What was the purpose of St. John's Gospel?

Answer 1

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It is not generally realised that a great many gospels were written in early Christian times. Each was generally written for a specific community or sect of Christianity, and included support for the theology of that community.

Like all the other New Testament gospels, John's Gospel was originally written anonymously and only attributed to the disciple whose name it now bears later in the second century. For convenience, the author continues to be called 'John', although we do not know who actually wrote this Gospel, and the community for which it was written is known as the Johannine community. John contains some Gnostic themes and was probably somewhat more gnostic in its earliest version, before being amended to make it suit a wider audience.

Two specific themes of John, which were part of its purpose, but no all, were to disparage the disciple Thomas as the 'doubting Thomas', and to downplay the role that Peter had played in the preceding gospels. It could be said that to a significant extent, the Gospel of John was a political document.