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3:16
 
Perhaps the most celebrated, widely circulated verse in the New Testament is John 3:16:
 
"For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life."
 
Hundreds of millions of Christians around the world consider this verse to be a cornerstone of their faith, and rely upon it as a moral and spiritual standard that reflects the primary, and perhaps the only, meaningful truth about the ministry of Jesus Christ. Some Christians have called this verse the most important passage in the Bible. John 3:16 has been circulated in countless pamphlets, repeated from countless pulpits, and even flashed around the globe when cameras pan across crowds at major sporting events or public gatherings.
 
Not many people, however, fully understand the derivation of the Gospel in which this passage appears, or the extraordinary textual difficulties this single verse presents.
 
A Problematic Gospel
 
Although the Gospel of John appears, on first reading, to be an eyewitness account of events observed by "the disciple whom Jesus loved best," its reliability is highly suspect. The mysterious "disciple" who seems the guide the narration has been strongly associated through the centuries with John, the son of Zebedee, a disciple of Jesus -- but the earliest attribution of this Gospel to that person comes, not in the first century, but in the late second century C.E., nearly two hundred years after the birth of Christ.
 
The Gospel of John appears to have been composed in the late first century, and many scholars have held that it is the last of the four canonical Gospels to have been assembled. (See THE COMPLETE GOSPELS, by Miller and Funk [HarperCollins, 1994], page 6.) It is so strikingly different in tone, content, theological outlook, and structure that it has been recognized for most of the history of Christianity to stand apart from the other three "Synoptic" ("same-viewpoint") Gospels.
 
The Synoptics present their own textual challenges, but a sense of the unique difficulties of appealing to the material in the Gospel of John in order to determine what Jesus actually said or did can be glimpsed in the following introductory remarks from THE COMPLETE GOSPELS:
 
"In John there is nothing of Jesus' teaching in parables or his associating with the outcast. He performs no exorcisms and barely gives ethical teaching ... We hear of ranking priests and Pharisees (perhaps reflecting the author's own experience more than Jesus' time), but nothing of Sadducees, Zealots, scholars, elders, toll collectors, prostitutes, rich and poor. Jesus accomplishes miracles, but in the Greek they are called 'signs' -- just what the Synoptics' Jesus refuses to give .... (D)espite what is claimed in the comment inserted in 21;24 ["This is the disciple which testifieth of these things, and wrote these things, and we know that his testimony is true"] there is in this Gospel very little of the historical Jesus' actual teaching." [Miller and Funk, pages 196-197]
 
 
The Problem with John 3:16
 
Among the major challenges presented by the Gospel of John is that it offers up many long thematic monologues and attributes them, verbatim, to Jesus Christ. These extended monologues are theologically fascinating ... but the idea that they encapsulate the actual, literal, words of the Messiah as he delivered them is rejected by all but the most radical scholars.
 
The verse that supposedly represents the cornerstone of Christian faith, John 3:16, appears right in the middle of one of these highly dubious monologues.
 
The passage in question (John 3:10-21) is traditionally attributed entirely to Jesus. (This is how the King James Bible and the New English Bible, for instance, distribute the quotation marks.) Yet anything resembling an objective reading of this portion of the Gospel inevitably leads to the conclusion that the author of the Gospel is inserting his own theological doctrines into the mouth of the Messiah. If you doubt this, read John 3:10-21 yourself, and then consider the following questions:
 
* Why does Jesus refer to himself as "I" in verse twelve, but as "he" and "him" from verses 16-21?
 
* Why does verse 13 refer to Jesus' resurrection as having occurred in the past, when it has not yet taken place in the narrative of the Gospel?
 
* Who recorded this extended saying of the Messiah's, and how?
 
In this passage, so important to Christian theology, it is simply impossible for an open-minded person to avoid the conclusion that the author of the Gospel of John -- whoever he was -- decided to merge his voice with that of the Messiah. Some commentators view this phenomenon as an "emphasis" in the text. Muslims, who attest to Jesus's divinely appointed role as Prophet, view it as a corruption of the text.
 
Muslims believe, and have believed for fourteen centuries, that the ministry of Jesus was twisted and distorted by others. Muslims believe that the charges that were falsely brought against Jesus by the authorities of the day -- that he claimed to be the Son of God -- were, implausibly, adopted as a central doctrine of the faith that bears his name.
 
The Other 3:16
 
By an extraordinary coincidence, chapter 3, verse 16 of the Qur'an, the holy book of Islam, contains one of the most striking, concise prayers of pure monotheism ever written. (Pure monotheism is the practice of worshipping Almighty God without intermediaries, which Muslims believe Jesus taught.)
 
"Our Lord! We have indeed believed; forgive us, then, our sins, and save us from the agony of the Fire."
 
This, Muslims believe, was the message of Jesus. It is far easier for those who submit to God Alone to imagine Jesus pronouncing these words than the words set down in John 3:16.

What's the most remarkable book you've ever read?

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