The Historical Reliability of John's Gospel: Issues & Commentary

by Craig L. Blomberg

Throughout much of the twentieth century the Fourth Gospel took a back seat to the Synoptics when it came to historical reliability. Consequently, the contemporary quest of the historical Jesus discounted or excluded evidence from the Fourth Gospel. The question of the historical reliability of John's Gospel is well overdue for a thorough reinvestigation and reassessment. In this foundational study, Craig L. Blomberg sheds new light on persistent questions. He presents his conclusions largely in commentary form, following the principal scenes of the Gospel. His introduction frames the pathway into the discussion, taking up critical issues such as In his commentary examining the text of the Fourth Gospel, Blomberg asks two essential questions. First, using the recently nuanced criteria of authenticity, "What positive evidence do we have that the actions or words of the characters in John's narratives are indeed historical?" Second, "Is there anything in the text . . . that is implausible within the historical context to which it is attributed, particularly if we assume the general historical trustworthiness of the Synoptics?" The result is a seminal work for the present day--one that affirms the historical reliability of John's Gospel with intelligence and sure-footed care.

Genres: Christianity, Theology, Religion, History, Biblical Studies, Reference

346 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 1998

About the author

Dr. Craig Blomberg joined the faculty of Denver Seminary in 1986. He is currently a distinguished professor of New Testament.

Dr. Blomberg completed his Ph.D. in New Testament, specializing in the parables and the writings of Luke-Acts, at Aberdeen University in Scotland. He received an MA from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and a BA from Augustana College. Before joining the faculty of Denver Seminary, he taught at Palm Beach Atlantic College and was a research fellow in Cambridge, England with Tyndale House.

In addition to writing numerous articles in professional journals, multi-author works and dictionaries or encyclopedias, he has authored or edited 20 books, including The Historical Reliability of the Gospels, Interpreting the Parables, commentaries on Matthew, 1 Corinthians and James, Jesus and the Gospels: An Introduction and Survey, From Pentecost to Patmos: An Introduction to Acts through Revelation, Christians in an Age of Wealth: A Biblical Theology of Stewardship, Neither Poverty nor Riches: A Biblical Theology of Possessions, Making Sense of the New Testament: Three Crucial Questions, Preaching the Parables, Contagious Holiness: Jesus' Meals with Sinners, and Handbook of New Testament Exegesis.

Reviews

[Jimmy Reagan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book by reputed scholar Craig Blomberg has become the leader in the field in the unique category of the historical reliability of John’s Gospel. Haven already written “The Historical Reliability of the Gospels”, Mr. Blomberg was right at home in digging deeper into the much beloved Gospel of John.

Part one covering through page 68 is what he calls introductory considerations. It includes topics such as you would find in a traditional Introduction of a major commentary, yet always with an eye to his subject of historical reliability. A skepticism in the matter of historical reliability mars many works in print on the Gospel of John today. It’s wonderful to see a book that upholds that reliability when he discusses authorship, date and provenance, sources, the relationship between John and the Synoptic Gospels, literary genre, and audience and purposes. The final part of this section discusses where he feels the burden of proof lies in what the criteria of authenticity ought to be followed by his sensible suggestion for the way forward.

Part two is a commentary of over 200 pages on the Gospel of John with a focus in every text on the historical data and why it is reliable. To my mind, that makes this short commentary a jewel. It’s a subject that might be ignored in several texts in even major commentaries on the Book of John. In our skeptical age, this commentary helps in an area of one of the strongest onslaughts against the Book of John that we face. Frankly, the value of this commentary exceeds its size.

The commentary is followed by an incredibly detailed bibliography of near 35 pages. All in all, this volume’s attractive cover and economical price makes it an all-around winner.

I received this book free from the publisher. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.

[Neil Kruger · Rating 4 out of 5]

An immense amount of analysis showing that the historicity of John (despite its theological emphasis) is sure.

[Steven H · Rating 3 out of 5]

A SOLIDLY “ORTHODOX” EVANGELICAL STUDY OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL

Craig L. Blomberg is Professor of the New Testament at Denver Seminary in Colorado.

He wrote in the Introduction to this 2001 book, “it remains patently obvious to any careful reader of the Fourth Gospel that John is more different from than similar to the Synoptics. One of the reasons that many stand unconvinced of … John being substantially accurate is that thematic studies of the Gospel’s historicity still cover only representative problems that affect a minority of John’s data… but as one reads the text sequentially from start to finish there still seem to be just too many difficulties. The time seems ripe, therefore, for a study that discusses many of the standard introductory and background considerations, but which goes on to examine in some detail every passage in John… with a view to assessing historicity.” (Pg. 21-22)

Concerning the gospel’s authorship, he notes, “The claim of John 21:24 is that the individual referred to … as ‘the beloved disciple’ … was the author of the work or at least a very substantial core of it… Neither John nor the Synoptics ever demonstrably limits the disciples present in any of these contexts to the Twelve, but it has often been assumed that only these apostles would have communed with Jesus the last night of his life. If this is the case, then the beloved disciple must be one of the Twelve… we must think of one of the apostles.

“Indeed, the Synoptics on several occasions group Peter, James and John together as an inner core of three of the Twelve who participate in experiences like the transfiguration or Gethsemane to which the other nine are not privy. But Peter appears… in the same scenes as the beloved disciple, so he cannot be this anonymous individual… James, the brother of John, was martyred in AD 44, much too early for him to have authored this Gospel. That leaves John… The more difficult question to answer is if the logic just set out is the same as that which led to the early church tradition… or if it is also based on actual historical information. The Fourth Gospel, after all, never identifies an inner trio as closer to Jesus than other disciples. Interestingly… this Gospel omits those episodes in which the Synoptics describe John playing a role.” (Pg. 29-30)

He rejects the suggestion of Frederick W. Baltz [‘Lazarus and the Fourth Gospel Community’] that the author of the Fourth Gospel was Lazarus, on the grounds, “the vast majority of his arguments work for John as well, and he has not provided convincing evidence for rejecting this tradition.” (Pg. 31)

He argues, “John and the Synoptics alike omit and include material according to relatively clear theological and literary criteria. What does not fit those criteria is not included, however much we might have thought it should be. Thus the resurrection of Lazarus does not appear in the Sunoptics because it takes place in Judea prior to the last of Christ’s trips to Jerusalem, of which the Sunoptics with to record only one. The transfiguration does not appear in john because it occurs in the middle of the ministry, but does not take place in or around Jerusalem or directly tie in with one of the Jewish festivals. And so we might continue. We may not be able to guess the reason for every omission in a given Gospel, but enough examples are clear that such omissions cannot be used to argue that a given Evangelist did not know of an event he omits, much less that it is not historical.” (Pg. 55-56)

He suggests, “If [there] are variant accounts of the same event… then on the one hand we have a good example of the freedom that John felt to bring out different details and emphases in stories already commonly from early Christian oral tradition, if not from the final form of the Synoptics themselves… the dissimilarity between Matthew and Luke is at least as great as that between John and either Matthew or Luke. On the other hand… there are no necessary contradictions among the variant accounts. This conclusion should inspire confidence that… John is not freely inventing ‘history’ incompatible with the actual words and deeds of the historical Jesus.” (Pg. 107)

He acknowledges, “When Lazarus becomes ill, Mary and Martha send word to Jesus (v. 3). They refer to their brother as ‘the one you love,’ leading a few commentators to speculate that Lazarus was the ‘beloved disciple’ behind the composition of the Fourth Gospel [e.g., Vernard Eller, ‘The Beloved Disciple: His Name, His Story, His Thought’]. But Jesus obviously loved more than one person (cf. v. 5), and ‘it would be a very curious procedure to speak of him by name 11 times in chapters 11 and 12 and to abandon the name in all subsequent references to him.’” (Pg. 165-166)

Of the raising of Lazarus, Blomberg says, “Josef Wagner has demonstrated the literary and theological unity of the account in such a fashion that, while not excluding possible tradition-historical development, nothing in the chapter requires it. A fairly impressive array of recent analysts of the miracles attributed to Jesus, along with studies of this text in particular, concludes that a substantial historical core does appear to underlie John’s narrative… In the absence of convincing evidence to the contrary, this approach seems to be the best.” (Pg. 171-172)

He notes, “Considerable controversy surrounds John’s statement that the Jews remained outside Pilate’s residence so as not to defile themselves and be unable to ‘eat the Passover.’ A sizeable majority of commentators takes this expression in its most common sense of referring to the initial evening meal of the week-long feast, in which the Passover lamb was served… This then forces the meal of John 13 to be something other than the normal, festive meal with which the Passover began, and Jesus is thus crucified on the afternoon of the day during which the lambs would be slaughtered for the upcoming Passover meal… On this view, John flatly contradicts the Synoptics… It is not at all clear, however, that this is an accurate description of the state of affairs in the Fourth Gospel… When we read 18:28 in its narrative sequence… we would naturally assume that by ‘eating the Passover’ John is referring to upcoming meals in the week-long feast of the Unleavened Bread.” (Pg. 237-238)

He admits, “Without question, the four Gospel accounts of the resurrection pose problems for would-be harmonizers. Yet it is by no means as self-evident as many critics suggest that a plausible reconciliation of the Gospel parallels is impossible to achieve. John Wenham… lays out a credible synthesis of the data… One could, in fact, argue that later fabrications would have tried to avoid the appearance of minor inconsistency further. Even John’s Gospel reflects sober restraint in comparison with a later apocryphal work like the ‘Gospel of Peter.’” (Pg. 259)

He concludes, “Grant Osborne … seems correct when he stresses that either [21:24-25] ‘are the work of a first-rate storyteller who knew how to weave in authentic-sounding details, or they are the written-down version of an eyewitness account.’ … the latter seems overwhelmingly more likely. And, I would add, that eyewitness account repeatedly appears reliable.” (Pg. 281)

This book will be of keen interest to those seeking a defense of the traditional authorship and historicity of the Fourth Gospel.

[Mu-tien Chiou · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dr. Craig L. Blomberg writes this book in an amazing accessible style that does not drag alone in minute details, yet the contents are very well-argued and well researched against previous scholarly literature.

The editorial fact that the main thrust and theses in this book were developed in 1990s, years before the 2004 Autumn Jerusalem old city sewage reconstruction project that saw the accidental digging-out of what exactly corresponds to the second-Temple period Siloam pool described in John 9, all the more lends weight to the Dr. Blomberg's scholarly foresight.

Dr. Blomberg studied his PhD in NT under I. Howard Marshall during 1979 to 1982 at the University of Aberdeen. His academic interest in the historicity of the gospels was professedly kindled by the latter's critically acclaimed book Luke: Historian and Theologian (1970).

In this book Dr. Blomberg expands his 1987 book chapter on John's gospel mainly by including a thorough review of (and then debate against) practically all the major 1980s and 1990s sceptic scholarships on the issue. The way he makes this book succinct and readable is by referencing relevant works for excessive details, so the readers' appetite does not get easily satiated.

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bible scholar Craig Blomberg notes in his introduction that many critical scholars have attacked the historical credibility of the gospel of John. His purpose in this book is to show the arguments put forth by those scholars is unjustified. So this book builds a powerful case for the historicity and trustworthiness of the gospel of John. Very highly recommended.