John the Evangelist: Encyclopedia - John the Evangelist

John the Evangelist

John the Evangelist (? - c. 110; יוחנן "The LORD is merciful", Standard Hebrew Yoḥanan, Tiberian Hebrew Yôḥānān) is the name used to refer to the author of the Gospel of John. Tradition has identified him with John the Apostle and with John of Patmos, the author of the Book of Revelation. Numerous modern scholars dispute that these were the same person (see authorship of the Johannine works).

The author of this Gospel is also sometimes presumed to be the author of other books in the New Testament: 1 John, 2 John, and 3 John. There are also schools of thought which attribute some of these five works (always including The Gospel of John) to John the Apostle and others (usually including the 2nd and 3rd epistles) to another John.

Collectively, the Gospel, the three Epistles, and Revelation are known as Johannine literature, and there is some internal textual evidence to suggest they may have been authored by the same person (see textual criticism).

See also

• Four Evangelists
• John the Baptist

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "John the Evangelist", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki