 coming on now I think yes we are getting recorded. All right then yeah so welcome to the sessions that we would be having on John's Gospel and also the epistels. In the chat over here in the side I will try to pay attention to that but sometimes I get so involved in the session that you know I may not notice what is being typed but when we have our break you know we would be having a 10 minute break right so at that time I will make sure that I you know take note of everything that has been posted in the chat because you might have posted even some of your questions and I want to make sure that I answer all of those all right so we will generally have a 10 minute you know break at the very end where you can ask any questions that you have regarding the session that has been covered but then in the meantime also if you would like to post anything you know in the chat section that should be all right only I may not be able to while I'm speaking I may not really note down what is you know there in the site all right now coming to the introduction to the Gospel of John which is what we will begin with we will talk maybe briefly about the authorship I just have a small PowerPoint here just one slide with a kind of summary of all the things that we would be you know hopefully covering today that will give you an idea of what is planned for today should just give me a moment let me share this now let me know if this is you know showing up on your screens or not is it visible to all of you perfect all right just a minute I'm still a bit new to this and I'm trying to learn Google Classroom all right so yeah this is what we would be covering we would look at the authorship also from where the author has written this particular Gospel we'll also see how copies were made of this particular Gospel and sent out what are the areas regions that this Gospel initially covered so these are hopefully some of the things that we would look into today getting back to video mode okay now there's been debate in the recent past on the authorship of the John's Gospel this was not really an issue that anybody even you know had any controversy regarding but it's only in the recent past that some scholars began to say oh that maybe somebody else who wrote John's Gospel and maybe it was not John himself because he doesn't name himself in the Gospel rather in John's Gospel he just refers to himself as the one home Jesus loved and so just recently some people have brought up a controversy saying that the one home Jesus loved was it really referring to John or was it referring to some other disciple okay so that's what that's just a small controversy that has come up in the recent past but down the ages no one has really doubted the the author as being John okay so John's authorship of this Gospel is not really something that is contended you know by people now why can we be so sure that this person who refers to himself as the one home Jesus loved how can we be very sure that this refers specifically to John himself that's because you know when we look at the references where this term is used we noticed that it could not possibly be Peter because Peter and the one home Jesus loved are mentioned together so if both of them are being mentioned together in the same verse then obviously it cannot be Peter it has to be someone else and I'll just give you a few of those references if we were to look at John chapter 13 verses 23 to 25 we see over there that the one home Jesus loved communicates with Peter so both of them are seated over there so obviously it's not Peter who is being called the one home Jesus loved then coming to another reference when we look at chapter 20 John chapter 20 verses 2 to 4 again we see that the one home Jesus loved he he goes racing towards the tomb you know to to examine it and he is along with Peter on that occasion as well so obviously it is not Peter who is being referred to by that particular term then if we were to look at John chapter 21 verses 20 to 23 again over there we see that Jesus was walking with Peter and the one home Jesus loved so based on all of this we can be pretty sure that Peter is not the one who has written this particular gospel and then the other possibility which some people suggest is that maybe this author maybe it is James but then it cannot be James because in Acts chapter 12 verse 2 we learn that James was martyred and this gospel was written much later years later after the martyrdom of James and so it cannot be James either so now based on this the argument by most scholars is that John himself must have written this gospel now coming to some details regarding John in John chapter 1 verses 35 to 40 it talks about some disciples who approach Jesus for the first time and maybe if we could actually look at that John chapter 1 and if maybe one of us could just read out probably verses 35 okay maybe we can just read John chapter 1 verses 38 39 and 40 could I have one person read out please John chapter 1 verses 38 39 and 40 you could maybe just unmute yourself and if you could read out shall I read ma'am shall I read ma'am am I audible yes you are ma'am ma'am okay John chapter 1 verse 38 then Jesus turned and seeing them following said to them what do you seek they said to him rabbi which is to say when translated teacher where are you staying he said to them come and see they came and saw where he was staying and remained with him that day now it was about the 10th hour one of the two who heard John speak and followed him was Andrew Simon Peter's brother I'm unable to hear at all so it might be something that I would need to reset later but yeah at least for today no one would be audible at all to me so yeah I will probably not have any worse reading today it may just be some technical error in my system so yeah I'll have it I'll figure it out later but yeah could I just have maybe one person responding and telling me could the others here you know even as we had a manual reading it out could the others was it audible what was being read out put the rest of you here what was being said yes fine then in that case definitely there must be some defect in my system which I would need to reset all right I will I will take care of that later okay so yeah based on you know these verses which we just read now it says in verse 40 one of the two who heard John speak and follow him one of the two who heard John speak and followed him was Andrew Simon Simon Peter's brother so we get to know in this verse that Andrew was one of the persons who heard what the John the Baptist was saying and followed Jesus it does not name the other person and generally tradition says that it was probably John the the disciple John who is probably the other person who followed on that particular day so it was probably Andrew and John who heard the words of John the Baptist and chose to come and follow Jesus on that particular day also tradition says that when we look at John chapter 18 verses 15 and 16 where it talks about this particular disciple who seemed to know the high priest personally and because of which you know he was able to gain access inside the courtyard you know along with Peter so they say that this person who is being being referred to was probably John once again so in John chapter 18 verses 15 to 16 where we have a person who is personally acquainted with the high priest they say that it was most probably John who was that person also we of course know that it was John who stood at the foot of the cross during this crucifixion process and it was to him that Jesus says that commands him and asks him to take care of his mother so all of these things also seem to verify the fact that the one whom Jesus loved the one who refers to himself as the one whom Jesus loved is probably John himself now apart from these biblical evidence regarding the authorship of John's gospel we also have some church historical figures who confirm that this particular gospel was written by John himself now one of the early church fathers was somebody named Paulicarp now you might be familiar with this Paulicarp was in fact a disciple they say of John so John was mentoring a lot of people and they say that one of the persons that he mentored personally was this church leader named Paulicarp and Paulicarp when he wrote out his writings and his teachings he in fact quotes 1st John the entire passage that passages from 1st John he quotes them in his own work because he was a disciple of John and he clearly says that it was John who wrote this particular gospel and also apart from Paulicarp during his time there was another person named Papias or maybe Papias not sure of the pronunciation and even Papias also says that this particular gospel was written by John himself we also have Irenaeus who is in fact one of the more popular you know church fathers of that time and he wrote his work in 280 and he clearly says that John was living in Ephesus at that particular time when he wrote this particular gospel apart from that we also have some people who wrote some not very accurate doctrinal works they wrote they wrote works which contain some false doctrines but then in their works they do mention the fact that the writer of this particular gospel was John so when we have so many sources all very clearly saying that John is the writer it really does not make sense why in the recent past some scholars have brought up this controversy just to kind of cast a shadow on the scriptures so we do not need to take these things seriously we can be very sure very confident that this gospel was very much written by John and it is important for us to you know to to to establish the the the integrity of this fact because John says that he was a witness right now where would we have that in John chapter one verse 14 and yeah as I cannot really hear from other people maybe you know I can just read out and it says over here the word became flesh you know John chapter one verse 14 the word became flesh and lived among us and we have seen his glory the glory as of a father's only son so over here so very clearly you know this writer of John is saying we have seen his glory so this person is saying I have personally testify I'm personally testifying that I have witnessed this Jesus with my own eyes I have heard his words I have spoken to him and so you know if we have some scholars coming along and saying no no no this must be some stranger who wrote this gospel down the line you know who probably never even had any personal contact with Jesus that would just dilute the importance of this gospel so when anyone comes up with such arguments we should be able to you know present this evidence to them and prove that this gospel was written by someone who had literally interacted with Jesus you know on a daily basis had spoken to him had seen him had witnessed the things which Jesus did so these are not just things that were concocted much later in some you know latter century but rather it these things were written down by someone who was an eyewitness of these of these very different things also there is archaeological you know accuracy in the in ABC in the things written but in this particular gospel because he refers to the school of Bethesda and for a long time there were scholars who were arguing and saying oh I think this pool of Bethesda is just a mythical story because archaeology has not been able to find any such pool but then again you know in the recent past archaeologists have been able to uncover it and it says over there if you look at that particular passage which talks about the pool of Bethesda it talks about how there were five colonnades and that's exactly what we see in the archaeological find you know which has been uncovered now there are five colonnades exactly the way you know John has described it also he John makes reference to many other things he talks about Solomon's portico and he talks about the pilots and all of that and all these references are are backed up by archaeology so these are all things which were seen and witnessed by the writer and it and all these because you see some of these buildings were destroyed after the fall of Jerusalem so this person who has walked around Jerusalem and seen all these things was someone who was alive and moving about before the fall of Jerusalem before AD 70 itself so this kind of false claim that John's gospel was written much later in one of the latter centuries is a very very false claim because here is a person who's describing all these spots which he has seen with his own eyes and which he records about in his in his gospel and all of this is evidence that this was written by John and he was living in that place he saw those places with his own eyes and he mentions them by name in his gospel coming to the second thing the place of writing we we have a lot of historians church historians in the you know belonging to the very early centuries all of them saying that John was most probably living in Ephesus at that time you see this is one of the one of the first church historians who wrote out his you know historical record of all that happened in the early church so you see this he talks about how John was living in Ephesus at that time when he wrote out this particular gospel we have Irenaeus once again who mentions the same fact this there's a bishop named Pauli crates now bishop was the Pauli crates was the bishop of Ephesus in 190 AD so in the early church they had leaders and some of the leaders were called bishops and Pauli crates was one of them and he says that while John was living with them in Ephesus he wrote out this particular gospel there's also an interesting reference that we see in the in something called the Moratorian canon okay now the Moratorian canon is is a writing not very trustworthy when it comes to doctrine but in that canon there is mention made that Paul it says over there that John was urged by his friends to write down a gospel with all the details of all that had occurred during the time of Jesus okay so in this canon can that information be found in the early church writing so yeah in fact if you were to go I don't know whether these things are available freely on the internet but if you were to actually go into English translations of these works we would in fact see references you know pointing out that John wrote while he was living in Ephesus and references like that we would in fact see it so because now a lot of these ancient monographs have been posted online and they are available for us to view so these are all things which have been backed up you know with proof so so yes it may there is there is every chance that if you were to really hunt down the Moratorian canon and if you could find a monograph of that online there would be these references you know in it so in this Moratorian canon the writer whoever you know who wrote that canon he said that he will that John it seems was urged by his friends to write down a written record of all that had occurred and we see an indirect reference to this in John chapter 21 verse 24 again let me just read out because I don't seem to have access to have to sound so John 21 24 just a minute this is the disciple who is testifying to these things and has written them and we know that his testimony is true okay so up to verse 23 we have John writing down a whole bunch of things and now over here in verse 24 someone is confirming affirming and they are saying you know this is the disciple who is testifying and so they say that it's probably the elders of Ephesus who are confirming at the very end of this gospel they are confirming and saying all these things which have been written down so far they have been written down by this disciple and we the elders are confirming that we all know what he has written down over here is something that has been testified accurately so there's a reference to that and so there you know they emphasize the fact that it says over here and we know that his testimony is true so there are people who have seen what he has written and now they are confirming and saying you know we have also some of us have witnessed these things with our own eyes and so we can back up what is being recorded over here in this gospel and we confirm that whatever is being said over here this testimony is true now coming to this chapter 21 it is generally said that this may be a kind of later slightly later addition probably originally John when he wrote down the gospel he stopped with John chapter 20 because the ending of John chapter 20 sounds like a very clear conclusion and then later on maybe one or two years later they say that he probably added chapter 21 just to clarify some extra things that's generally what is said by scholars regarding this particular thing now yeah maybe we can talk about how it was written out and how it was circulated yeah now in the in those days writing was not something that was very commonly undertaken because for generations they had been used to the oral tradition and so when an important teacher would come into their towns and villages and teach and if they really valued what was being said there would be people who would literally memorize entire chunks of that teaching and then they would go from village to village you know communicating what they have heard and what they have learned what they have memorized so in this way in the initial stages even all of these things which Jesus was teaching his followers you know his 12 disciples as well as the others would have memorized entire chunks of this and they would have gone from place to place transmitting it communicating it and then later John would have actually sat down and written down in written form the things which you know had been orally memorized by him and by the others so it's the same even with the Old Testament you know I mean in the in the very beginning all the genealogies and all those poems and songs and all of those passages which we see in Genesis they would have been memorized by hearted and then later at some point of time Moses would have sat down and he would have put it all down into writings that future generations would have a record of it so we see this even here in the New Testament where most probably initially Jesus disciples would have just by hearted all that was being taught by Jesus and so it would have been oral communication in the very beginning and then later John would have put down these things in writing so we see that when you know Irenaeus in his Irenaeus the church historian he says that John published he uses the term published he says that John published his gospel now that was a term that was used in those days when something is being produced on a mass scale okay so what do I mean by that when an important work was written out there would be people who would be hired to make copies of it so it's not just one single copy going out but that particular original writing would be published in the sense there would be many many copies of it made and it would be distributed you know in different regions so in that sense what they say is that John probably published this particular gospel because near the town of near the city of Ephesus there was this large library at Pergamum I think says somewhere in my notes not particularly sure where I put it but yeah I think it was somewhere in Pergamum that there was this large library where you would have all these scribes scribes are the people who have really good neat handwriting I suppose and they would write down they would make copies of the original and so they say that John also probably you know took his gospel there and they would have made many many copies of that and these copies were then sent out to different places and just a minute I've seemed to have lost track of my notes just a minute please yeah I think yeah that that's correct all right so John when he presents his gospel he begins by talking about the word right right in the very first chapter John begins by talking about the word and he presents the word not just as something written but as a living person who comes down and not only speaks but acts out all that God wishes to communicate so he so Jesus becomes the word Jesus not just not becomes Jesus is the word who chooses to come down and he reveals through his words and his lifestyle and his actions and his choices all that God wishes to reveal about himself so there's a great emphasis in the gospel of John on the word as not just written as something that is written down but also as something that which was lived out and so in his gospel John hopes to to make a record of all these things that Jesus expressed both through his words and through his actions and through his lifestyle and the emphasis throughout is not just to give a kind of historical record of what took place but to bring out the spiritual insights the spiritual teachings the things which go beyond just a historical record so when we are looking at this gospel of John we would not just see it as a historical document which it definitely is it is a historical document but we would also see it as a document of faith it is meant to help people believe in Jesus and it is meant to help them to imitate him and to be a true follower of Jesus so that would be the main focus of this particular gospel and so what has been mentioned in the records is that you know in AVD's this church historians where they have talked about how this John's gospel was was distributed to various places they they keep referring to it as a codex that's supposed to be the term that they have used and so what do they mean by a codex by that time they were no longer using long scrolls but they were using a papyrus right so John's gospel when he was writing down he probably would have used a scribe maybe he wrote it himself we do not know but then you know he might have dictated it to a scribe because the scribe specialized in handwriting they were taught how to write in a particular style which would be very clear very you know easy for the readers to read and so he probably would have just dictated it to a scribe and the scribe would have done the actual writing down and it would have originally been written on a papyrus which were which was a kind of very ancient paper so these sheets of papyrus would have been stitched together and they would have been attached to one to a wooden spine you know that's basically how those ancient books were created how they were formatted so all this all this papyri all these pages would be stitched together to one single spine to a wooden spine which which would hold the whole thing together so these code they were called papyrus codex's and so these codex's were sent out throughout the region of asia at that time asia minor throughout the region of asia minor at that time yeah may some of these codex's I mean some of these manuscripts have I mean exist even today and there are two of them which are just technically called p5 and p75 and so these p5 and p75 these two papyrus codex's they contain 20 chapters only but then you have other manuscripts which contain the 21 chapters which is why you know like I said earlier it is believed that in the first edition john probably just finished with chapter 20 and sent out his codex's and then later he wanted to add some additional details and when we are when we are going through this chapter by chapter and even as we are making a study verse by verse we will look at the significance of the 21st chapter so we will talk about that later but just for us to know right now we have copies where we have only the text being written up to chapter 20 and also there are manuscripts which exist today which we have copies we know which we have today where you have the 21st chapter added on so we have both types of manuscripts available to us even now yeah at this point yeah if I would just like to pause for a few minutes um is there any any doubt or any question at all that anyone would like to raise it says your page number page number of what uh if and I cannot hear you because I don't seem to have audio so if you could you know type it out um it says page number so I just want to know I mean are you referring to the the textbook which was posted because this introduction I mean it's just an introduction it's not in the textbook so I I'm assuming that that was the question so whatever I have been talking about today it's just an introductory session just to give an introduction to the Gospel of John so these are not things which are mentioned in your textbook as such so I'm assuming that that was that was what Asharani was referring to okay they don't seem to be any other questions but would anyone like to raise any question at this point of time just regarding this background of this gospel and uh how it was recorded and anything at all that we would you know any doubts regarding the things that we were talking about it would be of course convenient if I could just hear you and um is it audible fast but if you could type out your question just for today next time onwards I'll make sure that my audio is working because today it isn't I'm so sorry Sri Kumar I mean I can see that you know I can see the um icon blinking over there but then I cannot hear you um I'm not able to get any audio over here would it be if it's a brief question could you you know just type it out sorry can anyone else who would like to raise any question maybe we can just you know move on to the next section then and yeah if if possible yeah Sri Kumar if you could you know type out the the question which you had and then I can answer it and next time onwards I you know will fix the audio so that I'll be able to hear everyone okay so we will look at the circulation of John's Gospel um so initially when we see that the Gospel of John was sent out throughout Asia Minor and in the beginning it was just these four Gospels which were individually being distributed throughout that entire region and then later I it was third century onwards that we see all the four Gospels joined together as one single collection and being sent out but in the first century and the second century we see that they were just simply distributed as individual copies as individual Gospels and it was only later that they were compiled into one into one single section as four Gospels and we have quotations from John's Gospel found in the works of many people just to name a few we have these are the more popular names okay origin and Clement of Alexandria and a historian named Tertullian and Hippolytus and also the Bishop of Sardis Melito all of these people they all quote John in their writings so which means that the Gospel of John was distributed and spread to all these different regions where these people were living all of these names that I mentioned they were people located in different parts of the Mediterranean region and all of them are quoting from John's Gospel which means that the this Gospel reached all of them yeah just a minute there are some comments here okay this one question here is there any possibility of error by the scribes and then after that could you shed more light on Codex okay I think now that these things are showing up in the chat they were not showing up earlier okay let's go back to the first question which was possibility of error now we do see variations in spelling and in fact I mean if you were to look online you would there are websites where you literally have every single variation of spelling mentioned so sometimes there were errors made by the scribes when it came to a spelling mistake but we don't find any we don't find entire sentences changed we do not see that occurring anywhere so there are variations in spellings sometimes they would leave out a verse I mean a word not verse so very sorry they would leave out one word by mistake that also has occurred and sometimes they would repeat a word you'd have the same word being repeated twice so that kind of copyist errors what they call copyist errors when the when during the process of hand I know copying by hand another new copy of the original so while that was going on there were copyist errors which occurred in the form of spelling mistakes in the form of word being dropped out accidentally because they you know they did not notice it or sometimes words would be repeated the same word would be repeated twice that kind of a thing but an entire sentence being changed in all the manuscripts that we have in you know today available to us today which are still existing which have not been you know destroyed or deteriorated when we compare all of those we notice only these kind of small errors we have not observed any an entire sentence being changed somewhere so that kind of major errors are have not been noticed at least not so far so the scribes would have been quite careful in doing their work