John: The Gospel That Redefined Jesus

Season 2 · Episode 18

Full episode description

The Gospel of John is the latest of the four canonical gospels, written most likely between 90 and 110 CE, more than half a century after Jesus was killed. By the time it is written, the Jesus movement has already produced the Gospel of Mark, the Gospel of Matthew, and the Gospel of Luke. The author of John knows the synoptic tradition and chooses something else.

Part 1 reads John as gospel:

• the prologue, where Jesus is identified with the Word, divine before time, present at creation
• the seven signs, the miracles John presents as theological proofs rather than as wonders alone
• the raising of Lazarus, the most famous miracle in the New Testament, which the synoptic gospels do not preserve
• the seven I Am sayings, where Jesus speaks divine names from the Hebrew Bible and applies them to himself, including I am the bread of life, I am the light of the world, I am the resurrection
• the kingdom of God, central to the synoptic Jesus, has been quietly replaced. In John, the kingdom is no longer what Jesus preaches. The new question is who Jesus is

This is not the historical Jesus. This is the Johannine Christ. The shift is deliberate, and the consequences are enormous. The doctrines that later Christianity calls the incarnation and the eternal sonship of Christ are rooted here, not in the synoptic gospels.

Part 2 will follow what this gospel costs. John’s calendar moves the crucifixion. The Last Supper has no bread and no cup. The authorship of the gospel becomes a fight that takes centuries to settle.

Not from tradition. From evidence.