, or you might expect a name to appear but you don't, and if John the Apostle as the writer, he's being consistent and not referring to himself by name, he may be that person that you alluded to in chapter 18. It's interesting. We tend to have a, sort of, romantic notion perhaps of Galilee, and it's a backwater place with rude, unlettered fishermen and farmers, and the ancient reality was much more complex than that, especially in Tiberias, especially in Sepphoris. You had very urbanized cities. There was a thriving fish industry going up and down the Jordan River. The best fish were consistently said to come from Galilee. Jerusalem is landlocked. It's almost as close to the Dead Sea as it is to the Jordan River, and somebody had to provide the elders, and Sadducees, and the high priests and governors with food and the food, for the most part, came from Galilee. Citrus fruit came from the planes of Sharon along the Mediterranean Sea. It's complete speculation but it's not recent speculation. It was John's family, one of the suppliers of fish to the high priest's home. Is that how he knew them? It's not beyond the bounds of possibility.
Andreas Kostenberger: All that is claimed there is that the high priest apparently knew who John was. And so, that enabled him to gain Peter access. This is part of the consistent portrayal of the author, which I believe to be John the Apostle having superior access, superior even to the Apostle Peter. And so, you see consistently that's in the Upper Room. Peter is turning to the beloved disciple to find out the identity of the betrayer, or later on, the empty tomb. John outruns Peter and gets to the tomb first␣or even more, maybe prominently in chapter 21, it's John who recognizes Jesus and says, "It's the Lord," and then Peter jumps into the lake. And so, I think there's this consistent holy one-up-man-ship, you might say, where John tries to boost his credentials as a witness, if you will, and shows that in some ways he was even closer to the source than Peter. And so, if you place that reference in John 18 within that larger picture, that again, Peter can't get even into the high priest courtyard without John's help.
Shane Rosenthal: But how do you think John, the son of Zebedee, would have been known to the high priest?
Andreas Kostenberger: We just have to consider the possibility that John had a personal acquaintance. His father had a fishing business with several employees and so forth, which we need to realize that in Galilee, fishing was one of the major industries. So, this is not just some marginal business he was engaged in.
Lydia McGrew: It says explicitly that ␣the disciple whom Jesus loved␣ was standing at the foot of the cross. So, there's no reason to introduce a different anonymous person who is sort of following through Jesus' passion in chapter 18. So, to take the phrase the other disciple in chapter 18 to be that same person as "the disciple whom Jesus loved", at the foot of the cross in chapter 19 is a very reasonable, simplifying assumption␣that this was a disciple of Jesus who was remaining close to him through his passion.
Shane Rosenthal: Yeah, and then there's also John 20, where it says "the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved."
Lydia McGrew: Exactly. Sometimes those phrases are, actually, even brought together.
I think we have an anachronistic idea of this courtyard as a sort of exclusive place. We, modern Americans, are not used to big households with courtyards and especially as an influential person, and with lots of people kneeling around who aren't members of the family. But that's, actually, the picture we see in all four of the gospels. It's a very crowded place. So, I don't think the high priest is there giving orders, hardly letting anybody in–"Be really careful, we're trying to keep this quiet." That's not the picture I get from any of the four gospels.
Well, I don't know of any independent evidence that only a resident would generally have the social ability to get the servant girl to let someone in. I think that's just a supposition. It's really who you know. So, she sees him and out. She thinks well of him and He's probably pretty young, by the way. I think he was maybe the youngest of the disciples since he lived to quite an old age. So, you could think of him as the kid who delivers the fish, the kid␣maybe I'm being a little exaggerated but, you know, he's in his late teens or something like that. She lets him in then he can say, "Oh, this guy is fine. He's a friend of mine. Let him in." Again, it's a society where influence is what matters.
Of course, it's a conjecture! We don't know how he was known to the high priest, but at least I don't have a whole chain of conjectures. This is just one conjecture to account for this one statement that he was known to the high priest. How might have he have been known? I mean, I could make other conjectures, too. That's just one.
Shane Rosenthal: Okay. So now, once he grants access to Peter there in the courtyard of the high priest, where do you think the beloved disciple goes from there?
Lydia McGrew: Looks like he follows Jesus to the cross. I mean, I think we're agreed on that because that's what we find in John 19. I think he was probably one of the witnesses with Pilate. He may have been one of the witnesses here. I do think we have reason to think that there were multiple witnesses, one of them might have been someone who converted from the priestly class. We know in Acts that they were members of the priestly class who converted.
Okay. So, we've got several different questions here. So, let's start with he was in the inner trial. He was there. He was a witness of it. That is an inference. We don't know that. Maybe yes, maybe no. Maybe he stepped in the back of the room for a minute and stepped back out. Number 2, if he was there, then he had to be someone more important. He had to be someone closer to the high priest. And at this point, you're multiplying your improbabilities. So, I'm not going to hold myself responsible to answer a question, "Hey, why was he definitely allowed into this trial if they didn't know him really well?" There's all kinds of suppositions going on there, but then the absence of his being named in the synoptic narratives as being, for example, near the cross, receiving custody of Mary␣well, let's note the synoptics don't even say that anybody got custody of Mary. In fact, they don't even mention Mary near the foot of the cross. So, why didn't they mention Mary? Now, as far as why they didn't mention him as a witness, I believe that Bauckham and those who argue from that has the exact same problem themselves–if he was this person who was important to the early church, if he was "the disciple Jesus loved", he was in that sense an important witness. I think the very same question arises, "Why don't they mention this disciple at the foot of the cross in the synoptics?" Well, people just don't mention things sometimes.
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