From the phrase "John 3:16" on billboards, gift items and signs in the crowd at football games to pictures of Jesus as the Good Shepherd, some of Christianity's most recognizable passages and widespread images are found in the Gospel of John. This book also holds the roots of controversies that have echoed through history up to the present day.
"For good reason, the Fourth Gospel has been called a 'maverick' among early Christian Gospels, both canonical and noncanonical," said religion scholar Kim Haines-Eitzen. "It is the Gospel most beloved by Christians throughout history and yet its biography is a vexed one."
In "The Gospel of John: A Biography," Haines-Eitzen, the Paul and Berthe Hendrix Memorial Professor of Near Eastern studies in the College of Arts and Sciences, tells the story of the most widely cited book of the New Testament, explaining how John stands out from other Gospels about the life of Jesus and giving insight into ways Christians have interacted with it, from early believers through the Crusades and Reformation to modern-day evangelicals. She looks at the music, art, novels and films it has inspired.
"I am interested in the ways that the past and present are interwoven with one another, and the history of the Gospel of John offers exceptionally rich material for understanding this very issue," Haines-Eitzen said.
The College of Arts and Sciences spoke with Haines-Eitzen about the book.
Question: What makes the Gospel of John different from the other three Gospels?
Answer: The Gospel of John is strikingly different from the other New Testament Gospels - Matthew, Mark and Luke - which share much of the same content and frequently have word-for-word similarities. Two of these Gospels (Matthew and Luke) begin with Jesus' birth narrative, all three depict Jesus teaching in parables, performing miracles like exorcisms, and going up to Jerusalem towards the end of his life where he creates some kind of disturbance in the Temple that leads to his trial and execution. Almost none of this is in the Gospel of John.
In John, there is no birth narrative. Instead, the Gospel begins with a poetic prologue that places Jesus at the creation of the world: "In the beginning was the Word" (Jn 1:1). Jesus does not teach in parables in John but rather teaches openly about his own identity, sometimes for multiple chapters. He does not perform a single exorcism and the miracles that John does narrate, such as the raising of Lazarus, which is unique to John, are much more dramatic. John does include the "cleansing of the Temple" narrative but it is right near the beginning of the Gospel; it does not lead to his arrest and trial. In addition to the story of Lazarus, this Gospel is the only one to include familiar stories like the changing of water into wine at the village of Cana and the story of the woman who was charged with adultery.
One of the most unusual and distinctive features of this Gospel is that it uses the phrase "the Jews" to describe Jesus' opponents. Such language has a long and challenging legacy.
Q: Who has looked to the Gospel of John to develop ideas about Christian faith?
A: We know that early Christians drew heavily upon the images and language of the Gospel of John. The earliest Christian commentary written on any New Testament book was one written on the Gospel of John by Heracleon, a Christian gnostic. Augustine regarded this Gospel as "sublime" and foundational for Christian theology. Martin Luther considered John the most "true and noble" of all the Gospels.
In contemporary American evangelical circles, the Gospel of John is the most widely cited and quoted of all the Gospels. Billy Graham, for example, thought the entirety of the Christian message could be summarized in a single verse, John 3:16. And today, John 3:16 can be found etched into the undereye paint of football players, repeated in country music lyrics and inscribed on tens of thousands of items for sale on Amazon.
Q: How have controversies rooted in the language of the Gospel of John unfolded through the centuries?
A: The primary argument I make is that the history of the Gospel of John, from its origin in the late first century to the modern day, is a contentious one.
Even though it's been beloved and influential, the Gospel of John has been used to justify violence against Jews and others throughout history: It was used to legitimize the burning of synagogues from the medieval Crusade campaigns through the Reformation and on down to the present day. Nazi children's books quoted directly from the Gospel of John to teach children about the dangers of Jews. And white supremacists today frequently quote John in support of antisemitic violence.
Today, some Christians promote its exclusionary ideals while others focus on its appeals to "love one another." Images of Jesus as the "Good Shepherd" come primarily from the Gospel of John and artistic renderings of the "cleansing of the Temple" narrative that depict Jesus wielding a whip are derived from this Gospel's story of the incident. How does a first-century text come to have such a complex and multivalent history? That's the question I wanted to answer in the book.
Kate Blackwood is a writer for the College of Arts and Sciences.
