followHIM - John 1 Part 1 • Dr. Eric D. Huntsman • Jan. 16 - Jan. 22

Episode Date: January 11, 2023

What does the Book of John teach us about Jesus Christ? Dr. Eric D. Huntsman explores John 1’s Christology, the authorship of the Book of John, and the power Jesus Christ can have in our lives.Please rate and review the podcast!Show Notes (English, French, Spanish, Portuguese): https://followhim.coApple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/follow-him-a-come-follow-me-podcast/id1545433056Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/followhimpodcastInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/followhimpodcastSpotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/15G9TTz8yLp0dQyEcBQ8BYThanks to the follow HIM team:Shannon Sorensen: Executive Producer, SponsorDavid & Verla Sorensen: SponsorsDr. Hank Smith: Co-hostJohn Bytheway: Co-hostDavid Perry: ProducerKyle Nelson: Marketing, SponsorLisa Spice: Client Relations, Editor, Show NotesJamie Neilson: Social Media, Graphic DesignWill Stoughton: Video EditorKrystal Roberts: Translation Team, English & French Transcripts, WebsiteAriel Cuadra: Spanish TranscriptsIgor Willians: Portuguese Transcripts"Let Zion in Her Beauty Rise" by Marshall McDonaldhttps://www.marshallmcdonaldmusic.com

Welcome to Follow Him, a weekly podcast dedicated to helping individuals and families with their Come Follow Me study. I'm Hank Smith. And I'm John, by the way. We love to learn. We love to laugh. We want to learn and laugh with you. As together, we follow him. Hello, my friends. Welcome to another episode of Follow Him. My name is Hank Smith and I am your host and I'm here with my beloved co-host, John, by the way. Welcome, John, by the way. Welcome to another episode of Follow Him. That's a nice adjective. I hope that's true. Because we're talking about another beloved John today. We're spending our entire episode in

one chapter of the Gospel of John, John chapter one. John, when I saw that this lesson was on John chapter one, I knew exactly who we should bring on. Who's joining us today? Yes, we're excited to have Dr. Eric Huntsman back with us again. Our listeners might remember as we talked about the Psalms and he is coming to us from, isn't this awesome technology? He is actually in Jerusalem, a place you may have heard of as you've gone through the New Testament and the Book of Mormon and everything else. We're delighted to have him here to talk about this. And I'll give you a reminder of who Eric is. If you see that smiling face and you watch music

in the spoken word like I do, you may say, I think I recognize him from the baritone section. Eric was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, raised in upstate New York and Western Pennsylvania and Tennessee. He married N. Elaine Scott in 1993. They had two children, Rachel and Samuel. I love reading this background of Dr. Huntsman. Received a bachelor's in classical Greek and Latin from Brigham Young University, master's in ancient history from the University of Pennsylvania, a PhD in ancient history from the University of Pennsylvania. as an instructor of the classics, became an assistant professor of classics and ancient history, and then transferred to the College of Religious Education, becoming an assistant professor of ancient scripture in 2003, associate professor in 2008. And he was appointed as the coordinator of Ancient Near Eastern Studies program in August 2012 2012 after spending a year teaching at the BYU Jerusalem Center and then promoted to full professor in 2015. He's got a number of books, God So Loved the World,

about the final days of the Savior's life, Good Tidings of Great Joy, which is one I have. I also have The Miracles of Jesus, Worship, Adding Depth to Your Devotion, and this one, Becoming the Beloved Disciple, Coming Unto Christ Through the Gospel of John. That was studied in 2018. It would be perfect to have this year. And you have another one coming out in February called Greater Love Hath No Man. Great Easter book. Yes. Look at that beautiful book about Easter. I also wanted to mention he gave a talk at a BYU devotional called Hard Sayings and Safe Spaces, Making Room for Struggle as Well as Faith. That was a great talk. I also forgot to mention he served in the Thailand Bangkok Mission, an ordinance work in the Provo Temple,

and as I said, a member of the Tabernacle Choir. So we're really glad to have you. And Hank, I was telling you before we hit the record button that I don't know if there's anybody who knows more about the book of John that we could have got today than Dr. Huntsman. So we're thrilled to have you. Thank you for joining us today. Thanks, John. Thanks, Hank. Yeah, we love having Eric on Follow Him. He's a friend of the podcast. I'm starting out my Come Follow Me study. I really want to get a lot out of this gospel. I've got the expert here. How should I go about studying the gospel of John? What can you tell

me about it? Well, you know, one of the things you can do and should do for the gospel of John is what you should do for all of the gospels. There's this tension because on the one hand, particularly as we do it in gospel doctrine, we tend to harmonize the gospels because the gospels are based on the real life experiences, teachings, and doings of Jesus. And so it's natural for us to try to come up with a chronology for Jesus's life and ministry and see how the gospels all fit into that. But in addition to harmonizing, as we do in classes sometimes, I think it always is worth studying each Gospel individually. Because when we study the Gospels individually, we're able to see their particular portrait of Jesus, understand a particular agenda, the emphases, the style of the individual evangelist. Real quickly before we get into John,

when I'm teaching Religion 211, I do take the Gospels separately, and I only bring them together for the last week of Jesus's life. And maybe they're a little cutesy, maybe they're simplistic, but I kind of characterize the Gospels to help my students differentiate between them. So starting with the oldest first, I often say that the the Markan Jesus is what I call the John Wayne Jesus. He's the strong, tough guy kind of fellow, very human, very emotional. I mean, he's the son of God, but he's the most human of the four portraits that we have in the Gospels. And I also call the Gospel of Mark the Harry Potter Gospel. Mark loves miracles.

He loves to have Jesus do all kinds of things, say things, makes the miracles huge and exciting and almost magical. Whereas the Matthean Jesus, the Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew, of course, is the royal king of Israel. The Lucan Jesus is what I like to call the primary Jesus. Jesus loves me, this I know, because the Bible tells me so. Well, actually, the Gospel of Luke tells you that. In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus is always forgiving and compassionate and healing. And the Johannine Jesus, the one we're going to treat today, is what we call the divine Jesus. We use the term in biblical studies called Christology, which is the study of the person and the work of Jesus. First of all, the person. What does it mean when we say Jesus is the Christ, the anointed one of God, the son of God? And then the work of Jesus, what does he come to do? And of course, all four Gospels agree he came to suffer, die, and rise again. But they approach it from different angles.

So as I said, this Mark in Jesus is sometimes called a low Christology. You know he's the Son of God because at the baptism, God declared him the Son of God, and then his deeds prove it. Now, we have a friend, Julie Smith, who's done a great volume of the BYU New Testament commentary series, who actually argues against a low Christology for Mark. She calls it a full Christology of Mark. But then you have Matthew and Luke, which have a higher Christology because he's the son of God because Jesus was divinely conceived and miraculously born. So those two gospels add what we call infancy narratives at the beginning. But the Johannine Jesus is divine from the get-go. And as we'll read when we get into John chapter one, in the beginning was the

word and the words of God and the word was God. I mean, patently unashamed saying that Jesus is God, which is not always comfortable for Latter-day Saints because in the first article of faith and our understanding of the Godhead, we don't usually say Jesus is God. Sometimes it makes it easier if we say Jesus is divine, but that's how the Gospel of John presents him. So that's the first thing I would do is I'd take the Gospel of John and say, okay, what is the characterization of Jesus first and foremost? Who is the author and how does the authorship affect the way that portrait of Jesus is drawn? Who was the original audience of the gospel, and how does that affect the way the gospel is related, then how does it apply to us, if that makes any sense. Now, in terms of the

Gospel of John, Mark, Matthew, and Luke are very close together, and some of your listeners will know this term synoptic. It comes from the Greek synopsis, which means looking at it with the same eye or from the same perspective. The usual assumption is that Mark was the earliest gospel written, perhaps based on the testimony of Peter. Mark was the helper, the translator of Peter. And then Matthew and Luke, even though Matthew, if the traditional authorship is correct, and he's the apostle Matthew, even though Matthew was there, he had not written a gospel yet. And so when he saw this wonderful literary creation, the story of Jesus as a narrative, he said, wow, that's great. But I have some teachings of Jesus, some parables, some sermons that Mark didn't use.

I'm going to fold them into that. And then Luke has either Mark and Matthew or just Matthew. And then he adds some things. But still, those three gospels more or less follow the same outline with some differences occasionally with different portraits of Jesus. But the gospel of John is almost 90% unique material. And so that's one of the things that's so interesting about the gospel of John is it gives us figures, characters, events that you don't have in Mark, Matthew, and Luke. So that on its own is a reason to study the gospel of John. When I introduced John in a

Christ in Everlasting Gospel class or in a Religion 211 class, a gospels class at BYU, I always put up a little chart on what do we know about Jesus from the synoptics, and then I have another column, and what do we know about it from John? It's just amazing how many differences there are. And then I'll often pause and I'll ask the students and say, what is it you like about the Gospel of John? And people will say, well, Jesus is so powerful. Jesus is so strong. Jesus is so divine. Or I love the stories he has about individual characters. We have these sharply painted characters such as Nicodemus and the woman of Samaria, Mary of Magdala, the mother of Jesus, et cetera. And they'll say all these different things they like about the gospel of John and why it's so appealing. And I agree

with all of those things, but I will tell you right off why I resonated with the gospel of John from a very young age. I spent my last two years of high school in Jackson, Tennessee. My dad moved there my junior year of high school. And I suddenly was moved from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Catholic and Presbyterian friends. I was moved to what I like to call the buckle of the Bible belt. I was put right in this evangelical stew and all my friends were born again and they were so passionate about the Lord Jesus Christ. And it was a time in my life when I was selling my own testimony and strengthening my own testimony. I had a lot of questions and I'm going to talk about the Book of Mormon for a while, if you don't mind, and this New Testament come follow me here. I decided I was going to read the Book of Mormon to settle my testimony

of the Book of Mormon because my friends were really arguing against the church and against the prophetic mission of Joseph Smith. And instead of doing what I had been taught in seminary, what my mother had taught me, which was you read the Book of Mormon, then you'd Moroni 10 it. You pray it out the whole book and it's true. And if it's true, just miss the prophet, just miss the prophet, the church is true. I decided I was going to be inductive rather than deductive. I was going to pray every chapter as I was going through the Book of Mormon. Just try to find out, do I believe this? And I didn't need to wait till Moroni 10. I got to that final chapter of 2 Nephi when Nephi is giving his farewell. And he says, if you don't believe me, believe these words,

because they are the words of Christ. And suddenly this Jesus who I was striving so hard to get to know as a teenager, as I was just accepting him into my life and following him as my savior, I thought, yeah, this is Jesus. Everything that says about Jesus is what I believe, what I know is true. And so I got this strong testimony of the Book of Mormon. Well, now let's apply that to John. I started to read the Gospel of John that same senior year of high school, because after the Book of Mormon, I read the Gospels and I liked Mark and I really liked Matthew and especially Luke. But I got to John, and it was the same Jesus I had come to know and love in the Book of Mormon. And so the way I describe it, not that we have a

favorite gospel, but if we did, it might be John, because it's the Jesus I know, that I love, and I worship, whom I had gotten to know in the Book of Mormon. As I try to explain this idea of Christology, particularly the high Christology of John, I once again use the Book of Mormon. As I try to explain this idea of Christology, particularly the high Christology of John, I once again use a Book of Mormon example. When I was first teaching religion after I moved from classics to religious education, and wanted to start off kind of deliberately with the title page purposes of the Book of Mormon, I said, okay, what does the title page tell us the purposes of the Book of Mormon are? Well, to bring us to knowledge of the great things that God has done for our fathers and our mothers is to bring us to a knowledge of the covenants.

And then to bring us to a knowledge that Jesus is the, and I paused, and my freshmen all said, son of God. I'm like, wrong. Jesus Christ is the eternal God manifest in self-dolmation. Think about 3 Nephi 11, the risen Lord touches down in bountiful. And what does he say? I am the God of Israel and the whole earth. So even this idea of talking about the divinity of Jesus, even if talking about the divinity of Jesus is a little unfamiliar to us or not the way we usually talk about him in the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Book of Mormon absolutely gives us permission to do what John 1 says, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was the divine Jehovah before the incarnation, and we'll come back to

that when we get to John 1. But that's what I would encourage people to do, is understand a little bit about John, and we'll talk a few more moments about that, who we assume the author is and who we think the audience was and how the book is structured. But then particularly for Latter-day Saints who have a testimony of the restoration, the Jesus who appeared in the Sacred Grove and the Kirtland Temple, and Joseph and Sidney saw in section 76, when you know that Jesus, you're going to find him in the gospel of John. That's wonderful, Eric. I just think when I was a kid and I saw the gospel according to Matthew, the gospel according to Mark, the gospel according to Luke, it sounded like, well, actually, it was like this. Well, actually, it was like this.

And the JST helped me to call all of these chapters the testimony of Matthew, the testimony of Mark, the testimony of Luke. And that helps us see why, as Eric was just explaining, there may be some different things like the John Wayne Jesus, the royal king. They were maybe writing to different audiences and so forth. But it's nice to, oh, OK, this is what they wanted us to know. This is what they remembered. This is what they taught. I just like that distinction there. Yeah, there's a slight clarification we can make on that. I know

our footnotes have the testimony for all four gospels of the JST title or alternative, but if you look in that big fat folio edition of the JST that Fowling and Jackson and Matthews did, it actually appears that he changed it for Matthew and John, the testimony of Matthew, the testimony of John. And in the earliest versions of the JST manuscripts, it's actually still the gospel of Mark and Luke. And the reason that may be significant is Mark and Luke were not there, but Matthew and John, the traditional authors of those gospels, were apostolic witnesses. But back to what you're saying, if I can pull out a little Greek, not to beat you over the head with it, but in all of these gospels, it's Elangelion, the good news, kata, according to whatever. But from the earliest Christian tradition, there were not four gospels. There was one gospel. One gospel, as you were

hinting, John, from the perspective of Matthew or according to the testimony of John. Because it's all the same good news, but it is, as you say, from the perspective or sharing the testimony of that gospel of those particular authors. So if we were going to play a game of one of these things is not like the others, John would be the standout. Matthew, Mark, and Luke, you said are the synoptics like synonym, like same. Same I, yeah. And then John. It's its own thing.

You know, one of the earliest, I think it's Papias is quoted by Eusebius, says that John, having seen that the gospel had been told by Mark, Matthew, and Luke, decided to compose a spiritual gospel. The idea being what happened and what Jesus said and what Jesus did had already been recorded in these other Gospels, and yet somehow John was moved upon by the Spirit to give it a slightly more spiritual, I would say, because all of them are spiritual, perhaps a more symbolic take. When I ask my students what's different about this Gospel, they say, wow, it's so symbolic. Jesus is the door, the gate. Jesus is the vine. Jesus is the light of the world. There are all these wonderful symbols, and it's so deep. I'm going to slide into this as we move further into our discussion. One of the things that's so powerful is that John has what

we call discourses and dialogues. Jesus talks to people at length. If you go to the earliest gospel, Mark, the sayings of Jesus are very short. They're short parables, short teaching sayings. The only exception is Mark 13, the Olivet Discourse. We have a whole chapter where Jesus was given an extended prophecy or sermon. Matthew, to be sure, has long sermons. Sermon on the Mount is the greatest example of that, chapters 57, but he has five of those sermons. But no one has dialogues like John does. And we'll talk about this as we move into the material, but Nicodemus in John chapter 3, the woman at the well in John 4, talking to Martha and Mary in John 11, the farewell discourses after the Last Supper.

You have 14, 15, 16, 17, Jesus is speaking at length to his disciples. And there's a power in dialogue because as you see Jesus speaking with one person, and I hope to talk about this as we set up chapter one, that person may be a stand-in for you. And you almost feel like Jesus is speaking to you. There's an immediacy about this gospel, which I think is so powerful. That was the basis for your book, right, Eric, becoming the beloved disciple? Yeah, exactly. So as we move into John chapter 1, the high Christology of John is established in the first 18 verses. I used to say the prologue of the Gospel of John was John 1, 1 to 18. And we'll talk about this in more

detail in a moment, the so-called Logos hymn, Jesus is the divine word who became flesh. And then I said, well, 19 to 51 is moving into the ministry. But as I was doing a study for Lincoln Blumell's masterful collection on New Testament, it's a great resource for this year. It's New Testament history, culture, and society or something, but it's a collection anthology. A lot of great Latter-day Saints scholars have contributed to it. And Lincoln asked me to do the chapter on the Gospel of John. As I was looking at the outline that I put together for that chapter, the outline for the Gospel of John, originally I was looking at the outline that I put together for that chapter, the outline for the Gospel of John, originally had the prologue just being those first 18 verses,

but then it became apparent to me that verses 19 through 51, which we're also going to talk about today, where Jesus encounters people and people encounter him, that was also part of the prologue. As we slide in a moment after we finish our discussion of the background and the authorship and the audience and the structure of the gospel as a whole, as we slide into our discussion of chapter one, this week's Come Follow Me assignment, I'm going to argue that that chapter gives you the two main themes of the gospel of John. The primary one, which I had known since I was a senior in high school, the divinity of Jesus, the high Christology of John. But the one that was new and gave birth to that book you mentioned, verses 19 to 51, is the encounters people have with Jesus. I realized this is also a gospel

about discipleship. When people encounter Jesus, how do they respond to him? Now, some, of course, reject him. But those who do accept him, how do they become what we call in Greek, mathetes? A disciple is both a learner, that's the way we usually think of a disciple being a student, but it's also an apprentice. Someone who's not just learning from the master, but someone who's seeking to become like the master. And so the secondary theme of this gospel, I argue, is discipleship. And the disciples we're going to talk about in the second part of this discussion give us the template or the model for that. And so I decided to do a whole book, not on what I thought I would write. I thought when I finally write a book about John, it's going to be about the high Christology of John. It could be about the divine Jesus.

But it ended up being a book about discipleship. Because one of the things that struck me as I got into the Gospel of John is how dramatic it is. And he draws these powerful characters, and I've already mentioned Jesus talks with them, their dialogues. I mean, it's like a play. And characters, so I did a lot of study of character theory and how character was done in the Hebrew Bible, and particularly in Greek tragedy. That was my old field before I went into religion. And I said, wow, each of the main characters in John represents a different faith walk. Different people encounter Jesus.

And because of their life situation, their background, who they are, they respond differently. And their walk of faith is different from each other. OK, these first disciples we're going to talk about respond one way. The mother of Jesus in chapter two at the wedding at Cana, she's his mom. She already knows who he is. She responds a different way. Then you have Nicodemus, who's kind of like this teacher in Israel. He's a professor.

He's a syn-electoral. He actually has trouble understanding Jesus on a spiritual level, although he gets there eventually by the end of the book. Then you have the woman at the well, an outsider. She's a woman, but she's an outsider ethnically too. She's a Samaritan. A Samaritan. And then you'll do another layer, at least in Jesus's dialogue with her.

She has kind of an interesting and challenging marital history. She seems to have been rejected by her own community. And yet she is the first missionary in the gospel of John. She responds by running to her village and preaching, and the whole village gets converted. In fact, that's the only time Jesus is called Savior in the Gospel of John, is when the Samaritans come up to the woman at the well, and they say, We no longer believe because of your word, but because we found out for ourselves that he is the Christ, the Savior of the world, not just of the Jews. Moving on, there's this wonderful family in Bethany, which is in the Savior of the world, not just of the Jews? Moving on, there's this wonderful family in Bethany, which is in the middle of this gospel, Martha, Lazarus, and Mary of Bethany,

which I like to call the friends of Jesus. And you've got Thomas and Peter at the end who are impulsive but devoted disciples, fallible but faithful disciples. They all have these different walks and experiences. And what that said to me, it was about the same time, John, you mentioned my devotional back in 2018. It was the same time I was doing my devotional. There are so many people who have so many different experiences in the church today, whether because of their socioeconomic background, their faith background, their sexual orientation, their gender, their race.

And the gospel of John was giving me some models for how that was okay. And that maybe people could find themselves in one of these characters. Of course, the danger is once you start saying diversity, where's the body of Christ? Where's the unity? In fact, some years ago, I was on the college diversity inclusion committee and we didn't actually end up doing this, but I actually said once to college, I said, I would prefer to say inclusion and diversity rather than diversity and inclusion, because the goal is inclusion. We want everyone to be part of the same team, the same body of Christ, the same church.

Now let's recognize their diversity. We don't want to minimize that. So I thought, how am i going to control this if i write a chapter in this little book on each of these characters in john and at the end of each chapter i have a little application section where i compare it to someone today i will confess i was nicodemus i was the guy with too many questions who's too intellectual who had to really struggle to get my testimony it wasn't't until the end when Nicodemus sees Jesus on the cross in chapter 19, he realizes, oh, that's what he was saying in John 3, when you see the Son of Man lifted up upon the cross. So I actually used myself in a crisis of

faith I had on my mission as the application section at the end of the chapter in Nicodemus. But I thought, for the conclusion, how am I going to tie this all together? How am I going to have the unity of faith? Isn't that what Joseph Smith read in James? One faith, one baptism. And I realized, and we're going to come back now to the authorship of the gospel of John. It was the figure of the beloved disciple who gave us the model for the inclusion, for the unity. The author. The author or source, we'll talk about this in a moment, the author or source of this gospel never names himself. And it's only towards the end of the gospel, starting with the Last Supper, that he's called the God, the disciple whom Jesus loved. And he appears in four powerful scenes. He may appear in this first chapter, as we'll see as we finally get to the gospel doctrine lesson for the week.

He may appear in chapter one, but what we see at the Last Supper is he is the disciple leaning in the arms of Jesus. Our King James says, leaning in the bosom of Jesus. In my own translation of this, I say reclining in his arms because the word kolpon, which can be translated bosom, means embrace. And real quick for fun, the only other time that word is used is at the end of the high Christology part of chapter one, when it says that the word was in the bosom of the fathers, our King James. Just as the word was in the bosom of the father, this disciple is in the bosom or the embrace of Jesus. Isn't that lovely? So anyway, we're introduced to him there. Then he may be the one who is walking with Peter after the arrest of Jesus to

the high priest's palace. The next important scene he's in is chapter 19, when he is standing at the foot of the cross with the mother of Jesus and Mary and Mary the aunt. He's right there standing for the cross. And then of course, he and Peter are running when they hear the tomb's empty. They're running to find the empty tomb. And then finally, at the end in chapter 21, after Peter's kind of rehabilitated after the threefold denial, the Lord asked him three times if he loves me, gets to say three times, I love you, Lord.

He says, okay, feed my sheep. Has this little personal priesthood interview, a prophecy about how he's going to end his ministry through martyrdom. He turns around and he sees the disciple whom Jesus loves following. He says, okay, I'm going to die. I'm going to be martyred.

What about this guy? And it's really interesting because Jesus says, if he lives till I come again, what is that to you? And we usually just go straight to section seven and talk about the translation of John and the post-translation career of John. But we miss the context. Jesus raises this because Peter's saying, okay, I'm following you this way, and I'm going to lay down my life for you. What about this guy? And the Lord says to Peter, no matter what happens to John, let me live until I come again. What is that to you?

You follow me, which is so powerful. We don't judge the discipleship or the ministry of other people. We just follow the Lord himself. So I have these four things for my conclusion. We can be like the beloved disciple, lean in the arms of Jesus's love at the Last Supper, say as we take the sacrament, as we participate in ordinances, we can stand with him at the foot of the cross, having a testimony he died for the sins of the world. We can be like him running with hope to the empty tomb to find out that he's risen. And then we can continue to follow him.

However that is, without judging other people's discipleship, we can follow him to the end. And so that's how that book ended, Hank and John, is I use the beloved disciple figure as the binding model. No matter what your personal walk is like, these are the things we need to all share. The love of Christ, testimony that he died for us, hope in the resurrection, and a commitment to follow him.

This is fantastic. I love that the church let us just do one chapter of a single gospel to allow us this time to talk about the gospels individually. Like you've been saying, they each have separate, unique missions to them. If you can see them separate from one another, you'll get more out of them. You've certainly shown us that with John. It's interesting what you were saying before, Eric, about there was an old orange Religion 211 manual, which did a harmony, but the one that they have now goes Matthew and then Mark and then Luke. And I love it that way so that we can look at unique voice and contribution and everything to each one. And that's kind of what you were just saying, Hank. And it's fun to be

able to say, now, you'll notice that in the Mark account, we get a little of this, but the Matthew account doesn't mention it and things like that. But I was curious, Eric, about, I think you said you prefer teaching them one at a time. Yeah, the way I do it is, you know, I do some historical and literary background for a couple lectures. And then I do infancy narratives. So I do Matthew 1 through 2 in a lesson and Luke 1 through 2 in a lesson. So we get the background. And then I do Mark up until Jerusalem. So you get Mark's portrayal of this, as I call this, John Wayne Jesus with all the miracles. You've read my book, The Miracles of Jesus.

Mark has 19 discrete miracle stories. Now, while it's true Matthew and Luke have 21, Mark's so much shorter, miracles are happening much more frequently. And his descriptions of them, so for instance, a miracle they all share, the story about casting out the legion of devils. Mark's account is twice as long as Matthew's account. Because Mark is about the deeds of Jesus, whereas Matthew is mostly about the teachings of Jesus, and then Luke kind of balances them. So what I do is I teach Mark and then I have an exam. And then I teach Matthew and then Luke, and my students have read Mark, and so they can see how Matthew either adds something to what Mark had,

like the Sermon on the Mount, how he shortens something like shorter miracle descriptions, what Luke does, and I have an exam, and then I do John. And then what I do for the last few weeks of the semester is I bring them all together for the passion narrative. So we start with the triumphal entry, the last week, what my new book is about. Trevin Hatch and I did this book on Holy Week. By then, the students know those four voices so well, those four portrayals of Jesus so well, that we can take them together and say, okay, this is what Jesus did on that Sunday. What is this what he did on Monday and Tuesday? Here's the story about the anointing on Wednesday.

Here's the Last Supper in Gethsemane on Thursday. Here's Good Friday. And on my exam, I can actually put passages from the gospels and say, tell me which gospel this is from. And they can always do it. All four gospels have Peter cut off someone's ear in the Garden of Gethsemane when Jesus was being arrested. But only Luke hasn't put it back on. And that's because Luke's this gospel

that focuses on healings and compassions. Jesus, only in Luke does Jesus on the cross teach a first missionary discussion, and they can identify that. Oh, here's an interesting one since we're talking about John. Mark, Matthew, and Luke. That's how I always say Mark, Matthew, and Luke rather than Matthew, Luke, and Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Mark, Matthew, and Luke all have Simon and Cyrene help Jesus carry the cross to Golgotha. In John, that story's left out because the Johannine Jesus doesn't need help from anyone. In John, Jesus carries his own cross the whole way. So if I put on the exam, Jesus carrying his cross came to Golgotha, my students know in an instant that's John because they've had the experience with the Gospels individually, that even when we're taking them together, they can identify the style or the portrayal of Jesus

or the emphasis. Oh, that's awesome. I like the John Wayne Jesus of Mark. And I don't know what you guys think of this, but I feel like the book of Mark sounds a little like the book of Mormon, because people are always amazed and astonished. The book of Mormon has people that are always amazed and astonished. And Mark, the way of Mormon has people that are always amazed and astonished. And Mark, the way he describes it, they were amazed. They were astonished. And it sounds like the Book of Mormon. Well, some of you that heard my discussion with you from the Psalms

or read any of my books or ever heard me talk, you know I never speak without talking about my boy, Sam. And our family has a tradition. We read Matthew 1 through 2 and Luke 1 through 2 in December, getting ready for Christmas as part of our Advent celebration. And then between Christmas and Holy Week, we pick a gospel to read together as a family. Well, when Sam got old enough to be part of this, whenever I'd say, Sam, what gospel should we read? He would always say, let's read Mark. Well, I always assumed it was because it was the shortest. But once he finally said, Dad, it's because in Mark, Jesus does stuff. It's his gospel of action. And Mark Goodacre, a great

scholar, he's at North Carolina Duke, I forget which one, but he has a great podcast series that some of our listeners may be interested in following, but he talks about the gospels, and he and others have done these projects where people read the gospel of Mark aloud. It can be done between two or three hours, the whole gospel. And it was meant in the original Christian congregations to be read aloud. Books were very expensive. Scrolls were very expensive. So it was read aloud.

So in this new book that Trevin and I did, we have at the beginning of each chapter for each day of Holy Week, we have the text that families or individuals can read together. And they're always Mark and John. Matthew and Luke, there's something unique there. But Mark is so dramatic. And I love what you said, John, it's so engaging. So Mark is both the earliest account of the Passion Week and resurrection, but also the one that's the most dynamic. And then John, who is, in fact, anciently, they used to call him John the theologian. And as we move into John 1 and read those opening verses, it's because he looks at Jesus as God, and he looks at the principles. And so I kind of framed each chapter with Mark and John quotations.

Using Luke, obviously, or Luke 22 for Gethsemane, there are some times that Matthew and Luke give things the other ones don't have. So shall we talk a little bit more about John and then move to John chapter one? Absolutely. This is fantastic so far. I feel like you can sense your excitement for the gospel itself, which I think our listeners are going to appreciate. You got me to get ahead of myself by asking about that little book, Becoming the Beloved Disciple. We should have talked about the authorship of the gospel of John. Now, the tradition that it was John the Apostle is very old. It goes till the late second, early third century. There are a lot of pieces of internal evidence that always convinced readers of the Gospel that this was John the son of Zebedee

and the Apostle. I think as Latter-day Saints, we bring in some Book of Mormon and some Doctrine and Covenants evidence, and we are reinforced by that. So I think the vast majority of Latter-day Saint readers and many scholars would say that John the Apostle was the author. There are some modern scholars who make other arguments, and for those who are interested in that, you can read either my chapter in the Blue Mail volume or even the introduction to Becoming the Beloved Disciple, and I talk about that and give you some things that you can pursue. But let's just assume for our discussion in a church context that John the Apostle was the source or the author of this text.

And I'll explain why I say source or author in a moment. Why doesn't he ever name himself? Well, the reality is none of the gospel authors do. All four gospels are formally anonymous. Mark doesn't say, I, Mark, the translator and assistant of Peter, hearing him preach, wrote this gospel of action. And Matthew doesn't say, I, Mark, the translator and assistant of Peter, hearing him preach, wrote this gospel of action. And Matthew doesn't say, I, a former tax collector, wanted to write sermons of Jesus. Or Luke, the compassionate and detailed evangelist, I want to show stories of Jesus healing people

and talk about Mary's perspective in the birth. None of them do that. None of them actually name themselves. So in that sense, it's not unusual that the author doesn't name himself. But what's odd is with the one exception of when Levi in Mark and Luke and Matthew in the Gospel of Matthew, the publican is called to follow Jesus. You never have Matthew as a character other than being in the apostolic list. And yet I've already mentioned that the author or source of the Gospel of John is a character towards the end. So why is he so hesitant to say who he is? Is it modesty?

What is it? Well, I'm convinced as many scholars are, it's because he doesn't want to distract. For those of us who love Jesus and he's Jesus's best friend, he doesn't want to take any attention away from Jesus. It's about Jesus, not himself. But by preserving his anonymity, it allows readers to see themselves in his experiences. So if it said, John the Beloved was in the arms of Jesus, like, yeah, of course, he's his best friend. John the Apostle stood at the foot of the cross and ran to the tomb. Well, of course he got to get that testimony. He's an apostle. I'm just a professor or I'm just an accountant. That's not me. But by

remaining anonymous, he can be a type for all of the disciples. And as disciples, we should all be beloved of Jesus. So the beloved disciple can be there for all of us. And in my book, I actually lay out some of the other characters who are really significant are also unnamed. The mother of Jesus is never named Mary in this gospel. She's always just the mother of Jesus in chapter two and in chapter 19. Okay, so some other characters, and we won't go into it because we've got to get back to John chapter one.

The suggestion is that the author or source of this gospel maintained himself, did not name himself, and maintained his anonymity so that readers could identify with the experiences he was blessed to have. Now, why do I keep saying source or author? At the end of John chapter 21, there's a clear editorial edition. This is chapter 21, verses 24 and 25. This is after Jesus has told Peter, the risen Lord has told Peter, don't ask about what's happening to the disciple who's followed me, the beloved disciple. You just follow me. Anyway, there's this edition, verses 24 to 25, which most scholars think an editor added

later. This is the disciple which testified of these things and wrote these things. We know his testimony is true. And then goes on to say, if we wrote everything this guy knew about Jesus, the world couldn't hold all the books. So there are two things written in that verse. He testified of these things and he wrote them. So did the beloved disciple, did John share his testimony orally for years, even decades before he wrote anything down. When I was doing a chapter actually on Luke, not on John, for a very symposium volume we had some years ago, Thou Art the Christ. I don't know if you remember this, Hank. It was the year we did

Christology, New Testament Christology, this very symposium. I did the chapter on Luke, and I found a really interesting study that suggested that the author of Luke not only had Matthew and Mark before him, even though the gospel of John hadn't been written yet, he had access to some of the same material as the gospel of John. And why could it not be that Luke heard John testify of things he heard and saw the Savior do? So there's this idea that there was this long oral tradition where the beloved disciple was traveling around sharing his testimony, as of course he would. Now, did he write this gospel? Probably, perhaps, but does that mean that it wasn't later edited?

Now, I've already mentioned that Mark seems to have written the testimony of Peter. That's an example of where we have a testimony of apostle, but we name it by the guy who wrote it down. Maybe here we have the gospel named for the person who bore the testimony, and other people may have written it down and edited it. Most of your listeners don't care about this, but if you get interested in Johannine scholarship and you start reading stuff about the compositional history of John, just know that someone who's spent a good 20 years doing this can read all that stuff, find it interesting, and not be threatened by it.

Let me tell you why I have no problem with compositional history. I've got a great example in the Book of Mormon, Alma 34. It gives a rocking testimony about the infinite and eternal atonement. And Alma at some point wrote it in his missionary journal, or he wrote it down in his record. And later Mormon abridges that and puts that in the plates of Mormon. And Joseph Smith later translates that. I have no problem with compositional history. With some of this stuff being sermons or teaching that was verbal and someone else writes it down and someone else abridges it and then someone else translates it. Just know that I have a firm testimony that the person who

is the source of this material, and whom I believe wrote it down, at least the early versions of it, knew Jesus, saw and heard the things. So the next question is, after we establish that the source and or author of this text was a witness, an eyewitness, and an earwitness, is who was his original audience. We may be oversimplified, but it's useful for students. We say that Mark's writing for the early saints in Rome where Peter had been preaching. And we talk about Matthew writing for Jewish Christians and perhaps other Jews. And we talk about Luke writing for a Gentile audience. And we often say that John was writing for members of the church. And that could very well be true. There are some passages I won't go into here where we don't know if he's talking about

people who are going to begin to believe or people who already believe. I actually think John's writing for both. He's writing for members to deepen their faith. But I am of the firm conviction. This was also a great missionary tool that he wrote for people who didn't know Jesus. And all you have to do is watch the Super Bowl and see some evangelical Christian friend of ours with John 3, 16, 17 on his forehead to know that this is a missionary track. I think it's like the Book of Mormon. Yeah, the Book of Mormon is written for us, but it's written for

everybody. It is written for Lamanites who get it, Jews who get it, us, etc. The initial audience, I do believe, was a group of early Christians, maybe in the circle around John, whom he wanted to deepen their faith and help understand Jesus better. But it very quickly was used for Jews and Gentiles to come to acknowledge that Jesus was the Christ. And then, of course, in this day and age, people read it. And in fact, I think the theme or the purpose of this text is found at the end of John chapter 20, which I think was the end of the book before chapter 21 was added, where it says in verses 30 and 31, many other signs truly did Jesus do in the presence of his disciples, which are not

written in this book. But these are written that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you might have life through his name. Anyone who reads this book at any point is the intended audience of this text. That's great. The last thing I'd like to say is by way of introduction before we get to John chapter one, now that we know a little bit about the source and the author and we know who we are as the audience, what is this book's structure? How is it set up? Because I think it's really important when we're trying to understand the gospel to understand how the pieces fit together. And that's why my particular take on John chapter 1 is so important.

How does it fit as the prologue of the whole book? So John chapter 1, in my argument, is the prologue with the two themes, the divinity of Jesus Christ in John 1, 1 through 18, and this theme of discipleship in 1, 19 through 51. And then we have a section, John 2 through 11, which is called the book of signs by a lot of scholars. There are only seven clear miracles in the first half of the book of John, unlike that 19 in Mark and the 21 in Matthew and Luke. And whereas, John, you know this from my

little book on the miracles of Jesus, the common word for miracles in the Synoptic Gospels is dunamis, our word dynamite comes from that, powerful deeds. But in John, they're always called semea, which means signs. In my translation, I usually render it as miraculous signs, but we know they're miracles. But it's not so much the great deed that Jesus does for someone or a group of people. The miracles are primarily for the audience, the readers in the Gospel of John to know more about Jesus. What do they reveal about Jesus? So you've got these seven miraculous signs, changing water to wine, and then you have healing the nobleman's son and the man at the pool of Bethesda, and then you have walking in water and feeding the 7,000, then you have healing the man

born blind and the raising of Lazarus. So chapters 2 through 11 are the book of signs. Then chapters 12 through 20, second half of the gospel, is what I like to call the book of glory. I borrowed that from a great Johannine scholar, Raymond Brown. He was the president of the Society of Biblical Literature, great scholar, but he was also an ordained Roman Catholic priest. So he was what we would call in our church a disciple scholar, a believing scholar. He called it the book of glory because a lot of times Jesus will start saying, my glory is I'm going to be lifted up and I'm going to glorify the father and the father will glorify me. And I think Latter-day Saints should embrace that title, the book of glory, because we know from Moses 139, this is my work and my glory to bring to pass the immortality,

internal life of man. And that's what chapters 12 to 20 are all about. And then chapter 21 is the epilogue. Added later, it appears this post-resurrection appearance on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, where I would say the theme of discipleship in the second half of chapter one is reprised as he appears to seven disciples by the Sea of Galilee and then has that personal encounter and dialogue with Simon Peter and that final fate and testimony of the beloved disciple in verses 20 through 25. So if you kind of have that structure in mind as you're reading

individual chapters, you can see how it fits into the whole purpose of the gospel. I love big picture before we get close up. How do you want to approach as we begin these first verses in the book of John? Well, one of the things I'd like to point out, and John's not unique in this, but because of my work in John, I see it here a lot more. The gospel of John very consciously echoes the book of Genesis. So there's a lot of what we call intertextuality. So beginning of Genesis, Bereshit. So in the beginning, God said, let there be light. So we have here, in the beginning was the word, and in the Greek, I just have this handy, and our Heinho Logos, in the beginning

was the word. So God spoke in Genesis 1, and how is he speaking in John 1? Well, he's speaking through his son, Jesus. So we have the same kind of thing. So we had the original creation in Genesis 1, and even though this is talking about the original creation, because this is the New Testament, what we're going to see is that Jesus has come to work a new creation. So you've got this kind of interesting thing going on. Now, when we say in the beginning, is that Jesus has come to work a new creation. So you've got this kind of interesting thing going on. Now, when we say in the beginning was the word, energein hologos,

or logos, depending on how you want to pronounce that, classicist argue about it. The term for word, logos, if you look it up in a big dictionary, big Greek lexicon, it will go several pages. It means all kinds of things. So it can mean a word that we speak or a word that we write or a word that we read, but it can also mean a thought, an idea, a principle. So it has what we call a broad

semantic range. And someone reading this Greek would have known that. But the most important thing is, once again, keen back to Genesis 1.1, in the beginning, God said, God is speaking to us now through his son. And this is where we get the idea, and we know this very well in the church, the restoration through the temple and other senses, that God the Father works through his son, Jesus Christ. One of the things that Aristotle said distinguished humans from other animals, the rest of the animal creation, was logos or logos. And so what Aristotle would say is we have a logos, a thought, an idea, concept in our head, and a word, whether we speak it or write it, is how we

communicate that to someone else. And then so someone else reads or hears our words and then translates those into thoughts in her own head. Word is the intermediary. Well, suddenly you see how this works. You have God, the Father, and you have us. And how is God communicating, interacting, affecting things? It is through this word that is with him at the beginning. And in Greek, it says, kaiho logos empros tontheon. So in our English, it says the word was with God. Here, it's actually kind of at God's side is one way of rendering it. So they're there together. And then, as we've already mentioned, and the word was God. So he was divine from the beginning. The same was in the beginning with God. All things

were made by him and without him was not anything made that was made. So once again, this is providing actually, if you go to the beginning of the book of Hebrews and some other texts, scriptural validation for what we know liturgically through the temple that God creates through his son. Now in him was life and life was the light of men. One of the things you have to understand in John is that things are always conceptual. We mentioned earlier, it's very symbolic. So when you say life, you think of biological functioning and you think of light, you think of electromagnetic illumination, but in John, it's always more than that. So it's not just biological life. It's life in a spiritual

sense. It's not just light from the sun or from electric lamp. It is illumination. The word is much more than what we experience in this physical sphere. And the light shineth in the darkness, and the darkness comprehendeth it not. Now, in Greek, when it says the darkness did not comprehend it, the word is actually kaihe skotia auto u katelaben. Kata lambano means literally to take down. Lambano means to take something. Kata is the adverbial prefix, like sacking a quarterback. Now, it can mean to hold something in your mind and hence understand it,

which is what our English word comprehend usually means. But the King James translators, it meant something more than that. The darkness not only did not understand the light, it wasn't able to sack the quarterback. It wasn't able to take him down. It wasn't able to restrain him. I like that. Please join us for part two of this podcast.