The Gospel of John is the most cultured of the Gospels, yet its author is often indicated as one of Jesus' apostles, a simple and humble man, a fisherman. The philologist Giulio Busi in his Giovanni. Il discepolo che Gesù amava (Mondadori, 2024, pp. 156, also e-book) brings to light another John. His Gospel revolves around the "disciple whom Jesus loved", presented as an eyewitness to the salient moments of Jesus' life, death and resurrection. John is an evangelist immersed in the life of Jerusalem, who knows the intricacies of the holy city like the back of his hand, is an expert in Jewish customs and habits, and possesses the minute details of Israeli jurisprudence. John is not only a first-rate historical source. He is mystical fire, and uncompromising polemic.
This is the disciple that Giulio Busi presents to us in an original biography, far from the stereotypes that have lasted for a couple of millennia:
"The evangelist John is not for me to be identified with the apostle. He was not a simple fisherman as too often handed down by Catholic tradition. He was a person that his listeners called the Elder and was of Jewish priestly descent."
During your research, what struck you most about the character?
"I was struck by his elitism, an elitism that makes the Gospel he wrote so different from those of Matthew, Luke and Mark. He does not care about the poor, the humble, he has the attitude of a representative of the Jerusalem elite. His Gospel is a polemic against the Jewish establishment from the outside, but from the inside. It is a violent polemic, but from a person who understands his interlocutors very well. John is not a stranger to the Jewish priestly caste and he is not an outcast. His Gospel is at the same time the most Jewish of the Gospels and the most anti-Jewish."
What impact did the Gospel of John have on the development of early Christianity?
"It had a remarkable impact because from a theological point of view John is extremely lucid. It is John who introduces the theme of the incarnation, fundamental in Christianity. It therefore had an enormous influence, even if high, cultured. The Gospel of John favors the diffusion of the Christian message in the upper classes."
John defines himself as the disciple whom Jesus loved, thus underlining the value of his evangelical testimony. But how does John relate to Jesus?
«He loved many aspects of Jesus' message very much, but a philological reading of his texts, the Letters and the Gospel, also reveals a certain irritation of a member of the priestly class for certain positions taken by Jesus, for certain ways of doing things that were too 'proletarian'. I don't know how much he could appreciate certain thaumaturgical attitudes such as mud on the eyes to restore sight to the blind, assuming that my reconstruction is reasonable».
Do you attribute the Letters and the Gospel to John, but not the Apocalypse?
«No, it is written too differently from the other Johannine texts».