(3:28) tells another story of John which he got from the works of the second-century theologian, Irenaeus. We have seen that one of the leaders of the Gnostic heresy was a man called Cerinthus. ‘The apostle John once entered a bath to bathe; but, when he learned that Cerinthus was within, he sprang from his place and rushed out of the door, for he could not bear to remain under the same roof with him. He advised those who were with him to do the same. “Let us flee,” he said, “lest the bath fall, for Cerinthus, the enemy of the truth, is within.”’ There we have another glimpse of the temper of John. Boanerges was not quite dead.
Writing in the fifth century, John Cassian tells another famous story about John. One day he was found playing with a tame partridge. A narrower and more rigid brother rebuked him for thus wasting his time, and John answered: ‘The bow that is always bent will soon cease to shoot straight.’
It is the great biblical scholar Jerome who tells the story of the last words of John. When he was dying, his disciples asked him if he had any last message to leave them. ‘Little children,’ he said, ‘love one another.’ Again and again he repeated it; and they asked him if that was all he had to say. ‘It is enough,’ he said, ‘for it is the Lord’s command.’
Such then is our information about John; and he emerges as a figure of fiery temper, of wide ambition, of undoubted courage and, in the end, of gentle love.
The Beloved Disciple
If we have been following our references closely, we will have noticed one thing. All our information about John comes from the first three gospels. It is the astonishing fact that the Fourth Gospel never mentions the apostle John from beginning to end. But it does mention two other people.
First, it speaks of the disciple whom Jesus loved. There are four mentions of him. He was leaning on Jesus’ breast at the Last Supper (John 13:23–5); it is into his care that Jesus committed Mary as he died upon his cross (19:25–7); it was Peter and he whom Mary Magdalene met on her return from the empty tomb on the first Easter morning (20:2); and he was present at the last resurrection appearance of Jesus by the lakeside (21:20).
Second, the Fourth Gospel has a kind of character whom we might call the witness. As the Fourth Gospel tells of the spear thrust into the side of Jesus and the issue of the water and the blood, there comes the comment: ‘He who saw this has testified so that you also may believe. His testimony is true, and he knows that he tells the truth’ (19:35). At the end of the gospel comes the statement that it was the beloved disciple who testified of these things, ‘and we know that his testimony is true’ (21:24).
Here we are faced with rather a strange thing. In the Fourth Gospel, John is never mentioned; but the beloved disciple is, and in addition there is a witness of some kind to the whole story. It has never really been doubted in tradition that the beloved disciple is John. A few have tried to identify him with Lazarus, for Jesus is said to have loved Lazarus (John 11:3, 5); or with the rich young ruler, of whom it is said that Jesus, looking on him, loved him (Mark 10:21). But although the gospel never says so in so many words, tradition has always identified the beloved disciple with John, and there is no real need to doubt the identification.
But a very real point arises – suppose John himself actually did the writing of the gospel, would he really be likely to speak of himself as the disciple whom Jesus loved? Would he really be likely to pick himself out like this, and, as it were, to say: ‘I was his favourite; he loved me best of all’? It is surely very unlikely that John would confer such a title on himself. If it was conferred by others, it is a lovely title; if it was conferred by himself, it comes perilously near to an almost incredible self-conceit.
Is there any way, then, that the gospel can be John’s own eyewitness story, and yet at the same time have been actually written down by someone else?
The Production of the Church
In our search for the truth, we begin by noting one of the outstanding and unique features of the Fourth Gospel. The most remarkable thing about it is the long speeches of Jesus. Often they are whole chapters long, and are entirely unlike the way in which Jesus is portrayed as speaking in the other three gospels. The Fourth Gospel, as we have seen, was written about the year AD 100, that is, about seventy years after the crucifixion. Is it possible after these seventy years to look on these speeches as word-for-word reports of what Jesus said? Or can we explain them in some way that is perhaps even greater than that? We must begin by holding in our minds the fact of the speeches and the question which they inevitably raise.
And we have something to add to that. It so happens that in the writings of the early Church we have a whole series of accounts of the way in which the Fourth Gospel came to be written. The earliest is that of Irenaeus, who was bishop of Lyons about AD 177; and Irenaeus was himself a pupil of the Bishop of Smyrna, Polycarp, who in turn had actually been a pupil of John. There is therefore a direct link between Irenaeus and John. Irenaeus writes:
John, the disciple of the Lord, who also leant upon his breast, himself also published the gospel in Ephesus, when he was living in Asia.
The suggestive thing there is that Irenaeus does not merely say that John wrote the gospel; he says that John published (exedōke) it in Ephesus. The word that Irenaeus uses makes it sound not like the private publication of some personal memoir but like the public issue of some almost official document.
The next account is that of Clement, who was head of the great school of Alexandria about AD 230. He writes:
Last of all, John perceiving that the bodily facts had been made plain in the gospel, being urged by his friends, composed a spiritual gospel.
The important thing here is the phrase being urged by his friends. It begins to become clear that the Fourth Gospel is far more than one man’s personal production and that there is a group, a community, a church behind it. On the same lines, a tenth-century manuscript called the Codex Toletanus, which prefaces the New Testament books with short descriptions, prefaces the Fourth Gospel thus:
The apostle John, whom the Lord Jesus loved most, last of all wrote this gospel, at the request of the bishops of Asia, against Cerinthus and other heretics.
Again we have the idea that behind the Fourth Gospel there is the authority of a group and of a church.
We now turn to a very important document, known as the Muratorian Canon. It is so called after a scholar Muratori who discovered it. It is the first list of New Testament books which the Church ever issued and was compiled in Rome about AD 170. Not only does it list the New Testament books, it also gives short accounts of the origin and nature and contents of each of them. Its account of the way in which the Fourth Gospel came to be written is extremely important and illuminating.
At the request of his fellow-disciples and of his bishops, John, one of the disciples, said: ‘Fast with me for three days from this time and whatsoever shall be revealed to each of us, whether it be favourable to my writing or not, let us relate it to one another.’ On the same night it was revealed to Andrew that John should relate all things, aided by the revision of all.
We cannot accept all that statement, because it is not possible that Andrew, the apostle, was in Ephesus in AD 100; but the point is that it is stated as clearly as possible that, while the authority and the mind and the memory behind the Fourth Gospel are that of John, it is clearly and definitely the product, not of one man, but of a group and a community.
Now we can see something of what happened. About the year AD 100 there was a group living in Ephesus whose leader was John. They revered him as a saint and they loved him as a father. He must have been almost 100 years old. Before he died, they thought most wisely that it would be a great thing if the aged apostle set down his memories of the years when he had been with Jesus. But in the end they did far more than that. We can think of them sitting down and reliving the old days. One would say: ‘Do you remember how Jesus said . . . ?’ And John would say: ‘Yes, and now we know that he meant . . .’
In other words, this group was not only writing down what Jesus said; that would have been a mere