Description:
Within Johannine scholarship, the assumed differences between Jesus’ teaching in John and in the Synoptics have frequently led to a negative judgment about Johannine authenticity. This article proposes a comparative approach that distinguishes between different levels of similarity in wording and content and applies it to John 5,31-47. What we find in this discourse section corresponds conceptually to a significant degree with the picture offered in the Synoptics, though couched in a very different idiom. Thus, the comparative evidence does not preclude us from accepting this particular part of Johannine speech material as an authentic representation of the actual content of Jesus’words.