Coptic Orthodox Answers

In the name of Father and Son, the Holy Spirit, One God. Amen.

Welcome to Coptic Orthodox Answers Deep Dive where we aim to dive deeper into certain fundamental subjects. As I said in the introductory video, we are gonna start with the Gospel of John. And since we're taking it only fifteen minutes at a time, we're gonna dive deeper right now with the introduction of the Gospel itself.

Alright! So, the first thing we have to remember about the Gospels is that there are four Gospels. And these Gospels have minor differences between them and some of them, they have major differences between them. But is that normal? Yes, it is normal, because although the main author of the Bible itself is the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit is working in synergy with mankind.

And therefore, God works through Mark, for example, to write Mark's Gospel. And what does that mean? It means that Mark has influence on that Gospel, in the sense where he has a mindset, right? He has an objective, a purpose. He has a context that he's working with and he is writing based on that context for that specific objective.

For example, as we often say, St. Mark is writing to the Romans. St. Matthew is writing to the Jews. St. Luke is writing to the Greeks. Here, St. John is writing at the end of the 1 st century when there were still fights or arguments between Jews and Christians on the identity of Christ. And therefore, St. John wanted to demonstrate once and for all that Christ is God.

So, John's purpose is to write about the divinity of Christ and he does so at the end of the 1 st

century. And since he's already aware of the synoptics or the synoptic Gospels, meaning Mark, Matthew and Luke, because Mark was written in between 55 and 68 (some people say in the 40s), and Matthew and Luke are almost at the same time between 58 and 63 and 58 into 68 (some people say in the 80s for both of them). So, John's already aware of all these things. So, he purposely skips over some of the events that are already recorded by these other Gospel writers.

So, one of the first questions we have to ask ourselves is how do we know that John is actually the one that wrote the Gospel, because the Gospel itself is anonymous, right? Some say that John did this on purpose, because John was a big apostle, if I may say that, meaning being the last of the twelve, living at the end of the 1 st century with all of these miracles, writing the Epistles, the book of Revelation... There was a certain weight associated with John.

John did not want this weight to be coupled with the Gospel. He wanted the divinity of Christ itself to speak. In other words, he wanted the truth of Christ to be revealed in the Gospel and he wanted that truth itself to speak, to demonstrate its authority on its own. But there are internal evidences within the Gospel that demonstrate that John is the one that wrote it. For example, in John 21:24, it says:

'' 24 This is the disciple who testifies of these things, and wrote these things; and we know that his testimony is true.'' (John 21:24)

Now, at the end of the Gospel, in the last chapter, John writes this. Now, how do you know this is John? The first hint is that the person that is actually writing this verse, right?, is one of the few disciples that were there earlier in the chapter. And we see that this could be Peter, Thomas, Nathanael, James, John or two others that the author doesn't name. So, that's the first hint: we know that the person that wrote is from these specific apostles.

Now, from these seven apostles, we can see that Christ had an immediate inner circle, which consisted of St. Peter, St. James and St. John. And we can also see from the book of Acts and from the Gospel of John itself that Peter and John had a very special relationship. For example, in Acts 3:1, we see them both going to the temple to pray at the ninth hour. We see in Acts 8:14 that Peter and John went to Samaria to give the Holy Spirit to the people that were baptized but hadn't received the Holy Spirit yet. So, we know that these two saints were close.

But also, we see a close relationship between St. Peter and the author of the Gospel, like in John 21 here referring to John 13, the last supper, it says this:

'' 20 Then Peter, turning around, saw the disciple whom Jesus loved following, who also had leaned on His breast at the supper, and said, ''Lord, who is the one who betrays You?'' 21 Peter, seeing him, said to Jesus, ''But Lord, what about this man?'' (John 21:20-21)

What about this man? And then, three verses later, it says:

'' 24 This is the disciple who testifies of these things, and wrote these things; and we know that his testimony is true.'' (John 21:24)

So, this verse 24 confirms or talks about the author of the Gospel. And a few verses earlier, we can see that St. Peter is preoccupied about the author of this Gospel, therefore, asks: God, what about this man?

So, from the seven apostles named in John 21, verse 2, and the special relationship between St. Peter and St. John, and the special relationship between St. Peter and the author of the Gospel, we can comfortably point toward St. John as being the author of the Gospel. But

ultimately, the Church Fathers, through the tradition of the Church, are the ones that confirm that John is the author of the Gospel. There are a few Church Fathers that mention this, but I will take only one example, St. Irenaeus who died in 202 A.D., meaning he lived at the end of the 2 nd century, He says:

''John the disciple of the Lord who also leaned upon His breast, himself published a Gospel during his residence at Ephesus.'' (St. Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 3:1,1)

There is also a papyrus fragment of the Gospel of John that was discovered and it dates to 125 A.D., so, we know that the Gospel was definitely written before that. And all of these things together demonstrate that John is truly the author of the Gospel.

Now, before getting into the Gospel itself, which we'll do in the next video, I wanna share with you a three 7's. The first one is that, in the Gospel of John, there are 7 days. He starts with 7 days, which... which are equivalent to the 7 days of Genesis. But I will talk about this in more detail in the next videos to come, so I'm not gonna tackle it this time around.

There's also 7 I AM's. So, Christ said I am the bread of life, for example. There's 7 of them. And there's also 7 miracles, 7 major miracles that Christ has done that John wrote in his Gospel. Again, he skipped over the other miracles that were written in the synoptics. So, let's jump into that.

So, let's start with the miracles:

John chose seven miracles that complement each other that demonstrate the authority and the divinity of Christ.

1 So, the first miracle is God turning the water into wine, in John 2, at the wedding of Cana of Galilee, where God takes a certain substance, water, right?, and transforms it into wine. He ferments it, etc.

So, there's a lot of applications here, whether theologically, whether spiritually or symbolically. There's many contemplations that could be done, but it's not the time for it. But the point is that God creates something out of something else. So, He is, in a sense, the source of the creation.

2 The second miracle is the healing of the official's son in John 4 where, here, the person's at the point of death and Christ, that is the source of life, intervenes, right?, and he heals this person.

3 Miracle 3 is the healing at the pool of Bethesda where this sick man has been sick for 38 years. But even 38 years could not come between God healing humanity, right?, because He cares for humanity and He is capable.

4 Miracle #4 in John 6, the feeding of the five thousand, which demonstrates that God sustains humanity. He is truly the one that we need for us to be able to live.

5 Miracle #5, walking on the water, John 6 again, which is very obvious that God wants to demonstrate His authority over nature.

Up to now in the miracles, we've seen that Christ does a miracle out of something, meaning he turns water, something that exists, into wine, or He takes the five loaves and two fish and makes a miracle out of them; when He walks on water. But the next two miracles are very different. They truly demonstrate Christ's divinity being the Creator and the source of life.

6 So, miracle #6 is when Christ heals the man born blind. Now, here is a miracle unheard of, because God creates out of nothing. A creation ex nihilo they call it, right?, where He demonstrates that He is the Creator Himself, because He creates new eyeballs for the man.

7 And miracle #7, the epitome of the miracles, right?, is when Christ raises Lazarus from the dead on the 4 th day in John 11, demonstrating that He is the source of life, because here, decay started in Lazarus, but God reverses this decay. So, He reverses the power of death, right?

So, God is the source of life and that's what John wants to demonstrate throughout these seven miracles.

Now, we mentioned quickly the seven I AM's. We'll go through them in detail as we study the Gospel, but...

the seven I AM's are:

I am the bread of life I am the light of the world I am the door of the sheep I am the good shepherd I am the resurrection and the life I am the way, the truth and the life I am the true vine

So, to sum up, the three sevens of the Gospel of John are first the 7 days of recreation, which parallel the 7 days of creation in Genesis 1. Number two, the 7 miracles, and number three, the 7 I AM's.

Now, finally, the Gospel breakdown:

1 So, from 1:1 to 1:19, it talks about the incarnation of the Son of God. And this is one of the most important parts of the Bible that discusses theologically who Christ is: the fact that He is the Son of God, one in essence with the Father, as we shall see.

2 Then, the second portion from 1:19 to 5:1 is the presentation of the Son of God. So, who He is.

3 The third portion, 5:1 to 13:11, is the opposition to the Son of God from the Jews, Pharisees and so on.

4 From 13:1 to 18:1, the preparation of the disciples. That's what this section is focused on, where we see the Gospel of the Paraclete 1 .

5 And the last portion, 18:1 to 21... chapter 21, verse 25, is the cross and the resurrection.

So, this concludes the introduction of the Gospel of John. We will start next time with John 1:1 and we pray that you will join us.

Remember: Know your faith, live your faith, and teach your faith. And glory be to God forever and ever. Amen.

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Remember: Know your faith, live your faith, and teach your faith.

1 The word Paraclete is a term unique to St. John's writings and refers to Jesus or the Holy Spirit, depending on the context. It is not an English word, but a transliteration of the Greek word παράκλητος (paráklitos) and is often translated as an advocate, counsellor, helper or comforter.