The Gospel of John, Volume One

William Barclay

• Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
• Year: 2001
• Print ISBN:
  9780664224899
• eBook ISBN:
  9781611640144
• Edition: 3
• Topic: Théologie et religion
• Subtopic: Commentaire biblique

"The Gospel according to Saint John is to many people the most precious book in he Bible, " states William Barclay. In order to help uncover the tremendous wealth of this Gospel, Barclay has provided his own unique translation of the text, a detailed commentary, and a comprehensive introduction. This new edition will help bring the book in which "many people find themselves closer to God and to Jesus Christ than in any other book in the world" closer to home and freshly relevant for today's readers. For almost fifty years and for millions of readers, the Daily Study Bible commentaries have been the ideal help for both devotional and serious Bible study. Now, with the release of the New Daily Study Bible, a new generation will appreciate the wisdom of William Barclay. With clarification of less familiar illustrations and inclusion of more contemporary language, the New Daily Study Bible will continue to help individuals and groups discover what the message of the New Testament really means for their lives.

INTRODUCTION TO THE GOSPEL OF JOHN

The Gospel of the Eagle’s Eye

For many Christian people, the Gospel according to St John is the most precious book in the New Testament. It is the book on which above all they feed their minds and nourish their hearts, and in which they rest their souls. Very often on stained-glass windows and the like, the gospel writers are represented in symbol by the figures of the four animals that the writer of the Revelation saw around the throne (Revelation 4:7). The emblems are variously distributed among the gospel writers, but a common allocation is that the man stands for Mark, which is the plainest, the most straightforward and the most human of the gospels; the lion stands for Matthew, for he specially saw Jesus as the Messiah and the Lion of the tribe of Judah; the ox stands for Luke, because it is the animal of service and sacrifice, and Luke saw Jesus as the great servant of men and women and the universal sacrifice for all people; and the eagle stands for John, because it alone of all living creatures can look straight into the sun and not be dazzled, and, of all the New Testament writers, John has the most penetrating gaze into the eternal mysteries and the eternal truths and the very mind of God. Many people find themselves closer to God and to Jesus Christ in John than in any other book in the world.

The Gospel that is Different

But we have only to read the Fourth Gospel in the most cursory way to see that it is quite different from the other three. It omits so many things that they include. The Fourth Gospel has no account of the birth of Jesus, of his baptism, of his temptations; it tells us nothing of the Last Supper, nothing of Gethsemane and nothing of the ascension. It has no word of the healing of any people possessed by devils and evil spirits. And, perhaps most surprising of all, it has none of the parable stories Jesus told which are such a priceless part of the other three gospels. In these other three gospels, Jesus speaks either in these wonderful stories or in short, epigrammatic, vivid sentences which stick in the memory. But in the Fourth Gospel, the speeches of Jesus are often a whole chapter long and are often involved, argumentative pronouncements quite unlike the pithy, unforgettable sayings of the other three.

Even more surprising, the account in the Fourth Gospel of the facts of the life and ministry of Jesus is often different from that in the other three.

(1) John has a different account of the beginning of the ministry of Jesus. In the other three gospels, it is quite definitely stated that Jesus did not emerge as a preacher until after John the Baptist had been imprisoned. ‘Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God’ (Mark 1:14; cf. Luke 3:18, 20; Matthew 4:12). But in John there is a quite considerable period during which the ministry of Jesus overlapped with the activity of John the Baptist (John 3:22–30, 4:1–2).

(2) John has a different account of the scene of Jesus’ ministry. In the other three gospels, the main scene of the ministry is Galilee, and Jesus does not reach Jerusalem until the last week of his life. In John, the main scene of the ministry is Jerusalem and Judaea, with only occasional withdrawals to Galilee (2:1–13, 4:35–5:1, 6:1–7:14). In John, Jesus is in Jerusalem for a Passover which occurred at the same time as the cleansing of the Temple, as John tells the story (2:13); he is in Jerusalem at the time of an unnamed feast (5:1); he is there for the Feast of Tabernacles (7:2, 10); he is there at the Feast of Dedication in the wintertime (10:22). In fact, according to the Fourth Gospel, Jesus never left Jerusalem after that feast; after chapter 10 he is in Jerusalem all the time, which would mean a stay of months, from the wintertime of the Feast of the Dedication to the springtime of the Passover at which he was crucified.

In point of fact, in this particular matter John is surely right. The other gospels show us Jesus mourning over Jerusalem as the last week came on. ‘Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!’ (Matthew 23:37 = Luke 13:34). It is clear that Jesus could not have said that unless he had paid repeated visits to Jerusalem and made repeated appeals to it. It was impossible for him to say that on a first visit. In this, John is unquestionably right.

It was in fact this difference of scene which provided the great Church historian Eusebius with one of the earliest explanations of the difference between the Fourth Gospel and the other three. He said that in his day (about AD 300) many people who were scholars held the following view. Matthew at first preached to the Hebrew people. The day came when he had to leave them and go to other nations. Before he went, he set down his story of the life of Jesus in Hebrew, ‘and thus compensated those whom he was obliged to leave for the loss of his presence’. After Mark and Luke had published their gospels, John was still preaching the story of Jesus orally. ‘Finally he proceeded to write for the following reason. The three gospels already mentioned having come into the hands of all and into his hands too, they say that he fully accepted them and bore witness to their truthfulness; but there was lacking in them an account of the deeds done by Christ at the beginning of his ministry … They therefore say that John, being asked to do it for this reason, gave in his gospel an account of the period which had been omitted by the earlier evangelists, and of the deeds done by the Saviour during that period; that is, of the deeds done before the imprisonment of John the Baptist … John therefore records the deeds of Christ which were performed before the Baptist was cast into prison, but the other three evangelists mention the events which happened after that time … The Gospel according to John contains the first acts of Christ, while the others give an account of the latter part of his life’ (Eusebius, The Ecclesiastical History, 5:24).

So then according to Eusebius there is no contradiction at all between the Fourth Gospel and the other three; the difference is due to the fact that the Fourth Gospel is describing a ministry in Jerusalem, at least in its earlier chapters, which preceded the ministry in Galilee, and which took place while John the Baptist was still at liberty. It may well be that this explanation of Eusebius is at least in part correct.

(3) John has a different account of the duration of Jesus’ ministry. The other three gospels, on the face of it, imply that it lasted only one year. Within the ministry, there is only one Passover Feast. In John, there are three Passovers: one at the cleansing of the Temple (2:13), one near the feeding of the 5,000 (6:4), and the final Passover at which Jesus went to the cross. According to John, the ministry of Jesus would take a minimum of two years, and probably a period nearer three years, to cover its events. Again, John is unquestionably right. If we read the other three gospels closely and carefully, we can see that he is right. When the disciples plucked the ears of corn (Mark 2:23), it must have been springtime. When the 5,000 were fed, they sat down on the green grass (Mark 6:39); therefore it was springtime again, and there must have been a year between the two events. There follows the tour through Tyre and Sidon, and the transfiguration. At the transfiguration, Peter wished to build three booths and to stay there. It is most natural to think that it was the time of the Feast of Tabernacles or Booths and that that is why Peter made the suggestion (Mark 9:5). That would make the date early in October. There follows the space between that and the last Passover in April. Therefore, behind the narrative of the other three gospels lies the fact that Jesus’ ministry actually did last for at least three years, as John represents it.

(4) It sometimes even happens that John differs in matters of fact from the other three. There are two outstanding examples. First, John puts the cleansing of the Temple at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry (2:13–22); the others put it at the end (Mark 11:15–17; Matthew 21:12–13; Luke 19:45–6). Second, when we come to study the narratives in detail, we will see that John dates the crucifixion of Jesus on the day before the Passover, while the other gospels date it on the day of the Passover.

We can never shut our eyes to the obvious differences between John and the other gospels.

John’s Special Knowledge

One thing is certain – if John differs from the other three gospels, it is not because of ignorance and lack of information. The plain fact is that, if he omits much that they tell us, he also tells us much that they do not mention. John alone tells of the marriage feast at Cana of Galilee (2:1–11); of the coming of Nicodemus to Jesus (3:1–15); of the woman of Samaria (4); of the raising of Lazarus (11); of the way in which Jesus washed his disciples’ feet (13:1–17); of Jesus’ wonderful teaching about the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, which is scattered through chapters 14–17. It is only in John that some of the disciples really come alive. It is in John alone that Thomas speaks (11:16, 14:5, 20:24–9); that Andrew becomes a real personality (1:40–1, 6:8–9, 12:22); that we get a glimpse of the character of Philip (6:5–7, 14:8–9); that we hear the carping protest of Judas at the anointing at Bethany (12:4–5). And the strange thing is that these little extra touches are intensely revealing. John’s pictures of Thomas and Andrew and Philip are like little cameos or vignettes in which the character of each man is etched in a way we cannot forget.

Further, again and again John has little extra details which read like the memories of one who was there. The loaves which the young boy brought to Jesus were barley loaves (6:9); when Jesus came to the disciples as they crossed the lake in the storm, they had rowed between three and four miles (6:19); there were six stone water pots at Cana of Galilee (2:6); it is only John who tells of the four soldiers gambling for the seamless robe as Jesus dies (19:23); he knows the exact weight of the myrrh and aloes which were used to anoint the dead body of Jesus (19:39); and he remembers how the perfume of the ointment filled the house at the anointing at Bethany (12:3). Many of these things are such apparently unimportant details that they are inexplicable unless they are the memories of someone who was there.

However much John may differ from the other three gospels, that difference is to be explained not by ignorance but rather by the fact that he had more knowledge or better sources or a more vivid memory than the others.

Further evidence of the specialized information of the writer of the Fourth Gospel is his detailed knowledge of Palestine and of Jerusalem. He knows how long it took to build the Temple (2:20); that the Jews and the Samaritans had a permanent quarrel (4:9); the low Jewish view of women (4:9); and how the Jews regard the Sabbath (5:10, 7:21–3, 9:14). His knowledge of the geography of Palestine is intimate. He knows of two Bethanys, one of which is beyond Jordan (1:28, 12:1); he knows that Bethsaida was the home of some of the disciples (1:44, 12:21); that Cana is in Galilee (2:1, 4:46, 21:2); and that Sychar is near Shechem (4:5). He has what one might call a street-by-street knowledge of Jerusalem. He knows the sheepgate and the pool near it (5:2); the pool of Siloam (9:7); Solomon’s Porch (10:23); the brook Kidron (18:1); the pavement which is called Gabbatha (19:13); and Golgotha, which is like a skull (19:17). It must be remembered that Jerusalem was destroyed in AD 70 and that John did not write until around AD 100; and yet from his memory he knows Jerusalem like the back of his hand.

The Circumstances in which John Wrote

We have seen that there are very real differences between the Fourth Gospel and the other three gospels; and we have seen that, whatever the reason, it was not lack of knowledge on John’s part. We must now go on to ask, what was the aim with which John wrote? If we can discover this, we will discover why he selected and treated his facts as he did.

The Fourth Gospel was written in Ephesus around AD 100. By that time, two special features had emerged in the situation of the Christian Church. First, Christianity had gone out into the Gentile world. By that time, the Christian Church was no longer predominantly Jewish; it was in fact overwhelmingly Gentile. The vast majority of its members now came not from a Jewish but a Greek background. That being so, Christianity had to be restated. It was not that the truth of Christianity had changed; but the terms and the categories in which it found expression had to be changed.

Take but one instance. A Greek might take up the Gospel according to St Matthew and immediately on opening it would be confronted with a long genealogy. Genealogies were familiar enough to Jews, but quite unintelligible to Greeks. Moving on, the reader would be confronted with a Jesus who was the Son of David, a king of whom the Greeks had never heard, and the symbol of a racial and nationalist ambition which had no significance for the Greeks. The picture presented was of Jesus as the Messiah, a term of which Greeks had never heard. Must Greeks who wished to become Christians be compelled to reorganize their entire thinking into Jewish categories? Must they learn a good deal about Jewish history and Jewish apocalyptic literature (which told about the coming of the Messiah) before they could become Christians? As the biblical scholar E. J. Goodspeed phrased it: ‘Was there no way in which [they] might be introduced directly to the values of Christian salvation without being for ever routed, we might even say, detoured, through Judaism?’ Greeks were among the world’s greatest thinkers. Was it necessary for them to abandon all their own great intellectual heritage in order to think entirely in Jewish terms and categories of thought?

John faced that problem fairly and squarely. And he found one of the greatest solutions which ever entered the human mind. Later on, in the commentary, we shall deal much more fully with John’s great solution. At the moment, we touch on it briefly. The Greeks had two great conceptions.

(a) They had the conception of the Logos. In Greek, logos means two things – it means word and it means reason. Jews were entirely familiar with the all-powerful word of God. ‘God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light’ (Genesis 1:3). Greeks were entirely familiar with the thought of reason. They looked at this world; they saw a magnificent and dependable order. Night and day came with unfailing regularity; the year kept its seasons in unvarying course; the stars and the planets moved in their unaltering path; nature had her unvarying laws. What produced this order? Greeks answered unhesitatingly: the Logos, the mind of God, is responsible for the majestic order of the world. They went on: what is it that gives human beings power to think, to reason and to know? Again they answered unhesitatingly: the Logos, the mind of God, dwelling within an individual makes that person a thinking rational being.

John seized on this. It was in this way that he thought of Jesus. He said to the Greeks: ‘All your lives you have been fascinated by this great, guiding, controlling mind of God. The mind of God has come to earth in the man Jesus. Look at him and you see what the mind and thought of God are like.’ John had discovered a new category in which Greeks might think of Jesus, a category in which Jesus was presented as nothing less than God acting in human form.

(b) They had the conception of two worlds. The Greeks always conceived of two worlds. The one was the world in which we live. It was a wonderful world in its way but a world of shadows and copies and unrealities. The other was the real world, in which the great realities, of which our earthly things are only poor, pale copies, stand for ever. To the Greeks, the unseen world was the real one; the seen world was only shadowy unreality.

Plato systematized this way of thinking in his doctrine of forms or ideas. He held that in the unseen world there was the perfect pattern of everything, and the things of this world were shadowy copies of these eternal patterns. To put it simply, Plato held that somewhere there was a perfect pattern of a table of which all earthly tables are inadequate copies; somewhere there was the perfect pattern of the good and the beautiful of which all earthly goodness and earthly beauty are imperfect copies. And the great reality, the supreme idea, the pattern of all patterns and the form of all forms was God. The great problem was how to get into this world of reality, how to get out of our shadows into the eternal truths.

John declares that that is what Jesus enables us to do. He is reality come to earth. The Greek word for real in this sense is alethinos; it is very closely connected with the word alēthēs, which means true, and alētheia, which means the truth. The ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Series Foreword
• General Introduction
• General Foreword
• Editor’s Preface
• Introduction
• Introduction to the Gospel of John
• The Word
• The Word Became Flesh
• The Eternal Word
• The Creator of all Things
• Life and Light
• Life and Light
• The Hostile Dark
• The Witness to Jesus Christ
• The Light of all People
• Unrecognized
• Unrecognized
• Children of God
• The Word Became Flesh
• The Word Became Flesh
• The Word Became Flesh
• The Inexhaustible Fullness
• The Revelation of God
• The Witness of John
• The Witness of John
• The Lamb of God
• The Coming of the Spirit
• The First Disciples
• Sharing the Glory
• The Surrender of Nathanael
• The New Exhilaration
• The New Exhilaration
• The New Exhilaration
• The Anger of Jesus
• The Anger of Jesus
• The Anger of Jesus
• The New Temple
• The Searcher of Human Hearts
• The Man who Came by Night
• The Man who Came by Night
• Born Again
• The Duty to Know and the Right to Speak
• The Uplifted Christ
• The Love of God
• Love and Judgment
• A Man without Envy
• The one from Heaven
• Breaking Down the Barriers
• The Living Water
• Facing the Truth
• The True Worship
• Sharing the Wonder
• The Most Satisfying Food
• The Sower, The Harvest and the Reapers
• The Saviour of the World
• The Unanswerable Argument
• A Courtier’s Faith
• Human Helplessness and Christ’s Power
• The Inner Meaning
• Healing and Hatred
• The Tremendous Claims
• The Father and the Son
• Life, Judgment and Honour
• Acceptance Means Life
• Death and Life
• The Only True Judgment
• Witness to Christ
• The Witness of God
• The Ultimate Condemnation
• The Loaves and Fishes
• The Meaning of A Miracle
• The Response of the Crowd
• A Very Present Help in Time of Trouble
• The Mistaken Search
• The Only True Work
• The Demand For A Sign
• The Bread of Life
• The Failure of the Jews
• His Body and His Blood
• His Body and His Blood
• The All-Important Spirit
• Attitudes to Christ
• Not Our Time But God’s
• Reactions to Jesus
• Verdicts on Jesus
• The Ultimate Authority
• A Wise Argument
• The Claim Of Christ
• Searching – in Time
• The Fountain of Living Water
• The Fountain of Living Water
• Unwilling Admiration and Timid Defence