The Author in the Story
I would like to share something that fascinates me about John's Gospel, which may well cross other readers' minds when we see the regular 'authorial notes' where the narrative is suspended and the author addresses the readers directly, as he does right at the end in 21:24.
This is the disciple who is bearing witness about these things, and who has written these things, and we know that his testimony is true.
The curious thing about these notes, of course, is that the author is anonymous. While there is no reason to doubt the ancient tradition which held that the gospels are 'The Gospel according to...' in each case, we have no direct evidence as to authorship apart from the tradition. This is the reason why there is still a dispute about which John of the NT is the author of the fourth gospel.
What I want to share, however, is not concerned with that dispute. It's easy enough to search 'authorship of the Fourth Gospel' and find plenty of material on that.
My point here, is the value of thinking about the literary device of author anonymity (which I understand was not uncommon in ancient writing similar to that of the gospels). When I heard the talk linked below, I found it really fascinating. It turns out that understanding and remembering that the Bible is a human product as well as God's word, 'God-breathed', can be very helpful.
So if any of the above interests you, I'm sure you'll find this talk from Netherlands (and Cambridge) Bible scholar Dirk Jongkind interesting and well worth 53 minutes listening. Here it is:
https://foclonline.org/talk/johns-gospel-author-who-present-story
NB. For anyone nerdy enough (like me) to want to see an outline of the talk and keep it for reference, the page linked above has a link to a PDF for download under the heading 'Resources'.
This is the disciple who is bearing witness about these things, and who has written these things, and we know that his testimony is true.
The curious thing about these notes, of course, is that the author is anonymous. While there is no reason to doubt the ancient tradition which held that the gospels are 'The Gospel according to...' in each case, we have no direct evidence as to authorship apart from the tradition. This is the reason why there is still a dispute about which John of the NT is the author of the fourth gospel.
What I want to share, however, is not concerned with that dispute. It's easy enough to search 'authorship of the Fourth Gospel' and find plenty of material on that.
My point here, is the value of thinking about the literary device of author anonymity (which I understand was not uncommon in ancient writing similar to that of the gospels). When I heard the talk linked below, I found it really fascinating. It turns out that understanding and remembering that the Bible is a human product as well as God's word, 'God-breathed', can be very helpful.
So if any of the above interests you, I'm sure you'll find this talk from Netherlands (and Cambridge) Bible scholar Dirk Jongkind interesting and well worth 53 minutes listening. Here it is:
https://foclonline.org/talk/johns-gospel-author-who-present-story
NB. For anyone nerdy enough (like me) to want to see an outline of the talk and keep it for reference, the page linked above has a link to a PDF for download under the heading 'Resources'.
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