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as it was put in the reference material Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, Volume IV: “John’s purpose for writing yet another gospel, and one that was so different from others…” John’s gospel is so blatantly different from that of the Synoptic gospels—the gospel of Matthew, Mark, and Luke—that many feel his intention with this gospel was far different than that of the synoptic writers. This gospel is very different. The other gospels start with either Jesus’ birth or during his teaching. John’s gospel starts with Jesus being the “Logos,” truth, of God. Jesus was there from the very beginning. Trying to be as unbiased as possible, it would seem that John was saying Jesus was always meant to fulfill God’s purpose. Another blatant difference was John’s gospel showed Jesus as talking in long solo discourses, while the synoptic gospels showed Jesus as a man who spoke in parables and aphorisms. This leads many to believe that John changed the way Jesus spoke to serve his purposes. Another difference was in the synoptic gospels; Jesus spoke of the kingdom of God. In the gospel of John, however, Jesus spoke of his own role. He was the son of God. He was the bread of life. Jesus was the only way through which man could be saved. We were saved only if we believed in Jesus as the messiah and as the son of God. John’s gospel paints a different character of Jesus, turning him into the ultimate messianic character, as well as the title role of suffering servant, which he fit perfectly. John focused more on Jesus than his history, his actions rather than his words, and his thoughts rather than his background. This gospel was meant to glorify the life and teachings of Jesus, not to give us historical information in the era which the writer lived, nor the era when Jesus taught. It was solely about the glory of Jesus as the Christ. It gave us our belief foundation and reasons to praise Jesus. That is where it differed from the others. It gave us a spiritual gospel to follow, instead of a textual, historical, factual gospel to learn. It gave us a list of Jesus’ teachings and movements, not his history and his community. This gospel was dedicated to the pursuit of the spiritual instead of the factual. In this gospel, as Stephen L. Harris, writer of The New Testament: a Student’s Introduction proclaims: Jesus is “Divine wisdom was made flesh.” (Harris 215) According to W. Hall Harris III, a closing difference would be “… during this time Jesus goes several times from Galilee to Jerusalem. The synoptics (gospels) appear to describe only one journey of Jesus to Jerusalem.”
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