Participants: Deyvy Rodriguez & Jon Paulien
Series Code: JBOTB
Program Code: JBOTB00003A
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00:19 Hello, friends.
00:20 We're so glad that you're able to join us 00:22 in this Bible study, 00:23 in this program "Books of the Book." 00:25 My name is Deyvy Rodriguez 00:27 and we are studying the Gospel of John. 00:29 And with me is Dr. Jon Paulien, 00:32 he is the dean of religion at Loma Linda University. 00:37 Welcome, Dr. Paulien. Thank you. 00:39 It's good to be here with you. All right, good to have you. 00:43 You know, the last program we were talking about 00:45 how Jesus was directing the disciples 00:49 and He said to them, 00:50 "I am the vine, you are the branches." 00:53 And earlier in another program you said that, 00:56 He referred to the branches as the disciples. 01:00 Now tell us a little more about that. 01:03 Well, I think obviously 01:05 some people might have questions about it. 01:06 So I'm glad you brought that back. 01:09 Because I think even if you look at some commentaries, 01:11 people will say, "I am the vine, you are the branches." 01:15 That's talking to us. 01:16 You know, about our relationship with Jesus. 01:19 And that's what I would call the devotional reading 01:21 and there's nothing wrong with it, 01:23 it's powerful, it's helpful, but it's kind of related 01:26 to what we talked in the first program 01:28 about a Hollywood kind of Jesus where-- 01:30 where all you see about Jesus 01:32 is what make sense to us, you see. 01:35 But if you don't take that story out of its context, 01:40 actually go back into the context 01:42 when Jesus says, "I am the vine, 01:44 you are the branches." He is talking to His disciples. 01:46 They're having a conversation back and forth. 01:49 So the scholarly approach to the book 01:53 is not to undo the devotional approach 01:55 'cause that has its own value, 01:57 but when you see the original context of the story, 02:02 when you read it the way it was written 02:04 and you realized Jesus is saying something to these disciples, 02:09 then you're seeing something bigger, 02:11 something different, something additional. 02:14 John has a story to tell to and we miss it sometimes 02:19 when we read it only in the light 02:21 of the other gospels and read it only devotionally 02:25 and we miss some very powerful things. 02:27 So I was pointing out that in that story of the vine 02:30 and branches was a message to the second generation 02:33 who never had a physical contact with Jesus. 02:36 That if they stayed connected to the disciples, 02:39 they would be the fruit. 02:41 You see, if they stay connected to disciples, 02:43 then they would be connected to Jesus through the disciples. 02:47 So the words of the gospel, 02:49 the words of John are our connection to Jesus 02:53 through the disciple John. 02:54 So it can be viewed both ways that the disciples today 02:59 we are also the branches, right? Yeah. 03:02 You see scholars in the last 50 years 03:04 have more and more started reading these Bible books, 03:07 attempting to understand the original context 03:10 what actually was happening there. 03:12 And in doing that we spot all kinds of things 03:16 that we have missed before 03:17 and things that could give us fresh insights into God, 03:20 fresh insights into Jesus. 03:22 I don't want us to miss those treasures 03:25 by simply saying over and over 03:27 what people have seen through the centuries. 03:29 So if some of our viewers will say, 03:31 "I never heard that before." That's true. 03:33 There was a time in my life I hadn't heard it before either, 03:36 but as you read the gospel in the original language, 03:39 understanding the context in which it was written, 03:42 some things emerged that you would've missed before. 03:45 And John has a lot of depths in this gospel 03:48 that people have missed. Well, you know what? 03:50 Are we studying today in the Gospel of John? 03:54 Well, this is the third of three programs 03:57 where we're looking at the entire gospel, 04:00 and just sort of asking what's special about it, 04:02 what's unique about it, what's different? 04:05 If you were to take the four gospels 04:07 and put them side by side 04:09 and mark everything that's similar, 04:12 the unmark stuff is what's unique to that gospel. 04:17 And trying to understand any of these gospels 04:20 is good to start with that unique stuff, 04:23 and that's what we've been doing here. 04:26 Now who wrote John is a question that comes up. 04:29 It says, "John." Right? 04:32 But that's a title that's on there. 04:35 If you actually read the text, 04:36 it doesn't say who the author is, 04:38 it's kind of anonymous, 04:40 but it does suggests that the very end 04:43 that the author of the gospel was a beloved disciple. 04:48 So it's somebody who was one of the 12, 04:52 he was with Jesus 04:54 and he is often a companion of Peter in the gospel. 04:58 So there is a beloved disciple, 05:01 not named who's always wherever Peter is. 05:04 When you get to the Book of Acts which John didn't write, 05:08 you get there, 05:09 Peter is always traveling around with John, you see. 05:13 So John isn't mentioned here, 05:15 but he is a disciple that Jesus loved, 05:17 who is always with Peter, and so from that, 05:20 we get the sense that John is-- 05:23 is the one that wrote this gospel 05:25 and that's what the early church decided 05:27 and they put that on as the title. 05:30 Around what time was the Gospel of John written? 05:34 Do we have any information about that? 05:37 Well, you know, it's very, very interesting 05:39 that scholars at one time, particularly skeptical scholars 05:43 thought it was written as late as a 170 AD, 05:46 which would be several generations 05:48 after the time of Jesus. 05:51 And in doing that, they basically said, 05:53 the gospel is not historical, 05:55 it doesn't tell us a real story of Jesus, 05:57 it's simply made up stories. 06:00 Well, there's a problem with that theory. 06:03 They've recently found a fragment 06:05 of a manuscript about this size that has John 18 in it 06:10 and the date of that manuscript is about 115 AD, 06:13 in other words, 60 years earlier 06:15 than what people thought. 06:17 If you've got copies of the Gospel of John in 115, 06:20 it must have been written even earlier. 06:22 So scholars today are pretty united 06:25 that the Gospel of John is probably 06:27 the last book written in the New Testament 06:31 even after the Book of Revelation. 06:33 Not the last gospel, 06:34 but the last book of the New Testament. Right. 06:37 Yeah, the other gospels were quite a bit earlier. 06:39 Yeah, they were written sort of in the lifetime 06:42 of most of the disciples, but John outlives the disciples. 06:46 And just before he dies, 06:47 if you remember the context from our last program, 06:50 just before he dies, 06:52 he writes his gospel to first all the rumor 06:55 that he was gonna live till Jesus comes, you see. 06:58 So Gospel of John is probably the last gospel 07:01 written maybe 95, 180 AD, 07:04 which is 70 years after the crucifixion. 07:07 John was an old man there. 07:09 And so the Gospel of John comes to us 07:14 within the lifetime of one of the disciple, 07:17 so it still has that memory of the actual Jesus. 07:20 So John writes the gospel just before he dies. 07:25 Where does he write the gospel? 07:28 Well, that's an interesting story 07:30 because some of the early church fathers 07:33 talked about that and they suggest that John 07:38 and his community were in Jerusalem 07:40 for decades after Jesus died on the cross. 07:43 But then, just before 07:45 the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans. 07:48 You may remember the Romans came around the mid '60s, 07:52 35 years or so after the crucifixion, 07:54 they surrounded Jerusalem 07:55 and then one night they just left. 07:59 And people remember that Jesus had said 08:03 when you see the cities surrounded by armies, 08:05 know that its destruction is near. 08:08 So when the Romans left, a lot of the Christians escaped 08:12 remembering the words of Jesus. 08:13 And John and his community went across the Jordan River 08:17 into what we would call Jordan today 08:20 and they stayed there for a while 08:21 and then the community left and went to Asia Minor. 08:25 So we have evidence that John lived in Ephesus 08:30 at the latter end of his life. 08:32 We know that he was on Patmos for the time, 08:34 an island off the cost there that can be visited today. 08:38 And Ephesus can be visited today. 08:40 It's a remarkable ancient ruin. 08:42 So it was probably written from Ephesus. 08:45 Now John did not only write the gospel, right? 08:48 He wrote 1st, 2nd and 3rd John. Right. 08:52 He wrote Revelation. Yeah. 08:54 Can you give us maybe the gospel 08:58 where along that period that he write it or-- 09:02 We don't know exactly. 09:03 I mean, it's possible-- it's generally felt 09:06 that the gospel is written after he left Patmos. 09:09 We know that in 96 AD, 09:13 the emperor that imprisoned John on Patmos died 09:17 and was replaced by a new dynasty. 09:19 And so it's usually assumed that in 96, 09:22 he was released to go back to Ephesus. 09:24 And just felt that those three letters in the gospels, 09:28 the gospel was written at that time. 09:31 I personally think the gospel is the very last one written 09:35 because its very context is the impending death of John. 09:39 But this John while he writes from Ephesus, 09:42 he knows Palestine very well. 09:46 And here's an interesting piece of it. 09:48 Luke doesn't know Palestine. 09:51 When you read the Gospel of Luke, 09:53 he doesn't know the relationship of all these things. 09:56 He's not a local. He is getting the second hand. 09:59 He is interviewing people. 10:01 He is reading gospels and he's putting this together. 10:06 So in Luke, Jesus sets out from Galilee to Jerusalem, 10:11 his first stop on the trip is Bethany, 10:14 two miles out of Jerusalem. 10:17 Then he travels for eight more chapters 10:19 and ends up in Jericho 27 miles from Jerusalem. 10:23 You see, clearly some things are mixed up 10:25 in terms of the geography. 10:27 That was not Luke's strength, 10:29 was the geography 'cause he had never lived there 10:31 except maybe for a short time 10:33 with Paul on one of the visits there. 10:37 So John on the other hand, he knows it back and forth. 10:41 He knows where Jacob's Well is. 10:43 You can visit Jacob's Well today. 10:46 Many scholars doubted the Bible because they said, 10:48 "It's a story of the Pool of Bethesda in Jerusalem." 10:51 There is no Pool of Bethesda. 10:54 Well, guess what? We found it. 10:57 And it's 100 meters by 70 meters. 11:00 It's huge, but it just was forgotten and they thought, 11:04 "Oh, John doesn't know what he is talking about." 11:06 He is talking about Pool of Bethesda. 11:07 Well, it's actually there. So John writes those details? 11:11 Yes. Which is good. 11:13 Yeah. Yeah. 11:14 There are little historical details in the Gospel of John, 11:18 no other writer has 11:19 and they're proven to be accurate. 11:21 For example, he says 11:23 that Jesus in John 10 was in Solomon's portico 11:28 and it was winter. 11:31 Well, what does that have to do with anything? 11:34 Solomon's portico is the part of the temple 11:38 that got sun at the end of the day 11:42 and was sheltered from the win 11:43 which in winter time came the other direction. 11:46 If it's winter, that's the one part of the temple court 11:48 you want to be as it's nice. 11:51 Yeah, 20 degree Celsius in there 11:53 even though it's freezing everywhere else, 11:56 you can have classes there, 11:57 there's no wind, there's no chill, 11:59 the sun is beating in 12:01 and warming that little portico there. 12:02 So there is a little detail 12:05 that could only be here if the guy knew 12:08 what he was talking about. 12:10 He was sharing actual events with details 12:13 that prove that they actually occurred. 12:16 And so when he says, for example, 12:20 that Peter gestures to John at the table, 12:23 it's kind of like, you know, 12:25 please John, hey, ask him a question. 12:27 And when he does that, we take them seriously 12:31 because those details are all through the gospel. 12:35 John has a number of these little details, 12:37 no other gospel writer has and they connect with archeology 12:41 and with history, 12:43 so we find that to be a very believable gospel. 12:46 Tell us about John the person? Who was John? 12:51 What was different about him 12:53 that perhaps the other 11 disciples? 12:57 Well, John was probably the youngest of the disciples. 13:00 I mean, he lived long, long time afterward, 13:03 so he may have been just a teenager 13:06 when he was following Jesus. 13:08 And one other things is mentioned about him 13:12 is that he was a son of thunder, you know. Okay. 13:16 Now that suggests somebody who is kind of loud and noisy, 13:21 you know the big mouth and stuff like that. 13:24 Perhaps he mellowed out a little bit 13:26 as he got older 'cause he seems more, 13:28 you know, gentler and humble 13:30 at the time the gospel was written. 13:32 But when he was following Jesus, 13:33 he was bit of a troublemaker, you know. 13:35 He and his brother came to Jesus, 13:37 you know, and the mother is asking for them, 13:40 you know, can they sit at your right hand 13:41 and left when you get into the kingdom. 13:43 So even while being the disciple of Jesus. 13:44 Oh, yeah. He was mischievous. 13:45 Oh, yeah. Yeah. 13:47 And there was one time 13:49 when they are passing through a Samaritan village 13:52 and the people refused them hospitality, 13:54 they says, "Hey, shall we call fire down from heaven 13:56 to destroy the village?" You know so. 13:58 That was not always his character 14:01 eventually after so long with Jesus. 14:04 His character was eventually transformed, 14:07 isn't that right? Yeah, that's right. 14:09 And even in the gospel or not the gospel, 14:11 but his letters, his epistles first, second, and third 14:15 or you know, they talk so much of God's love. 14:18 Yeah. That's right. 14:20 So he definitely mellowed as he walked with Jesus. 14:23 Jesus, you know, made a difference 14:25 in his heart and changed him. 14:27 Well, there's a lot of things about the Gospel of John 14:30 that are definitely unique to John 14:33 and we'll get back to some of those after the break. |
Revised 2014-12-17