John's gospel

[Absolem]

I understand that there is no claim of authorship within the gospel, aside from a confusing verse (24) I'm the final (21) chapter of the gospel. So if this account was written by John, the beloved disciple, why is it written in third person?

[GandalfTheWise]

The term illeism is sometimes used to describe referring to oneself in the 3rd person.   It's been long noted in scripture.  In the OT, God often referred to Himself in the 3rd person.   Jesus referred to himself as the "son of man".  Paul's discourse in II Corinthians 12 about a man caught up into heaven is considered by a number of scholars to be self-referential.  Outside of the Bible, it is a somewhat common rhetorical and literary method.

Some writers choose 3rd person to avoid constantly interjecting I and me everywhere.  It takes the reader's attention to what is being talked about rather than the author's direct involvement.  I've read and heard various personal testimonies where someone wrote or talked about a topic in the 3rd person and then revealed it was about themselves at the end.   One example is a speaker I heard who was talking about bullying in school.  He started off talking about the out of place kid and the various things others did to that kid.  Then at the end, he revealed he was talking about himself.   He didn't want people focused on feeling sorry for him.  He wanted them focused on the acts and tragedy of bullying which he described in the 3rd person and then by shifting to 1st person at the end, he added much more authority to his presentation.   The author of John's Gospel likely didn't want to draw attention to himself but rather to what he'd seen Jesus do only bringing himself in at the end to point out everything prior was directly witnessed rather than hearsay.

My understanding is that the scholarly debate over the authorship of the Johannine books (Gospel of John, 3 epistles of John, and Revelation) is usually focused on the testimony of early church fathers and other such historical evidence as well as internal information in the book rather than the overall choice of 1st or 3rd person for the majority of the book.  If someone is looking for complete and absolute proof of authorship, it doesn't exist.  However, as far as I can tell, the evidence seems consistent with John the son of Zebedee being either the direct author or the source of the material.  

[Absolem]

Then he would be talking about someone talking about his testimony being true. 24:21. That's the only verse that throws me off. I can get the literary method of 3rd person but that verse seems strange even for the method of 3rd person.

[johnthebaptist]

17 hours ago, Absolem said:

I understand that there is no claim of authorship within the gospel, aside from a confusing verse (24) I'm the final (21) chapter of the gospel. So if this account was written by John, the beloved disciple, why is it written in third person?

Off the top of my head, because he sees no reason to involve himself in the gospel.