Two Johannine specialists, George van Kooten (Cambridge) and Michael Gorman (St Mary’s Seminary and University, Baltimore), are soon to publish monographs boldly arguing for a redating of John’s Gospel. Van Kooten thinks John is the first gospel and was published in the early 60s A.D.* Gorman thinks Paul’s theology is deeply indebted to John. That gospel must, therefore, antedate his letters.
In the same vein, this monograph sets out the case for an early dating of John, prior to Paul’s letter to the Philippians. Paul’s language and concerns in Philippians (esp. 1:27; 2:1–2, 14–16; 3:3, 14, 19–20) are Johannine, in a way that is best explained if Paul writes from Ephesus (c. 53 C.E.), where (a form of) John’s Gospel was in circulation. In the light of my comprehensive new approach to the Philippians Christ Hymn in The Divine Heartset (2023), this book explores eleven points of thematic and linguistic connection between the hymn and John.
The monograph also sets up some proposals for a new approach to the historicity and theology of Johannine tradition, illustrated through a close study of John 5. I present a new approach to John 5 in the light of proposals for: (a) a well-known Jewish response to the Hellenistic ruler cult, (b) a scriptural and Jewish understanding of the priesthood’s sacramental participation in the ongoing work of creation, (c) the variety of Jewish responses to the Greek and Roman competitive culture of honour, and (d) a temple and high priestly reading of Daniel 7 (verse 13 of which is cited in John 5:27). If John 5 is read in the light of these four phenomena it is at once possible to see how that chapter might accurately record an episode in the life of Christ.