Why is the Book of John so different in style and substance?

Question

than the synoptic gospels of Mathew, Mark, and Luke?

The focus on the synoptics seems to be on the kingdom of God, of loving your enemies and connecting with God.

John contains many more "I" speeches and much negative talk about the "Jews" . Plus, there are in no infancy narratives, no sermon on the mount, and no Lord's prayer.

I am not attacking The Bible (I am a Christian). Just interested in what many of you think/believe about these key differences.

Peace.

Answer 1

I think it's because John was the last gospel to be written. John had probably read the others, and decided he wanted to write one that had special things he remembered about Jesus, but that the others hadn't included in theirs. Remember, John was very close to Jesus and Jesus told him things that he hadn't told the others, also. So John focused on the things he remembered best, that had been the most meaningful to him, and didn't try to cover everything, because that had already been done.
Just my personal opinion : )
Also, as he states at the end, he wanted to focus on Jesus being the Son of God.
Concerning "negative talk" about the Jews, you must be careful because some have used passages from the book to accuse Christians of being anti-semitic. Realize that John was Jewish and writing from that perspective. However, he seems to use "Jews" as a term to refer to the leaders of the Jews. As you know, even today in the United States people will say, "the Americans" did this or that, like "the Americans killed the Indians and took their land" or "the Americans had to fight a war to end slavery", even though these statements are being made by Americans to Americans. So are these statements anti-American? No, it is understood that they refer to a select group of Americans, although their actions had reverberations for the whole country. It seems to me that this was how John sometimes used the term the "Jews". (Another theory is that he was distinguishing leaders of Judea from the Galileans, but I'm not so sure about that one.)
John is my favorite gospel because it is the one which records some things that were closest to Jesus' heart, and things Jesus said about being intimately close with God. John 17:3 is probably my favorite Bible verse.
God bless!

Answer 2

Good question. The answer is because John wrote his version of the life of Christ so much later that the first three. His purpose was to prove that Jesus was God, He was the living Word... the One who came to bring light to a dark world. John lived long enough to see the whole picture. He saw the rejection of the Jews to their messiah and hoped to sway some with his book. I John also serves to add to this. Most of the gospels excude some parts of the story. Each include those parts that were important to the writer. It does not mean that those parts did not happen. It is significant that John speaks with such detail, even many years after the events and yet his version is so accurate and in agreement with the others gospels. He was the youngest of the disciples and he lived the longest. He saw more than any of them. His message is very important for the furtherance of the growth of the church... He was also fighting against some gnostic doctrine that was beginning to infiltrate the early church. He confirms that later in Revelations which he also wrote.

Answer 3

It is believed that the first three synoptic gospels have the same original source called Proto-Mark or "Q" (and yes that is where Star Trek gets Q from). They are all apparently based on both eyewitness accounts (In the case of Mark and Matthew) and "interviews" with Peter.

John is written from a different prospective and at a later date from a different source material. It is also written very much as an effort to "establish" the divinity of Christ and to show those Jews who were still following John the Baptist that the Baptist had clearly marked Jesus as the Messiah.

Answer 4

The main reason the gospel of St. John is so different from the others, is the Blessed Virgin Mary.

The Blessed Virgin was entrusted to his care, and who better to learn from than the mother of Jesus, who also happened to be closer to the Holy Spirit than anyone else who ever llived, except for her divine son.

Mary was perfectly capable of filling in any details that St. John didn't know or fully appreciate about Jesus' divinity.

This, plus the fact that Jesus likely never left either Mary or John truly alone. Odds are, the Book of Revelation wasn't the only time the risen Jesus appeared to St. John.

Why do you think John said that there was so much more stuff he could have written about Jesus, that it would have filled up all the books in the whole world?

Answer 5

John's gospel is about the nature of Jesus.
Jesus was of God and part of God. Jesus was the Word of God. He states this in the first verse. This verse also shows his entrance point or the view he will use to describe Jesus.
This is why it is different in substance. Style is different because of who John was as a man. Although all scriptures are inspired by God each writer's style is part of it.
John talked strongly against the people that murdered Jesus. This is true and he also states how strongly Jesus fought against the man made doctrine of the different sects.
Many people state that John is saying Jesus is God through what he wrote but I think that John is describing the divine nature more than calling Jesus God.

Answer 6

The Gospel of John is a persuasive argument for the deity of Jesus Christ. As such it focuses on presenting Jesus as the Word, that is, God who became a man. This is why John meticulously records the statements and describes the miracles of Jesus that can only be attributed to God Himself. It does not focus so much on recording Jesus's every movement but on emphasizing his deity, very God and yet very man etc.

Answer 7

John wrote this gospel to meet the spiritual need of a church that had little background in the OT and that may have been endangered by the plausible contention of Cerinthus or men like him. John's intention is stated with perfect clarity: "These [signs] are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name" (20:31). The total thesis of the gospel is belief in the Son who came from the Father.
The gospel gives an initial impression of discontinuity. Many of its episodes have little direct chronological or logical connection with one another. Nevertheless, they show a remarkable unity built on the one purpose of convincing the reader that Jesus was supernatural in his origin, powers, and goal. He was the Logos who had come into the world from another sphere (1:14). He performed miracles, or "signs," that illustrated his many-faceted powers, especially applied to human need. He died an unusual death, but he rose from the dead to send his disciples out on a universal mission. The last sentences of the gospel imply the promise of his return. An entirely new revelation of the plan and power of God is latent in this gospel (1:18).

John is the book of Love it covers approximately twenty days in the life of Christ.

Answer 8

The Gospel of John, as I see it, is a work of pure genius. I understand that John was not so literate, but he was the disciple that Jesus loved.

John wrote, as I understand it, revealing Jesus as God. I believe it when I read it that he set out to show that fact. Also, I understand that John did not copy from Mark, as I understand that the current mainstream theologians have thought since the 19th century.

I am really glad that John's Gospel is around today.

Answer 9

I just studied the book of John in Community Bible Study. It was extremely enlightening.

John was primarily concerned with proving the divinity of Christ; as you've observed, he recorded all the I AM statements of Christ. And he starts the book off by establishing the divinity of Christ: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." It's the main goal of most of the first chapter.

Perhaps John felt a burden for his own people, the Jewish people, who were by and large rejecting Messiah. Perhaps this was his way of trying to show them the error of their ways, by pointing out the hypocrisy and legalism of the Jewish leadership and showing the shining evidence of Christ's divinity.

The book was apparently written late in John's life, but far from having faded the details from his mind, time had given him the opportunity to examine the things he had seen and heard with Jesus and to understand their spiritual significance. He had the hindsight to see the significance of what seemed like insignificant episodes at the time, and recognize the relevance of small details.

John is a great book to study when trying to determine who and what Christ was and claimed to be.

Blessings.

Answer 10

Because it was written by a true apostle (John) as opposed to Paul of Tarsus and his henchman.

Jesus founded the Nazarenes, also known as the gnostics.
See:
http://one-faith-of-god.org/new_testament/apocrypha/nazarenes/nazarenes_0010.htm

However, Paul of Tarsus and the High Priests who had Jesus crucified created christianity as a parasite to destroy the true message of Jesus.

http://one-faith-of-god.org/new_testament/apocrypha/founders_christianity/founders_christianity_0010.htm

John survived because he made effectively a pact with Paul and his followers. He would write in support of their fictions.

But what he did not tell them was that he included throughout his texts (Revelation and Gospel) countless clues as to the truth.

Lazarus, for example is an aramaic anagram Su Razal meaning "Good" or Holy man, an obvious reference to Jesus which reveals he survived the crucifiction and that people eventually killed him to keep the myth alive. An extraordinary clue to survive in Paul's own gospels all this time.

666 in revelation is another clue- 666 years between the destruction of the Temple of Solomon and the Temple of Herod- begging the question who was the rebel leader Simon (Peter) the Zealot?