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“Gnosticism is undeniably pre-Christian, with both Jewish and gentile roots. The wisdom of Solomon already contained Gnostic elements and prototypes for the Jesus of the Gospels...God stops being the Lord of righteous deed and becomes the Good One...A clear pre-Christian Gnosticism can be distilled from the epistles of Paul. Paul is recklessly misunderstood by those who try to read anything Historical Jesus-ish into it. The conversion of Paul in the Acts of the Apostles is a mere forgery from various Tanakh passages... [The epistles] are from Christian mystics of the middle of the second century. Paul is thus the strongest witness against the Historical Jesus hypothesis...John's Gnostic origin is more evident than that of the synoptics. Its acceptance proves that even the Church wasn't concerned with historical facts at all.”
― Arthur Drews

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
― The Gospel of John 1:1 (KJV)

“However it—or the kind of extreme individualistic epistemology it embraces—can lead historians to an overly skeptical approach particularly to those sources that were intended to recount and inform events of the past, that is, testimony in this restricted sense. Particularly in Gospels scholarship there is an attitude abroad that approaches the sources with fundamental skepticism, rather than trust, and therefore requires that anything the sources claim be accepted only if historians can independently verify itâ€�..”
― Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony

“Equally, it does not mean that Christian beliefs cause more distortion than other ideological beliefs. This emerged with particular clarity in engaging with the opinion that Jesus did not exist. This view is demonstrably false. It is fuelled by a regrettable form of atheist prejudice, which holds all the main primary sources, and Christian people, in contempt. This is not merely worse than the American Jesus Seminar, it is no better than Christian fundamentalism. It simply has different prejudices.”
― Maurice Casey, Jesus of Nazareth: An Independent Historian's Account of his Life and Teaching

“It is said that when times are truly dark, as these times are, when lights have gone out and the culture has become a secular environment, often full of violence, a culture of death some call it - it is in those times of intense darkness that a ray of light can shine brightest. It can be found by those who are seeking, but one must be seeking for it. I would remind you of those marvelous, timeless words from the Gospel of John, that the darkness sought to overcome the Light, but it could not, it cannot overcome it. (S. 120)”
― Theodore J. Nottingham, Yeshua the Cosmic Mystic: Beyond Religion to Universal Truth

“John 3:16 is not about forgiveness of sins, no matter the guy with rainbow hair
in the end zone who's holding up that sign. John 3:16 is about life now.”
― Dallas Willard

“The recognition type-scene belonged to the storyteller's standard repertory in ancient Greco-Roman narrative and drama, especially in epic, novel, tragedy, and comedy, where motifs of hidden identities, veiling and revealing, Sein and Schein, deception and discovery often played a central role in the plot.”
― Kasper Bro Larsen, Recognizing the Stranger: Recognition Scenes in the Gospel of John

“There is the vast difference in content between John and the others. Simply put, John has Jesus preach himself as the object of faith, while Matthew, Mark, and Luke make Jesus a pointer to the Father. In the Synoptics, Jesus proclaims the coming kingdom of God, while in John he speaks instead of eternal life. For the Synoptic Jesus, one must believe in his news and repent, while the Johannine Jesus demands belief in himself. In the first three gospels, repentence is sufficient for salvation, unlike John, where, unless one accepts the Christological claims of Jesus, one will die in one's sins.”
― Robert M. Price, The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man: How Reliable is the Gospel Tradition?

“The chronology of John is so totally at odds with that of the Synoptics (not that they always agree among themselves) that we must suppose John's itinerary of Jesus to be governed solely by the theological demands of any particular scene. For example, Matthew, Mark, and Luke have Jesus, by implication, active for about a year's worth of ministry and teaching in Galilee, after which he embarks on the fatal visit to Jerusalem for Passover. But John has Jesus going to Jerusalem and back several times. For Matthew, the Jerusalem crowds on Palm Sunday have to inquire of the Galileans who Jesus is, but John's Jerusalemites know him well enough. And John has Jesus present at three Passover feasts, giving us our traditional estimate of a three-year ministry. But is John just constructing a Passover scene whenever he wants to have Jesus return to Passover themes in his teaching? Likewise, in the Synoptics, the Last Supper takes place on Thursday, the crucifixion on Friday, but not in John, where Jesus must die on Thursday, like the Passover lamb he typologically embodies.”
― Robert M. Price, The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man: How Reliable is the Gospel Tradition?

“Samuel Gregg: Certainly, Smith notes, Einstein was right to claim that the theories designed by humans are important tools for comprehending reality. Yet before there is theory, Smith adds, there is thought and reason, a logical sequence that, he says, finds it parallel in the opening verse of the gospel of John: “In the beginning was the Word [Logos], and the Word was with God, and the Word was Godâ€� (1:1 KJV).”
― Vernon L. Smith, The Evidence of Things Not Seen: Reflections on Faith, Science, and Economics

“Between Genesis and Revelation, the two ends of the Bible, there is a wide gap, a broad span. What bridges this gap? The bridge is the Gospel of John. The book of John opens with the words, “In the beginning.â€� However, if you read this gospel carefully, you will discover that the history recorded in it has no end. Hence, it starts from the beginning in eternity past and it continues indefinitely into the future. Thus, it bridges the span between Genesis and Revelationâ€�.If you want to know the meaning of the Bible, you cannot stay away from the Gospel of John. The key to the whole Bible is in this book.”
― Witness Lee, Life-Study of John