Is the Gospel of John Fictional?

What the stakes are, if it is at least partially fiction, is this: not everything written in the gospel happened, but some of it was created by authorial imagination. Around a month ago, I published a blog entitled, "Trickery in the Gospel of Mark,"¹ where I demonstrated that Mark was partially fiction ("a making up of imaginary happenings").²

            The narrator of the story in John becomes evident as a persona in the narrative when he directly addresses the readers, freezing the story in mid-telling and commenting on some aspect of what had just been shown and again resuming its telling.³ These comments are like parenthetical expressions interrupting the flow of the narrative. By comparison there is only one instance of this narrative device in the Gospel of Mark where the narrator becomes personified and directly addresses the reader (Mark 13:14).

            Among other things, the author uses this narrative device to present interior views (explain thoughts and motives) of characters in the drama and to explain what they are thinking and feeling. In real life, of course, the thoughts and motivations of others are hidden from us. We never know what people are thinking or their reasons for what they do. Even if they tell us, we only know what they told us they were thinking, and what they thought may well be different from what they said. The problem is also complicated by the fact that the Gospel of John is written around sixty years or so after the events narrated in the text,⁴ and the author was not an eyewitness to the events.⁵ This narrative device whereby the author presents interior views of characters in the narrative drama belongs more to the novelistic arts than to the historian's craft.

            What follows are several examples of this artifice by which the narrator reads the minds of characters in the drama including the mind of his created character, Jesus.⁶

The Narrator Reads the Mind of Characters in John's Gospel:

1 The narrator knows the steward did not know the source of the wine, but that the servants did know (2:9).

2 The narrator knows what the disciples remembered (2:22).

3 The narrator knows the inner motivation of those who persecuted Jesus (5:16).

4 The narrator knows what Jesus knew "within himself" (en eautō) (6:61).

5 The narrator knows the motivation of the parents of the man born blind (9:22–23).

6 The narrator knows what the disciples were thinking (11:13).

7 Judas questions why ointment was not sold and the proceeds given to the poor. The narrator knows Judas' motive for saying this (12:6).

8 The narrator reads Jesus' mind. Jesus knew from the beginning who did not believe and who would betray him (6:64).

9 The narrator reads the mind of Jesus and Judas (13:1–4).

10 The narrator knows that Satan had entered into Judas (13:27).

11. The Narrator reads Peter's mind and explains what Peter meant by the proverb Peter spoke (21:18–19).

What does it mean for a text when its author is found to engage in an unhistorical methodology, but chooses to use the conventions of literary fiction instead? At the least, it means that its narrative should be read very carefully. How should one read a text known to be novelistic? My suggestion is that one read it like one would read the historical novel Gone with the Wind. By recognizing that although it may have some historical features, the narrative itself is compromised as history. In the case of John, the author is more a Christian theologian than a disinterested historian.

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹Wry Guy Blog, "Trickery in the Gospel of Mark," April 11, 2025: http://blog.charleshedrick.com/search?q=Trickery+in+the+Gospel+of+Mark

²Webster's New World College Dictionary (4^th ed), under "fiction."

³Hedrick, "Authorial Presence and Narrator in John. Commentary and Story," in J. E. Goehring, et al., eds., Gospel Origins and Christian Beginnings (Sonoma, CA: Polebridge, 1990), 74–93. I found 121 instances of this narrative device, p. 81.

⁴W. G. Kϋmmel, Introduction to the New Testament (trans., H. C. Kee; Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 1975), 246.

⁵Kϋmmel, Introduction, 245.

⁶After a cursory reading in English, I found over thirty examples of this device used by the author of John. Here are several other examples of mind reading by the narrator of John: 1:43; 2:22; 2:23; 4:1; 4:17-18; 4:39; 4:41; 6:61; 6:64; 10:6; 11:13; 12:16-17; 12:18; 12:33; 12:41; 12:42-43; 13:11; 13:21; 13:29; 16:19; 18:4; 18:9; 18:32; 19:28; 21:12.

Pondering Christianity's Legacy

A Millenium, hence, when the final hymn has been sung, and the last parish priest has laid by his chasuble for a final time at the close of Mass; when the only functioning baptistry is filled with dust, and the vibrant edifices of Christian worship are crumbling mausoleums housing the bodies of the faithful awaiting resurrection day, secular historians will ponder the Christian faiths of the twenty-fifth century much as historians today ponder the Greco-Roman religions of some two Millenia ago.

            I personally am unaware of any residual influence those religions of Greece and Rome play in contemporary religious life. No one today, so far as I know, calls in prayer the names of the eternal Gods of the Greco-Roman world. What remains of their crumbling temples are stark testimonies to the once great influence of their religions. What then served as their religious literature is today relegated to ancient history classes, much as might be the case with the Bible in a Millenium or so. The corridors of history are cluttered with the remains of “true” religions. (Everyone’s religion is the true religion.) This observation raises the issue of the legacy of Christianity; what will today’s Christian faiths have bequeathed to the generations after its demise and final gasp as a vital force in human life?

            Legacies are only a matter of opinion, but there is one feature sparked by the Judeo-Christian faiths that has elbowed its way into contemporary human culture as perhaps a lasting residue of Biblical, Jewish, and Christian faiths. It is the caring concern for the most vulnerable in society. Until recently, such a humane concern was even inculcated into some USA governmental programs (USAID, for example, which Mr. Trump has effectively all but eliminated) but is found primarily in innumerable private benevolent programs for the poor and disfranchised of society.

            In Hebrew Bible God was the protector of the most vulnerable in Israelite society, widows, orphans/fatherless, strangers/sojourners, and the poor.¹ For example:

You shall not wrong a stranger or oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. You shall not afflict any widow or orphan. (Exod 22:21-22 RSV)

You shall not strip your vineyards bare; neither shall you gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the sojourner: I am the Lord your God. (Lev 19:10 RSV)

Christian faiths used the old covenant texts as Holy Scripture and to them added several postscripts in the form of what they called new covenant texts: gospels, letters/epistles, and an apocalypse. Within these postscript epistles/letters and gospels there is evidence that the gatherings of the earliest Christ followers continued the Israelite tradition of caring for the most vulnerable.

Jesus said, “Congratulations, you poor! God’s domain belongs to you. Congratulations, you hungry! You will have a feast. (Luke 6:20–21 SV)

In a parable: “Quick! Go out in the streets and alleys of the town, and usher in the poor, and crippled, the blind, and the lame.” (Luke 14:21 SV)

Religion that is pure and undefiled before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world. (Jas 1:27 RSV)

First Timothy 5:9–16 reflects the existence in the second century of an organized ministry to pious church widows and Paul coordinated a collection of money to support the poor saints in Jerusalem (1 Cor 16:1–4; Rom 15:25–29; 2 Cor 8–9; Gal 2:10; Jas 2:16–17).

            Many of the references about care for the disadvantaged in the New Testament relate to those in the household of faith but at several points the concern seems to shade over into care for anyone in need (for example, Rom 12:19–20; 1 Cor 13:8–10; Gal 6:10). The clearest example of humane care for the nobodies of the world, however, is found is a story Jesus told about an unknown man going down from Jerusalem to Jericho. The man is mugged and left beside the road half dead. Two other men, likely officials of the Judean temple at Jerusalem, pass by him with a furtive glance while a third man, a Samaritan (despised by Judeans) was moved to act compassionately. He tended the wounds of the half-dead man, and took him to an inn, where he cared for him that evening. The next day he paid the innkeeper what amounted to two day’s pay and told him “Take care of him and whatever more you spend I will repay you when I come back” (Luke 10:29b–35). The Samaritan’s abundant benevolence is simply astonishing!² The story is a product of the history of Judaism, but it has been garnered from history’s dustbins by early Jesus followers, who elevated its putative creator to divine status. It represents (in my view) the best example of disinterested benevolence that Christianity has to offer. What in your view will be the most positive legacy of Judeo-Christianity?

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹M. G. Vanzant, “Orphan,” NIDB, 4.343; B. B. Thurston, “Widow,” NIDB, 5.846–47.

²The story recalls an aphorism in the Gospel of Thomas attributed to Jesus: “Blessed are those who go hungry to fill the starving belly of another.” Gospel of Thomas 69b (my translation).