John's Gospel - Theology or History

By Rev. Randy Felton

Archaeology as a means of understanding the Bible has been discounted by some of the great theologians of the past. Many have asserted that it is not important to confirm the historicity of Jesus’ life and teachings, saying that much, if not most, of the gospels are myth, events created in the minds of the evangelists in order to support their emerging ideas of soteriology and Christology. German theologians in particular asserted that what is important is the faith of the church, which is true despite the fact that many of the events and places described in the gospels and apostolic writings may not be accurate. Wellhausen sought to "demythologize" the New Testament. Bultmann went so far as to say that the message of Jesus is only a presupposition, not a part of New Testament theology. Some have even asserted that the only quotation of Jesus that is historically accurate is, "Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s." If such is the case, archaeology can have no influence on Christian faith, for establishing the historicity of New Testament events is meaningless.

In more recent times, it has become increasingly apparent that attempts to divorce Christianity from the historical Jesus and his personal environment have produced a theological caricature of Jesus that is largely inaccurate both scripturally and historically. To remove Jesus from his inherent Jewishness and from his Jewish milieu is a subtle form of docetism, one of the church’s earliest heresies, which denied the humanity of Jesus. The truth is that Jesus was a Jew, the land in which he lived was the Jewish state of Israel, the Bible which he used was a Jewish book, the religion which he practiced was Judaism, and all his relatives and friends were Jews. He lived, died, resurrected, and ascended to heaven a Jew.

In recent years archaeology has made exciting new discoveries in the land of Israel. And, amazingly, many of these discoveries serve to give historical validation to statements in the Holy Scriptures which generations of scholars have considered to be mythical at worst or theological adaptations at best.

Heading the list is the Gospel of John. Many of its statements of Jesus’ activities in Jerusalem have been considered fabrications to support John’s theology. It has also been asserted that the writer of John’s Gospel could not have been John, himself, because of his inaccurate descriptions of the city which the apostle John knew well. Of particular note is John’s description in 5:1-9: "Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades." The story continues with Jesus’ healing the paralytic who could be first to enter the pool following the angel’s troubling of the waters. It has been asserted that John the theologian merely created this scene to underscore the superiority of Jesus’ healing power over the Torah (the five colonnades over the five books of Moses) and that there was no such literal place in Jerusalem.

In Jesus Within Judaism James Charlesworth sets forth archaeological evidence which confirms the accuracy of this and other statements in the Gospel of John. He notes that excavations of the actual site which John described have found numerous columns from an ancient reservoir that had porticoes on each side and included twin pools. Then he notes also that the Copper Scroll from Qumran calls a pool in Jerusalem "Beth Eshdathayin."

Another supposed example of such inaccuracy has been John’s description of Jesus’ cleansing of the temple in John 2:14, where he mentions sheep and oxen, larger animals which many critics were certain could not be in that area. Now archaeologists have uncovered a passageway that links the so-called Solomonic Stables, where large animals were kept, to the area of the Hulda Gates in the southern wall of the temple compound. It is very conceivable, then, that Jesus made a whip from cords found in the stables and drove the money changers and their sheep and oxen from the temple, just as John said. As Charlesworth notes, this skirmish could well have taken place on the lower level of the three-storied Royal Portico, "Herod’s meat market, Hanûth."

It is a serious mistake, then, to dismiss the Gospel of John as being devoid of historical information. It is equally erroneous to allegorize his words to portray Jesus as one who liberated the Jewish people from the Torah. The statements of the evangelist should be taken as his own historical observations of events and places with which he was acquainted. Once again, archaeology has served to confirm the accuracy of Holy Scripture and the fallibility of men’s assertions to the contrary.