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             How are we to assess the value of the Fourth Gospel, both as a contribution to an understanding of the historical Jesus and as a theological statement of Christ? For a significant period of the critical study of John, the gospel has served as a stepchild, considered to be late and derivative. Its value as a source for historical information has been downplayed or ignored. And its theological perspective has been viewed as late, Hellenistic, and the result of situations arising within a particular community of Christians who may not be representative of early followers of the Jesus movement. This perspective of the Fourth Gospel remains dominant today. For some time, however, scholars have raised questions about the dominant paradigm. Questions about John’s relationship to other gospels, its reliance on information about Jesus that might be independent and possibly superior to the Synoptics, and even its relative date of origination have been raised and continue to be raised.

            The “priority of John” is itself a problematic term. This term has a distinctive and idiosyncratic past due to its reigns in biblical studies. For some this term means that material in John has a historical priority – that is, a historical value that is either equal or superior to the Synoptics.[1] For others the term is used to suggest a literary priority, arguing for at least John’s independence.[2] Still others would assert an actual chronological priority, suggesting that John was the first of the gospels produced.[3]


[1] Certainly, in this category would come C. H. Dodd, The Historical Tradition in the Fourth Gospel (Cambridge: University Press, 1965), and J. A. T. Robinson, The Priority of John (Oak Park, IL: Meyer-Stone Books, 1987).

[2] Pride of place for this perspective must be given to Percival Gardner-Smith, Saint John and the Synoptic Gospels (Cambridge: University Press, 1938) and many who have followed him in this view. D. Moody Smith came to call this view the new consensus (in “Sources of the Gospel of John: An Assessment of the Present State of the Problem” [NTS 10(1963):349], although he later acknowledged that this consensus has not held [Johannine Christianity (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1984), p. 147].

[3] An example of this would be Peter Hofrichter, Model und Vorlage der Synoptiker -- Das vorredaktionelle Johannesevangelium (Darmstadt, 1997). And, within the narrower scope of LukeJohn relationships Mark A. Matson In Dialogue with Another Gospel? The Influence of the Fourth Gospel on the Passion Narrative of the Gospel of Luke (Atlanta: SBL Press, 2001).

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