In 1844, the Tübinger Jahrbuch published an essay by F. C. Baur to the effect that John’s Gospel should be dated no earlier than AD 160, and probably closer to 170. Baur came to this conclusion because he was heavily influenced by G. F. Hegel, the father of the “dialectic” named after him. Hegelian dialectic is known today mostly by its curt description: thesis, antithesis, synthesis. That is, one school of thought exists, followed by one that is strongly opposed to it. As these two duke it out, a third school emerges which gleans from the pugilists certain harmonizable ideas, thus reaching a compromise or, more accurately, a new synthesis. Baur applied HD to the New Testament and came to the conclusion that the Gospel of John was probably the last book of the NT to be written. It synthesized the Peter school of Jewish Christianity with the Paul school of the mission to the Gentiles, forming a new amalgam that attempted a harmonization between the two. Hence, it could not have been written in the first century, according to Baur, since such a rapprochement did not exist historically in the first century.

Baur went on to wrestle with the implications of Hegelian dialectic for all of NT history and early Christianity. He is rightly called the “Father of the Tübingen School” of theology. This was both a movement and a place. The movement was essentially the implications of Hegelian dialectic teased out for the NT. The school was a university, with its own seminary, in southern Germany, about 20 minutes from Stuttgart (by way of Autobahn; I’ll drive). The university was founded in 1477; the Protestant seminary in 1536. Both thrive today.

Baur’s influence over German NT studies in the 19th century (and well into the 20th and 21st) can hardly be overestimated. In relation to the Gospel of John, it essentially turned the tide of the scholarly world against seeing historicity in this Gospel. That is, because of Baur, scholars for decades considered John to be the least historical, the most theological, of the Gospels. Indeed, it would not be too much to say that many regarded John to not have any reliable historical information in it at all—except in broad outline. To this day, this is the opinion of many, if not most, scholars.

But Baur’s hypothesis was challenged rigorously by historians in Britain, most notably J. B. Lightfoot. Lightfoot showed that early second century patristic writers (writing before 150) must surely have known of John’s Gospel, thus rendering Baur’s notion of John’s origination in the second half of the second century invalid. Yet even with Lightfoot’s influence, biblical scholars continued to date this Gospel to the second century, albeit early in the second century. And by so doing, they felt they could readily dismiss any historical credibility in the book.

Ninety years after Baur first published his thesis on John, a young doctoral student studying at Manchester University came across a scrap of papyrus in the John Rylands Library. Colin H. Roberts was intrigued by the papyrus fragment, which had been excavated decades earlier from rubbish heaps in Egypt. It was only 2 & ½ inches by 3 & ½ inches, but its importance far outweighed its size. Roberts immediately recognized it as a fragment of John’s Gospel—chapter 18, verses 31 to 33 on one side, and chapter 18, verses 37 and 38 on the other, to be exact. He sent the photographs of the fragment to three of the leading papyrologists in Europe. Each one reported independently that this fragment should be dated, on paleographical grounds, between AD 100 and AD 150. A fourth scholar disagreed, arguing that the fragment should be dated in the 90s of the first century!

This tiny fragment of John’s Gospel rocked the scholarly near-consensus on the date of John, for it is impossible for a copy to be written before the original text is produced. It effectively sent two tons of German scholarship to the flames. As one wag put it, “This manuscript must have been written when the ink on the original text was barely dry.”

The discovery and publication of P52, the papyrus discovered by Roberts, conjure up aphoristic ditties that are almost proverbial in their staying power and application—such as, “An ounce of evidence is worth a pound of presumption.” Or, “The Germans create it [i.e., some aberrant theological viewpoint], the British correct it, and the Americans corrupt it!” Although in 1934, the Americans were not really getting into the mix on this find, they would in later decades. We have certainly contributed our fair share, and beyond, of looney views to academia.

Nevertheless, with the discovery of this papyrus, there was a new impetus for perhaps seeing something of historical value in John’s Gospel. Hardly enough to really get serious interest going in this topic, but at least it was a start. The following decades would increase John’s credibility, even on the part of some liberal theologians.

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