The Gospel of John: A New History

by Hugo Méndez

The biblical Gospel of John casts itself as a memoir of “the disciple whom Jesus loved”--a mysterious figure who allegedly watched Jesus die on the cross and stepped into his empty tomb. But in this groundbreaking study, Hugo Méndez argues that the text is something else a falsely authored gospel that inspired a rich tradition of disguised writing.

The author of John believed that Jesus was a divine being who came to earth to transform humans into divine beings. To encourage others to embrace this startling vision, that author composed a gospel filled with invented materials—one in which Jesus communicates the author's views through cryptic words and symbolic gestures left for readers to decipher. Finally, to make this revisionary portrait of Jesus plausible, the author concealed his identity, attributing his Gospel to an invented, shadowy disciple of Jesus gifted with supernatural insight and able to retrieve lost memories of Jesus's life. In these respects, the Gospel of John is similar to the so-called apocryphal gospels produced in the second century, including the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Judas.

The invention of this eyewitness was not a self-contained event, however. It was the genesis of a new and vibrant literary tradition. As the enigmatic disciple of the Gospel was folded into the same collective memory as Peter and Paul, he became a viable mask for other authors. In time, many such writers—among them, the authors of 1 John, 2 John, 3 John, Revelation, the Apocryphon of John, and the Epistula Apostolorum—coopted this figure, repurposing him for new agendas and weaving countless afterlives for him. The Gospel of A New History traces this arc, showing how a single act of disguised authorship ignited new literary trajectories and dramatically shaped twenty centuries of Christian culture.

Genres: Religion

288 pages, Hardcover

Published July 23, 2025

Reviews

[Dave Courtney · Rating 3 out of 5]

(2.5 stars)
Full disclosure, I want to be able to sit down and give this one more time. But I also wanted to get some of my initial thoughts on to the page. The reason I wanted to explore this book was largely because of Mendez's much publicized article a few years back on the same subject. This is book is basically a fleshing out of that essay, and if you've read it you'll have a good understanding of what this book is, its arguments, and its approach.

I would say, relative of course, that this book is accessible and concise. It has a clear structure, with the early chapters setting the stage or paramaters for the later ones in regards to the basic accepted assumptions driving his conclusions and theories. In short, Mendez is making two arguments at the same time. On one front is reclaiming the notion that the Gospel was written by a single individual, something that goes against the general consensus of scholarship (which prefers to see it as a product of a community and/or a product of different generations brought together into a composite form). One of the assumptions driving this assertion is seeing John through the lens of pseudepigraphy (something Mendez nearly weaponizes, at least in appearance, by wrapping it in targeted terms). In other words, this is a second century person writing under a false name, creating a false person (the beloved disciple), for the purpose of championing a later theology. Which, as Mendez's point depends upon, is in line with the category of gnostic materials. This is, in his eyes, a Gnostic Gospel doing the same thing as other Gnostic Gospels. That in itself is not necessarily controversial within his primary circle of academics (he is writing under the influence of Ehrman). The degree to which he states this and the way he uses this to flesh out his argument for single authorship (largely driven by finding in John a cohesive narrative and design and unity) is what sets him apart.

The second part of his argument essentially takes his argument regarding the single authorship of John and suggests a likely scenario where this person, whoever it was, actually started a whole stream of pseudepigraphical writings all under the same name and theological interest. This would include the letters of John. Thus it can give us an example of how this works and how this happens, and further applies to the whole of the New Testament material. It is, in his words, all invention formulated from later periods wanting to prop up their specific theological interests.

So is he right? He certainly wants this to be shocking enough. He believes its evident enough to at least imagine this idea, which he would situate within a larger discussion in his cirlce (I can't emphasize that part enough). And like Ehrman he is a good scholar. However, also like Ehrman, he has one glaring fundamental crutch- his failure to recognize his own bias. And that's especially problematic here because there are a few points (actually, he has a habit of repeating this as though he constantly needs to remind us of the qualification) where he essentially conveniently reinforces his particular bubble with one broad sweeping stroke of the brush. All you need to do is qualify everything that disagrees with your determining assumptions "conservative" and you conveniently allow yourself to qualify the real "scholarship" as those who agree with your beginning assumptions. Ehrman does this all the time, and its one of the greatest weaknesses of his scholarship and approach. It's similar here.

It matters here too because there is one simple, clear and overriding defeater (in my opinion) of Mendez's theory and conclusion- the Jewish quality and backdrop of the Gospel of John. Mendez says at one point that he wanted to write a book about John for Pauline scholars (which again, is assumed to be his Ehrman led bubble). Thus, he takes Ehrman's assumption about Paul's hellenized context, full as it is of glaring bias' which trap Paul's own theology and perspective in the Greco-Roman influences (beginning with the most important and relevant assumption that is all over Ehrman's work, the idea that Paul held to a sort of gnostic dualism between spirit and flesh akin to the popular Greek way of thinking permeating the world he wrote in), and transposes it on to the Gospel according to John. He sees John as coming up with novel (in comparison to the synoptics) theologies which evoke the same kind of esotric inner spirituality, tying soteriology to John's supposed view of the divination of the human and bringing new theologies to the forefront that have more in common with the gnostic Greek influences than the Jewish context.

From where I stand, regarding the breadth of scholarship that has emereged in the last 30 years interested in recovering the Jewish context of the Gospel of John, this couldn't be further from the case. It is actually Mendez who is bound to outdated and outmoded assumptions to this end, which is ironic. That John's Gospel, in its hellenized language (to be sure) is reading as a specific and aware Jewish text is something scholarship has been intimately interested in and largely bringing to the forefront. And the thing that this challenges outright is his readings and understandings of John's theology as bearing the mark of that gnostic flavour. He gets it twisted, and at times so blatantly misconstrued according to his bias that its a wonder how this whole exercise didn't coillapse under its own weight a long time ago (some would say it did before this book's release). In fact, in one of the most prominant and evident examples of this bias looming large over the entire directive of his argument, he admits straight up that his work emerges from standing outside of what he calls the constraints of all these extant influences and reading it as though it is a gnostic gospel we just uncovered today. That's the real irony- reading it through that lens IS the extant influence and trappings of his own tightly guarded circle. It runs into the same wall that Ehrman runs into when trying to present good scholarship (which he is) while also tightly guarding his own assumptions and bias (which you can see in how he interprets different verses in the Gospel, such as ones he claims to indicate the notes of a mystery religion as opposed to Jewish rhetoric). He fails to engage with an entire field of study beyond his tightly guarded circle that would readily show his assumptions to be misguided on good and fair academic grounds.

Here's my cards on the table. I have no problem seeing a composite form of John's Gospel being shaped by that later period. What Mendez completely neglects is the idea that this composite form is not the entire life of the Gospel's formation. That we can trace it back, not only through a theoretical history, but through the composition and see the layers of different generations representing different contexts and points in time. Why does this matter? Because this essential composition history bursts out of his tightly contained time period. And yes, it brings in whole communities. It's simply not the case, in my opinion, that this communal nature should lead us to expect something other than a cohesive and uniform nature regarding the Gospel's thought process. It's also not the case that this later composition and Tradition attributed to John should be anywhere near as shocking as he wants and needs it to be. The question is, does this composition history reveal an initial source, and where might it position that initial source. This is the debate. It doesn't need one to accept that this is the commonly attested to single writer to make that point. Of concern is what time period the sourcing places us in and what that tells us regarding the motivations and inspirations.

And an added point here. Mendez grossly misplays the nature of what we find in this Gospel when it comes to comparing it to the gnostic traditions and attributes. He also grossly misplays the ways he sees John appealing to "secret knowledge" (that is simply not true) attained in the spirit (John's Gospel is bursting with the Jewish interests in this world) and disguising the identity of its author (any indication is that original readers would not have had the same trouble that we do in fleshing out the beloved disciples identity- the way it takes prominance here in Johns Gospel is actually quite contrary to those gnostic attributes once you bring in the very Jewish qualities of the writings). Even worse, he moves to suggest that a scholar and work like Ben Witherington (whom he percievably is jettisoning as one of those quote on quote conservatives) who has spent a ton of time championing the idea of Lazarus as the orignal source and the identity of the beloved disciple, as somehow a common evangelical approach. Common? Witherington is doing something akin to Mendez's own claims, which is pioneering an entire theory against the common grain when it comes to locating Lazarus (which Mendez dismisses this strong theory with such a blatant and bad faith wave of the arm it was truly baffling). I would push things even further. I think the scholarship, if taken as a whole instead of disallowing voices outside of our bias, is actually bringing the idea of John having far earlier roots than has been assumed in the last 100 years is one of the more promising and stronger streams taking shape right now. That doesn't mean the composition, but rather the sourcing. That and it seems we are seeing a shift back towards a greater interest in a kind of fresh appeal to a form of contintuity and harmonization with the synoptics. Why? Because the bias' Mendez has made the absolute truth are being challenged.

[Eduardo Felix Diaz · Rating 5 out of 5]

First read of 2025 and possibly the best non fiction I’ll read all year.

Essentially, Hugo Méndez sets out to prove the Gospel of John was not written by a community as it is mostly believed to be by most scholars, but by one single author. He also suggests, the other works attributed to John, may have all been written by separate authors who emulated and took guidance from the Gospel, leading them to look like works from the same group, but in reality, having no direct contact with one another.

The book slowly takes you through the Gospel as well, and points to key differences between it and the Synoptics, which suggest many of those differences were inventions by the author of the Gospel.

In all, I give this book a 10/10 and highly recommend to anyone remotely interested in biblical scholarship.

[Andrea Engle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Approaching John’s Gospel as the work of a single author writing in Greek, Mendez leverages this into an introduction of a “spiritual,” “celestial” Gospel in contrast to the Synoptics, an obvious source. Eventually, the author concludes that John is an “Apocryphal Gospel,” one that “inserts itself into an established tradition, but it subordinates the tradition to itself as if it were a superior account of Jesus’s life, one that can augment and correct the works that came before it.” Although persuasive, the arguments of the book do not seem to have enough historical basis to eject the Gospel of John from its position as the canonical fourth Gospel.