Who wrote John's Gospel and what was his background?

Answer 1

A:The New Testament gospels were all anonymous until later in the second century, when the Church Fathers sought to attribute them to the apostles they thought most likely to have been the authors. Because the fourth gospel seemed to the Church Fathers to have been written by an eyewitness and because it is the only gospel that refers to the 'disciple whom Jesus loved', whom they thought must have been the apostle John, they attributed this gospel to John, son of Zebedee.

However, New Testament scholars say that the gospel could not have been written by an eyewitness to the events portrayed. In fact, scholars have established that John's Gospel was actually inspired by Luke's Gospel, which certainly rules out authorship by any disciple of Jesus. Therefore we do not know wh the author was.

From the text, and in the context of the First Epistle of John, we can establish that the author (or authors) of John was a member of a closed Christian community that split acrimoniously shortly after the gospel was completed. The community seems to have been mildly Gnostic, and the gospel shows evidence of later redaction to make it more acceptable to a broader Christian audience.