A Lot More Different Than What I Thought

Hello! New week, new gospel! I chose the gospel of John for this week. As I said before, because you already know the story of Jesus as told in the gospel of Luke, I will analyze the other gospels by comparing them. As the title states, the gospel of John is a lot more different from the gospel of Luke than what I thought it would. I thought that because it was the same story, written at approximately the same time, by people who saw the same things with their own eyes, it would be fairly similar. Well, it wasn't.

I first want to say that, without meaning to offend anyone, the gospel of John until now is boring. I have only read the first seven chapters, but they are enough to make me notice the difference. One of the things that was very different was the way of writing. I am not sure why, but this gospel has a very different tone and even word choice. It sounds more religious, sometimes a lot more descriptive, and for some reason it seems to care more about Jesus' words than his actions. Here they describe exactly what he says, while in Luke they described more of his actions.

Something weird that I noticed was that it said that either Jesus had created the earth, or God came to the earth and no one recognized him. Something else was that, from my point of view, Jesus was a lot blunter and mean in this version. "Jesus answered and said unto him, Art thou a master of Israel, and knowest not these things? (John 2:10)" The other version of Jesus was very nice, curing everyone and forgiving sins, while this one doesn't believe in his followers and is always blaming them for everything.

Another difference that I found, or at least something I noticed for the first time, is that Jesus doesn't baptize. I am not sure, but I think he WAS the person who baptized in the Luke version, but here it says that it is his disciples the ones who do his work. "Though Jesus himself baptized not, but his disciples... (John 4:2)" I'm not sure, but I read that attitude as being selfish, and sort of saying "I am too good to baptize normal people; I only do stuff to more important ones." Anyway, I might be wrong, and it might be simply that Jesus put that work to his disciples, just to give them something to do.

He also says things like, "Ye worship ye know not what: we know what we worship: for salvation is of the Jews (John 4:22)," which make him sound a lot more selfish. I think he sounds as if he didn't know what he was talking about, and he has an attitude of being better than others that is not prone for Messiahs.

Also, there is a moment in which the disciples make it clear that it is very surprising that Jesus talked to women, because it seems like it was not very common for men to speak to women out on the streets. I think that is very classist of their part, because even if that was what people did those times, they should set a good example. I got this from the quote that says "And upon this came his disciples, and marvelled that he talked with the woman (John 4:27)."

One of the few moments when I really saw that the stories had something in common was when it said that someone had asked Jesus to help cure his son, and Jesus had said that when the man went back his son would be cured. The man finally got back some days later and saw that his son was well, and when he asked when he had gotten well, his servants replied that it had been the day the man had seen Jesus. He then got the whole household to believe in God and in Jesus. I think this story would really fit in into the gospel of Luke. That is why, I think, I liked it more than the rest of the story.

Another story that was exactly the same was the one that with very little bread, Jesus was able to give as much as they wanted to eat to 5,000 people, and when they finished the servants picked up 12 baskets of leftovers. This story is basically exactly the same in both versions.

Somethiyng that doesn't happen in Luke but that I hadn't heard before was that Jesus can walk on water. I had heard that a lot, nut hadn't read it until now. It is a very nice description.

Last but not least, I want to say that it is ver strange how about half of the people like Jesus and would support him everywhere possible, and as in both gospels it is said, there are many who spend their lives planning how they will kill him. After all, they achieve their task.