Fairy Tale Spotlight: John [Book Review]

"John" is the forty-third book of the "Holy Bible," and it was written by John the Apostle himself. In the previous Gospel blogs, I have been giving you bullet points that stood out to me. Most of them were very similar with some differences in between, but the thing that actually made them similar was that they were an impassionate account of what happened with Jesus with very little personal stuff from the author, with a small exception from Luke, but not as much as what we are about to discuss.

I had intended to go into the differences in the same way, but this book is just not the same thing as the others. It's a very personal and passionate telling of the story by someone who was Jesus' personal friend. It also seemed to be written by someone who actually knew him. And because of that, I saw this one as more of a proper storybook, and not just an account.

If the author is going to be personal in his writing then I'd feel pretty silly in just putting everything in bullet points. "John" is the personalized story of Jesus. There's no way not to realize that if you read it from beginning to end. It is also the bulk of his doctrine delivered in an almost repetitious way as a means to make it very clear.

Something the other books failed to do was to show how passionate Jesus really was and that he did form personal friendships with people, becoming particularly close to them. He did the other things too, and I'll mention that in a moment. But his friendship with Lazareth was notable in that he cried when he found that he was dead.

Much of the story is him talking to friends and those who form a relationship with him. He came across as a very easy person to connect with... but only if you made the attempt. If someone ignored him, he would ignore them as well. The closeness he had with his disciples were made very clear. They were his friends, not just the followers of a religion.

Many of the miracles shown in former books were heavily and personally expounded on in "John." There was a sort of fairy pool where an angel would occasionally stir up the water, and whoever fell into it first would be healed. Now, the story was about how Jesus healed a man who could never make it into the water in time, but I found myself marveled at the pool itself. What an incredible thing to exist! I wish I knew more about it, but the book only speaks of its existence but not its origins.

Another anomaly of this story was a moment where the book steps away from Jesus to show something very amusing. After healing a man who, as it was suggested, was made blind by God at birth for the sole purpose of being healed by Jesus himself, the man has a very straight forward conversation with a priest within the temple. They try and get him to denounce that it was Jesus who healed him, but this guy was just so real and honest. He wasn't a religious zealot of any sort but just a formerly blind man who wanted to be honest about what he saw. He is ultimately thrown out of the temple, but after that, I'm not sure why he'd want to be there anyways.

Another thing that wasn't as well expounded upon in the other books is the mentioning of the Comforter, a man who was clearly defined as the Holy Spirit. He would come after Jesus left. And it honestly sounds, as written, that he is coming in the form of a man. It sounds like it, but it's not perfectly clear. Even so, one has to leave for the other to show up.

This book also made clear the love Jesus had for his Father. It was made very clear that he couldn't have done anything without the help of God. God is more powerful than the Son. Jesus gets everything from the Father which is willingly given.

There are a few passages at the very end of this book which don't even sound remotely like old English. The very last line sounds way off the beaten path of what I have read in the Bible so far. Just listen to this: "And there are also many other things with Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written." Wow. What even is this? That sounded like modern writing. I have read things with the same language in books written in the early 1900s. There's other lines like this too. It only seems to happen in "John."

The authorship of this book is very strange, but it works on a level not seen in the former three Gospels. Those books were about what Jesus did; where "John" is about what it was like to know him in those times. For this reason, I have no choice but to recommend it above the others. It's too good. It is the actual "story" of Jesus... and not just a raw telling of him. It was brilliant in his exposition throughout and shall go down as one of my favorites if not my actual favorite book in the whole of the "Holy Bible."

This blog was written on January 29, 2022.

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