We are going through the Gospel According to John. We will devote this post to deal with the structure of the Gospel and some elements like authorship and date of the Gospel. The Gospel according to John has many themes and contrasts. However, we will deal with these as we encounter them in the text. This will allow us to understand portions of the Gospel where these themes and contrasts make their appearance.
The Gospel According to John has a style that is distinct from the other three canonical Gospels. The other three – Matthew, Mark, and Luke – are collectively known as the ‘synoptic Gospels’ because they seem to be looking at Jesus and his life through similar points of view. The chronology of Jesus’ life and the character of Jesus differs between John and the synoptics. John’s Jesus speaks in lengthy discourses and with flowery language that is uncharacteristic of the synoptic Jesus. John’s Jesus speaks in tune with the themes that John’s Gospel contains, some of which are absent in the synoptics.
The chronology of Jesus’ life in John also is quite different from that in the synoptics. If we had only the synoptics to go with, we could fit Jesus’ ministry within a span of a single year. However, the chronology as presented in John seems to indicate Jesus’ ministry lasted about three years. Moreover, in the synoptics, Jesus’ ministry centered around Galilee, while in John Jesus spends a lot of time in and around Jerusalem.
John’s Gospel also presents ‘the Jews’ as a group of people who were opposed to Jesus. The use of the word ‘Jews’ in the Gospel of John is complex with multiple meanings and nuances. However, it is clear that, by the time John got around to writing his Gospel, the antagonism between the church and the synagogue had reached such levels that ‘the Jews’ were considered to be antagonistic not just to the Christians of John’s day but also to Jesus in his day.¹
So who was the author of the Gospel? Like the other three canonical Gospels, John is anonymous. This is important to note. None of the Gospels actually tells us who wrote it. Nevertheless, there are some good reasons for thinking that the apostle John was the author of the fourth Gospel.² For me one glaring reason is that the fourth Gospel does not mention the apostle John, but identifies its author as ‘the disciple whom Jesus loved’. The synoptic Gospels are quite clear that John was one of the twelve disciples and that he also belonged to the so-called ‘inner circle’ comprising Peter, James, and John. It is inexplicable that a Gospel would give details about so many other of the disciples – Nathaniel, Thomas, Philip – and fail to mention John unless it is John’s own way of not just downplaying his role, but also of using himself anonymously as an example for the reader to emulate.
The anonymity of the Gospels (and of Acts) should not be a cause for concern for Christians. Armin D. Baum, clearly locates the New Testament historical books in the tradition of the Old Testament historical books, all of which are anonymous. Baum claims that this was done so that the author would remain in the background throughout the text and would not draw attention to himself.³ This was in keeping with the Hebrew tradition for historical writings in which it was more important to communicate the message than to identify the messenger. So I am quite okay with admitting that we will never know for certain who the author of the Gospel is but for the sake of avoiding lengthy circumlocutions, I will refer to the author as John.
That being said, when was the Gospel written? In John 21.24, the Gospel claims to have been written by an eyewitness to the events it narrates. J. Warner Wallace presents arguments to defend the view that the Gospel predates the destruction of the temple in AD 70. However, the Gospel seems to reflect a significant and ongoing conflict between the church and the synagogue, which would require a later date. I concede that this is not a conclusive argument. Fortunately, the exact date for the Gospel does not affect how we interpret it. So for the sake of these posts, I will assume a date around the last decade of the first century AD.
There is more in the way of overview that I could address. Indeed, the Gospel according to John works through some themes and contrasts that can be appreciated only when one takes a bird’s eye view of the Gospel. However, the themes and contrasts are numerous and I would really like to get down to dealing with the actual text of the Gospel. Hence, I will deal with the themes and contrasts as they appear in the text. So in the next post we will begin dealing with the text of the Gospel.

Prayer:
Our gracious, loving Father. We are grateful that, in the Gospel of John, we have a different picture of Jesus than that of the synoptics. We recognize that this is simply because no single perspective can fully describe Jesus. As John himself says if we wrote down everything we know about Jesus, the whole world could not contain it. We ask that, as we prepare to study this Gospel, you would enlarge our hearts and minds so that we could somehow comprehend even a slight bit of the glory of Jesus. For we pray this in his name. Amen.

^{1. Willard M. Swartley. “The Jews” (in the Gospel of John) (Accessed on 5 January 2020). See also Robert G. Bratcher. “The Jews” in the Gospel of John. (Accessed on 5 January 2020).↩}

^{2. Mark L. Strauss. Who Wrote the Gospels, and How Do We Know for Sure? (Accessed on 5 January 2020)↩}

^{3. Armin D. Baum. (2008). “The Anonymity of the New Testament History Books: A Stylistic Device in the Context of Greco-Roman and Ancient near Eastern Literature.” Novum Testamentum, 50(2), 120-142. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/25442594. (Accessed on 5 January 2020)↩}