The Fourth Gospel is historical in the sense that it was written by the Evangelist who was an eyewitness of what Jesus had done and said from the beginning of Jesus’ public life. It, however, was not written simply to preserve memories, which might be called a ‘historical’ purpose, but rather for conveying a message which the Evangelist believed important, a message that would eventually lead audiences into faith. Therefore, it is also theological and spiritual, which indeed affords a deeper meaning behind the history, not because of an allegorical meaning of each word but because of the deeper goal of the Evangelist for the Gospel writing. Augustine (in Adams, 2005, 16) affirms that the Gospel is the outcome of deep reflection, saying,
[the Evangelist] soared beyond the flesh, soared beyond the earth which he trod, beyond the seas which he saw, beyond the air where birds fly; soared beyond the sun, beyond the moon and the stars, beyond all spirits which are unseen, beyond his own intelligence and the very reason of his thinking soul. Soaring beyond all these, beyond his very self, where did he reach, what did he see? ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God’.
The Gospel itself testifies that it is the result of the writer’s reflection in many ways. It is the Evangelist’s post-resurrection reflection on what he had experienced during the years he shared with Christ, paying particular attention to how Jesus expressed a new understanding of Scripture (the Old Testament). It is also a reflection of the Evangelist who selected choice memories for the purpose of understanding the deeper meaning of what Jesus was doing and saying.
First, it is a reflection of the Evangelist after Jesus’ resurrection. In many places of his Gospel, the Evangelist adds his interpretation of what happened or what the people around the event including the disciples either misunderstood or could not understand. In John 2:22, he adds his interpretation regarding what Jesus had said about the temple, ‘After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said. Then they believed the scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken’. In 7:39, he explains, ‘By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. Up to that time the Spirit had not been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified’. In 8:20, he adds that ‘He spoke these words while teaching in the temple courts near the place where the offerings were put. Yet no one seized him, because his hour had not yet come’. In 12:16, he again interprets the situation, ‘At first his disciples did not understand all this. Only after Jesus was glorified did they realize that these things had
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been written about him and that these things had been done to him’. There are many more verses7 showing the author’s own interpretation of situations. Those comments
indicate that even the disciples of Jesus did not understand what their teacher was talking about and that the Evangelist eventually understood the meaning of what his teacher had said and performed previously, but only after the resurrection or even after his ascension. Thatcher (2006, 27) explains this ‘as a complex cognitive interaction between (a) the disciples’ autobiographical recollections of an ambiguous event involving themselves and Jesus, (b) their subsequent awareness of Jesus’ destiny, and (c) a messianic reading of a passage from the Hebrew Bible’.
Secondly, the Fourth Gospel is a reflection of the Evangelist on the signs performed by Jesus Christ. The Evangelist knew that ‘Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book [the Fourth Gospel]’ (20:30). However, he selected a few signs8 for fulfilling his writing purpose. A
significant expression of the events in the Fourth Gospel is the word ‘sign’ (σημείον); the Synoptic Gospels use the word ‘miracle’ (δύναμις) for such events. The ‘signs’ in the Fourth Gospel are more than merely miraculous acts of Jesus. The signs in the Fourth Gospel are not a collection of different ‘miracles’ but are signs that reveal meaning through the subsequent discourses. Köstenberger (1998, 63) says that ‘[a] sign is a symbol-laden, but not necessarily ‘miraculous’, public work of Jesus selected and explicitly identified as such by John for the reason that it displays God’s glory in Jesus, who is thus shown to be God’s true representative, even the Messiah’.
It is ultimately to reveal God’s glory that Jesus performs the ‘signs’, but a significant feature of the signs is that they are sometimes followed by a discourse in the Fourth Gospel and include the Evangelist’s own reflections on the subject. For example, the account of Jesus feeding five thousand is followed by the discourse on ‘the bread of life’ and the Evangelist’s conclusion that ‘[f]rom this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him’ (6:66). The intention of the Evangelist in selecting those ‘signs’ in the Fourth Gospel needs to be interpreted in the context of the
7 See 2:24, 24; 4:9; 6:64,71; 7:1, 5, 30, 39; 8:27; 9:22; 11:13; 12:6, 33; 13:11; 18:9, 28, 32; 21:19, 23. 8 The numbers commonly accepted by Johannine scholars as signs in the Fourth Gospel are six (1.
Changing water into wine at Cana, 2. Healing a royal official’s son at Cana, 3. Healing a lame man at Bethesda, 4. Feeding five thousand on a mountainside, 5. Healing a blind man at Jerusalem, and 6. Raising Lazarus from the death at Bethany). Different scholars add different events as a seventh sign of the Fourth Gospel. Smalley adds the catching of 153 fish (21:1-14), Dodd sees Jesus’ walking on the water as the seventh (6:16-21), and Köstenberger suggests Jesus’ cleansing of the temple (2:14-17).
subsequent discourses, making this one of the critical points to understanding the purpose and the character of the Fourth Gospel. Morris (1989, 42) points out that ‘[e]very sign can be linked in some way with a discourse, and such links are part of the way John carried out his plan’.
Thirdly, the Fourth Gospel is a reflection of the Evangelist on the Old Testament. The Fourth Gospel reveals that the Evangelist had a new understanding of Scripture. The new understanding of Scripture, based on what he had received from Jesus Christ, enabled him to interpret it reflectively. In that sense, the Fourth Gospel includes reflections of Christ from the Old Testament. It is true that ‘the number of direct quotations from the O.T. given in the [Fourth] Gospel is small when compared with those of the other Gospels’ (Barrett, 1947, 155). Barrett, however, points out that the Evangelist uses the Old Testament ‘in a novel manner, collecting its sense rather than quoting’ (156). The Old Testament permeates the Gospel, which is only possible when a person understands the given text and the intention of the ultimate author of the entire Scriptures.
Christ himself taught his disciples in that manner. The Jewish disciples, undoubtedly, would be able to quote from the Old Testament since they were expected to memorize it from their childhood, according to Jewish tradition. Nevertheless, they were not able to grasp the essence of the whole message of the Old Testament. Jesus points out this discrepancy of the Jews, saying, ‘You [the Jews] study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life’ (5:39). The disciples of Jesus were no exception. One of the significant changes in the disciples after their interaction with Jesus was their change of perspective when looking at the Scriptures through the lens of Jesus. There is some evidence in the New Testament that supports this change. According to Luke, two disciples on the road to Emmaus experienced their ‘hearts burning’ after Jesus ‘explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself’ ‘beginning with Moses and all the Prophets’ (Luke 24:27, 32). A similar thing happened to other disciples (cf Luke 24:46-47). That was the turning point for them, the moment in which they understood the prophesied Christ and began to penetrate the Old Testament with this new understanding. It is natural for ‘the disciple whom Jesus loved’, as a close friend of Christ, to understand the Old Testament in this new way rather than randomly quoting some isolated verses. As Barrett (1947, 168) points out, ‘the whole body of the O.T. formed a background, or framework, upon which the new revelation rested’ in the Fourth Gospel.
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The word ‘Lamb’ (John 1:36) in the Gospel is a suitable example. Some scholars say that it is a mistranslation of the word ‘servant’ since it seems to be a clear reference to Isaiah 53 where it is translated as ‘servant’. Jeremias (1964, 339) insists on this point of view, saying, ‘the original reference thus [refers] to Jesus as the servant of God’. There are, however, other scholars who see the text as it is and insist that the word ‘Lamb’ is evidence of the Evangelist having a holistic understanding of the Old Testament rather than just quoting a few verses from it. The holistic understanding and the reflective citation of the Old Testament by the Evangelist in the Gospel is the outcome of his new reading of the Scriptures through the lens of Jesus. Schuchard (2015, 41) points out as follows:
The evangelist’s chief purpose in citing the Old Testament is to elucidate the person and the work of Jesus, especially the death of Jesus. His principal goal in his late first-century sociocultural context is that the hearer of his Gospel would be persuaded steadfastly to believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, so that, believing, the hearer would have life in his name (20:30-31). If the enduring popularity of his Gospel is any indication of the success of his efforts, we may say with some confidence that the evangelist’s intention for his Gospel was in the end accomplished.