Saturday, September 7, 2024

"And We Know His Testimony Is True": John 21:24, Authorial Plurals, and Traditional Authorship

 

“And We Know His Testimony Is True”: John 21:24, Authorial Plurals and Traditional Authorship

Introduction

In this blog post we will discuss John 21:24, authorial plurals and its implications for traditional authorship of the Gospel of John.

Different grammatical usages of “We”

Critics often argue that the “we” in John 21:24 differentiates the author of the gospel and the alleged eyewitness source material. Bart Ehrman remarks,

[a]t the end of the Gospel [of John] the author says of the “Beloved Disciple”…[John 21:24]…Note how the author differentiates between his source of information, “the disciple who testifies,” and himself: “we know that his testimony is true.” He/we: this author is not the disciple. He claims to have gotten some of his information from the disciple.[1]

However, this is an oversimplification of John 21:24 and first-person plurals. The NRSV renders this passage as

[t]his is the disciple who is testifying to these things and has written them, and we know [οἴδαμεν] that his testimony is true.

“This…disciple” is the “disciple whom Jesus loved” in 21:20. “These things” [ταῦτα] likely refers to the entire Gospel in light of 21:25.

There are several possible grammatical uses of οἴδαμεν and notice how none of these options exclude the author as an eyewitness:

1.)   Associativeà “we” as in the author includes him/herself with his/her audience [“we” = “I and you”]

2.)   Dissociativeà “we” as in the author distinguishes between a group they belong to and the readers [“we” = “I and my colleagues”]

3.)   Authoritative testimonyà “we as in a substitute for “I” to bring added authority to self-reference[2]

If the verb is used in the associative sense, it could be referring to the authors and his readers, or an appeal to common knowledge. If the dissociative, it could be referring to the author and his colleagues, in this case, the Beloved Disciple and Jesus’ other disciples. Obviously, with the last option it is self-referential.

Whiles I think both the associative and dissociative usage makes a lot of sense, Richard Bauckham—drawing upon an earlier study—argues rather compellingly that the “we” is interpreted best as the last option by scavenging through various Johannine texts’ usage of “we.”[3]

 Objections

Alan Culpepper objects to an authorial plural understanding of the “we” by highlighting the grammatical difficulty of the changing role of the author. In his view, 21:24 reveals several redactors within the Johannine community. He writes, “[i]t is unlikely that readers would understand that ‘this disciple,’ ‘we,’ and ‘I’ in the scope of these two verses all refer to the author.”[4]

In reply, Charles E. Hill points out,

The shifts, from third person singular to first person singular in the final verse, are issues for any view to explain. There are, however, two Johannine passages in particular that offer important comparisons, where not only are there shifts in a speaker’s pronouns but where we arguably have real examples of Johannine, authorial plurals.[5]

Essentially, quick shifts between persons are common in Johannine literature:

John 3:11-15à Jesus to Nicodemus: “I tell you…we know and testify to what we have seen…the Son of Man be lifted up…” Jesus switches from first person singular to first person plural to third person singular in the span of four verses.

3 John 9-10, 12à I have written…[Diotrephes] does not acknowledge our authority…so if I come, I will call attention to what he is doing in spreading false charges against us.” Similarly, the elder in 3 John switches from first person singular to first person plural back to first person singular and ends in first person plural.[6]

It is highly implausible that in these two passages, the speaker does not include himself within any of the first person plurals, thus providing evidence against the conventional model.[7]

In conclusion, the “we” used in 21:24 does not disqualify the Beloved Disciple as the main author of the Gospel of John.



[1] Ehrman, Bart D. Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible. HarperOne, 2010., 104.

[2] Bauckham, Richard. Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony. 2nd ed., William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company., 2017., 371-72.; Harnack, Adolf von. “Das ‘Wir’ in den Johanneischen Schriften.” SPAW, Philosophischhistorischen Klasse, 1923., 96-113.

 [3] Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, 372-83.; Chapman, John. “We Know That His Testimony Is True.” Journal of Theological Studies, vol 31, no. 4, pp. 379-387. Jackson and Bauckham do disagree, with the former agreeing with mostly with the dissociative sense.

 [4] Culpepper, R. Alan. “John 21:24-25: The Johannine Sphragis.” in Anderson, Paul N., and Felix Just eds. John, Jesus, and History, Volume 2: Aspects of Historicity in the Fourth Gospel., Society of Biblical Literature, 2009., 360.

 [5] Hill, Charles E. “The Authentication of John: Self-Disclosure, Testimony, and Verification in John 21:24.” in Evans, Craig A., and Andrew W. Pitts eds. The Language and Literature of the New Testament Essays in Honor of Stanley E. Porter’s 60th Birthday., Brill, 2017., 419.

 [6] Ibid., 420-24.

[7] The conventional model holds that the Gospel of John is a product of several redactors within the Johannine community. See Brown, Raymond. The Community of the Beloved Disciple. Paulist Press,1979 for an articulate, yet admittedly speculative, defense of this model.