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Is John the First Apocryphal Gospel?

Introduction

Transcript

Shirley Paulson

So, welcome! And in a little while, I’m going to have the privilege of introducing to you our speaker who’s not here yet!

And the reason he’s not here yet is that he is doing another interview right now, and he said he was going to hop off of that call and come and join us as soon as he could. So I’m going to go ahead and introduce him as if he’s going to be here very soon, so hopefully he’ll join us in just a little bit.

All right, so our guest speaker tonight is going… oh, is he here? He’s here!

So, this is Professor Craig Evans, and he’s here to talk about the Gospel of John, which is a great favorite for many of our participants here. It is such a unique text, and yet it provides a wealth of understanding that we’re just beginning to uncover. Dr. Evans is the Distinguished Research Professor at the Bible Seminary in Katy, Texas, and Professor Emeritus at Houston Christian University. He’s a New Testament scholar. He’s a prolific author who also lectures around the world.

I am so grateful that you were able to figure out how to fit us in with your very, very busy schedule.

I’m also glad to see that that’s the book that we’re talking about right there that you are showing us.

Craig Evans

That’s right.

Shirley

That’s great. Why don’t you tell us the name of that book, because we want to feature it tonight, so go ahead and tell us about the book.

Craig

Well, the editor is Paul Anderson. I’ve known Paul his entire career, and his doctoral dissertation was on the Gospel of John, and he published it, and his interest in John has never wavered. What he has done in the last 25 years or maybe 30 years. He wants John to be part of the historical Jesus discussion.

And that’s a good point to bring up. And one of the interesting things about it, scholars have been of almost two minds. On the one hand, oh, John is very theological; it’s the most advanced theology we have of the Gospels. Matthew, Mark, and Luke are so pedestrian, and they’re very historical. John flies high, and of course, you even have that from the church fathers. “John’s the eagle that flies really high, and Matthew, Mark, and Luke are down, down to earth.”

Shirley

Wow.

Craig

In John, you have remarkable verisimilitude. He talks about real people, real places. I mean, archaeologists love John, especially working in and around Jerusalem.

Shirley

Okay.

Craig

And of course skeptics say, “oh, John has no history in it because it’s all theology.” So anyway, Paul has addressed this, and this is yet another book, and this one’s probably the best that he’s brought together. There are archaeologists in it, and there’s a lot of important stuff there.

Shirley

And the name of the book is?

Craig

Archaeology, Jesus, and the Gospel of John. What recent discoveries show us. And look how big it is.

Shirley

Great. Yeah, it’s a big book. So, there are a lot of authors in that book, and then you were invited to be the cleanup person, as I recall.

Craig

Yeah, that’s right.

Shirley

And this is why I’m so delighted that you could come and be with us and talk about this because you not only summarized it, but you gave us some really interesting insights as to the whole project and kind of where it’s going. So delighted to have you with us.

Shirley

John has been controversial from the beginning, but I think what I like about the way Paul and you have brought this together is that it feels like you’re letting us enjoy the book of John, or the Gospel of John, and learn more from it, rather than taking away our desire to read it. So, I think you’ve done a great job of bringing us deeper into the history, the archaeology, and also let us still enjoy it as an amazing, amazing book.

Another thing I think you should help us with is the word apocryphal. What do you mean by an apocryphal gospel? What does that mean to you?

Craig

Yes, and there’s a reason why I wanted to focus on this, or at least launch our discussion, because an article appeared in a very influential journal. Just weeks ago arguing that the Gospel of John is an apocryphal gospel. That is quite a surprise.

Shirley

Okay.

Craig

Without getting all technical about what the word means, it means literally laid away, hidden away for later use. But the word apocryphal has come to have a very pejorative connotation.

Shirley

Yes.

Craig

It basically means this is something that you can’t take it to the bank. We don’t know if Jesus really said these things. We don’t know if he really did these things. There’s a lot of personal preference that’s now being tossed into the story. We’re getting Jesus… We want Jesus to say what we wished he had said earlier.

You know, it’s that kind of thing. You know, if we could do it again, this is what he would say. Well, this was a big issue. I’m looking at the faces on the screen, those who are showing their faces. You’re all old enough to remember Dan Brown and the Da Vinci Code.

Oh yeah, the book came out in ’03. Oh my goodness. You know, the so-called research he did, it was a stink bomb. You may have enjoyed the mystery and maybe even enjoyed the movie in ’06, but there are so many errors everywhere. And one of the errors was the statement that there were 85 gospels. And Emperor Constantine, who collated the New Testament—that’s a verbatim quotation. I don’t know what that means; he collated the New Testament, he selected the Gospels we have.

Oh, that’s baloney!

Shirley

Yeah.

Craig

And there weren’t 85 Gospels; most put the number at about 3 dozen, give or take. But Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are the only ones in the first century.

The only ones with credible connections to Jesus and the apostles, in other words, the eyewitness tradition. The other gospels, like the Gospel of Thomas, which is a favorite; Gospel of Peter, Gospel of Mary, Gospel of Philip, and on it goes. The Gospel of Judas—you might remember that from 2006—was a big deal. These are all 2nd-, 3rd-, and 4th-century Gospels.

And there are scholars who want to make them earlier than they really are and make Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and the New Testament later than they really are.

Well, the latest thing has been to suggest that John, in fact, is the very first apocryphal gospel. And the other gospels that follow it are imitating John.

Well, I’m working on a response to that. That is just plain wrong, and there are lots of reasons for that. And one of the big ones is what this book is about. That’s why we have archaeologists in it.

Shirley

Yeah.

Craig

Let me illustrate it this way. By the way, any of you out there listening to me, have you ever been to Israel and you ever visited an archaeological dig? I see a couple of hands. Good. Maybe you’ve met a few of these archaeologists along the way. I’ve been to Israel maybe 30 times, something like that, 32 times, I’m not sure. I’ve been a volunteer digger at Mount Zion with Shimon Gibson, okay? I’ve done a little bit of digging in Cyprus as well.

Shirley

Wow.

Craig

And I’ve become acquainted at conferences, and in Israel, and at digs. I know a whole lot of Israeli archaeologists. One or two are Christians; most aren’t, okay?

Shirley

Yep.

Craig

I have not met an archaeologist that uses the Gospel of Thomas, Gospel of Peter, or any of the … Gospels. But they all use Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

Now, these are archaeologists from a theological point of view, a religious point of view, and have no dog in the fight.

So, the late Gabby, or Gabriel Barkay, or the still-living Ronnie Reich, or any one of a number of others I could mention. They will say, when they’re lecturing or talking, or when they publish, they’ll say, now, we found this artifact, and we realize this is part of whatever, because as it says in Matthew. Or what we read in John, or what we read in Luke. I’ve never heard one say what we read in the Gospel of Thomas.

And so these archaeologists recruit every year at dig sites anywhere from 50 to 100 people or more. My boss, by the way, is Scott Stripling. He’s an archaeologist. He’ll have as many as 200 people working with him at Shiloh. Well, when you’ve got a lot of people like that, think of the tens of thousands of dollars invested, all these people flying to Israel, staying two weeks, four weeks, whatever, for a dig. And you’re digging in the wrong place? And you move 50 tons of debris?

Shirley

Oh, gee.

Craig

If you have nothing to show for it, you’re out of business. And so I have read the request to get dig permits. And so here’s a proposal, and what they always do, they cite ancient texts as part of the justification. They’ll say, well, Josephus talks about this or that there, and also in Matthew and Luke, they mention this or that there, or in John, or in the book of Acts, blah blah blah blah blah, or this other historian mentions it.

And so we think this is a good place to dig. And then the IAA, the Israel Antiquities Authority will say, you have permission.

Shirley

Wow.

Craig

And they did. And they have volunteers. They find some stuff. Oh, my! Look, we’re finding stuff! Then they go back to Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Book of Acts, and Josephus to make sense of it. And they then say, “Look, that looks like it’s paying off. Can we come back next year?” “Yes, you may.” That’s how a dig is done, okay? And so they have a lot of skin in the game.

Shirley

Yeah.

 

Craig

If you’re going to get 100 volunteers who spend $500,000 and all of this work. You better have something to show for it, so you use the best sources. It has nothing to do with what you think is inspired? Or what ought to be in the Bible? Or canon? No, no, no, I want the best sources, whatever they are! That’s their thinking, they’re very pragmatic. They’re not ivory tower scholars who are dreaming up theories. They want to dig in the right place.

And they always used John. And isn’t that interesting? So you have to ask them, why? And their answer is, John just gets it right.

So what Paul is saying is, well, if John gets it right, why are we reading John as if it has nothing to offer in terms of history?

Shirley

Yeah. 

Craig

Maybe we should start reading John differently. There’s your background to this book, and I find it very exciting.

Shirley

Well, it is exciting. So one of the other key words that you use is the word “verisimilitude,” and I think it would be helpful if you would explain that word, too.

Craig

Oh, I knew you were gonna ask that. I threw it out.

Shirley

Yes, I heard you.

Craig

Listen, folks, a lot of you already know it, but just in case you don’t, verisimilitude, it’s a Latin word, two words, “veri”, you realize, oh, that’s related to veritas, truth, correct.

“Similitude”—that’s kind of like “parable”—that’s a similarity. So, verisimilitude means that something resembles reality, the way things truly are or were in the past. Every historian looks for verisimilitude.

Shirley

All right.

Craig

So, if you’re going to write the history of Herod the Great, or you’re going to write the history of Alexander the Great, or Julius Caesar, you want to use sources that give you reliable information. So, how do you know that? Do they exhibit the reality? Do they exhibit verisimilitude? Let me give you an example of that. I’m back to the apocryphal gospels.

In the Islamic world, the Muslim world, the gospel Muslims like is the gospel of Barnabas. You may not have ever even heard of the Gospel of Barnabas. Well, the Gospel of Barnabas, I’m sorry to say, is not early, it’s not written by Barnabas, and it doesn’t really help us. Everywhere it departs from the actual story that we have in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, it goes wonky.

Let me give you an example. In the Gospel of Barnabas, the disciples are in the boat, rowing the boat across the Sea of Galilee. They’re rowing from the east to the west. And you’ll be surprised to learn they row the boat all the way to Nazareth.

Okay, I better not see any blank faces here.

Row the boat!? Do you know how many miles overland you’d have to row the boat to get to Nazareth? Hey, folks, the Olympics should consider that as a new event. Can you imagine that? Overland rowing.

Well, then they get out of the boat, and we’re told they go inland to Capernaum. Well, obviously, the author has mixed up the two cities. You row the boat to Capernaum, then you get out, you go overland, over the hills, and so on, to get to Nazareth, inland. I could give you one example after another where this author does not know what he’s talking about.

So, you’ll never meet an archaeologist in Israel who says, “Oh man, I wouldn’t know where to dig if I didn’t read the Gospel of Barnabas.” That will never happen, okay? Why? Because Barnabas exhibits no verisimilitude. Wherever it departs, it sometimes follows Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John, and so no problem. But when it goes its own way, either contradicting the Gospels or augmenting them, it gets it wrong.

Now, that’s what we’re talking about. So, verisimilitude has to do with, does the text reflect the realities as we know them from other sources of the past? And therefore, we judge it to be reliable. By the way, my younger students, I always teach them the word verisimilitude.

Shirley

Okay.

Craig

I use it. Then I said, when you go home and you’re having dinner with mom and dad, slip it into your conversation. They’ll go, wow, my son, my daughter’s getting a great education at Houston Baptist University. The tuition is worth it.

Shirley

And when we say that to our children, they’ll think, “Well, where did you get that, mom and dad?”

Craig

But that’s very important. It’s verisimilitude, and of course, we have examples of this in my chapter, but some of the archaeologists talk about it also. 

Shirley

It is, yeah, it is good. Alright, so, you talk about topography as an important element of this. How does topography fit in there?

Craig

Well, yeah, that’s… that’s a good one. There are scholars who think… In fact, this conference I just came from—one of the presenters is still trying to beat the old dead horse that the Gospel of Thomas is early and independent and really helpful. No, it isn’t. The late Larry Hurtado remarked one time, Larry was a great Markan scholar and a textual critic, knew manuscripts real well, and he said, if all we had was the Gospel of Thomas, which I think was late 2nd century, would we know that Jesus was even Jewish?”

Now, what about topography? Topography talks about real places. Roads that go to villages. Mountains. Rivers. There’s an apocryphal text that talks about the Jordan River flowing to the Mediterranean Sea. Does anybody see a problem with that?

You know, I’ve never seen a river flow uphill. 

Shirley

Right?

Craig

No, never. But, you know, who knows? Anyway, no. And so the Gospel of Thomas hasn’t any topography in it. But John does. John knows where every place is. 

Shirley

So go back just a little bit. You were just making a point about why the topography matters there.

Craig

Well, yeah, in the Gospel of Thomas, there isn’t any topography. You’d have no idea that Galilee’s up north, that there’s Samaria, then there’s Judea in the south, that that’s where Jerusalem is. You’d have no idea that you actually have to ascend to go to Jerusalem, go up. No idea about that at all. Or that further over to the east, you have the Jordan River flowing out of the Sea of Galilee all the way down to the Dead Sea. There’s no knowledge of this.

Whereas Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, they know the lay of the land, they presuppose it, they talk about it, they know what they’re talking about. That’s verisimilitude as it relates to topography. Again, it’s absent in these apocryphal gospels.

Shirley

So Alan Culpepper was dealing with just Galilee itself. What did he find about Galilee? 

Craig

Well, it’s the same thing. The author clearly understands Galilee. In other words, the author knows that the Jewish people in Galilee are not necessarily the same as the Jewish people in Judea in the south. And the people in Galilee don’t necessarily like the ruling priests in the south. And by the way, archaeology is helping us nuance that. It used to be, when I was in seminary—I won’t tell you how many decades ago that was, or which century—but when I was in seminary, the idea was, “Oh, the Galileans, you know, they’re kind of Hellenized and radical, and compared to the more conservative Jews in Judea and the priesthood.”

It’s the other way around! It turns out the Galileans took their faith seriously, and they did not like the worldliness and the cosmopolitan attitudes and lifestyle of the ruling priests and the Jerusalem elite. And so that has been an interesting flip in our understanding. Alan Culpepper has been a Johannine scholar since he was born. I’ve known him for years and years. He’s a great guy.

Shirley

And so, does that have anything to do with why there was tension between Jesus and Jerusalem?

Craig

Oh, certainly! And so, Jesus and Galileans come waving palm branches, and of course, they have allies in Jerusalem. Jesus has been to Jerusalem many times. How do we know that? Thanks to John. If all we went by was Mark, we’d think, “Well, Jesus visited Jerusalem once.” But John makes it clear, that actually, his ministry got underway a year or two earlier than Mark states it.

Mark is content to just begin. Jesus is baptized. John is arrested. He’s in prison. Now Jesus gets underway. Well, Mark’s not wrong, but that’s not the whole story.

John makes it clear that Jesus’s ministry started earlier, that he worked side by side with John. Jesus had disciples early on who were baptizing people. Indeed, Jesus’ ministry expanded and got bigger than John’s, to the point he was baptizing more people than John did.

John’s Gospel tells us a whole lot about Samaria and Samaritans. Again, he knows what he’s talking about. So, to leave John out of the picture and to say, “Well, we’re going to talk about the Jesus of history, and we’re only going to reference Matthew, Mark, and Luke”—that shortchanges the whole story.

Shirley

Why do you think the Gospel of John has been maligned like this? Where did that come from? Why?

Craig

Well, I think John got pushed aside in the 19th century by German scholars. He got pushed aside starting in the 1840s with F.C. Bauer. And I know everybody likes to beat up on Bauer. He was quite the guy. He was quite the scholar. In fact, the more I learned about him, I was rather impressed. He would study up in the garret. He had this little room. His wife said, “You have to take your books upstairs. Don’t clutter the house.” But he’s up in this attic, and he’s got a desk, and he’s got his books, and this is the 1830s, 1840s. He does not have central heating.

Shirley

Oh boy, yeah.

Craig

And in the wintertime, folks, I’m not kidding, his son-in-law tells us he would be working in that attic. And it’s so cotton-pickin’ cold, the ink in the inkwell froze!

Shirley

Wow. Interesting.

Craig

So let’s not be too hard on F.C. Bauer. Maybe some other things froze, too. I don’t know. But he came up with the idea that the Gospel of John wasn’t written until about the year 170. Well, it’s not eyewitness if it’s written 140 years after Jesus’s public ministry comes to a conclusion; this really damages, and of course. “Oh, it’s all theology; there’s no history.” And that’s what sidelined John.

But by the way, you know, a couple generations later, we find a fragment of John—an early copy of John—that dates to the beginning of the second century. Well, you can’t have a copy of John 50 years before it’s written!

That seriously forced everybody to say, “Wait a minute, the church fathers are right! John’s gospel was written earlier.” In fact, I argue that chapters 1 through 20 were written in the 60s. It was only after the beloved disciple died in the 90s that chapter 21 is added to make clear that Jesus did not say that the beloved disciple would remain alive until he returned, but only he had told Peter, if it’s my will that he remain alive until I return, what’s that to you? And so I think that’s why church fathers thought the Gospel of John was written in the nineties. In fact, it’s, prior to chapter 21, the original part that concluded at the end of 20, very likely circulated in the 60s, which means it’s just as old as Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and that means it’s eyewitness tradition. And that’s no wonder he knows Jerusalem so well.

Shirley

So, you alluded to the beloved disciple again. I know that everybody wants to know. What does archaeology have to tell us about who this character is?

Craig

A little bit. That’s a complicated question, I think. And here’s why. I’ll back up to our earliest source outside of John, and that’s Papias, or Papias, as he can also be pronounced. He’s writing around the year 110. Maybe a little bit later than that. He was born, we think, around the year 70. So he’s writing probably in his 40s, which is a mature age back in those days. He’s the Bishop of Hierapolis, which is in today’s Turkey.

And he talks about who wrote what. So he talks about Matthew, he talks about Peter and Mark, and he mentions that he knows this stuff because he got it from John. Here’s the interesting thing. He calls John an elder. Well, he calls the apostles elders.

Irenaeus, writing in 180—so about two generations later—he says that this is the Apostle John. So the Apostle John is the source for Papias’ knowledge of who wrote the Gospels, who’s connected to what, why Matthew’s called Matthew, and so on.

Here’s the problem, though. In the second century, Papias wrote this five-volume work, and in the work, he gets into Jesus’s eschatology, Mark 13, Matthew 24 – 25, the “Olivet Discourse.” And he says, when Jesus comes back, he will defeat the Roman Empire. He will kill the Roman Emperor. Well, in the second century, Christians thought, that’s okay, I don’t see a problem with that. Yeah, well, fast forward into the early fourth century, and now you’re Eusebius writing church history. And you’re in Constantine’s court, and you’re telling Constantine you should follow your mother’s lead and embrace Christ as your Lord and Savior, who, by the way, is going to come and kill you. Oops! Wait a minute, wait a minute.

Shirley

Right.

Craig

He had no interest in that kind of eschatology, and it was Papias. The trouble is, he can’t just throw Papias under the bus. Papias knew John! And John wrote Revelation. And so Papias knows the author, and he says, this is what the author of Revelation is talking about. What do you do with that? So here’s what Eusebius did. There are two Johns. There’s the Apostle John and Papias didn’t know him, and there’s this elder John, and he’s somebody else.

So how does archaeology help? Well, Eusebius says there are two tombs. Ah, there you go. Two, and he uses the word Meneon, which means two memorials. So there are two Minea. And they have the name John on it. Well, archaeology will help us out and say, “No, no, a memorial isn’t necessarily a tapos, a tomb.”

And so Eusebius is playing games with us. Oh, I like the guy, and I don’t mean to be too hard on him, but he wants to distance Papias from the Apostle John.

And doggone it, that didn’t help. We’re better to stick with Irenaeus, who quotes the same material, and he says he is talking about the Apostle John. So archaeology does help out and talk about when is a tomb a tomb, and when is a memorial just that, a memorial. You could have a plaque on the wall of your church that’s in memory of Pastor so-and-so. That doesn’t mean he’s buried there in your church. And that’s an important thing there. 

Shirley

Oh, my goodness. So we’ve only got like another minute before we really open this up to everybody else. But there’s one more thing that you brought out that I want to ask you about that. “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains a single grain, but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” There’s more research on that one too, right?

Craig

Well, it is a great analogy. Like, see, John in chapter 12, Jesus says that the Son of Man must be lifted up. The people understand what that means: lifted up on a cross, executed. And somebody in the crowd shouts out, “We understand that the Messiah remains forever.” So, the grain of wheat—the seed that seemingly has died—it’s dried out, it’s dead. It goes into the ground, and guess what happens? It multiplies; it bears fruit! It’s a great analogy. So if Jesus, who’s lifted up on the cross—and of course for John, it’s an interesting idea: that’s his first step toward returning to heaven, having achieved his work—yet just the same, his body will be placed in the ground, it will be buried. And so the analogy then justifies the need for the death. If he’s going to bear fruit, he must, like a seed, be placed in the ground.

Shirley

So, we are going to move on here. Before I do, let me just add a little commercial word here. I just want to remind everybody about Patreon—that if you are a Bible and Beyond supporter through Patreon, you get invited to our community conversation called Reflections, where we get together and talk about these Bible and Beyond Discussions. If you don’t know how to get there, you go to patreon.com/bibleandbeyond, and when you make a donation there, you automatically get invited to our Reflections conversations. There are other benefits to Patreon, because you also get a discount on the courses, and you also get my column once a week on “The Greatest Thing I Learned This Week.” All those nice things. Just want you to be aware.

We’re going to open the mic now to your questions, and I think we already have some questions going. I glanced at the chat. Peggy, help me out. Where do we start?

Peggy Williams

The biggest question that seemed to be going… first of all, I want to thank Philip. Philip’s been putting up links to the books, as they’re mentioned, and I appreciate that. So, there was… Linda wanted to know, where did Bauer get that idea that John was written in 170? But there are two or three questions that relate there, and Toto answered and said Bauer likely grabbed it from Hegel.

Craig

That’s a good observation. It would take way too much time to go into a detailed explanation of that. But Hegel is the key. The idea is there’s a thesis, something that’s going in this direction, and then there’s an antithesis that pushes against it, and there emerges, then, a synthesis. So what he has argued is that there is a Jewish Christianity thesis, and there’s Gentile Christianity, which has Paul driving it. So Peter is Jewish, and Paul is Gentile; they’re colliding. And so, John seems to show evidence of being past that, where the church now is blending together and saying, okay, we’ve worked out these differences, the book of Acts helps us do that.

The threat now is Gnosticism, and John was interpreted as a pushback against Gnosticism. And so, okay, you Gnostics are interested in an ethereal Jesus who knows lots of stuff, special revelation and only pretends to be a human, so John says, “Oh yeah? He’s the Word that became flesh! He stands on the ground and leaves footprints.” And so in his mind, in terms of the history of the development of thought—very Hegelian—John couldn’t be written any earlier than in the second half of the second century. That’s where that comes from. By the way, that has collapsed today by the end of the 19th century, and certainly by the early 20th, but that’s where F.C. Bauer was going with that. Very Hegelian.

Shirley

Yeah, thank you for that. That’s very helpful. Okay, Bob, please go ahead. 

Bob Costello

Thank you. Thank you very much, Craig. Let me ask you about one of Paul’s positions. And since I have not read your work where you’re proposing that it was written in the ’60s, and I hope someone will post a link to that so that I can also go and read your work on that.

But (Paul) Anderson is very fixed, it seems, on the idea that it really was written by John of Zebedee from Galilee. Richard Bauckham has proposed in his eyewitness book that he thinks that it was written by a Judean, that from what he is evaluating historically and the other evidence archaeologically, that are there within John, he thinks that it’s the Judean who actually wrote it—that it wasn’t the Galilean fishermen like John. I don’t know if you have an opinion on that or not.

Craig

Well, I have an incomplete opinion on that. Here’s the problem. We have the question of who actually wrote John. And who is “the beloved disciple”? And of course, the mystery, too, is that just because you’re from Galilee, or that’s where you live, doesn’t mean you have no connections or family in the south. Jesus is himself. I’m convinced he has family in Bethlehem. And so Luke gives us that impression, so does John. Jesus is going up and down frequently.

It’s his family’s custom to visit Jerusalem at Passover. This is the intimation we get from Luke. We have reason to believe that people from Bethlehem, many of whom are descendants of David, are the founders of the village of Nazareth in Galilee when the Hasmoneans were re-Judaizing the north. And so Nazareth probably was founded around 100 BC. So when Jesus was born, only two, two and a half generations of people lived there. It’s a newish village in a way.

The reason that people talk about the south is it’s so southern. The author knows Jerusalem like the back of his hand. He knows Bethany, the whole area around Jerusalem! But here, for me, is the real giveaway. It’s in the passion.

Who gets Peter into the courtyard of the high priestly family? A disciple that is actually known to a servant girl. That’s Zebedee? That’s a Galilean fisherman? I mean, it’s possible. But this level of intimacy, and it’s Peter who’s pointed out as the foreigner.

We know he… actually, he’s not really truly a Galilean. He’s from Golanitis. He’s on the east side of the Jordan River at the top north shore of the Sea of Galilee from Bethsaida. That’s actually in Golanitis, but it’s not wrong to call him a Galilean, because the border moves around a little bit anyway.

Well, his accent is readily noticed. The rabbis laugh and joke about the Galileans, how they pronounce certain words differently. But nobody points out to the beloved disciple and says, “Yeah, you’re from Galilee also.” No, it’s just Peter. And so, of course, I’m mixing up these questions. The beloved disciple isn’t necessarily the writer. I am very open to the possibility that the beloved disciple, isn’t the writer.

Someone knows him as the writer. But whoever writes says the beloved disciple’s testimony is true. Who is the beloved disciple? I’m open to the possibility of Lazarus.

And I’ll tell you why.

You could read it in English, but especially if you read it in Greek for the first time, the Gospel of John, from cover to cover, without knowing anything. No tradition about who the author is, or it’s John. You get to chapter 11, and for the first time, you’re told this person is somebody Jesus loved. You know who that is? It’s Lazarus, who has died. After that, 3 or 4 more times, you’re going to get reference to the disciple whom Jesus loved.

Anybody reading that for the first time without having their head cluttered with stuff they’ve heard in Sunday school, they’re gonna say, oh, he’s clearly talking about Lazarus, the man he raised up.

So who then actually wrote it? Well, it could be somebody named John. But the beloved disciple, who knows personally the servant girl, that’s somebody from Jerusalem, or, as we’re told, Lazarus and his two sisters are from next door, Bethany! Now that makes sense. But it still leaves some loose ends, I acknowledge.

Bob

Thank you. 

Shirley

That’s fascinating. Thank you. Okay, Peggy, where are we?

Peggy

In the chat, someone asked how to find your books, your writings. Philip is doing a great job of putting links in there. The original link he put in is at the top of the chat, and that will get you to the book. But there are several very worthwhile links in there.

Shirley

Thank you so much, Peggy. That’s very helpful. All right, Pat, and then Honor.

Pat Nester

Yes, maybe I’ve been reading the wrong Bible scholars, but I thought that the Gospels were anonymous. There was no certified connection between any human being and the writer. But when were the names of the apostles attached to the texts, which would then substantiate the claim that they were definite eyewitnesses?

Craig

Thanks, Pat, for asking that question. Martin Hengel, the great evangelical German scholar who passed away in 2009, was at Tubingen. For most of his career, he was a great guy. Boy, he would say, what are you talking about? The Gospels were never anonymous. Scholars say that because unlike Paul’s epistles, for example. When you look at the Gospels as they were originally written, there is no header above them, a title page that says Kata Markon, or Kata Matayon, or something like that: “according to Matthew,” or “according to Mark,” or very fully, “Euangelion kata Loukan,”—Gospel according to Luke. No, that isn’t how they circulated.

And so there is no name.

And so Paul says, “Paul” (Paulos), in every letter. “Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who are … grace and peace. On he goes; it’s a letter. The gospels are not letters.

Pat

Right.

Craig

We think that when the Gospels were penned, there was an accompanying letter, which was typical of monographs or treatises, books.

Pat

Right.

Craig

That would explain who wrote it, and for what reason, and who the primary intended audience is. And so everybody knew when Matthew’s gospel began to circulate—or Mark’s gospel—everybody knew. So it never was anonymous. It’s just the text as we have, it gives no name. And so, in a certain sense, textually, literarily, you can say it’s anonymous. But the church always knew.

And here’s how I illustrate it. There was never a competing suggestion when Mark began to circulate. There was nobody that came forward and said, “Well, actually, it was Philip who wrote it. Actually, it was Nathaniel. No, it was Thaddeus. There is no debate. It’s Mark, and what I find really interesting about that is, according to Papias, the real voice behind Mark was Peter!

And so if the early church was loosey goosey on—yeah, it doesn’t really matter, let’s just pick a name out of the hat—why not call it the Gospel of Peter? Peter’s the voice behind it. No, because they knew, because he isn’t the one that wrote it. He may be the voice, he may be the main source behind it, but it’s Mark who wrote it.

Pat

Hmm. Okay.

Craig

I would go back and make the same point about John. They don’t call it the gospel according to Lazarus, if they knew that, in fact, that he was the beloved disciple. Because Lazarus didn’t write it.

And so who wrote it is known, and that’s where it gets its name. So when you think about it, here’s another angle to this. If the church really didn’t know, and they’re picking names out of the hat, why do you pick Mark out of the hat? Who is he? Is he the guy that ran away and caused a rift between Paul and Barnabas? What kind of… why would you want him to be the author, if you really don’t know? What about Matthew? Who’s he? He’s a name on a list. The only thing that Matthew is known for in the Gospel stories, he’s a tax collector who follows Jesus and he has a reception. That’s it.

He doesn’t walk on water, he doesn’t heal anyone, he’s never at any story. He’s a name on a list at the beginning of the book of Acts. Not one story’s told about him. Why do you pick his name out? And why Luke? He’s a name that shows up in a few places. Why do you pick Luke out of the hat if you really don’t know who wrote the third gospel?

So, for me, that’s an argument also, that these Gospels weren’t anonymous. Now, here, I’m saving the big one for the last. Who wrote the book of Hebrews?

Nobody knows! And guess what? You got 4 or 5 names that the early church suggested for Hebrews. That’s what happens when it truly is anonymous, and people don’t know.

Was it Paul? Oh, I don’t think so. Could it be Luke? Eh, no, not really. How about Apollos? Nah, probably not. Well, then maybe it… and on it goes. Barnabas, perhaps? Nobody really knows. And when they don’t know, you get lots of suggestions. But when you do know, you don’t. You get the same name all the time.

Shirley

Very helpful ideas. OK. Thank you so much for that. That’s a new thought for us. And so, Honor, tell us what you’re thinking about.

Honor Haase

Well, I’d just like to hear your comment on one aspect of… To me, the beloved Gospel of John that it has many places where Jesus is very belligerent. How does that figure in your historicity of it. I mean, you don’t find Jesus in the other Gospels saying to the Pharisees, you guys are all wet, your father is the devil.

Craig

Oh, I see what you mean. Yeah. The language can be a little bit harsh.

Honor

Yeah, I would say.

Craig

Yeah, well, Jesus, he’s pretty hard-hitting in the synoptics too. Maybe it’s not quite as obvious. For example, in, you know, there’s the cleansing of the temple, as we call it, there’s the temple demonstration. And he basically is calling the ruling priests thieves and murderers by appealing to the certain texts, particularly the Jeremiah 7-11 one. Uh, you’ve made my father’s house a house of robbers. Highway men, muggers. That’s pretty harsh criticism. He talks in the parable of the wicked vineyard tenants, the ruling priests are the wicked vineyard tenants in the parable. They’re killers. And they’re so outraged when the parable ends, they would have seized Jesus on the spot, except the crowd loves it! Craig Evans: They agree with Jesus, and they don’t want to take on the crowd. That’s pretty hard-hitting, too.

But you just happen to have some different conversations, and yeah, it’s pretty blunt when Jesus comes right out and says, you are of your father the devil. There’s some hard-hitting stuff. In Matthew 23, he calls the scribes and Pharisees whitewashed tombs inside of which are dead men’s bones and all kinds of corruption and uncleanness. They’re polished cups, but inside’s filth. Man, if you’re a scribe or a Pharisee and you’re very concerned on your own personal piety and purity and everything, that is very hard-hitting.

So, I don’t think the contrast between John and the synoptics is that much. And by the way, if you read Josephus, if you read the Dead Sea Scrolls, the polemic, the polemical language of the Gospels is pretty mild compared to typical first-century Jewish polemic, which are just… your hair would catch on fire.

Shirley

Yeah, mm-hmm. Okay, honor, you brought it on for you. Thank you for that question.

Honor

Okay, thank you.

Craig

You’re welcome. Good question.

Shirley

All right. And so Linda and then Helen.

Linda Noren

Hi, Craig. Um, I’m no Bible scholar, but I have read recently some things that are saying that Jesus didn’t say a lot of these things, so do you think that he actually said some of those harsher things, or was that written… added, written by the people who wrote the Gospels?

Craig

Oh, I think Jesus indeed did use that kind of language, probably a lot more. I got into some trouble one time with a debate with Bart Ehrman where he was quoting, you know, John and Greek. He says, did Jesus actually say that? And I said, no. And then, man, the internet blew up. And of course, they never listen to the whole story. Jesus spoke in Aramaic.

Take the Sermon on the Mount, for example. If you were to open up the Sermon on the Mount right now, three chapters in English, in Matthew, chapters five, six and seven, how long would it take you to read it out loud? Twelve minutes, maybe? Do you think Jesus on the side of the hill overlooking the Sea of Galilee spoke for 12 minutes? And then said, okay, I’m done. Everybody go home. He spoke for hours! And in Aramaic.

And so, this happens all the time. Yeah, you get a few pithy, this is word for word, what he said right then and there translated word-for-word exactly into Greek what he said. But what the Gospel writers are doing, and that would include John, not just Matthew, Mark, and Luke, they take his teaching and it’s edited and translated, and so you get a pithy 6 verses, or 12 verses, or 3 chapters, Sermon on the Mount, in Greek that takes 12 or 13 minutes to read. But what he, in fact, said, he repeats over and over again, he says it again somewhere else.

You end up with this nice, tight consent, and in Matthew, five discourses, nicely edited, tightly concise, put together. But that’s not how Jesus taught. And so you’d have to have this realistic understanding for composition. Do we have some of his sayings word for word? Yeah, I’m sure we do. But otherwise, it’s a distillation, an accurate distillation. We know that because we can cross-reference.

And so, you get distillations in Greek that truly, correctly reflect what the Aramaic-speaking, much more long-winded Jesus said.

And that’s being realistic and appreciating how the Gospel writers worked.

Shirley

That’s a really great question. Yeah, thank you so much, Linda. Helen, I think you get the last word or last question, depending upon how long we go with this one.

Linda

Thank you.

Helen Mathis

Yeah, I missed some of it because I had an unstable internet, but you were saying that John was the author of the Gospel of John. Are you talking about John the Apostle? Because that couldn’t be, really.

And also, my other question is sort of an extension of what Linda was saying. In John, besides the historical aspects that are deeply an early history, you’ve got a lot of dialogues and monologues by Jesus that are very, very finely developed. I mean, they’re brilliant, with double and triple meanings, layer upon layer. So that’s why they call it the theological gospel.

Craig

Okay. Yes. Mm-hmm.

Helen

I wonder how historical you think those dialogues and monologues are, or do you see that as what you were saying to Linda, that these are more the developed sort of distillation of what Jesus might have taught? And then going back to the Gospel of John, who the author is. He might be John, but he couldn’t be the Apostle John.

Craig

Well, okay, that goes back.

Helen

I mean, the Gospel of John isn’t even interested in apostles.

Craig

I know, and you’re right on that. Who the writer is…

Helen

Seriously.

Craig

Who the person is who composes the fourth gospel, we’re not sure. It’s possible it was John. It’s possible it’s someone else’s John. I would argue the beloved disciple isn’t the same person. He’s the person from the South. Judea, perhaps Bethany, perhaps Lazarus. So you have to make that distinction. So the Beloved Disciple is the source; it is Southern, and it’s not Galilean, so you’re right there.

Helen

Right. Yeah.

Craig

But who actually wrote it out and circulated it? Who added chapter 21, 30 years later? Not sure.

So now, Matthew, as I already said, Luke less so, Mark less so, but Matthew very much so, gives us these beautiful compositions, five major discourses. The first one’s the Sermon on the Mount; it’s the longest. John does the same thing. He doesn’t do anything as long as 3 chapters, but he could have a discourse of 30, 40 verses.

Helen

Yeah.

Craig

So it’s a style of saying… and by the way, the ancients knew that. It’s called epitome.

So here’s this mass of teaching. You can’t tape record it and just page after page after page of rambling discussion and answering questions and repeating things. That would be… that wouldn’t work! So, what you get is a nice, crisp distillation in Greek that adds up to 20, 30, 40 verses, and that’s the discourse. Is it historical? Yes, if it actually reflects what he taught.

But if you’re defining historical as tape recording, word for word, well, then you’ve got a problem. It’s not a transcript. So it’s a distillation, an epitome of a lengthy teaching.

Helen

Do you think a fisherman could have, created the kind of developed theological, discourse that you get in the Gospel of John?

Craig

I’ll ask you a question, Helen. Do you think a tent maker could write a dozen letters the way Paul wrote his?

Helen

Well, depends upon the level of…

Craig

See, the problem is, Helen, the point is we do not know. What formal education? Peter and Andrew or the… or the Zebedee brothers, we don’t know. The fact that they owned… and by the way, the Zebedee brothers have hired hands and owned boats. This doesn’t sound like some real poor people that are barely scraping by. So, what their formal education is, we have rabbis, for example, in the rabbinic tradition, who are learned who have memorized Torah and yet, they’re cobblers, they make shoes. Or they they do this, or they do that, or they milk cows like Tovye in Fiddler on the Roof. We don’t know what their education always is.

And so, they find the time to sit down in the synagogue, usually, or some other house of learning, and study the Hebrew text, ask questions, learn how to read, learn how to exegete, and yet they still have their day job.

Helen

Good.

Craig

So, you know, it’s unknown. And this idea that, you know, this reflects a modern Western view, oh, they’re just poor fishermen. My gosh, they must have been ignorant. No, they’re not professional scribes. They haven’t done that. But it doesn’t mean they’re uneducated or can’t even read. We just don’t know.

Helen

Okay.

Shirley

What a great conclusion to this conversation. We just don’t know.

Craig

Thank you.

Shirley 

I… let me just ask you, I mean, this is… you’ve really opened up the door to lots and lots of questions and thinking about this. Do you have, sort of, like, one message you’d like to leave for us with this.

Craig

Uh, yeah, I do, I do. I have found that skepticism. What scholars typically express is always founded on just not knowing all the facts. There are a lot of theories that 200 years ago were thought to be invincible. Lots of so-called assured results of higher criticism—that have been just laughed out of the room. After the discovery of the papyri in the 1890s, after the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in the 1940s and 50s, all of the archaeology work. Do you realize just 30 years ago, a prominent scholar said there were no synagogues?!

Shirley

Yeah, right.

Craig

…in the days of Jesus? That Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are anachronistic? How embarrassing. Where are we now? 12 pre-70 synagogues and counting!

Shirley

Yeah.

Craig

What a dumb theory.

Shirley

Mmm hmm.

Craig

So, bad theories, skeptical theories, almost always they’re embarrassed later when we find out more information. You need to know that. And we have box loads of papyri from Egypt not yet published.

When I was in seminary, there were 79 New Testament papyri. There are now 140.

And I’m not that old, but it just shows you how things keep getting found and published, and the new defines the discoveries supported: the gospels. They don’t undermine them.

Shirley

Very wonderful. Thank you. I’m going to close us out here with a huge thank you to Craig. I know you’ve had a full day. We really appreciate you coming to be with us too. I hope this is the end of your day because it’s been a long day for you!

Craig

Okay.

Shirley

I just thank you so very much. This was the September 2026 Bible and Beyond Discussion, titled, “Is John the First Apocryphal Gospel?”—with our guest scholar, Professor Craig Evans.

These discussions are led by a knowledgeable scholar who provides a thoughtful overview of some early Christian texts or issues. The second half hour, participants have a chance to ask their own questions. We usually meet on the fourth Monday of the month from 8 to 9 p.m. Eastern Time. And now let me tell you what’s happening next month. We’ll be meeting on the fourth Monday, which will be October 26th.

Dr. Robert Miller is coming back, and he’ll be talking about the debates over how Jesus could be God and man.

So, anyway, right now, join me as a special thanks to Craig for helping us to appreciate the unique value of the Gospel of John, and how we can understand its relationship to all the other Gospels in and out of the Bible.

Thank you, thank you. Thank you so much. So great to be with you.