The Gospel of St John

The Gospel according to St John begins before time: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God" (John 1:1). It ends on a lakeshore in Galilee, with the risen Christ asking Peter three times whether he loves Him, and with the Evangelist's own signature: "This is that disciple who giveth testimony of these things, and hath written these things; and we know that his testimony is true" (John 21:24). The Fathers likened this Gospel to an eagle, because it soars above the rest to gaze on the divinity of Christ. Below this guide you will find all twenty-one chapters, the Latin of St Jerome's Vulgate beside the English of the Douay-Rheims Bible.

Who wrote the Gospel of John?

The Church has always received the fourth Gospel as the work of St John the Apostle, son of Zebedee and brother of St James the Greater, a fisherman of Galilee whom Our Lord named, with his brother, "Boanerges, which is, The sons of thunder" (Mark 3:17). He is the disciple "whom Jesus loved", who leaned on His breast at the Last Supper (13:23), stood at the Cross with Our Lady, and outran Peter to the empty tomb.

The witness of the Fathers. St Irenaeus of Lyons, who as a boy had heard St Polycarp, himself a disciple of John, writes: "Afterwards, John, the disciple of the Lord, who also had leaned upon His breast, did himself publish a Gospel during his residence at Ephesus in Asia" (Against Heresies III.1.1). Theophilus of Antioch, writing about 180, quotes the opening of the Gospel as the words of John (To Autolycus II.22), and the Muratorian Fragment, a Roman list of the sacred books from about 170, tells how John wrote at the urging of his fellow disciples and bishops.

Clement of Alexandria hands on "the tradition of the earliest presbyters": "last of all, John, perceiving that the external facts had been made plain in the Gospel, being urged by his friends, and inspired by the Spirit, composed a spiritual Gospel" (in Eusebius, Church History VI.14.5–7). Origen, Tertullian, St Jerome and St Augustine say the same; no ancient writer of the Church names another author.

The witness of the Gospel itself. The writer is a Jew who knows the feasts, the purifications and the topography of Jerusalem, down to the pond "called Probatica... having five porches" (5:2). He writes as an eyewitness: at the piercing of Christ's side, "he that saw it, hath given testimony, and his testimony is true" (John 19:35). The closing chapter identifies him with the beloved disciple who leaned on Christ's breast at supper (21:20–24).

Of the three apostles closest to Our Lord, Peter is named again and again beside this disciple and so cannot be he, and James was put to death early (Acts 12:2); John remains. And the son of Zebedee, so prominent in the other Gospels, is never once named in this one, the silence of a man who will not write his own name. The same author's voice is heard in the First Epistle of St John: "That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes... of the word of life" (1 John 1:1).

The Pontifical Biblical Commission, answering on 29 May 1907 under St Pius X, declared that the constant tradition of the Church is so solid a historical argument that the Apostle John, and no other, must be acknowledged as the author of the fourth Gospel; that internal reasons confirm it; and that the deeds and discourses it reports are not allegories or theological inventions, but true history. Many modern scholars propose instead a "Johannine community" or a disciple other than the son of Zebedee as the author; we note this because readers ask, but hold to the teaching handed down.

When was the Gospel of John written?

Tradition places it last of the four Gospels, written at Ephesus in the last decade of the first century, around AD 90–100. The 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia gives about AD 96 or the years following, after St John's exile on Patmos under Domitian. The text agrees: it presupposes the other three Gospels, alludes to the death of Peter (21:18–19), and corrects a rumour "that that disciple should not die" (21:23), which only makes sense when John was very old. St Irenaeus says John remained at Ephesus "until the times of Trajan" (Against Heresies III.3.4). Modern scholars mostly date the Gospel between 90 and 110, a few much earlier.

For whom was it written? For Christians, chiefly of Asia Minor, who already knew the Gospels of St Matthew, St Mark and St Luke. St Jerome says John wrote "at the request of the bishops of Asia, against Cerinthus and other heretics, and especially against the then growing dogma of the Ebionites, who assert that Christ did not exist before Mary" (On Illustrious Men 9). The Evangelist states his own purpose: "these are written, that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God: and that believing, you may have life in his name" (John 20:31).

What is the Gospel of John about? A summary

St John follows Our Lord through three Paschs (2:13, 6:4, 11:55), which is why tradition reckons His public life at about three years. The Gospel falls into a prologue, two great parts, and an epilogue.

The Prologue: the Word made flesh (chapter 1:1–18)

Chapter 1 opens with the eternal Word, by whom "all things were made", the light that "shineth in darkness", and the summit of the whole Gospel: "And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us... full of grace and truth" (1:14). "In the beginning" echoes the first verse of Genesis: the Creator has entered His creation.

The public ministry, or "Book of Signs" (chapters 1:19–12:50)

St John the Baptist points to the Lamb of God, and the first disciples follow Him. In chapter 2 Christ changes water into wine at Cana at His Mother's word and cleanses the Temple. Chapter 3 is the night conversation with Nicodemus on being born again of water and the Holy Ghost; chapter 4 the Samaritan woman at Jacob's well and the healing of the ruler's son. In chapter 5 He heals the paralytic at the pool and declares that He works as the Father works. Chapter 6 gives the multiplication of the loaves, the walking on the sea and the discourse on the bread of life at Capharnaum.

Chapters 7–8 take place at the feast of Tabernacles: the woman taken in adultery, "I am the light of the world", and the claim that silences His enemies, "before Abraham was made, I am" (8:58). Chapter 9 is the healing of the man born blind, chapter 10 the Good Shepherd, chapter 11 the raising of Lazarus, after which the Sanhedrin resolves on His death. In chapter 12 Mary anoints Him at Bethania, He enters Jerusalem, and the public ministry closes with the unbelief of the crowds.

The Last Supper discourse (chapters 13–17)

"Before the festival day of the pasch, Jesus knowing that his hour was come... having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them unto the end" (John 13:1). He washes the apostles' feet, foretells the betrayal and gives the new commandment. Chapters 14–16 are His farewell: the many mansions, the promise of the Paraclete, the vine and the branches, and the joy that no man shall take from them. Chapter 17 is the priestly prayer, in which the High Priest consecrates Himself for His disciples and prays "that they all may be one".

The Passion and Resurrection (chapters 18–20)

Chapters 18–19 narrate the Passion of Jesus Christ: the arrest, Peter's denial, the trial before Pilate ("What is truth?"), the crowning with thorns, the Crucifixion and the piercing of His side. Chapter 20 tells of the empty tomb, the appearance to Mary Magdalen, the gift of the Holy Ghost to the apostles on Easter evening, and the confession of St Thomas: "My Lord and my God."

The epilogue at the Sea of Tiberias (chapter 21)

In chapter 21 the risen Christ gives the apostles a miraculous catch of a hundred and fifty-three fish, eats with them on the shore, and three times commits His flock to Peter: "Feed my lambs... Feed my sheep."

Why is the Gospel of John different from the Synoptics?

Matthew, Mark and Luke, the Synoptic Gospels, tell largely the same story, mostly of the Galilean ministry. John, writing last, assumes their account and supplies what they left aside: the Judean ministry, the visits to Jerusalem at the feasts, and the long discourses in which Our Lord reveals who He is. He records no parables in the Synoptic sense, only the allegories of the shepherd and the vine, and in place of the institution of the Eucharist, whose doctrine he has given in chapter 6, he records the washing of the feet. Clement's phrase sums it up: the others gave "the external facts", John a "spiritual Gospel". The Fathers saw in this completion, not contradiction.

The seven signs and the seven "I AM" sayings

St John calls Christ's miracles "signs", because each shows who He is; he numbers the first two himself (2:11; 4:54), and commentators commonly count seven in the public ministry: the water changed into wine at Cana (John 2), the healing of the ruler's son (John 4), the paralytic at the pool of Probatica (John 5), the feeding of the five thousand and the walking upon the sea (John 6), the man born blind (John 9) and the raising of Lazarus (John 11). The miraculous catch of fish after the Resurrection is often added as a crowning sign.

Alongside the signs stand seven sayings in which Our Lord takes to Himself the divine Name revealed to Moses, "I AM WHO AM" (Exodus 3:14): "I am the bread of life" (6:35); "I am the light of the world" (8:12); "I am the door" (10:9); "I am the good shepherd" (10:11); "I am the resurrection and the life" (11:25); "I am the way, and the truth, and the life" (14:6); "I am the true vine" (15:1). Their key is the absolute "before Abraham was made, I am" (8:58).

Themes and the Catholic reading

The divinity of Christ and the Holy Trinity. No book of the New Testament teaches more plainly that the Son is God, equal to the Father ("I and the Father are one", John 10:30), or reveals more of the Holy Ghost, "the Spirit of truth, who proceedeth from the Father" (15:26).

The sacraments. Our Lord tells Nicodemus, "unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Ghost, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God" (3:5), and Trent condemns anyone who twists these words into a metaphor to deny that true water is necessary for baptism (Sess. VII, On Baptism, canon 2). In the bread of life discourse He says, "my flesh is meat indeed: and my blood is drink indeed" (John 6:56), and when many disciples "went back", He did not soften a word; the Church reads here the promise of the Holy Eucharist, as St John Chrysostom and St Augustine expound it.

On Easter evening He breathes on the apostles: "Receive ye the Holy Ghost. Whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them" (20:22–23); Trent anathematises anyone who denies that these words give the power of forgiving and retaining sins in the sacrament of Penance (Sess. XIV, canon 3), which is why Catholics confess to a priest.

Types fulfilled. Christ is the true Paschal lamb, whose bones were not broken, "that the scripture might be fulfilled" (19:36). He is the bread from heaven of which the manna in Exodus was the figure (6:31–33), and the Son of man who "must be lifted up" as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert (3:14), the brazen serpent of Numbers 21. From His opened side "came out blood and water" (19:34): St Augustine says the side was opened so that "the gate of life might be thrown open, from whence have flowed forth the sacraments of the Church" (Tractates on John 120.2), as the first woman was formed from the side of the sleeping man.

Our Lady. Mary appears at Cana, where her word, "Whatsoever he shall say to you, do ye" (2:5), obtains His first miracle, and at the Cross, where He says to her, "Woman, behold thy son", and to the disciple, "Behold thy mother" (John 19:26–27). In St John, Leo XIII taught in Adiutricem (1895), the Church has always seen the whole human race, and first of all those joined to Christ by faith, given to Mary as her children.

The primacy of Peter. Our Lord names Simon "Cephas, which is interpreted Peter" (1:42), and after the Resurrection gives him alone the charge of the whole flock (21:15–17). The First Vatican Council cites both passages in defining the primacy (Pastor Aeternus, ch. 1); see Thou art Peter.

Famous chapters and verses of the Gospel of John

John 1: the Prologue, "In the beginning was the Word", read as the Last Gospel at the end of Mass, and "Behold the Lamb of God" (1:29).

John 3:16: "For God so loved the world, as to give his only begotten Son; that whosoever believeth in him, may not perish, but may have life everlasting."

John 6: "except you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you shall not have life in you" (6:54). Peter's answer has become the prayer of every wavering soul: "Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life" (6:69).

John 8: the woman taken in adultery, "you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free" (8:32), and "before Abraham was made, I am" (8:58).

John 11: the raising of Lazarus, with the shortest verse in the English Bible, "And Jesus wept" (11:35), and the cry "Lazarus, come forth" (11:43).

John 14: "In my Father's house there are many mansions" (14:2), and "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No man cometh to the Father, but by me" (14:6).

John 15: "Greater love than this no man hath, that a man lay down his life for his friends" (15:13).

John 17: "Now this is eternal life: That they may know thee, the only true God" (17:3).

John 19: the Crucifixion and the last word of Our Lord in this Gospel: "It is consummated. And bowing his head, he gave up the ghost" (19:30).

John 20: "blessed are they that have not seen, and have believed" (20:29).

Its place in the canon and in the liturgy

The Gospel of John is the fourth book of the New Testament and has never been disputed in the Church: it stands in every ancient list of the sacred books, and the Council of Trent (Sess. IV, 1546) names "the four Gospels, according to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John". Catholic and Protestant Bibles alike give it twenty-one chapters; our Douay-Rheims, following the Latin Vulgate, numbers 879 verses.

The account of the woman taken in adultery (7:53–8:11) is missing from some early Greek manuscripts, but St Jerome found it in many Greek and Latin codices, St Ambrose and St Augustine expounded it, and the Church reads it as Scripture, Trent having received the sacred books "entire with all their parts, as they have been used to be read in the Catholic Church, and as they are contained in the old Latin vulgate edition". The same Apostle wrote the Second Epistle, the Third Epistle and the Apocalypse.

In the 1962 Missal, St John supplies the Gospel of the greatest days of the year: the third Mass of Christmas (1:1–14), Cana on the Second Sunday after Epiphany, Laetare and Passion Sundays, Maundy Thursday (13:1–15), the whole Passion on Good Friday (18:1–19:42), Low Sunday, Good Shepherd Sunday, Pentecost (14:23–31) and Corpus Christi (6:56–59). The Prologue is the Last Gospel, read at the end of Mass, and the Apostle's own feast on 27 December takes its Gospel from 21:19–24. You can follow the day's reading at Today's Gospel and in the liturgical calendar.

How to read the Gospel of John

Read it whole first: it can be read in an evening, and its Prologue is best reread at the end. Read chapter 6 with the Mass in mind, and chapters 13–17 as though seated at the Supper. For a Bible study, take one chapter a day for three weeks, asking at each sign what it reveals of Christ. For a commentary, take the Tractates on John of St Augustine, the homilies of St John Chrysostom, or the Catena Aurea of St Thomas Aquinas, which gathers the Fathers verse by verse. A novena to St John the Apostle is a fitting way to begin.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who wrote the Gospel of John?

The Gospel of John was written by St John the Apostle, son of Zebedee, the "disciple whom Jesus loved". St Irenaeus, who had known St John's disciple St Polycarp, says John published it at Ephesus, and the Gospel names its author as the beloved disciple (John 21:24). In 1907 the Pontifical Biblical Commission affirmed that John the Apostle, and no other, is its author.

When was the Gospel of John written?

According to tradition, St John wrote his Gospel at Ephesus near the end of the first century, around AD 90–100, last of the four Gospels. The 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia places it about AD 96 or shortly after.

Was the Gospel of John written by John the Baptist?

No. The Gospel was written by John the Apostle, the son of Zebedee. St John the Baptist, the forerunner of Christ, was beheaded by Herod in prison (Matthew 14:10) before the Passion, and the Gospel speaks of him in the third person as "a man sent from God, whose name was John" (John 1:6).

Who was the Gospel of John written for, and why?

St John wrote for Christians of Asia Minor who already knew the other Gospels, at the request, St Jerome says, of the bishops of Asia against heretics who denied that Christ existed before Mary. He wrote "that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God" (John 20:31).

How many chapters and verses are in the Gospel of John?

The Gospel of John has 21 chapters. In the Douay-Rheims, which follows the verse division of the Latin Vulgate, it has 879 verses; the longest chapter is chapter 6, with 72 verses. Every chapter is in the Iter Fidei Bible, Latin and English side by side.

What are the seven signs in the Gospel of John?

St John calls Christ's miracles "signs" because each manifests His glory (John 2:11). The seven usually counted are Cana, the ruler's son, the paralytic at the pool, the five thousand fed, the walking on the sea, the man born blind and Lazarus raised from the dead, found in chapters 2, 4, 5, 6, 9 and 11. Many add the catch of 153 fish after the Resurrection (John 21) as an eighth.

What is the main message of the Gospel of John?

Its main message is that Jesus is the eternal Word, God made man, who reveals the Father, gives His flesh as the bread of life and sends the Holy Ghost upon His Church. By believing in Him and receiving Him in the sacraments we have eternal life.

Why is the Gospel of John different from the other Gospels?

Written last, St John's Gospel supplements Matthew, Mark and Luke rather than repeating them. It dwells on Christ's visits to Jerusalem and His long discourses, especially at the Last Supper. Clement of Alexandria, handing on the tradition of the elders, called it a "spiritual Gospel".

Read the whole Gospel of St John verse by verse, the Latin of the Vulgate beside the English of the Douay-Rheims, in the Iter Fidei Catholic Bible app.

Sources. The Holy Bible, Douay-Rheims (Challoner) and Latin Vulgate; St Irenaeus, Against Heresies III.1.1 and III.3.4; Theophilus of Antioch, To Autolycus II.22; the Muratorian Fragment; Clement of Alexandria in Eusebius, Church History VI.14.5–7; St Jerome, On Illustrious Men 9 and Against the Pelagians II.17; St Augustine, Tractates on the Gospel of John; St John Chrysostom, Homilies on the Gospel of St John; St Thomas Aquinas, Catena Aurea; Council of Trent, Sessions IV, VII and XIV; First Vatican Council, Pastor Aeternus; Pontifical Biblical Commission, response on the Fourth Gospel (29 May 1907); Leo XIII, Adiutricem (1895); Missale Romanum (1962); Catholic Encyclopedia (1913), "Gospel of Saint John".