Dating of John 📜
The dating of John is highly based off the difference of Christology, Christology is the development of the Christian doctrine of how he became presumed as God, as we can see in gJohn, gJohn thinks of Jesus very highly in verses such as John 8:58, as the “Before Abraham, I am” sequence.
However, John’s dating is not solely based on the book’s high Christology.
The book uses a passion story that either comes from Mark or comes from a common source or comes from a secondary use of Mark. As a result of their simplified integration of interpretations and applications of shorter maxims and sayings, the lengthy discourses demonstrate a more advanced stage of literary development than the synoptic gospels (Helmut Koester, Ancient Christian Gospels, pp. 256-257), and in fact even converting shorter speeches into longer ones. Whether in the form of an epilogue or an appendix, the concluding chapter demonstrates familiarity with Peter’s death and the Beloved Disciple’s longevity. In addition, there is the gospel’s external connection to the Johannine correspondence and the circumstance it discusses.

It is not just a question of whether John’s Christology is high or low, but also how that Christology is expressed. Except for the disputed case of Romans 9:5 (which has uncertain punctuation), the three-fold application of to Jesus in John (1:1, 1:18, 20:28) is similar to the possible use of in later parts of the NT (Acts 20:28, 1 Timothy 3:16, Titus 2:13, Hebrews 1:8, 2 Peter 1:1), particularly in Ignatius of Antioch (AD 107-117), Justin Martyr, and probably Polycarp of Smyrna (Philippians 12:2).
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/scottish-journal-of-theology/article/abs/ancient-christian-gospels-their-history-and-development-by-helmut-koester-london-scm-1990-pp-xxxii-448-1950/F81303F76C0B5448B5186AC7B4B1C1A2

Chronological dating is not very well supported by Christology; The application of θεός in John 1:1, 1:18, and 20:28 is more appropriate for the 90-120 period (which includes the Pastorals, Acts, 2 Peter, Ignatius, and Polycarp), but such a date is not required. It functions better as evidence to back up more stringent criteria. In his book “The Temple of Jesus’ Body (2002) by Alan Kerr” makes a convincing case for a date between 85 and 90, pointing out the following: 1) Jesus declares that the time will come when the Father will no longer be worshiped in Jerusalem and presents his body as a replacement for the Temple (2:21, 4:21); 2) the prediction in 11:47-52 is that the Romans will come and destroy the Temple if people believe in Jesus; and 3) “ἀποσυνάγωγος” in 9:22, 12:42, and 16:2 is a neologism reflecting the situation following the adoption of the Birkat ha-Minim, and 9:22 To me, a date around 100 seems pretty appealing. Mark Goodacre considers the Johannine thunderbolt, which he cites in Matthew 11.27 and Luke 10.2, to be fundamental to Johannine theology and of Matthean construction. John would have to be from a time prior to Matthew’s writing if he is correct (which includes rejecting Q). Benedict Viviano and James Barker discuss the possibility that Matthew had an impact on John.

Summary wise though:
In 21:24, the author asserts that the gospel he has written is another person’s testimony. In addition, we can see that the gospel itself is a compilation of multiple sources, such as when Jesus transforms water into wine in chapter 2, which the text refers to as his “first sign,” and when he heals the son of a Capernaum official in chapter 4, which the text refers to as his “second sign.” This becomes problematic when we consider that chapter three had just informed us that people were beginning to believe in Jesus as a result of his numerous signs. We are told that Jesus leaves for Judea after his conversation with Nicodemus in chapters 2 and 3, which takes place in Jerusalem, when he is already in Judea. The conversations in chapters 14 and 16 about his departure and the presence of the Spirit among the apostles are similar. 13:36: Peter asks Jesus where he is going; 14:5: Thomas asks the same thing; 16:5: Jesus gets angry because no one has asked him where he is going. In 14:31, Jesus tells the disciples to get up so they can all leave; however, they don’t leave until chapter 18. Scholars contend that these contradictions result from a source that included chapters 13, 14, and 18 and another that included chapters 15, 16, and 17.
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The three-volume commentary “The Gospel and Letters of John” by Urban C. von Wahlde offers an intriguing take on the gospel of John. The layers are given special consideration. Von Wahlde contends that the gospel has undergone multiple revisions in response to a variety of contemporary issues within the Johannine community and outside of it. In a previous comment, Flemz discusses some of the evidence for revisions and multiple sources. I’ll just say something about John 14 because I looked it up for other reasons. First of all, John now uses the term “commandments,” as opposed to “commandment” in the past. The (other) Paraclete is mentioned for the first time, but 1 John 2:1 says that Jesus is a Paraclete (though you have to look at the Greek because many translations just say “advocate” or “comforter” to see this). The “Paraclete” passages in John (and 1 John) differ significantly from the “Holy Spirit” (pnuma) passages. The “spirit,” in particular, is not as fundamentally connected to Jesus as it could be (except as a given after his glorification). Only in the Paraclete passages does this relationship exist. In all three of his books, Von Wahlde argues that John was revised after John 1. Again, this would place the received version of John much too late to be by John, as others have pointed out.

It is believed that the fourth Gospel’s final chapter was added later and not included in the original work. This is from the blog of Bart Ehrman, and it basically states the majority critical view:
Far from showing that John the son of Zebedee wrote this Gospel, this verse demonstrates clearly that he did not write it. Readers tend to read the verse too quickly without paying close attention to what it is actually saying. Read it again. Note the pronouns. The disciple whom Jesus loved is said to have “written these things,” and “we” know his testimony is true. The author of the verse clearly differentiates himself (one of the “we”) from the person who wrote down a record of the things Jesus had said and done (“This…disciple…who has written”). In other words, the author is NOT that disciple. He is someone who has read the writings of that disciple.

The author then clearly distinguishes himself from the Beloved Disciple. He is not claiming to be that disciple. He is claiming that he has read what that disciple wrote. Whether that disciple actually did write anything is up for grabs: but that’s what the author is claiming.
https://ehrmanblog.org/did-john-write-the-fourth-gospel/

The author is mentioned in third person throughout the chapter to support his claim. That chapter’s authors are not claiming to be him; rather, they are a community expressing their support for it. This is not the only reason why scholars believe this chapter was added later. It has a different stylometric style and adds a second “ending” to a story that seems to have reached its conclusion at the end of chapter 20. In addition, it shows the disciples still fishing in Galilee after Jesus sent them on their evangelism mission in 20:21–23.

The author never asserts that he or she was the “beloved disciple” or a witness in the original work. Furthermore, the BD is never mentioned in the Gospel. The name John is never mentioned in the fourth gospel. It makes a passing reference to the “sons of Zebedee,” but it does not name them or suggest that they are the BD or the author of the book.
Since John’s Gospel twice states that Jesus loved Lazarus, and John depicts the BD at the cross while the Synoptics state that all twelve had fled, many scholars believe the BD to be Lazarus. Ben Witherington, for example, is one conservative Christian scholar who supports this identification, although they frequently go too far in attempting to argue that this indicates that Lazarus wrote the Fourth Gospel. There is a strong argument to be made that the author only created Lazarus as an allegorical character to respond to Luke’s parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man.
http://benwitherington.blogspot.com/2007/01/was-lazarus-beloved-disciple.html
We do not know who the author of John 21:24 was referring to, but their understanding of the BD was not necessarily the same as what the author of the original Gospel intended.

Moreover, just because a book has a third party confirming attribution does not necessarily imply that claim is credible. According to the authors of the Gospel of Thomas, Thomas was Jesus’ twin brother, and they derived the text from him.

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Where was the Gospel of John written? 📜
Numerous academics, including Raymond Brown, Paul N. Anderson, and Craig A. Evans, have proposed that the Gospel of John’s author had extensive knowledge of Jerusalem’s geography and geography. The precise and precise details about Jerusalem that are found in the Gospel of John, such as the location of various landmarks and the layout of the city, are the foundation for this concept, which is frequently referred to as the “Johannine topography” hypothesis. In addition to the accurate description of the temple, the following are some examples:
John 5:1–9, in which Jesus cures a man at Jerusalem’s Pool of Bethesda. The pool is said to have “five porticos,” which is accurate and common knowledge from history.

John 7:53–8:11, where Jesus teaches during the Feast of Tabernacles in the Temple. The passage is historically accurate in describing the layout of the temple area and the various courtyards where people would have gathered.

Where Jesus is detained at Gethsemane in John 18:15–18, Gethsemane is mentioned “across the Kidron valley” and “on the other side of the city” in the passage, which is historically correct.
It is essential to keep in mind that the evidence that the author was familiar with Jerusalem does not necessarily imply that the author was from Jerusalem or even that they had a residence there. The author might have had access to oral or written stories about Jerusalem that were passed down to him.

Early Christian writings are the source of the belief that the Gospel of John was written in Syria. For instance, the traditional author of the Gospel of John, the apostle John, “departed to Ephesus and, having served the Lord continuously in Asia, he fell asleep at a great old age in the city of Ephesus,” according to the early Christian writer Eusebius of Caesarea (c. 260/265–c. 339/340). “John, the disciple of the Lord, who also leaned upon His breast, did himself publish a Gospel during his residence at Ephesus in Asia,” Eusebius also writes. “John, one of the apostles of Christ, wrote a spiritual Gospel in Asia,” wrote the early Christian apologist Justin Martyr (c. 100–165 AD).
My own opinion is that there appears to be a loose theological relationship between gJohn, gThomas, and gPhilip, if you want to go into more speculative territory. These non-canonical works were previously grouped together under the heading “gnostic texts.” Nonetheless, for early Christian texts, they all share a profound and unusually similar protology. Elaine Pagels expounded widely on gThomas and protology as well as it’s relationship with gJohn. Philip employs the singular Johannine term “Paraclete” (παράκλητος). In addition, we discover that Thomas and Philip largely, if not completely, lack normative morality, just as Wayne Meeks argued that John has “no ethics.” gPhilip professes strong knowledge of Hebrew and Syriac and feels compelled to correct some translational-theological errors in other Christian frameworks, such as incorrectly labeling the Holy Spirit as male. We might be able to draw a religious-evolutionary line between gJohn, gThomas, and gPhilip and locate them in the same region, which might highlight the Syrian origin of the John hypothesis or tradition. Alternately, given that people did travel and move around, as Paul’s writings about himself and other missionaries/apostles abundantly demonstrate, it could have been written anywhere.
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What can the Gospel of John tell us about the historical Jesus? 📜
So, Paul N Anderson talks about this:
https://www.bloomsbury.com/au/jesus-research-9780567681355/
Paul N Anderson’s essay, “Why the Gospel of John is Fundamental to Jesus Research”, in The Gospel of John in Historical Inquiry, 2019 (from the Third Princeton-Prague Symposium on Jesus Research, Princeton 2016) outlines and discusses, among other things, –
‘Jesus in Johannine Perspective: A Fourth Quest for Jesus’
“… If the recent interest in the Fourth Gospel as a resource for Jesus research might be called a Fourth Quest within Jesus studies, perhaps a return to John’s originative history and character might be called “the Renewed Quest” in Johannine studies. And, the nexus of these two fields can be seen in the integration of Johannine and Jesus scholarship emerging since the beginning of the third millennium.” (p. 7)
Impossibilities of Harmonization
“.. including John in the historical quest of Jesus are fraught with problems and headaches. Indeed, the three dozen Johannine riddles outlined in fuller detail elsewhere show why the best scholars in the world still find themselves in contention over how to approach John’s composition, development and purposes, let alone how to integrate one’s understanding of the Johannine Jesus with his presentations in the Synoptics ..” (pp. 14-15)
The John, Jesus, and History Project – http://johannine.org/JJH.html – here as well.
Abstract
. . . an ironic fact of biblical scholarship over the last two centuries is that the one gospel claiming first-hand knowledge of the life of Jesus has been pervasively disparaged as ahistorical—off limits in the historical quest of Jesus. This, of course, is because the Gospel of John is different from the Synoptics and also theological in its thrust.
Additionally here’s another source about John that holds to the majority consensus (90-110 CE) that discusses John’s relationship to the other gospels and dating staring on page 18, and then again starting on about 29:
https://books.google.com/books?id=eYmxAwAAQBAJ&pg=PR3&source=gbs_selected_pages&cad=2#v=onepage&q&f=true

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Why is the Gospel of John so various from the Synoptic Gospels? 📜
Raymond E. Brown in his Community of the Beloved Disciple talks about this. The community would have also hailed “the beloved disciple” as its founder. However, the gospel was not written by the disciple himself; rather, in its current form, it was written by a member of the community after the disciple died. Although some scholars, like Marie-Emile Boismard, propose an original version of the gospel that goes back further, sometimes to around 50 CE (L’Evangile de Jean), the Gospel of John in its current form would typically be dated around 90-100 CE. However, since chapter 21 is typically rather clearly seen as added on after the original gospel’s composition, the typical dating of the gospel would be around 90-100 CE.
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More 📜
Robert Kysar writes the following on the authorship of the Gospel of John (The Anchor Bible Dictionary, v. 3, pp. 919-920):
The supposition that the author was one and the same with the beloved disciple is often advanced as a means of insuring that the evangelist did witness Jesus’ ministry. Two other passages are advanced as evidence of the same – 19:35 and 21:24. But both falter under close scrutiny. 19:35 does not claim that the author was the one who witnessed the scene but only that the scene is related on the sound basis of eyewitness. 21:24 is part of the appendix of the gospel and should not be assumed to have come from the same hand as that responsible for the body of the gospel. Neither of these passages, therefore, persuades many Johannine scholars that the author claims eyewitness status.
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There is a possibility that John, Zebedee’s son, had already passed away long before the Gospel of John was written. Even though the “beloved disciple” need not be identified with John, the son of Zebedee, this should be noted for its own sake. “[John] was worth of martyrdom,” writes George Hartolos in his Chronicle from the ninth century, which can be found in the codex Coislinianus. The following quote from Papias is made by Hamartolos: “He [John] was killed by the Jews.” The author quotes Papias in the de Boor fragment of an epitome from the fifth century Chronicle of Philip of Side: In the second book, Papias claims that Jews killed James his brother and John the divine. According to Morton Enslin (Christian Beginnings, pages 369-370): ” That information provided by Papias is merely an inference based on Mark 10:35–40 or its parallel, Matt. 20:20–23, is an option. Nevertheless, this Marcan passage provides solid foundation. The high probability that by the time these words were written, around, no reasonable interpretation of them could deny that 70 CE] Both brothers had “drank the cup” Jesus had drunk and “baptized with the baptism” he had received.” At least this evidence discredits the patristic tradition regarding the authorship of the Gospel of John because the beloved disciple is consistently identified with John.
The author of the Gospel of John would probably have been aware that Jesus and his fellow disciples were permitted to enter the synagogues if they were eyewitnesses. However, it is stated at several points that those who recognized Jesus as the Christ were kicked out of the synagogue during Jesus’ time there. As the result of an eyewitness, this anachronism cannot be conceived.

According to Kysar, the majority of scholars of today consider the expulsion of the community from the synagogue to be the historical setting for the Gospel of John (op. cit., p. 918). The word “aposynagogos” appears in the gospel three times (9:22, 12:42, and 16:2). “The Johannine community stood in opposition to the synagogue from which it had been expelled,” according to the high claims made for Jesus and the response to them (5:18), the polemic against “the Jews” (9:18, 10:31, 18:12, 19:12), and the assertion of a superiority of Christian revelation to the Hebrew (1:18, 6:49-50, 8:58). p. 918). Kysar states the following regarding the Gospel of John’s date: The gospel was written shortly after the Council of Jamnia, which is believed to have promulgated such an action, according to those who link the expulsion to a formal effort by Judaism to purge itself of Christian believers. As a result, these academics would place John’s age at 90. It is up to those who prefer to think of the expulsion more as an informal action taken by a local synagogue to suggest a date earlier. p. 919)
Kysar also observes on the dating of the Gospel of John:
“The earliest date for the gospel hinges upon the question of whether or not it presupposes the destruction of the Temple in 70 C.E. Most agree that it does, although there have been persistent attempts to argue otherwise. The reasons for positing a post-70 date include the view of the Temple implicit in 2:13-22. Most would argue that the passage attempts to present Christ as the replacement of the Temple that has been destroyed.” (p. 918)
Note also the irony of 11:48:
“If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and then the Romans will come and take away both our place [i.e. temple] and our nation.” Finally, there is no mention of the Sadducees, which reflects post-70 Judaism. The retort that there is also no mention of scribes misses the mark, as the Pharisees represented the scribal tradition, and the Pharisees are mentioned.
If it were certain that the Gospel of John is dependent on Mark, the terminus a quo could also be established by dependence on Mark. Contemporary scholarship debates the issue, but Kysar asserts that the theory of Johannine independence is supported by a “slim majority” of contemporary critics. John Among the Gospels by D. Moody Smith is recommended for this topic.
The Gospel of John’s terminus ad quem is established by external evidence. John was used by Irenaeus of Lyons in the year 180, and Tatian included the Gospel of John in his harmony in the year 170. The Muratorian Canon (circa 170-200) also includes a reference to the Gospel of John. The Gospel of John may have been utilized by Justin Martyr (c. 150-160) and the Epistula Apostolorum (c. 140-150). However, the Gnostic community is where John is used the earliest. The Naassene Fragment, which Hippolytus Ref. cited, is one of these. 5.7.2-9 (circa 120-140), the Valentinian texts mentioned in Clement of Alexandria’s Excerpta ex Theodotou (circa 140-160), a quote from Irenaeus’ Adv. Haer. 1.8.5-6 (c. 140-160), as well as Heracleon’s commentary on John (c. 150-180, which Origen cites in his own commentary). The oldest New Testament fragment, p52—also known as the John Rylands fragment—testifies to the canonical John and is paleographically dated between 120 and 130 CE.
Kysar writes:
“In the place where the synoptics narrate the origin of the eucharist stands the account of the foot washing (13:1-10). The last meal Jesus celebrates with his disciples before his passion is not a Passover meal at all. Thus one of the basic features of the institution scenes in the synoptics is missing. Furthermore, there is no account of the baptism of Jesus, and there is confusion about whether or not Jesus practiced baptism (compare 3:22 and 4:2). Water baptism is treated critically and assigned strictly to the Baptizer in contrast with Spirit baptism (1:26, 31, 33). One is left with the impression that the sacraments of baptism and eucharist did not figure in the theology of the fourth evangelist.” (p. 929)
Kysar states:
“The passages which seem to address the sacraments are sometimes thought to be redactional. Some maintain that ‘water and’ in 3:5 and the discourse in 6:51-59 are insertions of a later hand by one interested in strengthening the explicit sacramental teachings of the gospel. It has been recently argued that portions of chaps. 13-17 come froma redactor at the time of the writing of the Johannine epistles some ten years or more after the completion of the gospel.” (p. 922)
Norman Perrin is of the opinion that the redactor who added the passages about the sacraments to the Gospel of John also wrote the first epistle of John, which places an emphasis on the sacraments. Helms provides additional evidence that disagreements over John’s interpretation existed prior to the writing of the epistles 1 and 2. Take into consideration 1 John 2:18–19 and 2 John 7. (Who Wrote the Gospels?, Helms writes) p. 163):
Some members of the Johannine community departed, became a rival sect, over the question of the ‘flesh’ of Jesus Christ, an event that leads the author of I John to the certainty that ‘this is the last hour.’ We do not know for sure who these secessionists were, but as Raymond Brown notes, they were ‘not detectably outsiders to the Johannine community but the offspring of Johannine thought itself, justifying their position by the Johannine Gospel and its implications’ (1979, 107). This seems likely, until we reflect on the oddity of people who purportedly deny that ‘Jesus Christ came in the flesh’ citing a gospel that declares ‘the Word became flesh,’ and ‘whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood possesses eternal life.’ Brown’s argument founders on his insistence that ‘John exactly as we have it’ (108, his italics) was the text used by those who left the Johannine community. Brown refuses to ‘exclude certain passages from the Fourth Gospel on the grounds that they were probably not in the tradition known to the secessionists but were added by the redactor (either later or as anti-secessionist revision)’ (1979, 109). He admits that many accept that John 1:14 – ‘The Word became flesh’ – was ‘added by the redactor as an attack on the opponents of I John’ (1979, 109) but continues to write as if there were no revision of the Fourth Gospel.
“We need to note that part of the purpose of Irenaeus was to attack the teachings of Cerinthus, a gnostic Christian teacher who lived in Ephesus at the end of the first century,” Helms writes (op. cit.). cit., p. 162). “Educated in the wisdom of the Egyptians, Cerinthus was taught that the world was not made by a primary God, but by a certain Power far from him…Moreover, after Jesus’ baptism, Christ descended upon him in the form of a dove from the Supreme Ruler, and that at that time he proclaimed the unknown Father and performed miracles,” according to the Egyptians. However, “Christ remained impassible, inasmuch as he was a spiritual being” (1.26.1) after Christ separated from Jesus and Jesus suffered and rose again. According to Irenaeus, John’s mission at Ephesus was as follows:
by the proclamation of the Gospel, to remove that error which by Cerinthus had been disseminated among men, and a long time previously by those termed Nicolaitans, who are an offset of that ‘knowledge’ [gnosis] falsely so called, that he might confound them, and persuade them that there is but one God, who made all things by His Word; and not, as they allege, that the Creator was one, but the Father and the Lord another; and that the Son of the Creator was, forsooth, one, but the Christ from above another (3.11.1)
Helms argues:
“So the gospel attributed, late in the second century, to John at Ephesus was viewed as an anti-gnostic, anti-Cerinthean work. But, very strangely, Epiphanius, in his book against the heretics, argues against those who actually believed that it was Cerinthus himself who wrote the Gospel of John! (Adv. Haer. 51.3.6). How could it be that the Fourth Gospel was at one time in its history regarded as the product of an Egyptian-trained gnostic, and at another time in its history regarded as composed for the very purpose of attacking this same gnostic? I think the answer is plausible that in an early, now-lost version, the Fourth Gospel could well have been read in a Cerinthean, gnostic fashion, but that at Ephesus a revision of it was produced (we now call it the Gospel of John) that put this gospel back into the Christian mainstream.”
John’s gospel was more likely produced after 100AD, with dates going as far as 160-170AD (F.C. Baur and B. Bauer). Even in this, you have a variety of positions. See, for example, Holtzmann and Julicher’s 100-125 date, Keim and Schmiedel’s 130-140 date, or Volkmar and Schwartz’s 140-155 date. The arguments for a later dating are as follows in the 19th century, this was a popular view.
Some arguments:
The seeming lack of awareness of John’s gospel in early writings like 1 Clement, the Epistle of Barnabas, the Didache, Ignatius, Shepherd of Hermas, Odes of Solomon, etc. There isn’t a clear absence, but many scholars side on non-existence.

The first citation of John’s gospel doesn’t come until 150-180ish, from Theophilus of Antioch (180ish), Tatian (160ish), and Valentinus (150ish). Note that this relates to #6 above- scholars seem to agree that the content of John’s gospel reflects some sense of antiquity, but disagree on whether this means the text was written earlier or was written later while upholding the tradition of an earlier time period.
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Robert Kysar writes the following on the authorship of the Gospel of John (The Anchor Bible Dictionary, v. 3, pp. 919-920):
The supposition that the author was one and the same with the beloved disciple is often advanced as a means of insuring that the evangelist did witness Jesus’ ministry. Two other passages are advanced as evidence of the same – 19:35 and 21:24. But both falter under close scrutiny. 19:35 does not claim that the author was the one who witnessed the scene but only that the scene is related on the sound basis of eyewitness. 21:24 is part of the appendix of the gospel and should not be assumed to have come from the same hand as that responsible for the body of the gospel. Neither of these passages, therefore, persuades many Johannine scholars that the author claims eyewitness status.
There is a case to be made that John, the son of Zebedee, had already died long before the Gospel of John came to be written. It is worth noting for its own sake, even though the “beloved disciple” need not be identified with John, the son of Zebedee. In his ninth century Chronicle in the codex Coislinianus, George Hartolos says, “[John] was worth of martyrdom.” Hamartolos proceeds to quote Papias to the effect that, “he [John] was killed by the Jews.” In the de Boor fragment of an epitome of the fifth century Chronicle of Philip of Side, the author quotes Papias: Papias in the second book says that John the divine and James his brother were killed by Jews. Morton Enslin observes (Christian Beginnings, pp. 369-370): “That Papias’ source of information is simply an inference from Mark 10:35-40 or its parallel, Matt. 20:20-23, is possible. None the less, this Markan passage itself affords solid ground. No reasonable interpretation of these words can deny the high probability that by the time these words were written [ca. 70 CE] both brothers had ‘drunk the cup’ that Jesus had drunk and had been ‘baptized with the baptism’ with which he had been baptized.” Since the patristic tradition is unanimous in identifying the beloved disciple with John, at least this evidence discredits the patristic tradition concerning the authorship of the Gospel of John.

If the author of the Gospel of John were an eyewitness, presumably the author would have known that Jesus and his compatriots were permitted to enter the synagogues. But at one several points it is stated that those who acknowledged Jesus as the Christ during the life of Jesus were put out of the synagogue. This anachronism is inconceivable as the product of an eyewitness.
If the author of the Gospel of John were an eyewitness, presumably the author would have known that Jesus and his compatriots were permitted to enter the synagogues. But at one several points it is stated that those who acknowledged Jesus as the Christ during the life of Jesus were put out of the synagogue. This anachronism is inconceivable as the product of an eyewitness.

Kysar states that most scholars today see the historical setting of the Gospel of John in the expulsion of the community from the synagogue (op. cit., p. 918). The word aposynagogos is found three times in the gospel (9:22, 12:42, 16:2). The high claims made for Jesus and the response to them (5:18), the polemic against “the Jews” (9:18, 10:31, 18:12, 19:12), and the assertion of a superiority of Christian revelation to the Hebrew (1:18, 6:49-50, 8:58) show that “the Johannine community stood in opposition to the synagogue from which it had been expelled.” (p. 918)
Kysar states concerning the dating of the Gospel of John: “Those who relate the expulsion to a formal effort on the part of Judaism to purge itself of Christian believers link the composition of the gospel with a date soon after the Council of Jamnia, which is supposed to have promulgated such an action. Hence, these scholars would date John after 90. Those inclined to see the expulsion more in terms of an informal action on the part of a local synagogue are free to propose an earlier date.” (p. 919)

Kysar also observes on the dating of the Gospel of John: “The earliest date for the gospel hinges upon the question of whether or not it presupposes the destruction of the Temple in 70 C.E. Most agree that it does, although there have been persistent attempts to argue otherwise. The reasons for positing a post-70 date include the view of the Temple implicit in 2:13-22. Most would argue that the passage attempts to present Christ as the replacement of the Temple that has been destroyed.” (p. 918) Note also the irony of 11:48: “If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and then the Romans will come and take away both our place [i.e. temple] and our nation.” Finally, there is no mention of the Sadducees, which reflects post-70 Judaism. The retort that there is also no mention of scribes misses the mark, as the Pharisees represented the scribal tradition, and the Pharisees are mentioned.
The terminus a quo might also be set by dependence upon the Gospel of Mark, if it were certain that the Gospel of John is dependent upon Mark. The matter is debated in contemporary scholarship, but Kysar says that the theory of Johannine independence commands a “slim majority” of contemporary critics. For a discussion of this issue, D. Moody Smith’s John Among the Gospels is recommended. https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/157003446X/peterkirby

The external evidence fixes the terminus ad quem for the Gospel of John. Irenaeus of Lyons made use of John (c. 180), and Tatian included the Gospel of John in his harmony (c. 170). The Gospel of John is also mentioned in the Muratorian Canon (c. 170-200). Justin Martyr (c. 150-160) and the Epistula Apostolorum (c. 140-150) may have made use of the Gospel of John. But the earliest known usage of John is among Gnostic circles. These include the Naassene Fragment quoted by Hippolytus Ref. 5.7.2-9 (c. 120-140), the Valentinian texts cited in Clement of Alexandria’s Excerpta ex Theodotou (c. 140-160), a Valentinian Exposition to the Prologue of the Gospel of John quoted in Irenaeus’ Adv. Haer. 1.8.5-6 (c. 140-160), and the commentary of Heracleon on John (c. 150-180, quoted in Origen’s own commentary). The oldest fragment of the New Testament, known as p52 or the John Rylands fragment, attests to canonical John and is dated paleographically c. 120-130 CE.

Kysar writes:
“In the place where the synoptics narrate the origin of the eucharist stands the account of the foot washing (13:1-10). The last meal Jesus celebrates with his disciples before his passion is not a Passover meal at all. Thus one of the basic features of the institution scenes in the synoptics is missing. Furthermore, there is no account of the baptism of Jesus, and there is confusion about whether or not Jesus practiced baptism (compare 3:22 and 4:2). Water baptism is treated critically and assigned strictly to the Baptizer in contrast with Spirit baptism (1:26, 31, 33). One is left with the impression that the sacraments of baptism and eucharist did not figure in the theology of the fourth evangelist.” (p. 929)

Kysar states: “The passages which seem to address the sacraments are sometimes thought to be redactional. Some maintain that ‘water and’ in 3:5 and the discourse in 6:51-59 are insertions of a later hand by one interested in strengthening the explicit sacramental teachings of the gospel. It has been recently argued that portions of chaps. 13-17 come froma redactor at the time of the writing of the Johannine epistles some ten years or more after the completion of the gospel.” (p. 922)

Norman Perrin believes that the redactor who added the sacramental passages to the Gospel of John also authored the first epistle of John, in which the sacraments are emphasized.

Helms adduces evidence that there were divisions over the interpretation of John at an early period, as early as the writing of the epistles 1 John and 2 John. Consider the passages 1 John 2:18-19 and 2 John 7. Helms writes (Who Wrote the Gospels?, p. 163):
Some members of the Johannine community departed, became a rival sect, over the question of the ‘flesh’ of Jesus Christ, an event that leads the author of I John to the certainty that ‘this is the last hour.’ We do not know for sure who these secessionists were, but as Raymond Brown notes, they were ‘not detectably outsiders to the Johannine community but the offspring of Johannine thought itself, justifying their position by the Johannine Gospel and its implications’ (1979, 107). This seems likely, until we reflect on the oddity of people who purportedly deny that ‘Jesus Christ came in the flesh’ citing a gospel that declares ‘the Word became flesh,’ and ‘whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood possesses eternal life.’ Brown’s argument founders on his insistence that ‘John exactly as we have it’ (108, his italics) was the text used by those who left the Johannine community. Brown refuses to ‘exclude certain passages from the Fourth Gospel on the grounds that they were probably not in the tradition known to the secessionists but were added by the redactor (either later or as anti-secessionist revision)’ (1979, 109). He admits that many accept that John 1:14 – ‘The Word became flesh’ – was ‘added by the redactor as an attack on the opponents of I John’ (1979, 109) but continues to write as if there were no revision of the Fourth Gospel.

Helms states, “we need to note that part of the purpose of Irenaeus was to attack the teachings of Cerinthus, a gnostic Christian teacher who lived in Ephesus at the end of the first century” (op. cit., p. 162). Cerinthus was “educated in the wisdom of the Egyptians, taught that the world was not made by a primary God, but by a certain Power far separated from him…Moreover, after [Jesus’] baptism, Christ descended upon him in the form of a dove from the Supreme Ruler, and that then he proclaimed the unknown Father, and performed miracles. But at last Christ departed from Jesus, and that then Jesus suffered and rose again, while Christ remained impassible, inasmuch as he was a spiritual being” (1.26.1). Irenaeus stated that the purpose of John at Ephesus was as follows:
by the proclamation of the Gospel, to remove that error which by Cerinthus had been disseminated among men, and a long time previously by those termed Nicolaitans, who are an offset of that ‘knowledge’ [gnosis] falsely so called, that he might confound them, and persuade them that there is but one God, who made all things by His Word; and not, as they allege, that the Creator was one, but the Father and the Lord another; and that the Son of the Creator was, forsooth, one, but the Christ from above another (3.11.1)
Helms argues:
“So the gospel attributed, late in the second century, to John at Ephesus was viewed as an anti-gnostic, anti-Cerinthean work. But, very strangely, Epiphanius, in his book against the heretics, argues against those who actually believed that it was Cerinthus himself who wrote the Gospel of John! (Adv. Haer. 51.3.6). How could it be that the Fourth Gospel was at one time in its history regarded as the product of an Egyptian-trained gnostic, and at another time in its history regarded as composed for the very purpose of attacking this same gnostic? I think the answer is plausible that in an early, now-lost version, the Fourth Gospel could well have been read in a Cerinthean, gnostic fashion, but that at Ephesus a revision of it was produced (we now call it the Gospel of John) that put this gospel back into the Christian mainstream.”

John’s source as fictional:
That John is responding to Luke is actually a growing consensus in Johannine studies; likewise that John has been multiply redacted, such that our version is not the one originally written. … External evidence placing the Gospel of John’s appearance in history is also the scarcest [relative to the previous three Gospels]. It could have been written as late as the 140s (some argue even later) or as early as the 100s (provided Luke was written in the 90s [which a growing consensus now considers its earliest likely date]). I will arbitrarily side with the earlier of those dates. John was redacted multiple times and thus had multiple authors. (This is already the consensus of Johannine experts.) Nothing is known of them. John’s authors (plural) claim to have used a written source composed by an anonymous eyewitness (21.20-25), but that witness does not exist in any prior Gospel, yet is conspicuously inserted into John’s rewrites of their narratives (e.g. compare Jn 20.2 with Lk. 24.12 [likewise his insertion into the fishing story and last supper story and crucifixion story and his replacement of the resurrections at Nain and Gerasa]) and so is almost certainly a fabrication (as I show in Chapter 10, §7).
Richard Carrier states:
I cover the evidence and scholarship on all this in the most detail in Chapter 10.7 (Ibid., pp. 487-506). But one of the most important points I develop there is that the original authors of John clearly intended their unnamed “beloved disciple,” the one they claim as their source, to be none other than Lazarus. Who is most definitely a made-up person, invented by the authors of John to reify and reverse the teaching of Luke’s Parable of Lazarus (pp. 500-05), which Luke designed as an argument for why people should believe without direct evidence of any resurrection (thus, Luke knew of no Lazarus or Doubting Thomas tale to cite instead; to the contrary, his Parable was in fact an attempt to explain why there wasn’t any). Well, that argument the authors of John despised (pp. 489-90), and thus replaced by fabricating evidence for resurrections, not only through John’s ridiculously trumped up narrative of Jesus’s resurrection—complete with a Doubting Thomas fondling the open wounds in Jesus’s risen body, a story found nowhere in any prior Gospel or the Epistles of Paul, despite it being the most powerful and informative tale one could ever have attested and thus could never have been omitted by four prior authors (it also lies at the end of a long process of gradually exaggerated fabrication, starting with a merely missing body in Mark, then moving to the feet the women touch in Matthew, to the hands and feet grabbed by the Apostles in Luke, to the wounds fondled in John)—but also in John’s completely fabricated resurrection of Lazarus, which John depicts as so incredibly famous it was the reason the Sanhedrin started plotting to kill Jesus (and even Lazarus), another detail no previous author could have overlooked.
Thus the authors of John converted a fictional person who wasn’t raised from the dead to prove the faith into a real person actually raised from the dead to prove the faith. This is so obviously fiction that it is astonishing anyone would be so foolish as to believe it.
Richard Carrier responds to objections against gJohn not being anonymous:
Some of the nine objections Manning “tackles” are not even real objections found in contemporary Johannine experts. For example, “Wouldn’t John sound like the Synoptics” makes no sense as an argument (writers distinguish themselves by differences of style, not emulations of it—the fact that the Synoptics are so similar to each other is actually a weird fact that requires particular explanation). Although John’s Jesus ought to sound more like the Jesus in the Synoptics—so Manning would have to admit someone is taking license with the style and thoughts of Jesus. But regardless, writing a Gospel in one’s own words and style does not connect logically with the writer even being an Apostle, much less “John” specifically. So this is a handwave, not a serious objection Manning ever really had to deal with. Likewise, “How could a fisherman write high literature in Greek,” is not that substantive an objection either, as this requires assuming the Apostles even really were fishermen (and the Gospel of John never says the Apostle John was, and we have no particular reason to believe the Synoptics weren’t just making that up), but more importantly, that a fisherman couldn’t also be an educated Rabbi. As I explain in Chapter 2 of Not the Impossible Faith, Rabbis were all required to ply a trade (and most were known by such monikers, from sandalmaker to builder), so “fisherman” would not exclude one from the category “Rabbi,” and all Rabbis were well educated. Similarly, the argument that John seems limited in his geographical knowledge isn’t even true; I am not aware of any expert today who makes such an argument.
A more substantive objection Manning tries to answer is why the Gospel never says it’s written by John—in fact it bizarrely avoids ever doing so, thus strangely having to constantly resort to mysterious coded pleonasms like “the Disciple Whom Jesus Loved.” Likewise by its titulature using kata (“according to”), in Greek a term indicating source not author, we know whoever assigned it the name of John was the same person who assigned the names Luke, Matthew, and Mark to the other three Gospels. Because they chose the same unusual designator, and these four names only appear in editions of the Gospels that post-date their having been brought together in an Anti-Marcionite foursquare edition. The corresponding legends also do not match the Gospels’ content, e.g. Mark never writes like someone taking notes for Peter and in fact is an anti-Petrine Gospel and thus can’t have been authored by any such person (he’s actually just mythologizing the teachings of Paul); Matthew is not writing his own account but redacting Mark’s Greek almost verbatim and using the Greek Bible as his base text and thus can’t have been authored by any Palestinian, much less Apostle (and, like Mark, never claims to be); when Luke describes his sources and why he should be trusted in his first chapter, “actually being there” or knowing any of the people involved is conspicuous for its absence; and John, as I already noted, was clearly originally written by a group of people expecting us to believe they were narrating the eyewitness account of Lazarus, a patently fictional person.
Yet Manning’s only response to this objection is a series of non sequiturs: that people could narrate their own experiences in the third person does not mean they didn’t identify who they were and when they were present and why their accounts should be trusted—in actual fact only ancient fiction was ever anonymous in the way the Gospels are found to be; and the evident reason all manuscripts have these names is that (as Trobisch has shown) all the manuscripts we have derive from the same foursquare Anti-Marcionite edition that assigned them those names. So these simply aren’t responses to the objection. They are excuses that have no actual logical connection to the point: who the authors of John originally meant their lead character to be. Which is Apologetics Rule Number Nine: if you can invent a just-so story that explains why the evidence does not match expectation, then you get to pretend you just proved your just-so story true, and therefore have successfully avoided the consequences of that uncomfortable evidence. “It’s possible, therefore it’s probable.” Fallacy. The simple fact is, outside fiction, real books in antiquity typically identified their authors; “John’s” Gospel does not. And you can’t get from “never says who wrote it” to “was therefore written by an Apostle named John.”
Here is his full conclusion:
First we are told that “no one is going to forget the writers of the Gospels in the early church” because “the church must have raised the funds in order to have the canonical Gospels written,” therefore John the Apostle must have written the Gospel According to John. This is a whole string of possibiliter fallacies: presuming there was a singular “church” (the evidence suggests the reverse); presuming the Gospel wasn’t commissioned to be uncredited as all other Gospels by then were (the evidence suggests it was); and presuming any reliable information about its origin even reached later authors (which is unlikely given that none have any source to cite for that information beyond the Anti-Marcionite edition that named them). In short, there is no evidence for this supposition. Consequently, it is not evidence. It’s just something Christians “wish” were true.
The second additional argument is to incredulously ask “Why assign the name John?” In fact the names assigned to the Gospels in the foursquare edition all conspicuously derive from the Book of Acts and the Epistles of Paul, which were being included with them in the same edition. So whoever assembled that edition is trying to create hyperlinks that can explain why the Gospels can still be authoritative even while contradicting each other. And yet when the Book of Acts and the Epistles of Paul were written, they had no knowledge of any of those people having written any books on the subject. That notion is thus a post hoc development. For John in particular, Paul says there were three “pillars” believed to be the greatest authorities: Peter, James, and John. Lo and behold, all three had very popular Gospels named after them, notably all bogus (no one believes “The Gospel According to Peter” was ever even read by Peter much less written by him; likewise “The Protevangelium of James”). It just so happens that when someone assembled a foursquare Gospel-set to combat Marcion, the ones named after Peter and James had been declared heretical and were thus passed over for another, to be named after the one remaining pillar, John—probably indeed to distinguish it from them. And yet even still as late as the 160s A.D., Justin Martyr was still treating the Gospel of James as authoritative (as he effectively includes it among the “Memoirs of the Apostles” when he assumes they report that Jesus was born in a cave). But as that is not likely to have really been written by the Apostle James, nor the Gospel of Peter by the Apostle Peter, the Gospel “according to John” is just as likely not by any the actual Apostle John.
So these are simply more repeated failures to adduce any evidence that John was actually the author of the Gospel. Which leads us to conclude apologetics simply does not believe in actual evidence. What we get instead are isolated, disconnected “facts” and “suppositions,” which when combined with handwaving, baiting-and-switching, well-poisoning, and possibiliter fallacies, gets “converted” into something that “sounds” like evidence has been presented for the conclusion, when in fact not a single item of actually pertinent evidence has been. We are simply told it’s “possible” the late unsourced legends about who wrote the book are true, therefore we should conclude it’s “probable” they are true. But bridging that gap between possible and probable requires evidence, which means not just any random facts, and certainly not mere declarations and suppositions, but actual, material facts whose probability is substantially higher if the legends are true than if they are merely legends. But all we get is evidence the legends existed and were believed by persons most interested to believe them, and most prone to believe them on no real evidence; which simply isn’t improbable. It’s exactly what we expect if those legends were made up by similarly interested parties who wanted to sell the Gospel as authoritative. There is no evidence that’s unlikely on mere legend. By contrast, there is a lot of evidence that is unlikely if John really did write it (as surveyed above). The balance of evidence is therefore against his having done so.
https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/18401