3, 4. What is the external and internal evidence for (a) the Gospel’s canonicity, and (b) John’s writership?

³ Christians of the early second century accepted John as the writer of this account and also treated this writing as an unquestioned part of the canon of the inspired Scriptures. Clement of Alexandria, Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Origen, all of whom were of the late second and early third centuries, testify to John’s writership. Moreover, much internal evidence that John was the writer is to be found in the book itself. Obviously the writer was a Jew and was well acquainted with the Jews’ customs and their land. (2:6; 4:5; 5:2; 10:22, 23) The very intimacy of the account indicates that he was not only an apostle but one of the inner circle of three​—Peter, James, and John—​who accompanied Jesus on special occasions. (Matt. 17:1; Mark 5:37; 14:33) Of these, James (the son of Zebedee) is eliminated because he was martyred by Herod Agrippa I about 44 C.E., long before this book was written. (Acts 12:2) Peter is eliminated because he is mentioned along with the writer at John 21:20-24.

7. Of what importance is the Papyrus Rylands 457?

⁷ Bearing on the authenticity of John’s Gospel are important manuscript finds of the 20th century. One of these is a fragment of John’s Gospel found in Egypt, now known as the Papyrus Rylands 457 (P⁵²), containing John 18:31-33, 37, 38, and preserved at the John Rylands Library, Manchester, England.b As to its bearing on the tradition of John’s writership at the end of the first century, the late Sir Frederic Kenyon said in his book The Bible and Modern Scholarship, 1949, page 21: “Small therefore as it is, it suffices to prove that a manuscript of this Gospel was circulating, presumably in provincial Egypt where it was found, about the period A.D. 130-150. Allowing even a minimum time for the circulation of the work from its place of origin, this would throw back the date of composition so near to the traditional date in the last decade of the first century that there is no longer any reason to question the validity of the tradition.”