The Gospel of John: A Biography

The contentious life and times of the most widely cited book of the New Testament

Written some two thousand years ago, the Gospel of John is the only Christian Gospel to place Jesus at the creation of the world, and the only one where we find the stories of the raising of Lazarus, the woman taken in adultery, and the changing of water into wine at the wedding in Cana. The Gospel of John also points an accusing finger at Jesus’s Jewish opponents and has been used by medieval crusaders, Protestant reformers, and white supremacists to legitimize antisemitic violence. Kim Haines-Eitzen traces the legacy of this complex, beautiful, and at times deeply troubling work, from its composition in the late first century to its enduring power today.

Haines-Eitzen sheds light on the book’s reception by early Christian gnostic and patristic commentators, its use in the Crusades and Reformation, its revered status among American evangelicals, and the many ways it has inspired novels, films, music, and art. The earliest papyrus fragment of an identifiably Christian Gospel is a fragment of John, and John is the only canonical Gospel that depicts Jesus as a savior who teaches openly about his divinity. Haines-Eitzen shows how John simultaneously carries a message of inclusion and intolerance, and how its story teaches us about the nature and enormous influence of scriptural religions.

Compelling and provocative, The Gospel of John reveals how this dynamic, malleable biblical work has both unified and divided Christians over centuries of translation, interpretation, and creative reimagining.

Kim Haines-Eitzen is the Hendrix Memorial Professor of Early Christianity and Early Judaism at Cornell University. Her books include Sonorous Desert: What Deep Listening Taught Early Christian Monks--and What It Can Teach Us (Princeton) and The Gendered Palimpsest: Women, Writing, and Representation in Early Christianity. She appeared in National Geographic’s The Story of God with Morgan Freeman.