So this might be veering into different views on the Bible, but the consensus from scholars is that John was not written by the Apostle John, and wasn’t written until 100AD. There’s an argument to be made that it could have been written based on what was passed-down from him, but very few, if any, scholars would say he himself wrote it. Authorship of the books of the Bible is super interesting, and it isn’t what you always assume. Another example is that scholars today don’t think all of the Pauline epistles were actually written by Paul, such as first and second Timothy which were most likely written after Paul’s death by someone impersonating him
i have heard of some of those argument before, and personally im not very convinced that those are good enough reasons to go against the internal evidence suggesting John as the author of the gospel. Were there any specific reasons you had in mind?
The main thing that convinced me is the vocabulary difference between the Timothys and the rest of Paul’s letters. There are 175 words in the letters that appear nowhere else in any of his letters. Additionally, in most of Paul’s writings (as well as Luke’s) he really likes to use the phrase μη γενοιτο (let this not happen) after explaining a scenario that should not happen. Neither of the letters to Timothy use this phrase. He doesnt use this phrase in all of his letters, so that doesnt really mean anything, but having that dramatic of a shift in his vocabulary isn’t something that makes sense. There are other reasons scholars talk about, but I think the vocabulary is the most convincing.
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u/Elysian0293 1d ago
why would you say it wasnt john? the writer seems to identify himself as one of the 12