Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

§7.8 The Sources
the Fourth Evangelist knew and used a Synoptic-like tradition. 135 Indeed, again
and again it looks as though the Johannine discourses are based on particular sayings
of Jesus, similar to the Synoptic sayings in character. 136 Moreover, the regular
Johannine pattern of miracle ('sign') followed by discourse, and the 'farewell
discourses' of John 14-17 strongly suggest that what we have in the Fourth Gospel
is the Evangelist's meditations on significant words and deeds of Jesus.
In short, John provides another window on how the Jesus tradition was
used already within the first century, and indeed, within the first two generations
of Christianity. 137 But one can recognize both that the tradition has been heavily
worked upon and that it is well rooted within earlier Jesus tradition. 138 The point
so far as the teaching material is concerned is, once again, that the recognition of
both features is determined by comparison with the Synoptic tradition. That is to
say, the Synoptic tradition provides something of a norm for the recognition of
the oldest traditions. In what follows, therefore, we shall certainly want to call
upon John's Gospel as a source, but mostly as a secondary source to supplement
or corroborate the testimony of the Synoptic tradition.
7.8. Other Gospels
So far as testimony to earliest memories of Jesus' teaching and life is concerned,
the value of the other Gospels cited by Crossan and Koester becomes progressively
slighter.
a. The appropriately named 'Dialogue Gospel'is plausibly deduced to be a
source for the Nag Hammadi document known as the Dialogue of the Saviour 139
135. The debate continues as to whether John knew and used any of the Synoptics; see
the review of the debate by D. M. Smith, John among the Gospels: The Relationship in
Twentieth-Century Research (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992). In my own view, Dodd was right:
the indications of John's knowledge of earlier Gospels are as readily or better explained by
John's knowledge of an oral tradition which shared those features.
136. Koester, Ancient Christian Gospels 256-67, argues that John knows and refutes the
pre-Johannine Gnostic understanding of these sayings (263-67), but all that the evidence indicates
is a different interpretation of similar material; and, once again, 'different' does not mean
'earlier'.
137. The Gospel of John itself is usually dated to about 100 CE; see, e.g., Koester, Ancient
Christian Gospels 267; Schnelle, History 476-77; Brown, Introduction 374-76. Few have
been persuaded by the attempt of J. A. T. Robinson, Redating the New Testament (London:
SCM, 1976) to date John's Gospel prior to 70 CE.
138. See further my 'Let John Be John: A Gospel for Its Time', in P. Stuhlmacher, ed.,
Das Evangelium und die Evangelien (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1983) ET The Gospel and the
Gospels (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991) 293-322.
139. Translation of the Coptic by H. Koester and E. H. Pagels, in Robinson, ed., Nag
167