Hi
The Man Called John, But Which John?
Everything about the so-called author of the fourth Gospel, the three epistles and Revelation are mostly referred to as the Johannine documents. However, from the very beginning, Christians have attributed the manuscripts to John son of Zebedee, a hotheaded and impetuous Galilean fisherman. Who with his brother James and Peter made-up the trio of apostles most intimate with Jesus. However, according to Ehrman and many other scholars, the author of the Gospel of John never claims or intimates that he was John the son of Zebedee and brother to James.
Dates
But, first, let us put some dates that the consensus of biblical scholars put on the canonical four Gospels and Jesus:
Mark dated 70 CE.
Matthew dated 80 CE
Luke dated 85 CE, and
John dated between 95 and 100 CE.
Prof. Bart D. Ehrman on dating the gospel has this to say: How do we actually know when the Gospels were written? It is actually a difficult question to answer, but I’ll start at the beginning, with some basics that I think everyone can agree on…First, Jesus died around the year 30, so the Gospels were written after that. The first really convincing quotations of the Gospels (there are probable allusions earlier than this, but these are the most certain ones) come in the writings of Justin Martyr, around the year 150. Justin does not name the Gospels as Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, but he does call certain books “The Memoirs of the Apostles,” he quotes them explicitly, and his quotations line up with Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John (it is debated whether he quotes John, but there are two quotations that certainly make it appear that he knows John).
This means, for starters, that the Gospels must have been written sometime between 30 and 150 CE. And the question is how to narrow down the dates further.
https://ehrmanblog.org/how-do-we-know-when-the-gospels-were-written/
Scholars have dated Jesus’ birth at approximately 4 BCE and started his ministry at the age of Thirty (30). His death (according to the length of his ministry, which gospel a particular Christian follows: the Synoptic 1 year or John’s 3 years). Which puts his death between 26-30 CE.
Back to John?
John is mentioned with Peter in Acts 4:13, but surely this illiterate Aramaic fisherman cannot be the Greek author attributed to the works already stated above. Logically, he could not for several reasons be the author:
Firstly, he would have been too old—close to 100 years of age or even more!
Secondly, he was illiterate although conservative Christians will argue that God empowered John with the gift or reading and writing in a foreign tongue, namely Greek.
Thirdly, he did not write in the aliases of John the Elder or John of Patmos. Although most Christians will argue that they were his aliases.
Fourthly, the most important evidence has been overlooked by Christians for millennia and hidden by church propaganda to keep the so-called apostolic authenticity of the religion. The ancients were well aware of John son of Zebedee, of who and what he was!
The historian and author Harding in his book when referring to John and quotes from Papias ancient works and also the works of 20th-century scholar Shonfield, Harding wrote:
It is well established that James was later put to death by Herod Agrippa about 43AD (Acts 12:2). Shortly thereafter, Herod died in the seventh year of his reign over Judea having suffered for five days with severe pains in his stomach. [Flavius Josephus, “Jewish Antiquities,” 19.343-350] According to the author of Acts, Herod was struck down by an angel and was eaten by worms (Acts 12:21).
What about John? Did he escape Herod’s wrath? Apparently not. “We have testimony that both the sons of Zebedee, John as well as James, had been executed in Palestine in the early days of Christianity, and the words of Jesus quoted by Mark confirm that both had suffered by the time the Gospel was written,” says Hugh Schonfield* (1901-1988) in his book Those Incredible Christians published in 1968.[2] Other Bible scholars have said the same such as R.H. Charles.
[Fred Harding (2016), The Apocalypse Deception: The Book of Revelation is Not What it Claims to Be, Ch. 1, p. 9, published in the UK, retrieved from academia.edu. 20/05/20250]
The scholar Harding quotes [2] Hugh Schofield, “Those Incredible Christians”, Bantam Book, p191 (1986). However, my copy with the same title and words was published in 1968 by Hutchinson and the information is on page 180.
*Schonfield was a renown British Bible scholar specializing in the New Testament and the early development of the Christian religion and church. In his book, Schonfield refers to the writings of Papias (c. 60-130 CE), who said in his second book of Expositions that both John and James had been killed by the Jews. Philip of Side (380-431 CE), a historian of the early church who wrote a Christian history of which fragments survive, says the same.
What do you say, are the three John’s the same or are all the works forged by a person or persons named John?
Keep safe!
Cofion
Jero Jones
Article URL : https://breakingnewsandreligion.online/discuss/