A FOUR-WEEK ONLINE PROGRAM
St. Thomas is offering a four-week, online adult formation/education program every Wednesday evening at 7:30 PM, May 6th through May 27th.
ZOOM MEETING DETAILS
After reading more background on the gospel of John below, join us online on upcoming Wednesday evenings at 7:30 PM. Bring your bible and your own questions about John’s Gospel.
Zoom Link for Thursday Evening Study on the Gospel of John
Or Dial-in: +1 669 900 9128 meeting ID# 84709458542
FOCUS ON THE GOSPEL OF JOHN
If you open your Bible to the beginning of the New Testament, you will find The Gospels according to Matthew, Mark and Luke. Then you will find the fourth Gospel according to John. Matthew, Mark, and Luke are called the “Synoptic Gospels”. The word “synoptic,” rooted in Greek, means “presenting or taking the same or common view.” These three gospels share a number of the same stories, vocabulary
and style.
Then there is that other gospel, John. The style is radically different. It begins not with Jesus’ birth or baptism, but with a beautiful, cosmic poem. The gospel contains a large number of events and teachings of Jesus that are unique to this gospel, and events that are common with the Synoptic
gospels but which are told in a different way.
So, why and how is John so very different than the other three gospels? And how is it similar? What do we learn about Jesus as encountered in John’s gospel, that we wouldn’t know from reading the Synoptics?
There are other questions, just as intriguing: When, where and by whom was the Fourth Gospel composed? The way John’s Gospel is used in the liturgy is different from the Synoptics. Why is that so, and what do the answers tell us about the early church? How did the words of Jesus in the Fourth Gospel, particularly in the Last Supper discourse, shape how the church describes and addresses God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit?
Slider image taken from the Gospel of St. John the Evangelist, pages 104-105, The Book of Dimma, an irish Medieval manuscript contained in the medieval manuscript collection of Trinity Library in Dublin, Ireland.