Is the Gospel of John a Forgery?

Video Description

Visit https://www.bartehrman.com/courses/ to shop from Bart Ehrman’s online courses and get a special discount by using code: MJPODCAST on all courses. In this special episode, Bart takes a turn at doing the interviewing, talking to his colleague Hugo Mendez about the Gospel of John. Scholars have long argued that the Gospel of John -- named after Jesus' disciple John the Son of Zebedee -- was in fact written by someone else. Only later in Christian tradition was it ascribed to John. In that view, the author himself is not a "forger" -- that is, he did not claim to be a famous person knowing he was someone else. The book was *anonymous*: the author never names himself and so can't be blamed for later readers mistaking his identity. But in fact *is* there evidence that the author wanted his readers to think he was one of Jesus' closest disciples, and that he left hints for them in the book. If so -- and if he wasn't who he intimated he was -- isn't John a forgery?