Gospel of John - History

History

John was written somewhere near the end of the 1st century, probably in Ephesus, in Roman Asia. The tradition of John the Apostle was strong in Asia, and Polycarp of Smyrna reportedly knew him. Like the previous gospels, it circulated separately until Irenaeus proclaimed all four gospels to be scripture.

Although the Church Fathers Polycarp and Ignatius of Antioch did not mention this gospel, it is thought that its ideas are reflected in their writings. The gospel appears to have been familiar to Papias of Hierapolis, and was used by other early Christians, including the author of the Muratorian Canon, the Christians of Vienna and Lugdunum, Theophilus of Antioch, Tatian and Justin Martyr.

, , , are early papyri of the Gospel of John.

In the 2nd century, the two main, conflicting expressions of Christology were John's Logos theology, according to which Jesus was the incarnation of God's eternal Word, and adoptionism, according to which Jesus was "adopted" as God's Son. Christians who rejected Logos Christology were called "Alogi," and Logos Christology won out over adoptionism.

The Gospel of John was the favorite gospel of Valentinus, a 2nd-century Gnostic leader. His student Heracleon wrote a commentary on the gospel, the first gospel commentary in Christian history.

In the Diatesseron, the content of John was merged with the content of the synoptics to form a single gospel that included nearly all the material in the four canonical gospels.

When Irenaeus proposed that all Christians accept Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John as orthodox, and only those four gospels, he regarded John as the primary gospel, due to its high Christology.

Jerome translated John into its official Latin form, replacing various older translations.

Although harmonious with the Synoptic Gospels and probably primitive (the Didascalia Apostolorum definitely refers to it and it was probably known to Papias), the Pericope Adulterae is not part of the original text of the Gospel of John.