Gospel of John, general question of intended audience

[hlawson38]

I've been wondering about the intended audience of the Gospel of John. It seems to me that the earliest readers of it would not have understood it, unless they had already accepted the basic teachings of Christianity, or at least knew what those teachings claimed. I'm thinking in particular about the conversations between Jesus and traditional religious leaders.

I decided to read in the NT because I understood that the sentences were short, and on a grammatical level fairly easy. Besides that, the NT is fairly familiar to me, and I could easily find English translations. Although I know that differences exist between the Greek of John and Attic Greek, I know that only in principle and not in detail, because I don't know enough Greek to tell the difference. I'm getting some good practice, I think. I read a few lines each day, as I work my way through Mastronarde's Attic Greek textbook. I'm about two-thirds of the way through M.

[Barry Hofstetter]

The earliest dating for the GoJ is usually sometime in the 90's of the first century, others date it as late as the mid 2nd century CE. Either way, plenty of time for Christian tradition to develop, and the author can write assuming that tradition, and do his own thing with it.

[hlawson38]

The earliest dating for the GoJ is usually sometime in the 90's of the first century, others date it as late as the mid 2nd century CE. Either way, plenty of time for Christian tradition to develop, and the author can write assuming that tradition, and do his own thing with it.

Many thanks Barry.

[Paul Derouda]

I've have almost completed reading Bart Ehrman's The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings (see this thread viewtopic.php?f=23&t=69881&p=209204#p2092049). I think I'll write a review of sorts later on, but I thought I'd mention it to you. I have been asking questions of the same sort as you myself and I must say that I have found many, many answers in this book, which I sincerely recommend. I don't have the competence to judge the substance matter myself, but I don't really have any reason to doubt that it's serious in its scholarship. My main reservation is that the book, according to the preface, is written primarily for nineteen or twenty year old college students, and for that reason it's sort of assumes that the reader is very naive, explaining everything in very plain English and at length. But if you can stand that, all important questions - the historical context of different books of the NT, how they relate to, how they differ from, and how they contradict each other, the forms of Christianity that didn't survive ("heresies"), etc., all is addressed with eye-opening clarity.

[Andriko]

It's been a few months since I was looking into related things, by accident never the less, so what I say should be take with a grain of salt.

However - The Gospel of John is interesting in that it leans ever so slightly Gnostic, and is supposedly written by the same John of the Apolcalypse (and other 'Johanine' texts). The content in all of them tends towards mysticism (there is a better word I can't think of), and I think I have read somewhere that it may have been included among the gospels as a way of trying to bring over some more Gnosticly minded Christians into the mainstream church.

It's also worth remembering that in the early days Christianity was (one could say) a Jewish heresy, and the ideas of 'logos' and so on that John mentions (and I have seen it suggested that even the dialogue with Nicodemus) may have their routes in Hellenistic thought (including Jewish Hellenism) - these ideas would perhaps have been fairly widespread amongst the readership.

Something else to remember is that what we would think of as 'basic teaching of Christianity' didn't really exist at that time, and I think that the Gospel of John would fall into the category of texts that would have been read symbolically as opposed to literally).

I will shut up now, as I fear I am talking above my pay grade.

[BrianB]

IHowever - The Gospel of John is interesting in that it leans ever so slightly Gnostic, and is supposedly written by the same John of the Apolcalypse (and other 'Johanine' texts).

I have the impression that the Catholic Church teaches that the same John is the author of both Revelation and the Fourth Gospel, while the Church of England used to teach (and possibly still does) that "St. John the Evangelist" and "St. John the Divine" are two different people. In both cases, it seems strange that they should make such an issue of it, when they could simply say it's not known for certain.