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[ 46 ] the rise and fall of soul and self
And so on.
While some of the ideas in these passages from John parallel those in the ear-
lier three Gospels, it is obvious that in John the ideas are developed more
abstractly. A dramatic symptom of this tendency toward abstraction is that in
John, Jesus is identified with the Logos. This identification may show the influ-
ence of Philo on John. Some of the early church fathers subsequently developed
the idea that Jesus is the Logos. They may have done this in order to express
Christian faith in terms that would be intelligible to the Hellenistic world or to
impress their hearers with the idea that Christianity, while heir to what was best
in pagan philosophy, embodied a higher truth. Be this as it may, there are other
dramatic differences in content between the first three Gospels (the Synoptics)
and John.
Among these differences are that in the Synoptics, Jesus talks a great deal
about the kingdom of God and hardly at all about himself. In John, Jesus talks a
great deal about himself and hardly at all about the kingdom of God. For
instance, Jesus uses the Greek word for “kingdom” (basilia) 18 times in Mark, 47
times in Matthew, 37 times in Luke, and 5 times in John; he uses the Greek word
for “I” 9 times in Mark, 17 times in Matthew, 10 times in Luke, and 118 times in
John. Such differences are not just statistical. When,
in the Synoptics, Jesus uses
the word “I,” almost all of his self-references are of a conventional kind. In John,
by contrast, Jesus regularly makes staggering statements about himself, such as
“I am the bread of life” (6:35), “I am the light of the world” (8:12), “I am the way,
and the truth and the life” (14:6), and “Before Abraham was, I am” (8:58).
6
There are possible ways to explain such differences between John and the
Synoptics that would preserve for John an early date of origin. Most scholars agree
that all such explanations are far-fetched. They conclude that John, who claimed to
have been an eye-witness to the events he describes, wrote much later than Matthew
and Luke, and elaborated for theological reasons what he claimed Jesus actually said.
In other words, in their view, John used Jesus as a spokesperson for his own
interpretation of who Jesus was.
For the purpose of recovering the actual words and deeds of the historical
Jesus, such issues are crucial. Before historians can even begin to reconstruct
Jesus’ life, they must separate the authentic wheat from the interpretational
chaff. However, for present purposes, it is more important what various New
Testament authors thought Jesus said and did than it is what Jesus actually said
and did. For it is what New Testament authors attributed to Jesus, and their
reflections on what they attributed to him, that have been historically influential.
The New Testament authors that matter most in this respect are Paul and John,
the earliest and perhaps the latest sources in the New Testament.
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