If John was a witness in the raising of Jairus daughter by Jesus -Luke 8 v 51 - then why was it not written in John?

Answer 1

This is one of the interesting features of the Gospel of John which is noted as a possible supporting argument for John being the author. Narratives in which John is prominent are omitted from this Gospel and this is attributed to modesty and shame in that he was writing about Jesus Christ the Lord not about himself.

It must be remembered that there is no requirement that any specific detail be recorded in any of the Gospels. Each author wrote down what they regarded as important according to particular editorial criteria and of course knowledge and ability. This is clear in that it seems Matthew was written for the Jews and Mark for the Romans etc. Various aspects of the styles of each book bring the editorial 'slant' into focus. This has nothing at all to do with changing the evidence but to making the record relevant to the intended audience. The Romans, for example, would have had to have many things in Matthew explained in great detail, since they were not familiar with the Old Testament prophecies as were the Jews.

John in his own unique style thus omitted a number of stories involving himself. He also added a lot of material relating to various miracles which are not recorded elsewhere and much teaching around the meaning of those miracles. The extra material would also have made it more likely that some other details would have been omitted anyway - given the stated criteria of John to promote faith in Christ. John had the raising of Lazarus -four days dead- as his great raising the dead miracle. The above answer is quite admirable and correct. There is a further reason, however. Whilst Luke's gospel is a complete (as much as Luke could find out!) account of Jesus' ministry as you would expect from someone who hadn't met Jesus but was merely commissioned to put together chronologically eyewitness accounts, John's gospel is very different. In it John does not give a chronological account of Jesus' life. Instead for much of the book he gives us a miracle, and then a statement of Jesus' teaching relating to that miracle - in a sense 'snapshots' taken across Jesus' ministry. As an example, John mentions the raising of Lazarus. But afterwards, he records Jesus saying 'I am the resurrection and the life' - indicating the reason why the miracle was performed in the first place. John never calls Jesus' healings, raisings and so on as 'miracles' - he calls them 'signs'. Signs of who Jesus actually is. And John wrote these signs down - coupled with their authoritative statements uttered by Jesus, 'so that you too may believe' as he said. So John's omission of himself from many of the stories may well have been deliberate and modest, but one must also remember that John wrote his gospel for a specific reason - to persuade you that Jesus is the Christ. Consequently he needed only to include enough evidence to do just that; his own part in the story was irrelevant.