Gospel of John

Bending to the will of the mob, Pilate has Jesus flogged, and the Roman soldiers mock him by putting a crown of thorns on his head and clothing him in a purple robe. Pilate then presents him to the crowd, hoping this will sate their desire for Jesus’s punishment, and says that he can find no guilt in Jesus. This leads to a famous scene, called the Ecce Homo (Latin for “Behold the man”), often depicted in Christian art: “So Jesus came out, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. Pilate said to them, ‘Behold the man!’ When the chief priests and the officers saw him, they cried out, ‘Crucify him, crucify him!’” (19:5-6). Pilate tries several more times to release Jesus, but the crowd is set on Jesus’s death, and eventually Pilate turns him over to be crucified.

Jesus is made to carry his cross out of the city, and the mob takes him to a spot called the Place of the Skull (Golgotha in Aramaic, also called Calvary in other texts). There he is nailed to a wooden cross, which is then raised up to display him to the public as he dies. Above his head they attach a sign from Pilate that reads “Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews” (19:19). Two other criminals are crucified with Jesus, nailed to their own crosses on either side of him. The Roman soldiers divide Jesus’s clothing among themselves at the foot of the cross, thus fulfilling an ancient prophecy of the crucifixion from Psalm 22. As Jesus dies on the cross, he sees his mother and some other followers standing in the crowd, and he commits his mother into the care of the one called “the disciple whom Jesus loved” (19:26), likely a reference to John. After expressing his thirst, Jesus says, “It is finished” (19:30), and he dies. A soldier pierces his side with a spear to verify his death, then he is taken off the cross, and buried in the garden-tomb of a rich man who was sympathetic to Jesus, Joseph of Arimathea (a close associate of the Pharisee Nicodemus). John places Jesus’s death as happening while evening fell on one of the high days of the Passover feast, which means that his tomb would be closed before the Sabbath came, and the earliest anyone could come back to visit the tomb would be on the third day, Sunday.

When Sunday arrives, one of Jesus’s female followers, Mary Magdalene, comes to the tomb at dawn, only to find that the stone sealing the tomb has been rolled away. She notifies Peter and another disciple (likely John), who race to the tomb and see that the tomb is empty, with only Jesus’s graveclothes remaining inside. Not yet understanding that Jesus has risen from the dead, they leave the scene, and Mary Magdalene remains behind, weeping. The resurrected Jesus approaches her, and she first mistakes him for the gardener, asking him where the body of Jesus has been taken. As soon as Jesus says her name, though, she recognizes him and responds with joy: “Jesus said to her, ‘Mary.’ She turned and said to him in Aramaic, ‘Rabboni!’ (which means Teacher)” (20:16). Mary Magdalene rushes back to the disciples, this time to bear the joyful news that Jesus has risen from the dead.

Later that day, as the disciples are keeping company together in a locked room, Jesus suddenly appears in their midst and greets them. He shows them the evidence of his suffering on the cross—the wounds in his hands and side—and then enacts a ritual conferring the Holy Spirit upon them: “Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.’ And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit’” (20:21-22). One of the only disciples who is not at that gathering is Thomas, who later expresses doubts at hearing the fantastical reports of his fellow disciples. Eight days later, while Thomas is with the group, the resurrected Jesus comes to them again, this time offering specific proof to Thomas of the reality and physicality of his resurrection body: “Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe” (20:27). Thomas responds to this with an awestruck declaration of faith. After this scene, the gospel notes that Jesus showed the disciples many other signs beyond the few that are recorded in this book.

After the events of Jesus’s death and resurrection, some of the disciples travel back home to Galilee and go fishing. After a long night with no catches, they see a figure standing on the beach, who encourages them to cast their nets out to the right side of the boat one more time. When they do so, the nets are miraculously full of so many fish that they cannot even haul them in. Immediately recognizing the figure on shore as Jesus, Peter leaps into the water and swims to him, while the others row the boat and nets full of fish back to shore. The disciples build a fire and roast fish and bread there, and after eating together, Jesus and Peter walk along the beach. Jesus asks three times if Peter loves him (presumably to counter Peter’s three earlier denials of him), and each time Peter professes his love, to which Jesus responds, “Feed my lambs,” “Tend my sheep,” and “Feed my sheep” (21:15-17).

At the end of this conversation, Jesus prophesies how Peter will die (which, according to early Christian tradition, was to be crucified on Rome’s Vatican hill). Peter looks back and sees another disciple following them (likely John), and he asks Jesus about that disciple’s fate. Jesus tells Peter that it is not his concern, and the gospel ends with a note that the same disciple wrote down the words of the gospel. The book closes with an admission that the words and acts of Jesus were so numerous that the gospel could not contain them all: “Now there are also many other things that Jesus did. Were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written” (21:25).