![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.bartehrman.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/Joshua-Schachterle-Bart-Ehrman-Author-1-1.png\" "\\"Joshua")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Written by Joshua Schachterle, Ph.D<\/a><\/p>\n Author | \u00a0Professor | Scholar<\/p>\n Author | \u00a0Professor | BE Contributor<\/p>\n Verified! \u00a0See our editorial guidelines<\/a><\/p>\n Verified! \u00a0See our guidelines<\/a><\/p>\n\nDate written: April 30th, 2026\n\nDate written: April 30th, 2026\n Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily match my own. – Dr. Bart D. Ehrman<\/p>\n Distinct in style, theology, and tone from the other three Gospels, the Gospel of John presents a portrait of Jesus that is at once intimate and cosmic, grounded in narrative yet soaring in philosophical depth. But behind its poetic language and bold claims lies a fundamental historical question: to whom was the Gospel of John written?<\/strong><\/p>\n Exploring this question can shed light on the origins of the Gospel of John<\/a>. It can also deepen our understanding of early Christianity itself\u2014a movement far more complex, contested, and dynamic than it is often assumed to be.<\/p>\n \n While the name John has been assigned to this Gospel since at least the 2nd century CE, our oldest manuscripts of it, like those of the other three Gospels, have no such title or authorial ascription. In fact, it was written anonymously, leaving us to decipher textual clues about who wrote the book and with what purpose. Because of this, biblical scholars over the last couple of centuries have formulated theories about who the anonymous author of the Gospel of John was and to whom it was written.<\/p>\n As Bart Ehrman<\/a> points out, the first Christian author we see attributing this Gospel to the disciple known as John, the son of Zebedee, is Irenaeus, a bishop and heresy hunter who wrote around 185 CE. Unfortunately, that\u2019s almost a century after the Gospel was written, so it\u2019s hard to know the accuracy of such a designation. Ehrman goes on to mention how ancient readers arrived at the conclusion that John had written this book.<\/p>\n John 19:35 and 21:20\u201324 seem to say that the author was one of the 12 disciples, the unnamed \u201cone whom Jesus loved.\u201d<\/strong> Based on that assumption, Ehrman writes, ancient readers had to decide which of the disciples this author could be:<\/p>\n That would make him one of the twelve disciples, and almost certainly one of the inner circle. In the other Gospels, there were three of them: Peter, James, and John (the latter two are brothers, the sons of Zebedee). So the Beloved Disciple (BD, as I\u2019ll call him) must be one of those\u2026 It could not be Peter, because elsewhere in the Gospel, Peter and the BD are clearly and definitively distinguished from each other. Moreover, it could not be James. That\u2019s because James was martyred relatively early in the history of the church (thus Acts 12:1\u20132) and the fourth Gospel was always thought to have been the last one written\u2026<\/p>\n The only choice left, then, was John, the son of Zebedee. While there are many good reasons to doubt this conclusion from a historical perspective, it seems to have been the thought process by which ancient Christians came to believe in John as the book\u2019s author. But whether John or someone else wrote this Gospel, what clues can we find in the text itself to identify its intended audience and purpose?<\/p>\n It\u2019s fairly certain that the Gospel of John<\/a> was written with a specific audience in mind. Since John is so different from the other Gospels, most scholars believe that it is addressing a specific Christian group and their sociohistorical situation. In fact, there\u2019s a clear statement of purpose near the end of the Gospel in 20:30\u201331:<\/p>\n Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples that are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may continue to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.<\/strong><\/p>\n The \u201cyou\u201d in this passage is the second person plural in Greek, addressing a group. This group, whoever they were, apparently saw belief in Jesus as both transformative and life-giving. Or perhaps the author wanted the group to believe this and wrote in order to convince them.<\/p>\n In attempting to identify John\u2019s audience, the first question modern scholars of the 19th and early 20th centuries had to address was whether the Gospel of John was written in order to convert non-Christians or for the edification or education of an already-established group of Christians. Was it for insiders or outsiders? While early theorists believed it was written as a missionary text to convert non-Christians, by the second half of the 20th century, the scholarly consensus had determined that it was written for insiders. But who were these specific Christians?<\/p>\n One idea, represented well by the book History and Theology in the Fourth Gospel<\/a> by J. Louis Martyn, said that they were a group of Jewish Christians who had been expelled from the synagogues for their belief in Jesus as the Messiah. Where did this notion come from? In John 16:2\u20133, Jesus warns his disciples of what will happen to them in the future:<\/p>\n (Affiliate Disclaimer: We may earn commissions on products you purchase through this page at no additional cost to you. Thank you for supporting our site!<\/em>)<\/p>\n They will put you out of the synagogues. Indeed, an hour is coming when those who kill you will think that by doing so they are offering worship to God. And they will do this because they have not known the Father or me.<\/p>\n Many scholars thus concluded that the author was part of a community to which he was writing, a Johannine community, as scholars called it, which was rejected by Jewish leaders and was being persecuted by more mainstream forms of Judaism in the late 1st or early 2nd century. The purpose of the book, then, as well as the letters of 1, 2, and 3 John, was to encourage this community of believers not to despair and to maintain their Christian faith until the end despite persecution to attain eternal life.<\/p>\n DID PAUL AND JESUS HAVE THE SAME RELIGION?<\/p>\n Jesus taught a message of repentance to prepare for the Kingdom of God while Paul taught faith in Jesus. \u00a0Did they agree?\u00a0 Should they be considered the \u201cco-founders\u201d of Christianity?<\/p>\n __CONFIG_colors_palette__{“active_palette”:0,”config”:{“colors”:{“62516”:{“name”:”Main Accent”,”parent”:-1}},”gradients”:[]},”palettes”:[{“name”:”Default Palette”,”value”:{“colors”:{“62516”:{“val”:”rgb(255, 133, 34)”,”hsl”:{“h”:26,”s”:0.99,”l”:0.5667}}},”gradients”:[]}}]}__CONFIG_colors_palette__ LEARN MORE<\/strong> <\/a> In 1979, scholar Raymond Brown wrote a book called The Community of the Beloved Disciple<\/a>. In it, Brown argued that the story of Jesus\u2019 meeting with the Samaritan woman in John 4 indicated that the Johannine community included Samaritan members. He furthermore claimed that the encounter with Greeks who wish to follow Jesus in John 12:20\u201326 and the reference Jesus makes to \u201cother sheep\u201d in John 10:16 (possibly referring to future Gentile followers) mean that the group contained Gentile members as well. In other words, this was not a Jewish-only group as had been assumed.<\/p>\n While agreeing with Brown\u2019s thesis about the presence of Samaritans and Gentiles in the group, Adele Reinhartz, writing in Paul, John, and Apocalyptic Eschatology<\/a>, believes that the occasion of the Gospel was less about external persecution and more about infighting. Thus, she argues that while all the members believed in Christ,<\/p>\n Those who were Jewish believed that they and their ancestors had long enjoyed an exclusive covenantal relationship with God to which Samaritans and Gentiles did not have access. The Samaritan members also believed in one God, but they had their own distinctive texts, sacred sites, and ritual practices. The Gentile participants did not feel constrained to believe in only one God, but in practice gravitated toward the mystery cults dedicated to the worship of or union with an individual divine figure and perhaps also towards Judaism itself and its monotheistic beliefs and practices.<\/p>\n In other words, Reinhartz believes that the author of John wrote his Gospel to foster unity in a diverse group in which disagreements were frequent<\/strong>. Part of fostering this unity was distancing themselves from \u201cthe Jews,\u201d who frequently play the villains in John\u2019s Gospel. Reinhartz points out that while John refers to many binaries\u2014 light\/dark, life\/death, above\/below\u2014 the positive term in each pair is associated with Jesus while the negative is associated with Jesus\u2019 opponents, framed by the author as \u201cthe Jews.\u201d This created a rhetorical situation in which one can either be on the side of Jesus or on the side of the Jews, but not both. Even Jewish members, whom Reinhartz believes were the majority of group members, had to make their allegiances clear.<\/p>\n While the theories I\u2019ve discussed so far have focused on the composition and social situation of a Johannine group, a more recent work argues that such a group may have been entirely fictional<\/strong>. In his article \u201cDid the Johannine Community Exist?,\u201d<\/a> and in his book The Gospel of John: A New History<\/a>, Hugo M\u00e9ndez argues that the combination of the Gospel of John with the three Johannine letters in the New Testament created the idea of a group which was entirely imaginary.<\/p>\n His theory begins with the notion that the supposed eyewitness who is claimed as the source of the Gospel (John 21:24) is likely a useful fiction, which might explain why this \u201cbeloved disciple\u201d is never named:<\/p>\n The text casts the eyewitness as Jesus\u2019 most intimate disciple \u2013 a figure moving in his inner circle and outranking even Peter in access to him (Jn 13.23\u201324). And yet, the identity of this figure is unknown, concealed under \u2018studied anonymity\u2019 (Attridge 2003: 79). All efforts to identify him with a known disciple of Jesus result in \u2018a dead end\u2019; the text \u2018systematically defeats any attempt to identify who that witness was\u2019 (Attridge 2003: 78).<\/p>\n If this eyewitness were in fact one of the original 12 disciples, why not name him? In fact, M\u00e9ndez points out that ancient pseudepigrapha, literature written in someone else\u2019s name, usually increased credibility by claiming an ideal eyewitness as source or author. This lends credence to the idea that this Beloved Disciple and his group may not have actually existed. However, if there were no Johannine community, who was the intended audience of the Gospel of John?<\/p>\n M\u00e9ndez believes that the book and its ideas were the work of a single author, putting out an extraordinary claim not found in the Synoptic Gospels:<\/strong><\/p>\n He wrote to advance the idea that \u2018eternal life\u2019 \u2013 a state linked to the \u2018age to come\u2019 in the Synoptics (Mk 10.30; Mt. 25.46; Lk. 18.30) \u2013 is available \u2018now\u2019 to those who believe (20.31). He characterizes the transition to this \u2018eternal life\u2019 as a spiritual resurrection (5.24-25). Notions of a spiritual resurrection appear in two Pauline pseudepigrapha (Col. 3.1-3; Eph. 2.1-7) but are condemned in other works (2 Tim. 2.17-18; possibly 1 Cor. 15.12), suggesting their controversial character. To lend his views greater credibility, our author adopted a strategy familiar from the Gospels of Thomas<\/a> and Mary: he constructed a narrative in which Jesus himself articulates his views.<\/p>\n M\u00e9ndez goes on to theorize that the author, while he may have been attached to a local congregation somewhere, may not have written the book for them but rather in order to disseminate his own ideas more widely, perhaps depositing the book into a local library or a literary collection. Furthermore,<\/p>\n To extend his text\u2019s reach, our author positioned it as the memoir of an unknown disciple of Jesus\u2026 His strategy succeeded. The text was shared widely and repeatedly copied, amplifying its authority. Though it met resistance in some quarters, it carved out a dedicated readership beside Mark and other gospels. Those communities that accepted the text accepted its authorial claims as a matter of course, embracing its enigmatic implied author as a historical figure \u2013 as much the object of speculation as of reverence.<\/p>\n In other words, perhaps the Gospel of John was not written to an already existing community, but to create a community of people who agreed with the author\u2019s unusual perspective on Jesus.<\/p>\n It has long been noted that the Gospel of John differs from the Synoptics in a number of ways. Rather than focusing almost entirely on the Kingdom of God, the Jesus of John\u2019s Gospel focuses more on his own identity as a celestial man and Messiah. In addition, its miracle stories are designated explicitly as \u201csigns\u201d of Jesus\u2019 identity, and its structure and timeline are distinct from the other three Gospels. Noting these differences, we must ask to whom the Gospel of John was written.<\/p>\n While the earliest modern theories argued that the book was a tool used for evangelizing to non-Christians, more recent scholars claim that it was written instead for a group of insiders, a Johannine community. Early ideas about this community said they were Jewish Christians who had been expelled from synagogues because of their belief in Jesus as the Messiah. However, some later scholars have speculated that the community was made up of Jews, Samaritans, and Gentiles, and that internecine fighting between these groups inspired the author of John to write a unifying narrative.<\/p>\n The most radical notion of all, though, comes from recent work by Hugo M\u00e9ndez, who argues that there was no such Johannine group. Instead, he theorizes that the shadowy nature of the unknown \u201cbeloved disciple\u201d who is supposed to be the author and\/or source of the book was an invented character used to propagate the radical spiritual views of a single author. This author was ultimately able to popularize his views, which resulted in widespread copying and use of the text. There was no Johannine community, in other words, until the Gospel of John created it.<\/p>\n NOW AVAILABLE!<\/p>\n In The Beginning\u2122 – History, Legend, & Myth in Genesis<\/b><\/strong><\/p>\n In Part One of Bart’s new “How Scholars Read the Bible” Series, dive into the stories of the first book of the Bible from a historical perspective.<\/p>\n __CONFIG_colors_palette__{“active_palette”:0,”config”:{“colors”:{“62516”:{“name”:”Main Accent”,”parent”:-1}},”gradients”:[]},”palettes”:[{“name”:”Default Palette”,”value”:{“colors”:{“62516”:{“val”:”rgb(255, 133, 34)”,”hsl”:{“h”:26,”s”:0.99,”l”:0.5667}}},”gradients”:[]}}]}__CONFIG_colors_palette__ LEARN MORE<\/strong> <\/a> To Whom Was the Gospel of John Written? Written by Joshua Schachterle, Ph.D Author | \u00a0Professor | Scholar Author | \u00a0Professor | BE Contributor Verified! \u00a0See our editorial guidelines Verified! \u00a0See our guidelines Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily match my own. – Dr. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":24949,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","tve_updated_post":" Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily match my own. - Dr. Bart D. Ehrman<\/p><\/div> Distinct in style, theology, and tone from the other three Gospels, the Gospel of John presents a portrait of Jesus that is at once intimate and cosmic, grounded in narrative yet soaring in philosophical depth. But behind its poetic language and bold claims lies a fundamental historical question: to whom was the Gospel of John written?<\/strong><\/p> Exploring this question can shed light on the origins of the Gospel of John<\/a>. It can also deepen our understanding of early Christianity itself\u2014a movement far more complex, contested, and dynamic than it is often assumed to be.<\/p> <\/strong><\/p><\/div> While the name John has been assigned to this Gospel since at least the 2nd century CE, our oldest manuscripts of it, like those of the other three Gospels, have no such title or authorial ascription. In fact, it was written anonymously, leaving us to decipher textual clues about who wrote the book and with what purpose. Because of this, biblical scholars over the last couple of centuries have formulated theories about who the anonymous author of the Gospel of John was and to whom it was written.<\/p> As Bart Ehrman<\/a> points out, the first Christian author we see attributing this Gospel to the disciple known as John, the son of Zebedee, is Irenaeus, a bishop and heresy hunter who wrote around 185 CE. Unfortunately, that\u2019s almost a century after the Gospel was written, so it\u2019s hard to know the accuracy of such a designation. Ehrman goes on to mention how ancient readers arrived at the conclusion that John had written this book.<\/p> John 19:35 and 21:20\u201324 seem to say that the author was one of the 12 disciples, the unnamed \u201cone whom Jesus loved.\u201d<\/strong> Based on that assumption, Ehrman writes, ancient readers had to decide which of the disciples this author could be:<\/p><\/div> That would make him one of the twelve disciples, and almost certainly one of the inner circle. In the other Gospels, there were three of them: Peter, James, and John (the latter two are brothers, the sons of Zebedee). So the Beloved Disciple (BD, as I\u2019ll call him) must be one of those\u2026 It could not be Peter, because elsewhere in the Gospel, Peter and the BD are clearly and definitively distinguished from each other. Moreover, it could not be James. That\u2019s because James was martyred relatively early in the history of the church (thus Acts 12:1\u20132) and the fourth Gospel was always thought to have been the last one written\u2026<\/p><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div> The only choice left, then, was John, the son of Zebedee. While there are many good reasons to doubt this conclusion from a historical perspective, it seems to have been the thought process by which ancient Christians came to believe in John as the book\u2019s author. But whether John or someone else wrote this Gospel, what clues can we find in the text itself to identify its intended audience and purpose?<\/p><\/div> It\u2019s fairly certain that the Gospel of John<\/a> was written with a specific audience in mind. Since John is so different from the other Gospels, most scholars believe that it is addressing a specific Christian group and their sociohistorical situation. In fact, there\u2019s a clear statement of purpose near the end of the Gospel in 20:30\u201331:<\/p><\/div> Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples that are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may continue to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.<\/strong><\/p><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div> The \u201cyou\u201d in this passage is the second person plural in Greek, addressing a group. This group, whoever they were, apparently saw belief in Jesus as both transformative and life-giving. Or perhaps the author wanted the group to believe this and wrote in order to convince them.<\/p> In attempting to identify John\u2019s audience, the first question modern scholars of the 19th and early 20th centuries had to address was whether the Gospel of John was written in order to convert non-Christians or for the edification or education of an already-established group of Christians. Was it for insiders or outsiders? While early theorists believed it was written as a missionary text to convert non-Christians, by the second half of the 20th century, the scholarly consensus had determined that it was written for insiders. But who were these specific Christians?<\/p> One idea, represented well by the book History and Theology in the Fourth Gospel<\/a> by J. Louis Martyn, said that they were a group of Jewish Christians who had been expelled from the synagogues for their belief in Jesus as the Messiah. Where did this notion come from? In John 16:2\u20133, Jesus warns his disciples of what will happen to them in the future:<\/p><\/div> (Affiliate Disclaimer: We may earn commissions on products you purchase through this page at no additional cost to you. Thank you for supporting our site!<\/em>)<\/p><\/div> They will put you out of the synagogues. Indeed, an hour is coming when those who kill you will think that by doing so they are offering worship to God. And they will do this because they have not known the Father or me.<\/p><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div> Many scholars thus concluded that the author was part of a community to which he was writing, a Johannine community, as scholars called it, which was rejected by Jewish leaders and was being persecuted by more mainstream forms of Judaism in the late 1st or early 2nd century. The purpose of the book, then, as well as the letters of 1, 2, and 3 John, was to encourage this community of believers not to despair and to maintain their Christian faith until the end despite persecution to attain eternal life.<\/p><\/div> In 1979, scholar Raymond Brown wrote a book called The Community of the Beloved Disciple<\/a>. In it, Brown argued that the story of Jesus\u2019 meeting with the Samaritan woman in John 4 indicated that the Johannine community included Samaritan members. He furthermore claimed that the encounter with Greeks who wish to follow Jesus in John 12:20\u201326 and the reference Jesus makes to \u201cother sheep\u201d in John 10:16 (possibly referring to future Gentile followers) mean that the group contained Gentile members as well. In other words, this was not a Jewish-only group as had been assumed.<\/p> While agreeing with Brown\u2019s thesis about the presence of Samaritans and Gentiles in the group, Adele Reinhartz, writing in Paul, John, and Apocalyptic Eschatology<\/a>, believes that the occasion of the Gospel was less about external persecution and more about infighting. Thus, she argues that while all the members believed in Christ,<\/p><\/div> Those who were Jewish believed that they and their ancestors had long enjoyed an exclusive covenantal relationship with God to which Samaritans and Gentiles did not have access. The Samaritan members also believed in one God, but they had their own distinctive texts, sacred sites, and ritual practices. The Gentile participants did not feel constrained to believe in only one God, but in practice gravitated toward the mystery cults dedicated to the worship of or union with an individual divine figure and perhaps also towards Judaism itself and its monotheistic beliefs and practices.<\/p><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div> In other words, Reinhartz believes that the author of John wrote his Gospel to foster unity in a diverse group in which disagreements were frequent<\/strong>. Part of fostering this unity was distancing themselves from \u201cthe Jews,\u201d who frequently play the villains in John\u2019s Gospel. Reinhartz points out that while John refers to many binaries\u2014 light\/dark, life\/death, above\/below\u2014 the positive term in each pair is associated with Jesus while the negative is associated with Jesus\u2019 opponents, framed by the author as \u201cthe Jews.\u201d This created a rhetorical situation in which one can either be on the side of Jesus or on the side of the Jews, but not both. Even Jewish members, whom Reinhartz believes were the majority of group members, had to make their allegiances clear.<\/p><\/div> While the theories I\u2019ve discussed so far have focused on the composition and social situation of a Johannine group, a more recent work argues that such a group may have been entirely fictional<\/strong>. In his article \u201cDid the Johannine Community Exist?,\u201d<\/a> and in his book The Gospel of John: A New History<\/a>, Hugo M\u00e9ndez argues that the combination of the Gospel of John with the three Johannine letters in the New Testament created the idea of a group which was entirely imaginary.<\/p> His theory begins with the notion that the supposed eyewitness who is claimed as the source of the Gospel (John 21:24) is likely a useful fiction, which might explain why this \u201cbeloved disciple\u201d is never named:<\/p><\/div> The text casts the eyewitness as Jesus\u2019 most intimate disciple \u2013 a figure moving in his inner circle and outranking even Peter in access to him (Jn 13.23\u201324). And yet, the identity of this figure is unknown, concealed under \u2018studied anonymity\u2019 (Attridge 2003: 79). All efforts to identify him with a known disciple of Jesus result in \u2018a dead end\u2019; the text \u2018systematically defeats any attempt to identify who that witness was\u2019 (Attridge 2003: 78).<\/p><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div> If this eyewitness were in fact one of the original 12 disciples, why not name him? In fact, M\u00e9ndez points out that ancient pseudepigrapha, literature written in someone else\u2019s name, usually increased credibility by claiming an ideal eyewitness as source or author. This lends credence to the idea that this Beloved Disciple and his group may not have actually existed. However, if there were no Johannine community, who was the intended audience of the Gospel of John?<\/p> M\u00e9ndez believes that the book and its ideas were the work of a single author, putting out an extraordinary claim not found in the Synoptic Gospels:<\/strong><\/p><\/div> He wrote to advance the idea that \u2018eternal life\u2019 \u2013 a state linked to the \u2018age to come\u2019 in the Synoptics (Mk 10.30; Mt. 25.46; Lk. 18.30) \u2013 is available \u2018now\u2019 to those who believe (20.31). He characterizes the transition to this \u2018eternal life\u2019 as a spiritual resurrection (5.24-25). Notions of a spiritual resurrection appear in two Pauline pseudepigrapha (Col. 3.1-3; Eph. 2.1-7) but are condemned in other works (2 Tim. 2.17-18; possibly 1 Cor. 15.12), suggesting their controversial character. To lend his views greater credibility, our author adopted a strategy familiar from the Gospels of Thomas<\/a> and Mary: he constructed a narrative in which Jesus himself articulates his views.<\/p><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div> M\u00e9ndez goes on to theorize that the author, while he may have been attached to a local congregation somewhere, may not have written the book for them but rather in order to disseminate his own ideas more widely, perhaps depositing the book into a local library or a literary collection. Furthermore,<\/p><\/div> To extend his text\u2019s reach, our author positioned it as the memoir of an unknown disciple of Jesus\u2026 His strategy succeeded. The text was shared widely and repeatedly copied, amplifying its authority. Though it met resistance in some quarters, it carved out a dedicated readership beside Mark and other gospels. Those communities that accepted the text accepted its authorial claims as a matter of course, embracing its enigmatic implied author as a historical figure \u2013 as much the object of speculation as of reverence.<\/p><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div> In other words, perhaps the Gospel of John was not written to an already existing community, but to create a community of people who agreed with the author\u2019s unusual perspective on Jesus.<\/p><\/div> It has long been noted that the Gospel of John differs from the Synoptics in a number of ways. Rather than focusing almost entirely on the Kingdom of God, the Jesus of John\u2019s Gospel focuses more on his own identity as a celestial man and Messiah. In addition, its miracle stories are designated explicitly as \u201csigns\u201d of Jesus\u2019 identity, and its structure and timeline are distinct from the other three Gospels. Noting these differences, we must ask to whom the Gospel of John was written.<\/p> While the earliest modern theories argued that the book was a tool used for evangelizing to non-Christians, more recent scholars claim that it was written instead for a group of insiders, a Johannine community. Early ideas about this community said they were Jewish Christians who had been expelled from synagogues because of their belief in Jesus as the Messiah. However, some later scholars have speculated that the community was made up of Jews, Samaritans, and Gentiles, and that internecine fighting between these groups inspired the author of John to write a unifying narrative.<\/p> The most radical notion of all, though, comes from recent work by Hugo M\u00e9ndez, who argues that there was no such Johannine group. Instead, he theorizes that the shadowy nature of the unknown \u201cbeloved disciple\u201d who is supposed to be the author and\/or source of the book was an invented character used to propagate the radical spiritual views of a single author. This author was ultimately able to popularize his views, which resulted in widespread copying and use of the text. There was no Johannine community, in other words, until the Gospel of John created it.<\/p><\/div>![\"to](\"https:\/\/www.bartehrman.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/to-whom-was-the-gospel-of-john-written-1.png\" "\\"to")
<\/p>\nWho Wrote the Gospel of John?<\/h2>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.bartehrman.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/quote-down.png\" "\\"quote")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.bartehrman.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/quote-up.png\" "\\"quote")
<\/p>\nModern Theories on the Intended Audience of the Gospel of John<\/h2>\n
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.bartehrman.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/Jesus-and-Paul-PBS-4x3-1.jpg\" "\\"Jesus")
<\/a><\/p>\nAlternative Theories About the Gospel of John\u2019s Audience<\/h2>\n
<\/p>\nAnother Theory: No Group at All!<\/h2>\n
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n![\"who](\"https:\/\/www.bartehrman.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/who-was-the-gospel-of-john-writing-to.png\" "\\"who")
<\/p>\nConclusion<\/h2>\n
![\"In](\"https:\/\/www.bartehrman.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/In-the-Beginning-Online-Course-by-Dr-Bart-Ehrman-768x576-1.png\" "\\"In")
<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\n\t__CONFIG_colors_palette__{\"active_palette\":0,\"config\":{\"colors\":{\"62516\":{\"name\":\"Main Accent\",\"parent\":-1}},\"gradients\":[]},\"palettes\":[{\"name\":\"Default Palette\",\"value\":{\"colors\":{\"62516\":{\"val\":\"var(--tcb-skin-color-0)\"}},\"gradients\":[]}}]}__CONFIG_colors_palette__<\/div>\n\t\n\t\tBurning Questions<\/span><\/span>\n\t<\/a>\n<\/div><\/div>To Whom Was the Gospel of John Written?<\/h2><\/div>
__CONFIG_post_symbol__{\"id\":\"17826\"}__CONFIG_post_symbol__<\/div><\/div>\t<\/span><\/div>Who Wrote the Gospel of John?<\/h2><\/div>
\n\t<\/div>\n\t\n\t<\/div>\n\t\n\t<\/div>\n\t<\/span><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n\t<\/span><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\tModern Theories on the Intended Audience of the Gospel of John<\/h2><\/div>
\n\t<\/div>\n\t\n\t<\/div>\n\t\n\t<\/div>\n\t<\/span><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n\t<\/span><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\t\t\n\t<\/div>\n\t\n\t<\/div>\n\t\n\t<\/div>\n\t<\/span><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n\t<\/span><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\t__CONFIG_post_symbol__{\"id\":\"10104\"}__CONFIG_post_symbol__<\/div><\/div>Alternative Theories About the Gospel of John\u2019s Audience<\/h2><\/div>
\n\t<\/div>\n\t\n\t<\/div>\n\t\n\t<\/div>\n\t<\/span><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n\t<\/span><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>Another Theory: No Group at All!<\/h2><\/div>
\n\t<\/div>\n\t\n\t<\/div>\n\t\n\t<\/div>\n\t<\/span><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n\t<\/span><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\t\n\t<\/div>\n\t\n\t<\/div>\n\t\n\t<\/div>\n\t<\/span><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n\t<\/span><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n\t\n\t<\/div>\n\t\n\t<\/div>\n\t<\/span><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n\t<\/span><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div><\/span><\/div>Conclusion<\/h2><\/div>
__CONFIG_post_symbol__{\"id\":\"10105\"}__CONFIG_post_symbol__<\/div><\/div>\n