Also, those who hold this view point out that developed theology does not necessarily argue for a late origin. The theology of Romans written c. Further, the statement in that there "is" rather than "was" a pool "near the Sheep Gate" may suggest a time before 70, when Jerusalem was destroyed.
Others, however, observe that John elsewhere sometimes used the present tense when speaking of the past. John's Gospel is rather different from the other three.
Whether or not he knew them or any one of them continues to be debated. In any event, his witness to Jesus goes its own way, highlighting matters that in the other Gospels remain implicit and underdeveloped. The literary style of this witness of Jesus is also unique among the Gospels; here focus is on the "signs" of Jesus' identity and mission and on lengthy, theologically rich discourses.
John begins with the profound announcement that Jesus is the "in the beginning" creative Word of God who had become embodied incarnated as a human being to be the light of life for the world. After this comes the proclamation that this Jesus is the Son of God sent from the Father to finish the Father's work in the world see and note. God's own glory is made visible in him "Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father," , and what he does glorifies the Father.
In him the full grace and truth of God has shown itself. Strikingly, a series of "I am" claims on Jesus' lips echoes God's naming of himself in Ex , further strengthening the link between the Father and the Son see ; ; ; ,9,14 ; ; ; ,5. Jesus' words to Nicodemus nicely summarize this Gospel's central theme: "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life" Although a variety of motivations for the composition of John's Gospel have been posited by interpreters such as to supplement the other Gospels, to combat some form of heresy, to oppose the continuing followers of John the Baptist , the author himself states his main purpose clearly in "that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.
For the main emphases of the book see notes on ,7,9,14,19,49 ; ,11 ; ; ; ; -- ; ; ,5 ; All rights reserved. Used with permission. Shoebox Collection Week is Here!
Plus Toggle navigation. Password Assistance. Email address. Book of John. Share Tweet Save. Chapters 1. Summary Summary of the Gospel of John This summary of the Gospel of John provides information about the title, author s , date of writing, chronology, theme, theology, outline, a brief overview, and the chapters of the Gospel of John.
Author The author is the apostle John, "the disciple whom Jesus loved" [see note there]; ; ; ,20, Helen's husband, George, was understanding. He hadn't an issue with her going dancing chaperoned by her sister. Of course, you knew what went on there. And you knew all about Patricia Docker and Jemima McDonald—the 31 year-old who had been found by local children in a dilapidated tenement block in Mackeith Street, streets away from The Barrowland on August 16, —but what could you do?
A 'Daily Record' poster appealing for information on Patricia Docker's death. Most of what happened next—and almost all of the available firsthand knowledge we have of the killer—we know from Jeannie's testimony to the police, taken over the course of the following days; endlessly repeated and amplified for many months and years after.
The girls split up soon after arriving at The Barrowland. A man approached Jeannie and they began the usual, awkward flirtation. His name was John, a builder from the distant southern suburb of Castlemilk.
They danced and had a drink together—then several more. Helen stood to the side, smoking and observing. Before long, she had her own partner, a man of around 5'10" with reddish hair and a strange, slightly arcane elegance. He was a John as well, but so were most men. She didn't catch a surname. This wasn't unusual at the Barrowland, even if his single-breasted suit and leather half boots were.
He was handsome—sharp-featured, with two slightly overlapping front teeth. You noticed his accent and its clipped, middle-class inflections.
Jeannie was later reported as saying that "he wasn't the Barrowlands type. Many of those who used to go were kind of rough or drunk. But he was nice, very nice, polite, and well-spoken.
Closing time arrived, with its fumble for coats and taxis. There had been a weird, fraught moment as Helen lost money in the cigarette machine, having pulled a switch for Embassy Blues.
Her John had caused a scene, demanding a manager and laying into the establishment and its patrons. On the way out, he let the girls know that his father "thought these places dens of iniquity. Religion flecked the conversation in the cab. Castlemilk John had thought better and hailed a night bus home: He has never been traced, despite the subsequent urgency of police appeals. Helen's John spoke of "adulterous women" and the age-old sectarian violence of Celtic and Rangers.
He said he didn't drink, but prayed. Things ran on, for some reason, to talk of foster children. John mentioned they were alright, citing Moses as an example a possible reference to Moses and the bulrushes from Exodus.
The Old Testament allusions gave Jeannie an odd feeling. John insisted that Jeannie was dropped off first, to her house in Yoker, before retreating back to Helen's in Scotstoun, the West End suburb. Helen was found yards from her home at Earl Street the next morning.
The same wounds, the same method—only, this time with a sanitary towel tucked under her arm, traces of semen left on her tights and a bite mark imprinted on her body. There was evidence of struggle: She had not submitted easily. The murder fell under the jurisdiction of the Marine Division, run by Superintendent Joe Beattie—a brilliant but inflexible detective. He knew what they were dealing with.
Soon, a public appeal was carried on the front page of Scotland's papers:. He may speak of having a strict upbringing and make references to the Bible. This man is quite well-spoken, probably with a Glasgow accent. There may be marks on his face and hands. This was all the tabloids needed. Enterprising hacks soon conjured up Bible John as a moniker. It was a journalistic open goal: a weighty, almost comic bookish cloak for the terrible reality.
It's an old trick. A film of unreality pulled over unthinkable acts. Soon, another layer was drawn over the case with the publication of the famous composite picture—a combination of Joe Beattie's urgings, Jeannie Williams' remembrances, and the imaginative flair of a tutor at Glasgow School of Art. With its mocking eyes and air of tightly coiled, evangelical malice, the result looks more like a depiction of a devil than a sober investigative tool.
It's something repeated—even more famously—in both the Zodiac and the recently solved Golden State case in California. The drawings feed into and become an essential part of the myth and suspense around the killings. Odd images, drawn from fragmented memories and pieced together under unspeakable pressure. For some, Bible John meant opportunity. Murders often do. The chance to settle old scores and dole out suspicion without consequence. Of course, you could just get it wrong.
It was dark, you'd had a drink. Maybe the ruffled, manic-looking man you saw at the bus stop had brown hair.
It could have been blood that crusted his jacket sleeve. But how better to settle a historic grudge or flatten ancient disputes? Some instances are too bizarre to be fully forgotten, like the businessman who hired a team of private investigators to try and implicate an old school friend who had moved to Holland. People thought they saw Bible John everywhere—in pubs, trains, and sloping down suburban high streets.
The killer could be lurking in barracks, subway stations, or flats in Glasgow satellite towns. It didn't really matter. Things got so heavy that police were soon handing out cards to men in the city certifying that they weren't Bible John. The search scaled, fast: doctors and dentists were interviewed on the back of Jeannie's remembrance of the two overlapping teeth.
Over barbers and hairdressers quizzed on the hope of finding the distinctive reddish hair; tailors who might have sold the odd, slightly continental suit. All of this and nothing back. Jeannie also remembered John bragging about a hole-in-one, so every golf club in the country submitted a list of those who had shot an ace.
In all, 5, suspects were questioned before gradual elimination to zero in the first year of the inquiry alone. But Bible John disappeared after the murder of Helen Puttock, banked straight into the myth kitty of popular imagination. Half a century has now passed. People have moved on or grown old.
Some have forgotten and many don't really wish to remember, while Jeannie remained the only confirmed eyewitness until her death in Joe Beattie died in , haunted and embittered by the case until the very end. I spoke with several Glaswegians who were young people at the time of the murders. They each recall the atmosphere of hysteria, the heavy, overstimulated mood that clung to everything surrounding the case.
It wasn't something you could close your eyes to, or absent yourself from. My questions lead me to someone who says they know one of the victims' families, and wonders if I'd like to speak with them.
But you wonder, who's benefit would it be for? To rip open old griefs, concerning mothers and grandmothers they never knew, to serve an anniversary they have no wish to commemorate. It makes me think of something picked up in my reading, from a book by two dogged tabloid journalists from the Scottish Sunday Mail. Bible John: Hunt for a Killer contains a postscript with some words from Helen Puttock's son, David, then 28 years-old. He never really knew his mother. The killer on the loose and I was doing nothing about it.
I find that hard to cope with. He didn't exist: I can't let her memory go. But there are others that it would be an oversight, not a kindness, to leave out. Joe Jackson was then a young detective in a north Glasgow murder squad when the call came in about the death of Patricia Docker.
As the case grew and morphed, he worked it diligently and not without frustration. Joe's career rose over the decades, until he achieved the rank of Detective Superintendent before taking retirement in the s.
It takes a week or so to get through to him on the phone. He's polite but firm. Frankly, he's sick of talking about the subject. So many years of the same questions, the same thoughts drudged up — there's nothing to add, nothing new to be uncovered. But as we speak, something thaws. Alright, how does 10 AM Friday sound, he says. Here's the address, there'll be a coffee waiting for you, try not to be too late. No one was beyond scrutiny or above an accusation, he says as we sit in the garden on an already sweltering summer morning.
You wondered about all the handsome young detectives suddenly assigned to the case. Surely Joe Beattie didn't mean to hint at them too. The guys with a reddish tinge to their hair, the bright-eyed young, polite young men with the chiseled or neurotically angled noses. You could feel his gaze on them, sizing them up the similarities, squinting hard for guilt.
They went dancing too. Paranoia, perhaps. But with the killer uncaught, you could never be sure. There was mania in the air and the passing of time was making things more desperate, not less. Soon, there were psychics and mind readers enlisted down at the Marine Division, all sorts of paranormal quacks to fill the void that normal procedures hadn't, or seemingly couldn't.
The then-internationally-famous Dutch clairvoyant Gerard Croiset even submitted a dossier as a gesture of good will. Joe Beattie thought in certainties and obsessions.
He wasn't a man you crossed or came to with bad news, especially as a junior detective. And he was sure about Bible John. He'd know the second he laid eyes on him. No one worked harder than Joe Beattie. No one else lived the killings like him, aside from perhaps the victims' families.
He had absolute faith in Jeannie, as a witness and investigative trump card. That was absolute faith. But it takes more than faith to solve a murder. There are still regrets, says Jackson. He can't shake the sense that the investigation was doomed from the start. Though he talks about Joe Beattie with immense admiration, it's not uncritical. You could construe his ubiquity as "trying to make a name off the case," he says.
The procedures not followed and reliance on the press.
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